The Water Thief

by Jane Kindred

“I want to make it good for us both together.” The words were a sensuous murmur, unlike his usual matter-of-fact manner. “I want to watch you in the mirror letting go while I let go inside you.”

  I had no objection to this plan. I tried to keep my moaning quiet as he jerked me, the perfumed mineral oil making his large palm slick, expertly pounding me from both ends. My toes were tingling, as though I floated above the ground. Sven grunted at my ear with increasing excitement, watching while his hips slapped against me with mounting force and speed.

  “I’m going to come,” he growled against my shoulder, his hand whipping against my cock, but I beat him to it by a second or two. Both of us shuddered and jerked with teeth clenched, trying not to shout, while my cock painted the mirror in a thick streak of creamy white.

  My breathing had become shallower and more rapid with my increasing excitement, and as my muscles relaxed with the sweet release, I fainted dead away.

  * * * * *

  “Sly. Sly.” Someone was slapping at my cheeks, and a strong, astringent scent assaulted my nostrils as I breathed in. I turned my head away, coughing harshly.

  “Thank the Fates.” Sven’s voice, coming from a ways above me, held genuine concern.

  I opened my eyes. Abigail crouched before me, capping a bottle of smelling salts. “Probably the corset what done it.” She lifted a wet cloth from my forehead as she rose. “Nothin’ you done, you fool. I doubt you’re that impressive.” She scowled at Sven and dunked the cloth into her bucket, squeezing it out on the mirror beside him to rinse the streak from it. I blushed so intensely, I was sure my face was glowing from the radiating heat. My drawers, at least, Sven had apparently had the good sense to pull up before he’d gone to fetch her.

  “Thanks, Ab.” Sven ushered her to the door. “Sure he’ll be right as rain in a minute.” He came and stood over me, offering me a hand, and I took it and got awkwardly to my feet. “Scared the damn hell out of me, Sly.”

  “Sorry.”

  Sven let out a roar of laughter. “I near fucked you to death, and you apologize to me. So proper, you highborn folk.” He drew me in close and looked in my eyes one at a time with a thumb drawing up on my eyelids, as if to be certain I wasn’t brain damaged. “I suppose we should get you out of this thing.” His fingers traced over my artificially enhanced hips, coming to rest on my buttocks. “Or we could try on the rest as long as you’re dolled up this far. If you feel all right now?”

  After the initial thrill of seeing myself in the unexpected light of femininity, and the attendant arousal now sated, my thoughts turned suspicious. “Why do you want me to wear it?”

  “Because you can,” said Sven simply. “There are any number of uses for an innocent and, if you’ll pardon my saying so, rather delicate-looking woman in our trade. Jewel and Abigail can’t pull it off. They’re hardened women who look like what they are. You, on the other hand…” Sven’s lips curved upward. “You’re a fresh canvas, Sly. As unspoiled as if you were a proper maiden, with skin as smooth, and barely a hair on your chin. It would be a shame not to make use of what the Fates have given you.” He turned to the sack of clothing and drew out a finely detailed gown of robin’s-egg-blue organza. “And it would be a shame to waste these. They really do seem to have been made just to fit you.” Sven held out the gown, posing it at my shoulders to show the cut indeed favored my proportions.

  Somewhat reluctantly, I stepped into the dress and allowed Sven to button up the back. It would require some artificial enhancement to fill out the bust, but I had to admit I looked rather fetching as a woman. And I looked familiar, somehow—not as my own countenance I was used to seeing reflected back at me from a looking glass, but as someone else.

  Sven evidently thought so as well. “You remind me of someone.” He glanced down at the Cantre’r Gwaelod Gazette on the pile of clothes beside the mirror. “Of her.” He picked up the paper and pointed to the illustration on the front page. It was a statue in the square—a statue of August. “The earl’s sister,” said Sven. “The one who drowned. You’re a dead ringer for her. Except older, of course.”

  I leaned closer to the mirror and peered at my reflection through the water that still streaked it. I’d never thought we looked so much alike, but it was uncanny. It could have been August standing there. Behind me in the mirror, August herself appeared, her head tilted to one side as she observed me. Forever younger than me in her ghostly form, she had the same warm brown eyes and dark cherrywood curls—though hers were damp—and the same bowed lips and high cheekbones. I glanced at Sven, but he didn’t seem to be aware of her. Perhaps I was mad.

  “Says here she drowned in the lake but they never found her body.”

  “It wasn’t the lake,” said August. “We didn’t go rowing at all. We went sailing on Cousin Emrys’s yacht.”

  Emrys’s yacht. How could I have forgotten that? It was his yacht, and we’d gone sailing on the north shore of the cantref.

  “After dinner, something queer came over us. I thought you’d fallen asleep. I felt dizzy. He’d drugged us both. It was Emrys who hit me. The last thing I remember is tumbling over the side of the boat, and Emrys watching me go.”

  Sven pulled the stool over to me and sat me on it, putting his hands on my shoulders and looking me in the eye. “Sly. You sure you’re all right? Maybe we should get you out of that contraption.”

  “What do you mean? Why?”

  “You’ve been staring at nothing in the depths of the mirror for a full minute, not responding to me.”

  “I have?”

  He went around behind me and undid the buttons, slipping the dress off my shoulders, and I felt a pang of regret.

  Sven tugged ineffectually at the corset. “Blasted thing. I have no idea how it unlaces. Let me get Abigail.”

  Though I couldn’t see her in the room with me when I turned my head, August’s reflection still appeared in the watery surface of the mirror. “Emrys must be brought to justice, Sebastian. You must have our inheritance back.”

  “How? How can I do that? If he meant to kill me once, if he’s replaced me with some imposter, he’ll never let me get close enough to expose him. He’ll have me killed for certain this time. He might even be looking for me right now.”

  “The mudslide at All Fates buried everyone in the East Wing and carried half the bodies out to sea. They think you’re dead. I believe it’s why you called me here. This is our chance.”

  “I called you?”

  “Called who?” The sound of Sven’s voice caused August’s form to fade into the mist. He and Abigail stood in the doorway.

  “What?” I blinked at him, pretending I didn’t know what he was talking about.

  Sven shook his head at me. “Damn, I hope I haven’t wrecked you, Sly. You’re scaring me a bit. You see what I mean, Ab? Get that thing off him.”

  “Suppose I may’ve laced him too tight. He’s not used to it.” Abigail worked out the laces with several sharp yanks, and I breathed in gratefully as my lungs filled with air.

  * * * * *

  We tried an experiment a few days later, after I managed to convince Sven he hadn’t literally fucked me silly—though the memory of it did make me a little giddy whenever I lingered over the events of that afternoon. Abigail and Jewel dressed me, making me a very convincing and respectable young lady. With a rouge pot Jewel had pilfered from a vendor and a bit of kohl to make my eyes look bigger, my face was transformed even more into the image of August, had she lived to twenty-one. My hair, curled and pinned beneath a fine bonnet, completed the picture.

  I set out on my own, a rather scandalous thing for a lady of breeding, while Sven and Ifan followed at a distance. My task was to dupe a poor jeweler into opening up his most expensive case to show me a frippery, and then feign light-headedness—which was no great stretch, ensconced in my attire—to distract him while Sven and Ifan robbed him blind. It
worked a charm.

  Remaining behind while Sven and Ifan made off with their loot was a tad unnerving, but the jeweler never made the connection, assuming the hooligans had simply taken advantage of a lady’s distress. His solicitousness and obvious attraction to me seemed to make Sven pensive when I returned, so that I mistook it for jealousy, but he revealed the reason after the bounteous supper our take had garnered.

  “I’ve been thinking, Sly.” Sven spoke while he packed a pipe with tobacco. “Wasn’t no one out there today, even in the swanky places, who looked twice at you. Or I should say they looked twice all right, but out of appreciation, not suspicion. You make a very convincing girl.”

  I smiled tentatively. “I hope that’s a compliment.”

  “It’s an observation.” As he lit his pipe, Sven glanced across the room to see if Ifan was listening, but found him nodding in his chair, having emptied a bottle of whiskey in celebration of our success. Glyn and Bryn had gone out to buy whores with their share—any bounty brought in by one was shared by all—and Jewel and Abigail were busy with a game of cards at the table, paying us no mind.

  Sven exhaled a ring of smoke and winked at me. “I may have something complimentary to give you later. But I have a proposition for you now.” He leaned in closer. “You remember the sketch I showed you in the Gazette? The earl’s sister? Her body was never recovered from the lake.”

  I eyed him warily, wondering what he was getting at. “What does that have to do with me?”

  “What if Lady August were to come back from the dead?”

  A shiver traveled up my spine, and I half expected August to appear. “What do you mean?”

  “Supposing she was carried out to sea by the current and washed up ashore a few towns over. And supposing she hit her head when she went overboard and didn’t wake for a long spell, and when she finally did, she couldn’t remember herself? What if someone recognized her in the sanatorium there and jogged her memory? She’d have an inheritance to claim.”

  “You want me to pretend to be Lady August of Cantre’r Gwaelod—to claim her inheritance.”

  Sven puffed on his pipe. “You catch on quick.”

  “But who would believe it? How could I possibly make them think I’m Lady August?”

  “I might have an idea about that.” Clutching the pipe between his teeth, Sven fished in the fob of his waistcoat and brought out a small paper packet. “Came upon this a while back. Thought I might have a use for it one day.” He placed it in my hand, and I unfolded the packet and emptied it into my palm. My mother’s ring lay in my hand. August had worn it around her neck.

  I wasn’t supposed to recognize it. “What’s this?”

  “Fellow I bought it off says it belonged to Lady August. There’s an inscription. I’m sure it’s authentic.”

  I didn’t need to read the inscription, but I pretended to.

  Mae nodau pêr yn dyfod,

  A gwn yn ddigon siwr

  Fod clychau Cantre’r Gwaelod

  I’w clywed dan y dŵr.

  I read them aloud. “‘Sweet tones are heard a-rising, and this I know as truth: the bells of the Lowland Hundred are sounding ’neath the waves.’ I’ve never understood that poem. What bells do you suppose they mean?”

  Sven shrugged. “Wedding bells, I reckon. Seller said this was the old lordship’s wedding present to Lady Aeronwen.”

  I handed it back to him, realizing I shouldn’t know that Lady Aeronwen was our mother. “I thought you said it was August’s.”

  “Gifted by her ladyship shortly before she died giving birth to the twins.” Sven tucked it back into the little envelope and into his fob. “Paid a pretty penny for it. I’ll guarantee its authenticity.”

  Chapter Four

  Sven coached me on my role, though the part of August came easily to me. But there were little ways, he said, that I might give myself away. He gave me the story to rehearse regarding where I’d been these nine years, while Abigail instructed me in how to behave like a lady.

  As I had at All Fates, I went along with other people’s plans for me because I had none of my own—Sven’s, to be his secret diamond in the rough who would realize his dream of riches, and August’s, to be rightly avenged. But for myself…I was conflicted about what I wanted. I deserved my birthright, and Emrys Pryce did not. That much was certain. But I was beginning to enjoy my new life in Thievesward, with the freedom to eat and sleep and wake as I pleased, within the confines of our meager living. I had no duties, no expectations thrust upon me but survival. And for the first time in my life, I had what I could call friends. I wasn’t altogether certain I wanted—or had ever wanted—to be the lord of Cantre’r Gwaelod. But someone was playing the lord in my stead. All else aside, I was sure about one thing: whoever had stolen my life would pay.

  Despite possession of the ring that would serve to “prove” my identity, Sven insisted that creating August Swift could not be rushed, and I was happy enough to delay yet another change in my fortune. I spent several months living as August among my new partners in crime so I could accustom myself to the restriction in freedom of movement and alteration of gait that such garments necessitated.

  I continued to find the corseting highly arousing, and Sven clearly did also but was reluctant to compromise me as he felt he’d done before, so I had no further pleasure from him while so attired. When it was convenient, however, he’d take me before the mirror when I undressed for the bath, upswept curls and powdered complexion gazing back at me while he plundered my backside and brought me to delightful release.

  * * * * *

  But all too soon, this pleasant interlude was over, and Sven—himself in costume as a physician from the hamlet of Pentref Gan-y-Môr who’d discovered the unfortunate August and brought her back to herself—was escorting me by coach up the hill from the coast to my own ancestral home.

  Anxiety took hold of me as we drew nearer, a growing sense of dread at the prospect of facing those who had killed August—and had kept me locked away. They would find me out immediately, and back to All Fates I’d go. Or they would do away with me for good. I looked properly ill by the time we alighted at Llys Mawr.

  The stone walls bordering the estate were a quaint reminder that this had once been a fortress, though its moats had been filled in and covered with grass since long before I was born in it. No portcullis barred the way to keep the riffraff out, the gate merely decorative ironwork beneath a charming stone arch. The ivy-covered keep within looked smaller than I remembered and yet loomed large over the greensward of the bailey with an air of oppression. I wanted to turn back.

  Sven’s carefully prepared speech, meant to convince my relatives that I was indeed August resurrect, proved unneeded. The moment I stepped out of the coach into Sven’s hands, the butler, drawn outside by the noise of the carriage on the drive, gaped at me and went pale as chalk. I remembered him, a tall middle-aged man who had grayed in the intervening years, but the same who’d served here in my childhood. Perkins. As far as Sven was concerned, I wasn’t supposed to know anyone here. But seeming not to remember Perkins wouldn’t appear odd. I had only just begun to regain my memory, after all.

  “Do you know me, sir?” I held on to Sven for support in my supposedly frail state.

  “L-Lady August?” The butler seemed on the verge of flight, presumably terrified at the sight of a ghost.

  “I suggest you fetch the earl,” said Sven sternly, his usual coarse speech elevated to a more proper working-class accent in which I had been coaching him. “The countess is unwell.” This was my cue to faint, and it was no great stretch to do so.

  * * * * *

  I “came to” in the drawing room, having been carried there by Sven, escorted by the flustered butler. The bitter salts were passed beneath my nose, and it took no acting to shudder and cough at the vapor. I opened my eyes and looked into the astonished—and rather
horrified—face of Emrys Pryce. He’d aged—somehow, I hadn’t expected that, as if everyone ought to have remained in stasis, as my life had—his receding hairline and stern brows now iron gray. And somehow he seemed even taller than I remembered. Perhaps his standing in society had improved his posture accordingly.

  My cousin stood transfixed in the entryway, beetle eyes narrowed on me. “What is the meaning of this? Who is this woman?”

  Sven rose from my side, my hand held between both of his in a protective manner. “My lord, I’m Dr. Bleddyn Rees. I have been the lady’s caretaker for a number of years. She was found half drowned on the shore of Pentref Gan-y-Môr some nine years past. She roused from unconsciousness in a state of dull stupor and remained so until just a few months ago, when she miraculously began to improve. She had difficulty communicating at first, and didn’t seem to know herself, but I have lately determined her identity. I believe she is your cousin, Lady August Swift of Cantre’r Gwaelod.”

  Emrys’s shock had turned into a stony resistance. “Impossible. Lady August is dead.”

  Sven slipped his hand from the top of mine. “It was this ring that jogged her memory. It was on a chain about her neck when she was found, and we kept it for her. When I brought it out, she knew it, and began to know herself. She says it belonged to her mother.” He held up my hand so Emrys could see the glittering ruby set in a scrolling filigree of silver. “Does it not bear the family crest?”

  “That proves nothing.” Emrys scowled. “She could have stolen it.”

  “Stolen it?” Sven raised an eyebrow. “Sir, she washed ashore unconscious wearing it on the day following the countess’s supposed death by drowning—the countess who would have been in possession of this very ring. I think it is no great leap to say she is the countess.”

  “How do I know this isn’t some elaborate hoax? The ring could be a counterfeit. You’ve had plenty of time to find a young lady who would match the description of the dead Lady August and have such a counterfeit made.”