Chapter Text
The days turn into weeks and before you know it, you’ve been at House Beneviento for an entire month.
If you had to describe how things have been going between yourself and Lady Beneviento, you would say it’s been… okay. Not great, but not horrible either. The two of you have settled into a simple sort of routine together. In the morning, she always wakes up first and quickly disappears into the kitchen to start making breakfast. A little while later, you’ll stir awake as well and get up to join her.
Mealtimes are pleasant enough, albeit a tad awkward sometimes. Conversation with the Lord is still a stunted, inelegant occurrence. Thankfully Angie is usually present to fill the gaps whenever the silences start stretching a bit too long. Those times when the doll starts chattering away, diverting Lady Beneviento’s attention away from yourself for a moment or two, are usually enough to blunt the sharp edges of the anxiety churning in your stomach.
Still, there’s really… not a lot to do around the estate. You were never the most social person out there, but living so far away from the rest of the village feels lonely in a way that you’ve never experienced until now. There’s only so much time you can spend reading in the study before your legs get stiff from sitting too long. And whenever the stillness of the manor starts becoming too much, you just turn on the gramophone in the foyer and choose a room at random to tidy up or rearrange.
It’s a fair enough deal, you suppose. She cooks and you clean. It’s not like there aren’t mutual benefits all around. The manor looks beautiful these days, and you’ve never eaten so well in your life.
You’re still not sure what Lady Beneviento’s feelings are regarding your continued presence here at her estate. Regardless of what Lord Heisenberg had told you during his visit, you find it hard to believe that the dollmaker truly likes you in any way. If you’re being optimistic, you’d say she tolerates you—not unlike the way you used to sigh and begrudgingly tolerate the occasional pesky rabbit taking up residence in your garden back at home.
Sometimes you wonder if that’s all Lady Beneviento thinks of you as. A pest in her home, taking up space and eating her food. One that she doesn’t have the heart—or perhaps, the authority—to dispose of.
Still, there are times that make you think she cares at least a little bit. You’ve had a few lazy afternoons where you’ve dozed off on the couch and later stirred awake with a quilt draped over your body. You know it’s Lady Beneviento who’s doing this. After all, those quilts are far too heavy for Angie to lift on her own. Other times she asks if you want anything from the Duke, or seeks your opinion on what she should make for dinner, and there are occasional moments when her voice is almost warm when she talks to you.
That’s how it is during the day.
Bedtimes are a harder routine to describe.
Some nights as you rest in bed, you find your eyes wandering from the book in your hands and darting instead toward the woman reading quietly beside you. In the warm light of the lamp atop the nightstand, she always looks a bit softer than usual. The dollmaker’s sleepwear is all in muted shades of gray, and you try to tell yourself that the only reason you’re staring is because of how ridiculous she looks while holding her book right up to the mesh of her veil. It almost makes you laugh, because surely she can’t see very well while wearing it.
And then there are other things you find yourself looking at too. In contrast to the stiff fabrics comprising Lady Beneviento’s usual skirts and blouses, the nightgowns she wears leave less to the imagination regarding the shape of her body. The style is modest, but the cotton cloth is thin enough that you can faintly see the swell of her breasts and the soft curve of her hips. Sometimes she reclines on top of the covers while reading, bare feet exposed beneath the hem of her nightgown, and you note with amusement that her toenails are painted a dark plum that matches her fingers.
If you could name one advantage you have over the Lord, you would probably say it’s your eyesight. With that veil obstructing her vision, it’s easy enough to subtly observe her from the corner of your eye without her noticing. And if she does turn her head to look your way, you quickly divert your gaze back down to your book and arrange your expression into something a little more innocuous, as if you’re merely waiting for her to turn the lights off.
One night you jolt awake after only a few hours of sleep. The bedroom is still pitch black. With the clock on the nightstand shrouded in darkness, you never know what time it is when this happens.
Lady Beneviento quietly sighs next to you. The soft sound of her breathing is much closer than usual.
It would be easy to place all the blame on the dollmaker, but you know it’s not just her. It’s not uncommon for you to move around a bit in your sleep—and at some point during this night, both of you have migrated to the middle of the bed. It’s not a lot, not like you’re wrapped up in her arms or anything like that. But there’s a pressure on your wrist where her hand gently rests and you lie motionless in that position for a long time, wide awake and with your heart beating dizzyingly fast.
During times like these, you can’t stop yourself from imagining it. Imagining what it would be like if she closed her hand around your wrist and pulled. If she decided she wanted to claim you after all, in the way that Mother Miranda had intended.
You wait with bated breath, but that imagined scenario never ends up happening. Eventually Lady Beneviento just rolls onto her other side, facing away from you. Her hand slips from your wrist and you draw your own hand back to your chest, fingers clenched tight into a fist.
When you fall asleep again that night, you dream about her. And the next morning when you wake up alone in bed like always, you feel strangely tense and restless.
It’s just stress, you tell yourself. Stress and anxiety.
But in between those days and nights at the dollmaker’s estate, interspersed with occasional trips to the village together where you hold her hand and play pretend with smiles and flirtatious comments in an attempt to convince everyone around you—some tiny part of your brain wonders what it would be like if any of this was real.
You can’t help but wonder if Lady Beneviento feels this building tension in the same way that you do. More and more frequently, you think there have been times where she’s stopped and stared at you for longer than what would be considered innocent. But it’s hard to tell with her veil hiding her expression like that. Maybe you’re just overthinking things.
Maybe the only one affected by this charade is you.
One or twice a week, you’ve been returning to the village alone to check on your house. That’s the explanation you end up giving Lady Beneviento, even if it’s beginning to feel like an excuse.
“You were here just three days ago. Do you really have that little confidence in my house sitting skills?” Elena bluntly asks during one of these visits. The two of you are seated in your living room, a cup of coffee in your hands and a matching cup of tea in your friend’s. It’s a relief to have some normalcy back in your life, even if these moments are only fleeting and temporary. You wish Elena would stop prying and just let you relax for the few hours you’ve set aside for this visit.
“This is my house, Elena. I can come back as much as I want,” you sigh, setting your cup down on the nearby table.
“Don’t say that too loud, or your lovely wife might get suspicious.”
You scowl at the reminder. “My lovely wife is just going to have to live with the fact that I have other things in my life besides her cheerful presence.”
Elena’s eyebrows scrunch together at the bite in your voice. “Are things not… going well between you two?” she carefully asks.
You make a face. “Things are going fine. It’s great. I’ve never been happier.”
“There’s no need to be sarcastic,” your friend sighs. “I’m just worried about you.”
Your eyes dart over to meet Elena’s. The concern you see there only makes you feel worse about how undeservedly short you’ve been with her today. “…It’s not like it’s bad,” you say at last. “But sometimes I feel like a—”
A prisoner. A trophy. A doll for Lady Beneviento to play with.
“…Never mind.” Looking away, you scan the room for something to distract yourself from your friend’s questioning face. Your coffee cup has left a ring of condensation on the wooden table, so you reach into your pocket for your embroidered lavender handkerchief to blot up the moisture.
“That’s cute,” Elena says.
“Lady Beneviento made it for me.”
“…That was nice of her?”
A frustrated sound bubbles up from your throat. “Look, it’s not all handmade gifts over there, you know,” you complain. “That old manor is so boring and lonely. There’s hardly anything for me to do there. I can’t even cook my own food because Lady Beneviento doesn’t trust me in the kitchen.”
Elena barely manages to stifle a laugh. “You’re a terrible cook. I wouldn’t trust you in my kitchen either.”
“I could learn,” you grumble, staring down into your coffee. And then the words are suddenly spilling out and you’re unable to stop them. “Sometimes she hogs the blankets at night and I’m afraid to say anything about it, even if it means I’m too cold to sleep. She leaves teacups all over the place. I have to go through each room and collect them, otherwise we’ll run out. I never know what she’s thinking because of that damned veil, and half of the time when she actually talks to me, she just acts petty and paranoid.”
Elena blinks, and then she says, “And here I thought you said things were going fine over there.”
“That is fine. I’m sure it could be way worse,” you sigh, taking another gulp of your drink.
The mood has been dampened a bit, but you still try to enjoy the rest of your visit as much as you can. Near the end, you even venture out to the market with Elena in an attempt to distract yourself further. It works, at least for a little while. You’ve missed this. You’ve missed walking through the village square, haggling with the merchants and grocers, and not hearing the constant drone of the waterfall. But all too soon, your time begins to run out. You need to return now.
After waving goodbye to your friend with the most cheerful face you can muster, you begin the slow walk back to House Beneviento, purchases in hand. The route to and from the village has become familiar to you over these past weeks. You’re even almost used to crossing the suspension bridge by now, and you know exactly where to step to avoid most of those yellow flowered plants along the path. They’re still prevalent throughout the grounds, despite Lady Beneviento sealing all of the ones within the manor into glass jars. Out in the open it’s not too difficult to avoid walking into them, so you can’t really complain that much. The pollen doesn’t bother you as badly when you’re outside in the fresh air.
When you arrive back at the manor and unlock the front doors, you brace yourself for the encounter that you know is about to happen. And sure enough, the first thing you see when you enter the foyer is the dollmaker’s seated form. She jumps at the sound of the doors creaking open, veiled head whipping around to glance your way, and then she quickly directs her gaze back down to the embroidery in her hands in a rather transparent attempt to look casual.
It hasn’t escaped your notice that Lady Beneviento is usually in the basement when you venture out, but then she’s always waiting around the foyer when you return. You would like to think this sort of behavior from the Lord is born out of concern for your wellbeing, if only because the other possibilities conjured up by your brain are less pleasant to think about.
“You were gone longer than usual today,” she says in a neutral tone, setting down her sewing and rising to her feet as you step inside with your bag in hand.
“I spent a little time visiting the market afterward,” you say with a shrug. “Elena said there was a sale on fruit today, so I thought we’d—”
Suddenly realizing what you’ve said, you freeze. Your eyes go wide and you quickly snap your jaw shut. You hadn’t meant to say that.
“Elena?” the dollmaker repeats.
With a nervous swallow, you don’t say anything else.
She doesn’t say anything either.
Finally, after the ensuing silence has dragged on for an uncomfortably long time, you take a deep, hesitant breath. “…My friend, Elena Lupu. She was there too, that day at the church. She’s the one Angie liked so much.”
“I remember Miss Lupu, yes.” Lady Beneviento looks at you closely. “Was she your partner?”
You blink. “What?”
“I saw you holding her hand that day.” The Lord sounds curious rather than upset. Still, the question seems dangerous.
“We’re just close friends,” you begin cautiously, “and we’ve only ever been close friends. Elena is like a sister to me. I held her hand because I didn’t know what else to do. Because Angie really wanted you to pick her, it seemed.”
“And because you feared for her safety.” It’s a statement, not a question. Lady Beneviento shakes her head and sighs. “I wouldn’t have hurt her.”
“Like you haven’t hurt me?” you say with a little more bite.
She sighs again, but makes no attempt to refute your words. After a moment, she gestures for the bag hanging from your hand. You hold it out to her and she takes it from you. Reaching inside, she pulls out an apple and examines it. “Is there anything in particular that you would like me to make with these?” she asks. “…A nice dessert, perhaps?”
You just shrug in response, suddenly feeling very tired. “Sure. Whatever you want, Lady Beneviento.”
She just looks at you for a moment, quiet, and then turns away to walk toward the elevator. Perhaps she’s going to the kitchen now. You think about joining her, but instead you sink down into the chair that she’d just been sitting in, letting your eyes fall on the unfinished embroidery. Pretty. Almost unconsciously, you reach down to your pocket to make sure your lavender handkerchief is still there.
As much as your new life has settled into a fragile stability, you’ve always known in the back of your mind that things couldn’t stay this way forever.
The breaking point happens during an otherwise typical evening at the manor. Feeling some combination of bored and tired, you’re aimlessly wandering through the hallways when you hear your wife speaking on the phone with someone. You really don’t mean to eavesdrop. It’s none of your business what she talks about, or who she talks to. But then you hear your name falling in hushed tones from the dollmaker’s lips and—maybe this is your business, after all. Walking on tiptoe, you creep closer as quietly as you can manage. Then you take a deep breath and peek around the corner.
Lady Beneviento is standing there in the hallway with the phone held to her ear. Her back is facing you, and you sneak just a tiny bit closer so you can hear better.
“—not trying to fool anyone,” the Lord whispers into the phone in a strained voice. “It’s… no, of course not, Mother Miranda.”
Your eyes widen. You haven’t seen any sign of the priestess over this past month, other than the occasional glimpse of those spying crows all over the village. Part of you has been surprised, albeit relieved, that she hasn’t checked in at any point to make sure you’re doing what she’d ordered of you. But maybe that’s not actually the case. Maybe she’s been in contact with Lady Beneviento this entire time, impatient for results.
“No, it’s not that,” the dollmaker continues, breaking you out of your thoughts. “I just don’t think this is the right time…”
You listen intently, but it’s impossible to hear Mother Miranda’s response at this distance. Lady Beneviento listens too, her hand trembling around the phone. Whatever the priestess telling her, it doesn’t seem to be good. As the seconds go by, your wife’s shoulders are growing more and more rigid with tension. And you remember that day at the church, staring into Mother Miranda’s cold eyes behind her golden mask as she orders you to—
“Please,” Lady Beneviento suddenly says. “I… I’ll ask her. Just give me a little more time.”
The blood in your veins turns to ice.
Your wife finally ends the call, stammering a hurried goodbye to Mother Miranda before dropping the phone back onto its base. She stands there in the hallway for a long moment, staring down at the device in silence. Heart racing, you slowly back away. Then the floor creaks beneath your feet and the dollmaker whips around at the sudden noise.
She stiffens at the sight of you. “Oh,” she says. There’s a hint of defensiveness in her voice, masked by a much more obvious layer of annoyance. “How much did you hear?”
You take a deep breath, trying to stay calm. “I heard enough.”
The dollmaker steps closer. “…And?”
“And I’m not stupid, Lady Beneviento,” you say. “I remember very well what Mother Miranda told me to do when I married you, and I can make a few educated guesses about what the two of you were talking about just now.”
Lady Beneviento clenches her hands into white-knuckled fists. “Fine,” she snaps. “You’re right, of course. Mother Miranda is still dissatisfied with my working state. She is not yet convinced that your presence is helping me like she had hoped.”
You roll your eyes. “So, it’s my fault you can’t work?”
“Don’t put words in my mouth. I didn’t say that,” Lady Beneviento hisses. She turns on her heel and storms away. Still flush with anger, you follow her. “Leave me alone,” the dollmaker adds in a vehement growl as you trail behind her into the kitchen. When it becomes clear you’re not going anywhere, she makes a frustrated noise and stomps into the bedroom instead.
You follow her there too. “We’re not done talking, Lady Beneviento.”
“What more is there to talk about? You listened in on my conversation and now you’re angry with me. I don’t know what else there is to discuss.” Your wife paces around the room for a moment or two before whipping around and glaring at your continued presence there in the doorway. “Leave me alone,” she snaps again. “Didn’t your parents ever teach you how to behave around one of the Lords?”
“Within these walls, you’re not a Lord. You’re my wife,” you counter. “Didn’t your parents ever teach you how to talk things through like an adult instead of running away?”
Lady Beneviento makes a terrible noise in her throat. “My parents ran away,” she sneers. Her voice is somewhere between tears and bitter, hollow laughter. “They ran right off the edge of the waterfall when I was a little girl. They ran out of my life and left me behind, so don’t you dare stand there with that smug look on your face and lecture me about cowardice.”
An uncomfortable feeling settles in your stomach at this revelation. You don’t know what to say to something like that.
Your wife draws in several deep, shuddering breaths, calming herself. Then she raises a shaking hand and points at you. “…Listen here,” she grinds out, her voice clipped and halting. “I have tried. Very, very hard. To be patient with you.”
You narrow your eyes at that, sympathy quickly overtaken by disgust. “Patient, really? You say that like you’ve been the perfect wife to me. Do you expect me to be grateful to my captor?”
With a growl, the dollmaker lunges forward and grabs you by the shoulders. Her grip is tight enough that you think you’ll have bruises later. “Despite what you may believe, I am not your captor and you are not my prisoner,” she snarls. “Have I not given you full reign of my estate? Have I not allowed you to visit the village whenever you like, while only asking in return that you come back home to me afterward?”
“My home,” you snap, “is where I can wake up in my own bed and look into an unbroken mirror and water my damn garden without being followed around by a shadow.”
Lady Beneviento stares at you for a long moment. “And yet, here you are,” she whispers.
“Here I am,” you agree. “Still alive, still breathing, still with you.”
“I’m surprised you haven’t tried to run away yet.”
You narrow your eyes and pry her hands away. “I promised I wouldn’t, didn’t I? Unlike you, I intend to keep my word.”
Lady Beneviento backs up half a step. “That’s a noble choice,” she says lowly.
“It’s not a choice,” you protest, and you’re not quite strong enough to stop your voice from cracking. “I didn’t have a choice in any of this!”
The dollmaker sighs. “And I didn’t have a choice either.”
“You did. You chose me. You could have chosen someone else, anyone else.”
“I should have. It would have saved me a lot of trouble. Perhaps it was a mistake that I didn’t choose your pretty little friend after she begged me to—”
You slap her.
It’s a mistake, a flaring of your temper, a straining of your nerves past breaking point. Lady Beneviento’s head whips to the side, a startled gasp escaping her lips. Your hand, still outstretched, faintly stings from the impact.
Very slowly, she turns to face you again. A wide gray eye meets your gaze. The Lord’s veil has been knocked askew from the slap, revealing the left side of her face. She’s pale, almost unnaturally so, with dark hair that’s been tied back. Her cheek, dotted with a mole that almost looks like a tiny pinprick of black paint, is reddened from your strike.
You gulp, heart pounding in your chest as your eyes dart over every bit of her that you can see. The other woman’s lips are slightly parted and she shakily raises a hand to touch her bruised cheek.
“How dare you,” she whispers.
Dread floods through your veins at the coldness of her voice, and you take a nervous step backward. “Lady Beneviento… remember my conditions,” you stammer.
“Your conditions. So you’re allowed to strike me in my own home but I can’t do anything to you in return?” Lady Beneviento’s lips curl into a smile that doesn’t look entirely natural on the half of her face that you can see. “That seems unfair, wouldn’t you agree?”
Trembling, you shake your head. Then you make the mistake of looking over your shoulder at the doorway, your only exit. In that split second when your attention is elsewhere, the Lord darts forward and grabs a fistful of your blouse. “Let me go!” you cry out.
“You wanted to talk,” Lady Beneviento snarls. “So let’s talk.”
Your shoes slide on the wood floor as the dollmaker drags you further into the room by your shirt. In your desperation, you do everything you can to wriggle out of her grasp. She barely reacts when you claw at her arms or push against her chest. But as soon as your hand curls into the front of her crooked veil, Lady Beneviento’s one visible eye goes wide with rage. “No!” she shrieks.
She releases her hold on your blouse to wrench your hand away from the cloth covering her face. Thrumming with both adrenaline and a sickening curiosity, you refuse to let go. The struggle brings the two of you further into the center of the room. Lady Beneviento stumbles backward and bumps into one of the nightstands, jostling the glass jar of dried flowers atop its wooden surface. Then her legs hit the edge of the bed. She sways in place as her balance falters.
It’s the chance you’ve been waiting for. You shove her back and simultaneously try to pull away. The first half of your plan works, as Lady Beneviento lands flat on her back onto the mattress. But the other half of the plan—the escape part—isn’t as successful. Even as you try to move away, the Lord’s hands curl into your blouse again and pull you down on top of her.
What follows next is what you can only describe as a tussle on the bed. It would probably even be funny if you weren’t so terrified right now. You know you’re not strong enough to physically overpower Lady Beneviento. Going for her veil again is the only other option you can think of. Amidst this chaos of flailing limbs, it takes a few tries before you’re able to grab another handful of the draping black cloth and tear it away. The dollmaker’s hands, still fisted in your blouse, immediately release you and dart up to cover the previously hidden side of her face.
Both of you freeze in place, panting. The aggression in Lady Beneviento’s movements has suddenly evaporated. She doesn’t seem capable of grabbing at you and hiding her face at the same time, so instead she just tensely lies there beneath you on the bed. You’re still perched atop her hips with the veil hanging limply from one hand, and you’re completely lost on what to do next.
“Let me look at you,” you finally say, tossing the black cloth aside.
“No,” she hisses.
Undeterred, you grit your teeth and grab at the dollmaker’s wrists. “I want to see my wife.”
It takes some struggling, but you’re at an advantage being on top of her like this. Eventually you’re able to pry her hands away. Lady Beneviento’s mouth twists into a grimace as she quickly turns her head. It’s too little, too late—you’ve already seen her entire face.
Starkly pale skin. Dark hair tied up in a messy bun. A straight nose. Full, soft-looking lips and an attractive jawline. A left eye with a warm, gray iris. And a festering, bulging mass of skin and flesh where the other eye should be.
“So this is what you really look like, Lady Beneviento,” you whisper.
A broken sound escapes her lips, more a sob than a laugh. “Are you disappointed?” she gasps. “Or am I exactly what you imagined?”
“I imagined a monster,” you say. She flinches at those words and you revel at the sight. Hate bubbles up, hot and sulfurous, and—and you want to make her hurt, to make her feel some fraction of the pain you’ve felt ever since Mother Miranda handed you off to her with no more care than for cattle sent to slaughter. You want to make your words sting, to make them burn, and so you spit out, “I imagined a monster and it turns out I was right.”
Lady Beneviento is still for a moment. Her face goes white, and then twists into something terrifying. She stares up at you, lip curled into a snarl, and some tiny, satisfied part of your brain realizes you weren’t lying at all. She is a monster, you think to yourself. She’s a monster and it has nothing to do with that thing on her face.
For a few seconds after your declaration, the room is horribly calm and quiet. Your hands are lightly resting on Lady Beneviento’s, but she’s not struggling anymore. For a brief, foolish moment, you think maybe all of the fight has left her. But then an odd feeling suddenly floods through your brain. Muddled, dreamlike, not entirely pleasant. You’ve felt this way before, that time you and the Lord argued after you visited the village for the first time, although right now it feels much more muted and subtle in comparison.
You shake your head violently until the foggy sensation goes away. “What are you doing to me? How are you doing that?”
The dollmaker is silent, but her eye betrays her—darting over to glance at the glass jar on the nightstand, at the withered yellow flowers contained within. She snaps her gaze back to you but it’s too late, you’ve already noticed.
“Those flowers,” you breathe, a sudden realization making itself known. “I should have realized there was something weird about them. Is that how you do it?”
She smiles at you again, another smile that doesn’t look quite right. “Do what?”
“Whatever it is you just did. To my head.” You lean down a little closer. “You won’t break me that easily, Lady Beneviento.”
Your wife laughs low in her throat. “I don’t need flowers to make you scream, girl.”
And then, in a single, forceful movement, she rolls the two of you over so your positions are reversed. You land flat on your back with a grunt, momentarily dazed. Lady Beneviento’s hands curl into your blouse again and she pins you down onto the bed. She’s stronger than you, much stronger. Almost hysterical, you can’t help but laugh as she flexes her hands against the cotton cloth. The dollmaker’s eye is shining and her chest heaves as she pants on top of you. It strikes you, suddenly, that this is the most alive you’ve ever seen her and—
You like it.
You like how she looks right now.
Breathing hard, you stare up at her furious face. A curl of heat suddenly blooms between your legs.
Maybe this was inevitable. You’ve been cooped up in this manor for weeks with Lady Beneviento, sleeping in her bed, sharing her space. There hasn’t been much privacy for you here, not with your wife or Angie always nearby, not with those countless dolls scattered through the rooms with their mockingly blank stares. You haven’t been able to take care of yourself in the way you so suddenly need right now, that sexual urge, that building tension. And when the dollmaker growls and presses into you harder, when her hands twist in your blouse and tear it right down the middle, you can’t help but moan.
Lady Beneviento freezes. Her eye widens at the little noise you just made. It widens further at the sound of buttons clattering onto the floor like loose coins on wood. Her gaze meets yours.
The other woman’s face twists in what you can only describe as terror. She jerks away from you and scrambles backward. Panting, you push yourself back up and stare at the Lord from across the bed. Her posture and expression somehow look shattered and there’s a haunted gleam in her eye as it darts from your torn blouse down to her own pale, twitching hands. She looks horrified. A terrible stillness overtakes the room, heavy and tense and nearly silent if not for the sound of Lady Beneviento’s uneven breathing.
Slowly, the dollmaker looks up from her shaking hands. “Get out. Please. You shouldn’t be around me right now,” she says through gritted teeth. In contrast to the tremors running through her body, Lady Beneviento’s voice is almost deathly calm. She sounds like what you imagine a ghost might sound like. Thin and hollow, the whisper of a corpse not quite brought back to life.
“No,” you say. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“You awful girl. For once, can’t you just listen to me? I almost—” Lady Beneviento’s voice stutters to a stop. She covers her face with her hands, like she can’t even bear to look at you.
“Almost what?” you ask. It comes out a little more harsh than you intended.
“Don’t make me say it,” the dollmaker hisses. “You know exactly what I almost did.”
The smile that splits your face feels satisfying and vicious all at once. “And does the thought sicken you, Lady Beneviento? That deep down, some part of you desperately wants to fuck your wife?”
Tension hangs in the air, almost palpable. She doesn’t seem to have anything to say to that.
The topic of sex has not seriously come up throughout your marriage to Lady Beneviento thus far—not since that single, tense conversation on your wedding night, that is. It’s felt like somewhat of an unspoken rule that this is something that you and the dollmaker should just not talk about, if only to maintain the fragile peace you’ve established with her. And… well, you’ve been successful up until now. Certainly you’ve thought about it a few times, especially in these most recent days, but the private thoughts you’ve entertained have never felt like anything more than fantasies—forbidden and impulsive ones, at that. And with the strained nature of your relationship with Lady Beneviento, a part of you had even assumed that the other woman simply didn’t harbor any feelings for you that dipped into the realm of carnal desire.
You think you know better now.
“I want to consummate our marriage,” you say, breaking the silence.
Lady Beneviento’s jaw clenches and she peeks out from behind her fingers, eye still bright and furious. “I’m not in the mood for your jokes right now, dear,” she snaps. Despite her efforts, the venom in her words falls flat.
You crawl closer until your legs just barely touch the Lord’s, both of you still kneeling on the bed. The other woman tries to draw back but her shoulder hits the headboard, trapping her in place. You think about touching her, maybe letting your hands rest upon her thighs—but think better of it. Lady Beneviento swallows and your eyes follow the tense shudder of her throat.
“If you don’t want this, tell me. You gave me a choice on our wedding night and I would never deny you the same in return.” Your voice trembles. Nerves, anticipation, or maybe something else entirely. “I won’t be angry, or even upset. But… I think you do want this, Lady Beneviento. And I want it too.”
The dollmaker’s eye snaps back to yours. Her gaze is bright, feverish. “I’ll ruin you,” she says with a shaky exhale. “I’ll hurt you. I already have.”
A hint of a smile curves the corners of your mouth up. “All’s fair in love and war. Isn’t that how the saying goes, my lady?”
Lady Beneviento swallows, lips pressed into a tight line. Then she shakes her head and whispers, “But you don’t love me at all.”
You try to laugh. The sound that comes out of your throat is ugly and strangled, and you can barely recognize that voice as your own. “That’s true. And you don’t love me either, do you?”
She’s silent.
Then she slowly nods. “…Okay.”
“Okay, what?”
Breathing hard, Lady Beneviento meets your gaze with a steadfast look that vacillates between hunger and dread. “Let’s get this over with.” She swings her legs around and stands up from the bed. You watch with both confusion and impatience as she walks over to her wardrobe and rummages around in it. When she finally resurfaces, she’s holding a length of dark cloth. It looks like a silk scarf. “Tie this over your eyes,” she says. “Please. I don’t want you to see my face.”
You purse your lips and groan. “I’ve already seen you, Lady Beneviento. What difference does it make now?”
With a trembling hand, the Lord drops the scarf into your lap. “Please,” she says again. “You can’t see, you can’t watch. Not for this, not when we’re about to…” Her voice trails off as a flush darkens her cheeks, like she’s too embarrassed to even finish the sentence out loud.
You sigh and loop the silken cloth around your head, tying it securely into a knot that hopefully won’t be too difficult to undo later. The room plunges into a darkness that is very similar to how it is at bedtime when the lights go out. The bed slightly dips as Lady Beneviento rejoins you atop the mattress. Your heartbeat quickens as she slides her hands down your chest, more tenderly than before. A few buttons on your torn blouse are still intact, so the Lord takes her time in carefully undoing the remaining fastenings.
“Pretty little thing,” she whispers, tugging off your ruined top before reaching around to unclasp your bra, removing it as well. The dollmaker’s hand slides up your neck and then curls into your hair. She tugs your head back to expose your throat, her grip firm but not painfully so, and the shakiness of her hand betrays an obvious nervousness. “…I don’t want to hurt you,” she breathes. “If I do something you don’t like, please, just tell me.”
“I will,” you say.
“I’ll try to be gentle.”
You run your nails down her back. “Gentle is for lovers, my lady,” you say with a bitter smile. “And I’m afraid we’re not quite there yet.”
As you recline into the pillows, you can feel Lady Beneviento’s lips brushing against your neck. Then her tongue draws a long, slow stripe along your pulse point. Shivering, you tilt your head back to give her better access. She’s on top of you again, her hands lightly resting on your wrists. You’re not being restrained this time. You could push her away if you wanted to.
You quietly moan when the stroke of Lady Beneviento’s tongue turns into open-mouthed kisses. She nips and sucks at your neck, hot and wet, but her mouth doesn’t wander further upward. She doesn’t try to kiss your face, your lips. You’re not sure if you’d want her to, anyway. Not with the memory of that horrible scar still fresh in your mind.
After a few long minutes of this quiet torture, when you feel like you might burst out of your skin from anticipation, the dollmaker pulls away. With a grunt, you push yourself back up into a seated position, already missing the comfortable warmth of her body. Blindly, you reach out until your hand bumps against Lady Beneviento’s blouse. Closing your fist into the stiff fabric, you pull her back to you. “Tired already, my lady?”
She makes a frustrated sound in her throat. “I can’t stand you,” she whispers. “Everything you do drives me crazy.”
“You were already crazy,” you say with a little laugh. “What are you going to do about it, Lord?”
Lady Beneviento growls. Then she shoves you flat onto your back again and slides her hands into the waistband of your skirt, roughly yanking it down your hips. Your underwear soon follows and you bite back a tiny sound. Naked and blindfolded, you suddenly feel very vulnerable. But maybe things are starting to even out again, as you lie back and listen to the telltale sounds of rustling fabrics as Lady Beneviento hurriedly strips herself of her own clothes. Moments later, her hands are back on you again, grasping your thighs and spreading them apart.
You sharply inhale when you feel her tugging you close so she can settle flush between your legs. It takes a bit of adjusting before the two of you come together in a position that feels comfortable, but then Lady Beneviento presses forward and you draw your legs up, wrapping them around her hips, and you bite your lip because all you can feel right now is her. Letting out a shaky breath, you grab at the dollmaker’s bare shoulders just to have something to hold on to.
Oh, you think to yourself as Lady Beneviento starts to move against you. Finally. You need this. The two of you are married—so why shouldn’t you do these things that married people do with each other? Why shouldn’t you indulge in some pleasurable stress relief to burn off a bit of the tension that has built up over these uneasy weeks of living together? That’s all this is. There’s nothing wrong with it. You repeat those words in your head like a mantra, even as the dollmaker gasps softly in your ear, her breath hitching when your hips begin bucking up to meet hers in a matching rhythm.
She’s not being gentle. The pace of this coupling has gradually intensified as the minutes go by. The rhythm, initially slow, has deepened into something hard and fast, each roll of the other woman’s hips driving you into the mattress with a low groan of creaking bedsprings. Her movements are rough and a bit uneven, and you’re guessing she’s probably never done something like this before with another person—but that hardly seems to matter with the way your twitching sex keeps grinding against hers, over and over again, coaxing tiny gasps from your lips.
There’s no doubt that you’re going to be sore tomorrow, and you think she probably will be too. You can’t bring yourself to care about something like that. Not when it feels so good, so raw and cathartic.
Your teeth scrape against the quivering, heated skin of her shoulder, the tang of sweat dancing on your tongue. There’s something desperate about the way she’s fucking you right now, something almost animalistic. It’s nothing like what you’ve read in any romance novel, those pages full of flowery prose and idyllic language. Your wife doesn’t hold you tenderly in her arms, doesn’t whisper sweet words into your ear as she loves you. Instead, Lady Beneviento clutches at your back like she’s afraid you might slip away, the movement of her hips rough and almost violent, and the sounds falling from her lips are nothing more than wordless moans.
It’s exactly what you need right now, exactly what both of you need.
Your hands dart upward, twisting through the dollmaker’s hair, and she hisses at the scrape of nails against her scalp. Leaning down, she rests her forehead against yours. You can feel the warmth of her breath across your lips. For a moment you think she’s going to kiss you, after all. But then she presses her mouth to your ear instead.
“I told you already, didn’t I?” she pants. “You are mine. And I am yours.”
“Lady Beneviento,” you whisper in response. Your entire body is beginning to shake, legs trembling, toes curling. “I… I’m…”
And then it happens.
You cry out when you climax beneath her, a high, wavering sound that you’re embarrassed to hear spilling from your lips. Lady Beneviento doesn’t slow in her movements even as your hands tighten in her hair, although you think you can feel a stutter in her rhythm, can hear a sharp gasp of breath as her body trembles on top of you. Her pace quickens, each harsh thrust of her hips coming faster than the last. You can hear it, the slick sound of her grinding into you, and the space between your legs clenches again because it’s so filthy and obscene and it feels good, so good—
Arms tighten around your back, nails digging in. Lady Beneviento’s head falls to your shoulder and she sobs into the crook of your neck. Her muscles tense and then shudder, rhythmic, damp with sweat where her body lies flush atop your own. A low groan escapes her lips, not quite muffled against your skin, and then she finally collapses on top of you, panting.
Your heart is pounding. A warm, relaxed feeling is spreading through you, from the top of your head all the way down to your toes. It suddenly feels like too much work to do anything except lie there drunk on post-coital bliss.
And so, trembling in bed with your wife cradled in your arms, you do just that.
You lie there underneath her for a while, almost in a daze. The furious tension from before has been replaced with a lazy peacefulness. Lady Beneviento’s face is still pressed to your neck. She whispers your name, exhausted, almost reverent. As if to offer something in return, you gently comb your fingers through her hair.
The cloth tied over your eyes is sticky with sweat and starting to feel a bit uncomfortable now. Your limbs feel like jelly, but you manage to gather enough strength to tug at the Lord’s hair, gently insistent, until she lifts her head. “Can I take the blindfold off now?”
There’s a small pause, and then you feel her shift on top of you. “Hold still, I’ll do it,” she whispers. She props herself up on her elbows and carefully moves her hands to the cloth over your eyes.
You blink several times when the scarf is pulled away and the warm light of the bedroom replaces the darkness. As your eyes regain focus, the first thing you see is your wife. Her face is flushed and sweaty, and her eye is very wide as the two of you stare at each other, still tangled together on the bed. Your own gaze lowers and you study the pale expanse of her shoulders. There are bruises there, already darkening to a dull purple, from your teeth. You’re fairly certain that their twin set is painted across your own neck. Another thing binding you to her, as blatant as the gold band on your finger. Something burns through you at the thought, a coiling heat that you’re ashamed to acknowledge as satisfaction.
Suddenly nervous, you force your eyes back up into safe territory. “Lady Beneviento, was that okay for you?”
She gulps. “I… yes. I liked it. It felt good.” Then she bites her lip, suddenly worried. “Did I hurt you at all?”
“Only a little bit,” you say with a tiny shrug. “And I wasn’t exactly complaining.”
Lady Beneviento gingerly nods, her eye still wide. The two of you fall back into another heavy silence.
“Your hands are still in my hair,” she suddenly says, voice cracking.
“You didn’t seem too bothered by it when you were busy fucking me into the mattress ten minutes ago,” you retort. Sighing, you go to remove your hands anyway, stung despite yourself. A hesitant touch to your cheek makes you pause.
“You don’t have to stop,” Lady Beneviento says. She doesn’t quite meet your gaze, determinedly staring at some point just past your right ear instead. “I was just—surprised. I was surprised. But it feels nice, so you don’t have to stop. Not if you don’t want to, I mean.” Her lips twitch, a hint of a cautious smile there.
Your heart squeezes within its ribcage. Lady Beneviento’s voice is soft right now, so soft. Her hand as well, still cupping your cheek. Soft and relaxed and so jarringly different from how she’d held you before, at the height of your argument. Your mind drifts back to snarled words and hands roughly pinning you down onto the bed. She had smiled then, as well, but the curve of her mouth had been all teeth. Monster, you’d called her. And perhaps she had behaved accordingly. It had been frightening, yes, but not entirely unexpected. And not entirely unwanted, either.
Her presence right now feels unfamiliar in comparison, and you’re not quite sure how to proceed. You’re used to distance from her, used to resignation and, at best, reluctant acceptance. But Lady Beneviento has never been so openly affectionate with you before. Not like this. It feels dizzyingly good, like being wrapped up in a warm blanket, and you want more of it. It almost feels like—
No.
It’s not love.
Abuzz with something very much like panic, you yank your hands out of the dollmaker’s hair and push away her hand still resting on your cheek. The tentative smile on Lady Beneviento’s face freezes, and then her expression darkens into a scowl. She crawls off of you and your treacherous body misses her warmth almost immediately.
The bedsheets rustle beneath her as she flops down onto her back. After a moment or two, you turn to look at her. She’s staring up at the ceiling. The flush has faded from her face by now, but her expression looks strangely empty in its absence.
“You don’t deserve me,” she says at last.
An unpleasant feeling settles in the pit of your stomach. It feels, oddly enough, like betrayal. You turn away from her and pull the sheets over yourself. The words burst out before you can stop them, bitter and acrid on your tongue. “I’m sorry I’m not good enough for a mighty Lord such as yourself.”
“Please don’t misunderstand. That’s not what I meant at all,” Lady Beneviento whispers. “You’re a sweet girl. A good girl. You should be living a peaceful life someplace far away from here. Far away from someone like me.”
“Well, I meant it when I said I have no intention of running away,” you mumble into your pillow. “So I suppose we’re stuck with each other, Lady Beneviento.”
She sighs. “…I’m sorry for what I said before. About your friend.”
“That’s fine. I’m sorry for striking you.”
Your wife laughs, barely audible. It’s not a happy sound, but it’s not completely hollow either. “But you’re not sorry for calling me a monster.”
“No,” you say. “I’m not sorry for that.”
She hums to herself. “You shouldn’t be. After all, it’s the truth. And you would do well not to forget it.”