“There are no LITTLE contracts with Lachlan,” he told her, still not yelling. His voice was breathy. “Why would you sign something like this?” He showed her the parchment.
She put out her hands. “Please let me read it…” she begged.
“It’s not to you, Charlotte. It’s to me,” he told her, and her brow wrinkled with surprise.
“T-to you?”
“I guess he figured I would intercept, and he wanted to get his gloating in. It is not written in a language you know, either,” he assured, if to explain why he wasn’t handing the letter to her. “It’s in an ancient elvish dialect…”
Her face flushed. “When… When I signed a contract with him, it was written in ancient elvish,” she admitted.
His brows raised. “Do you know this language?” he asked her, waving the letter.
She shook her head.
“But you just told me that…” Suddenly his eyes darkened. He took a deep breath. The paper began to crinkle noisily as his hands balled into fists. “You signed a contract you could not even read,” he ascertained, sounding like a man who had just swallowed something sharp.
“I didn’t know who he was, Ashcroft!” she pleaded, rushing over to him to hug her arms around one of his whilst he stared down at the parchment. “Well, I knew, but I didn’t know what he had done! I didn’t know he was evil!”
“Why didn’t you tell me, Charlotte?” he asked, sounding betrayed. “I thought you would trust me enough to tell me… if…”
“Ashcroft…” She shook her head. She couldn’t stand his expressions, how completely betrayed he appeared. She wondered if he would have looked any worse if he had come in to find her in the arms of another man.
And so she told him about the meeting with Lachlan—word from word how she remembered it. She told him about the pill, about how the spell seemed to force-feed her all the knowledge from every book in his study. She told him how Lachlan made it appear that she’d paid for his spell with a mere kiss out in the gardens; although she was so ashamed by the time she’d gotten to that part, she was choking out the words.
Ashcroft listened to her patiently, although his questions, when he asked them, were frank and cutting, and his expression became darker and darker.
“Please,” she begged him. “Forgive me! I know how stupid it was… I just…”
“Excuse me,” he replied crisply. “But you do not know. You have no idea what you signed.” He held up a sheet of parchment. “So good of my brother to enclose a copy of it to enable some light to be shown on your situation.”
She gulped. “So… there is something else I’ve agreed to,” she sighed, resigned to the fact. She nodded. “Ashcroft, this doesn’t have to involve you. Just tell me what it is and I will just take care of it.”
“Doesn’t involve me?” he asked incredulously, as if her statement was meant to be a stab. “What do you mean it does not involve me? Charlotte—everything you do involves me. What do you think marriage means?”
“We’re not married,” she reminded. Her lip trembled, and her heart felt like it was being squeezed. She knew there was no way that Ashcroft would marry her now. He was realizing, certainly, that she was just a silly girl.
“My word is my bond,” he replied. “But this… This…”
She sniffled.
His countenance softened. “Oh, Charlotte… What have you done?” he sighed. He shook his head and began to translate something from the parchment.
“After the contract has been fulfilled…” He swallowed. “The following solstice the signee will henceforth become the indisputable property of the holder of said lethal contract, Lachlan of Medwin. There will be no concessions for age, immortality status, marriage status, abilities or disabilities. Possession will be in full or contract will be void by death of the signee. All attempts at resistance will void contract by death of the signee. If other arrangements must be made that will enable to contract terms to change, or to be voided without death, must be agreed upon by the contract holder.”
Lachlan was right—there was a lot of legalese. But not so much that she couldn’t understand that she just signed herself away, and that if she resisted, she would die. “Does… does it say how long?” she found herself asking.
“No,” he replied brusquely. “And that is not at all a good thing. Unless stipulated, these contracts are indefinite until the contract holder is dead.” He slammed the papers down on the nightstand and then got up to pace the floor. “Not that I would let him have you for a single, solitary moment. He’d use the moment to kill you.”
She wasn’t surprised at that—she had thought about it much since the night she woke up and realized what she’d done. She knew whatever Ashcroft had written down in plain English, and it was quite clear from his pieces that Ashcroft blamed Lachlan for the death of her parents, for Byndians were ever the only things he feared to stand in his way.
“I just don’t understand, though,” she admitted in a quiet drawl. “Why he would toy with me like this—if he feared me enough to kill me, why did he make sure I knew so much before he did the deed? Wouldn’t it be easier to have me assassinated when I was stupid?”
“Because he doesn’t just want you dead, Charlotte!” Ashcroft shook his head. “He means to extract all your knowledge before killing you. He has been trying to get at my library for years. He could use all that knowledge better than you would be able to—he can perform all the spells and he knows all the languages I’ve ever written in.” He shook his head. “No, no. He might actually know more than me if…” He frowned and then wiped his palms down over his face, and then left his fingers over his eyes.
He stayed in that position for a long while, so still he could have been a statue. She resisted reaching out and touching her, because he was so stiff, that she feared he was barely controlling a terrible anger, and might actually slap her if she moved even too quickly.
But eventually she decided she didn’t care if he slapped her. She might feel better about her current situation then; less guilty. Either way, it seemed like her relationship with Ashcroft was already quite ruined from what had been revealed, and he couldn’t think any less of her than he did now.
She crawled up behind him and slowly, carefully, put her slender arms around him and kissed the back of his neck tenderly.
He didn’t react to her movements for some time, but finally he heaved a heavy sigh and then reached up to take her hand off his collarbone, where she was holding him, and brought the knuckles of that hand up to his mouth, which he kissed affectionately, she choked out a sob in response.
“Do not cry, my love. We will figure this out,” he promised. He shook his head. “I should have gotten this out of you earlier. Now we only have a couple of days before the Solstice…”
“Ashcroft…” Her throat never felt so dry. “What would happen to me if I don’t go with him?”
“Death, eventually. And I know exactly how he plans to do it. He already poisoned your lips—which, if he invokes the right magic, can lead to a very, very slow and painful death… Otherwise he would have had to go to the Wizard’s Circle to have you killed for your breach in contract, and he wouldn’t want to smudge his name any by bringing up the matter before them if he didn’t have to. He would prefer having you suffer and succumb to him.” He blinked. “That man uses black magic so casually it makes me shutter to my core.”
Her hand flew to her lips. “There has to be something I could do to—”
“No, there is nothing at all you can do to reverse your actions. All we can do now is press on.” He squeezed her fingers, and then stood up to dress.
And then when he was belting up his trousers, he gave her a look that she knew well, or had come to know well over the last four months. It was the same look that she supposed an old school teacher would give to a student that had remained after class on orders—the tone in his expression seemed moth exasperated and professional. “Please, don’t,” she begged in the same way th
at a wife might beseech a randy husband to keep his distance. “I need to be held right now—not whipped. I’m scared out of my mind, Ashcroft!”
“Yes, and you should be,” he assured. “I know I am, and I will hold you plenty before Lachlan no doubt appears on the doorstep within less than two days. But now, before we get swept up in any tragedy or any other tears, I will do my duty by you.”
She brought her knees up to her chest. Oh, how she wished he wouldn’t do his duty, just this once. But she was so mind-bogglingly guilty over what she had done, she didn’t even have the heart to argue for once. She couldn’t even plead. How would that even go? ‘Please, Ashcroft, I know I gave myself and your knowledge to the most evil man in the Otherworld, but if you overlook it just this once I promise to be a good girl from here on in’? Hardly.
“Spanking me isn’t going to help anything,” she told him, dropping her eyes to the ground.
“It’ll help you learn better,” he assured, rolling up his shirt sleeves. “And I like to think I can still teach you something.” His words struck her as accusing, and he glanced toward his dresser. “Go into my second drawer down, Charlotte, and bring me the paddle you find there.”
Her mouth fell open. The paddle was new to her; it seemed so ridiculous, and she was certain Ashcroft didn’t have one in his possession, or else he’d have used it by now. “A… A paddle?” she whispered.
“It was going to be a little wedding gift for you,” he admitted.
“How sweet,” she said dryly, but she worried inwardly if this meant he didn’t intend to marry her now.
“Now, Charlotte,” he demanded firmly.
And she turned to obey him, fishing out the paddle from where he said it would be. She actually felt relief—she had expected a large college-fraternity paddle, but this was much, much smaller than that, and rounder, and certainly lighter.
Maybe this wasn’t going to be too bad. Maybe all she had to look forward to was a little bit of a sting, and then she could go back to being Lachlan’s eternal slave.
She was so, so wrong. But she didn’t know how wrong she was until she was told to take off her nightgown and then was flipped over Ashcroft’s lap. And then the first paddle slap landed.
“Ffffaaaah!” was all she could say, and she had never screamed like that before, because she felt like she was in more pain by the end of her scream than she was when she first opened her mouth. The sting—one slap—seemed to resonate in her flanks. It almost hurt more after the initial SLAP then during.
And then the second slap came down. She screamed again, and flailed. Oh, the flailing. She was adamant to make Ashcroft work for every punishing spank.
“You’re killing me-he-he!” she sobbed, and was surprised to see herself already in tears. He certainly had just begun—this was not a good sign at all.
And then he started to lecture, which was strangely even more heart wrenching than the consistent, firm use of the paddle. He didn’t have to say anything—she knew that everything she’d done was stupid. Signing the contract was stupid. Not knowing what she was even signing made it doubly so. And then following through with taking the pill without consulting him, which he said was certainly of a type of magic that was near-lethal, and then she kept it from him.
“Why would you keep this from me? Why won’t you let me help you, Charlotte? Why would you have suffered alone for so many months?” he asked towards the end of his lecture, when his words felt even more weighted, even more disappointed.
Her backside was bruised, and she didn’t respond until his paddling finally slowed down as she could feel him begin to release her hands. “How can you p-possibly help me?” she sobbed. “I’m doomed! I was doomed before we even did anything at all! Before you ever touched me!” It sounded a little melodramatic to her own ears, but then she knew she meant it. She was utterly and completely doomed. There was no way out of a contract short of a painful death.
She was to die, she was certain. And the worst part of it all was now she’d die on a sore bottom.
“You are not doomed,” he promised her, pulling her up until she was curled up on his lap and sobbing into his chest. He held her tightly to him. “I promise you, nothing will happen to you. I still love you, my Darling. Nothing will change that.”
She continued to sob, feeling worse as his words did sound forgiving. Exasperated? Definitely, but he was also so forgiving. She couldn’t help being disgusted by what she had done. She had had so many nightmares about it. So many restless nights. “Why? How can you love me? After what I’d done?”
“I’m your keeper, and you had signed your protection over to me and I did nothing to keep you safe,” he was chiding himself passionately in her ear. “You should have never been given the opportunity to even meet with Lachlan. I should have never left that opening for him to entrap you. This is my failing as well… The stupidest of shepherds would know better than to let their prized sheep alone when there were wolves about.” He kissed her forehead and rubbed her arms with his hands.
“I will do anything to make this right,” she sniffled.
He kissed her on her cheek. “As will I. Anything and everything in my power, for I couldn’t stand the emptiness in my life like I’d known before we’d met. You brought color into my life. We quarrel at times, but know that before you, my long life was such a dull grey. I stood it because I did not know any better. I’ve never known such passion as I’ve known with you.”
It was impossible not to bask in his warmth, even with such a pain in her flanks. She simply couldn’t understand the unconditional love he had for her. But she was absolutely thankful for it above all things.
* * *
“Cholly,” Alice said as she and Charlotte quickly and very carefully packed away the fine china and antiques in the parlor. She used Charlotte’s nickname, the one that her friends used in America, mostly because it brought Charlotte comfort. “I don’t have a good feeling about any of this.”
Charlotte didn’t say anything at all at first, because she had a horrible feeling, too. She frowned. “I’m so sorry about everything, Al,” she told her finally, glancing out the window to watch Moriarty shouting at the stable boy about something. Moriarty was very on-edge, too, after hearing about what Charlotte had signed... Even more on-edge than expected.
Charlotte’s shoulders rolled forward and she slumped.
“You look awful,” Alice fretted in a motherly way.
Charlotte slowly turned her head toward her sister, her look very blank for a moment. “Of course I look awful. I feel like I’m gonna be sick. I can’t believe I was really that dumb.”
“Oh, Cholly,” Alice sighed. “It could have happened to anyone. Lachlan was counting on you not being wise enough to overcome his ruse. It could have just as easily been me that made that mistake.’”
Charlotte looked over at Alice hopefully. “Really?”
Alice winced out an expression, like she was physically battling with keeping the truth in her lips. But she ended up saying, “No, I probably would have demanded that I read what was written in the contract…” Alice admitted. “But you know, you’re not the first person in the world that’s fallen for small print…”
Charlotte face-palmed. “The worst part about it is I knew—KNEW this would come to bite me in the ass.” Without even thinking about it, she reached around behind her and rubbed her rear end through her skirts. The pain lingered; her bottom actually felt fully swollen and stung to the touch.
Alice glanced at her sister, who she had already noted sat very uncomfortably during breakfast. “Speaking of getting bitten in the ass… What on earth did Ashcroft do to you last night? It woke up the whole house. Moriarty thought Ashcroft was finally killing you…”
Charlotte’s cheeks immediately went red. “Well, it wasn’t as bad as I expected and it isn’t the worst I’ve ever had,” she replied. “Believe it or not, there’re worse things than a paddle.” She didn’t say what that thing was, however. She shook her
head. “I don’t know why he bothered. I’ll be dead within the week, anyway. I know he says I won’t, but I’m a pretty creative person, and I can’t think of a way around this situation.”
Alice grimaced. “You sound so nonchalant about it,” she chided, her eyes betraying her worry that Charlotte was correct.
Charlotte shook her head. “I’m still not immortal,” she reminded. “I’m easy enough to destroy. And my life is inconsequential.”
Alice’s lip curled with confusion. “What do you mean?”
“I mean that I’m nobody, Alice. I mean nothing to the universe. I’m not the heir, I’m the spare. And what’s the use of a spare tire when the better one is working fine?” Her shoulders drooped and she closed up one of the boxes she was filling.
“You’re the last Byndian!” Alice reminded. “What do you mean that you’re nobody? And Ashcroft loves you…”
Charlotte rolled her eyes. “I came on the scene at a time when Ash would love anyone. He’s lonely, that’s all, and for some reason I amuse him… He’ll get over me.” She didn’t look up at Alice—it was as if she was lecturing herself. “There’s not much about me to love. In a way, I’m glad I get to stop while I’m ahead.” When she looked over at Alice, Alice’s dropped jaw was emblematic of her protest. But Charlotte said, “And I am not the last Byndian. When I’m dead, you’ll be the last.” She picked up the box into her arms full of ornaments and added, “Don’t blow it like I did.”
Alice followed her. “No, Cholly. Don’t be stupid. If you go to Lachlan, he’ll bleed your brain dry of everything it contains.”
“I’m not going to Lachlan. I’ll just sit here and die wait for the Wizard’s Circle to have me executed for breach of contract,” she assured, and by the time she got to the wagon, the box she held in her hands, full of heavy, priceless objects, was no larger than a jewelry box. She dropped it carefully onto the bed, next to the other boxes that were already there.
“Let Master Ashcroft figure this out,” Alice begged wearily. “He’s working on a plan right now. At least give him a chance.”
Otherworldly Discipline: A Witch's Lesson Page 24