The Devil's Mistress by David Barclay (summer reads txt) 📗

He regarded her in the glass. “You’re quite disgusting, aren’t you? I can already see the swell of your belly. You’ll be fat as a cow erelong.”

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“Fortunately for me, there are others.” He turned his eyes to the third figure in the room.

Before Marianne’s ash wood desk sat a large metal basin, above which hung the beautiful, long-limbed form of the Huxley cook, Rosila. Ebony-skinned, with long, curly hair and pointed breasts, she was a bit older than Thomas’s personal house slave, but no less enticing. Thomas turned from the mirror and set his brandy upon the desk.

“Please, Master Huxley,” Rosila said. “I don’t deserve this.”

“Deserve? I didn’t deserve to have my betrothed so rudely taken from me, but we do not always get what we deserve. Do we, Rosila?”

“Please. Madam Huxley would not approve. She—”

“Madam Huxley likes to keep her son happy,” he said reasonably. “Now Winifred, if you would be so kind as to turn this woman, so that I might discipline her.”

The girl did just that, rotating Rosila until her back faced the open part of the room. Rosila continued pleading, but her cries fell on deaf ears. She began to kick against the rope.

“Careful there, you’ll tire yourself,” Thomas chided. “I do hope you keep some energy for later. Believe me when I tell you the worst thing you could do, my dear Rosila, is bore me.”

“Let me down!”

Thomas went to a small table where he had set his tools: a series of kitchen knives, a riding crop, a wooden rod, a loaded flintlock pistol—which he always kept for emergencies—and a cat-o’-nine-tails. This last he had purchased from a traveling monk under the pretense of self-mortification, a fact which brought tears of laughter to his eyes whenever he spoke of it.

He took the whip. “Are you ready to be a good girl, Rosila?”

“Tell me what I did! Please. Tell me what I did so that I won’t do it again. I swear, I’ll be good!”

“Oh, Rosila,” he said indulgently. “You won’t just be good. You’ll be the best. I know you will.”

The cat-o’-nine-tails flashed in his hand, and a series of red, ripe claw-marks appeared on her back. She bit her lip, her eyes watering with pain.

“There you are,” he said, and struck her again.

A whistling, sobbing sound escaped her. Thomas found himself chortling. He hit her a third time, and a fourth. A handful of cuts opened, oozing down her back into the basin.

“Now we’re getting somewhere,” he declared. “Winifred, do not let one drop get on Mother’s rug, do you hear?”

“I hear, Master Huxley,” the girl croaked.

Rosila, on the other hand, had only grown bolder. She thrashed again the rope, her body twisting and contorting. “Let me down! Let me down from here!”

“Oh? Shall I stop?”

“Piss on you!” she screamed.

“Perhaps you shall, if I wish it.” He laughed. Oh, maybe ’twouldn’t be such a bleak evening after all.

Then, as he drew back again, a breeze blew through the room and extinguished the candles. Someone touched his wrist. “Hello, my love.”

“Ah!” He was so surprised, he dropped the whip. “Winifred, is that—”

“I’m here. Has it been so long? Do you not recognize the sound of my voice?”

Thomas spun, clutching at the shadow before him, but his hands grasped only darkness. His heart began to pound, a delicious and frightful sensation. “My…my little honey pumpkin? Is it really you?”

Something leaned in and nipped him on the ear.

“Do you not feel the touch of my skin? The taste of my lips?”

A pair of hands grasped him by the head, and the figure planted a kiss firmly upon his mouth. She lingered a moment, then pulled away, her tongue tracing the line of his teeth.

“Oh my. What is…” His eyes settled on the darkness, and for the first time, he could see something of her shape. It looked like Isabella, but it was—

“You have been a bad boy, Thomas.”

“I… No! You were the one who was bad, my sweet melon, poisoning your father. We were to be so…so happy!”

A hand pushed him backward as if he were nothing more than a dandelion on the wind. The back of his legs hit the nearby couch, and he collapsed into it.

“Lies, my dear.”

“That was not my doing. It was…it was Mother! You know how protective she can be. She was afraid for my life. It’s why she made me testify. She didn’t see you as you really were…as I knew you were. She thought you were…dangerous,” he finished.

“Did she?”

The cushions on the couch burst apart, and four long vines grew from their leavings. They wrapped round Thomas’s arms and legs and pulled him onto his back.

The figure climbed on top of him and knelt over his stomach. His body responded in kind, swelling in lurid anticipation. “You will be gentle on me?” he said timidly, hopefully.

“First, I want you to see me.”

The candle flames flickered back into existence, but the creature before him was not his fiancée. It was an earthy, hideous thing with filthy black hair and amber eyes. A monster from the furthest reaches of Hell.

Winifred screamed. She ran toward the door, but the creature snapped her fingers, and another vine wrapped itself round the exit. She turned to Rosila and snapped her fingers again. The ceiling rope unraveled into a series of straw-colored threads, and the woman fell into the blood-speckled basin

The two women came together, clutching one another in front of Marianne’s desk. Then Rosila darted across the room and grabbed a knife from Thomas’s collection. She held it in front of her, alternately pointing it toward Thomas and toward the thing that had once been Isabella.

The creature, in turn, looked back. “Came I to take something tonight, but I think it belongs to you. Will you take it?”

“Rosila,” Thomas called. “Free me at once!”

The sound of his voice brought a look of rage to Rosila’s cheeks, every bit as hateful as that of the witch. Then she seemed to realize