Total pages in book: 94
Estimated words: 87848 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 439(@200wpm)___ 351(@250wpm)___ 293(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 87848 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 439(@200wpm)___ 351(@250wpm)___ 293(@300wpm)
“Oh, my god…”
“You have landed on your feet, pup,” he says. “All of this, and so much more will be yours once we are married. My millions, at your disposal.”
My stomach clenches. This can’t be real. Am I having a hallucination? Did they catch me when I ran and hit me with some drug that put me into a dissociative state? Am I back at the orphanage, talking to a mop?
Strong arms wind around me and squeeze me, not hard enough to choke the life from me, but enough to put pressure all around me and calm me like the frightened animal I am.
“Breathe,” he says. “You are safe.”
You are safe. He says those words, and I believe him. I feel myself calming down, even though the world has suddenly become so strange I hardly recognize it.
“There are many hours before we reach our destination. You can have a bath, get changed, eat some food. Settle in. We will talk of larger matters later.”
Armand
She is overawed, overwhelmed, and overstimulated. I can feel the tremors in her frame as I hold her close to me. I should have thought more about this. Should have taken her into a quieter carriage, not one that Louis the Sun King would have found appealing.
I take her hand and lead her to the rear. This is where I have a bed and a bathroom. The designs here are not so ornate, colors more muted, fewer fancy trims.
“I don’t have a lot of clothing for someone your size or gender, but have a bath and I will find something for you to wear.”
I would like to bathe her myself, but she is already panicked and afraid and right, in the sense that I have purchased her. She is my property. There is no escape.
The train is already moving, sleek and comfortable through the countryside. We will not be captive to roads filled with drivers of varying capability. We will not be cramped in a small vehicle with no ability to move around, have a cocktail, or feel ourselves think.
Beatrix does as she is told, disappearing into the bathroom. I pass a shirt through the door. There is nothing else on board to cover her because I did not plan on having female companionship. This little visit to the orphanage was a last-ditch effort. I thought it would be a waste of time. I cannot quite believe that my mate really was there, suffering poverty for years while I lived like… this.
I have food brought for her. Nothing fancy. Bread. Cheese. Cold meat. Hardly the meal I thought I would be gracing my mate with, but I think she needs solid food. She looks hungry in every sense.
After a time, she emerges from the bath chamber. She has a towel on her head and my shirt on her body. It comes down to mid-thigh on her, giving me a nice view of her long legs. I wince internally when I see the marks she sustained in her effort to escape.
In the privacy of my bedchamber, with a serving platter on the bed, we sit together. She devours hunks of bread, favoring the brioche. Then the cheese meets its fate. She eats particularly, avoiding the Roquefort, decimating the Camembert and Brie. She ignores the meats entirely.
She catches me noticing.
“I don’t eat animal meat,” she says.
I smile, amused. She does not know why, but I find it quite fascinating that one of her blood would avoid meat. Of course, this is killed, cured, as far from its original pumping self as it is possible to imagine while still being fit for consumption.
“More for me,” I say, finishing what she does not eat.
It is an honor to eat the crumbs from her meal.
She does not know it yet. Cannot know it yet. But I am entirely devoted to her. She is mine, not in a manner of crude ownership alone, but in a role that makes me her protector. I would lay down my life for her.
“Are you still hungry? Would you like a little wine?”
“Are you trying to get me drunk?”
“No. I am trying to help you feel comfortable and settled. You need to sleep.”
I pour her a small glass of red wine. Not enough to get a sparrow drunk, and I watch as she first sips, then drains it.
Like most broken things, she is desperate to be able to trust. I will give her that space, and she will fall into it. Force will be unnecessary. I can see her exhaustion. It is not simple tiredness. It is a deep fatigue of the soul caused by well over a decade of being denied the simple, necessary experience of being known.
She settles back against the pillows, visibly fighting sleep. I see her lids becoming heavy, dark lashes sliding down over those big eyes of hers. I wonder what they will look like when she smiles. I have never seen her so much as smirk. She may not know that happiness exists as yet, kept as she was in that prison for innocence.