Dijon, France, 1752
Ysanne Moreau rolled over in bed, burying her face in Clotilde's auburn hair, and trailing one hand down the bare curve of her lover's spine.
Clotilde stirred, mumbling into her pillow.
"What was that?" Ysanne said, kissing Clotilde's shoulder-blade.
The other woman lifted her head, blinking sleep from her eyes. "I said, you're insatiable."
"It's your fault. You're so beautiful I can't keep my hands off you," Ysanne teased, her palm moving closer, tracing the slope of Clotilde's backside, moving down to her thighs.
Clotilde made a noise like a purr.
It had been thirteen years since Artus had died, and in the aftermath of his death, the world had become a dark place for Ysanne. She'd started to question her own immortality, wondering if this was all her life would ever be – loving and losing people. She no longer even had a friend to weather the storm – since she and Edmond had parted ways, she had no idea where he was or what he was doing.
Everything had seemed bleak.
Then she'd met Clotilde, and for the first time in a long time, it had felt like the sun was coming out.
"Can we stay in bed all day?" Clotilde said, rolling onto her back and stretching. Her back arched, breasts lifted, and Ysanne's eyes gleamed.
"If you'd like to," she said.
Clotilde rolled over again, climbing onto Ysanne. Her hair fell like a curtain around them. Ysanne ran her hands up Clotilde's soft hips.
Someone knocked on the front door.
Clotilde groaned and lowered her head so her forehead rested on Ysanne's.
"Whoever it is, ignore them," Ysanne murmured, nipping at Clotilde's lips.
Clotilde giggled and kissed her.
The knocking came again, louder this time, and Clotilde started to frown, but then Ysanne slid a hand between her legs, and Clotilde's expression melted in bliss.
"Ysanne," she moaned.
Another furious hammering sounded at the door, and then: "Clotilde. I know you're in there."
The colour drained from Clotilde's face, and she went rigid. "No," she whispered.
"What is it?" Ysanne said.
Clotilde lifted her head, her eyes wide. "It can't be."
The knocking hadn't stopped; it sounded like someone was trying to break the door down.
"Clotilde." Ysanne captured her face with both hands. "What's going on?"
"That's my father," Clotilde whispered.
She scrambled off Ysanne, and climbed off the bed.
"How did he find me?" she said, wringing her hands.
Slowly Ysanne sat up. "He didn't know where you were?"
She'd been with Clotilde for months, but her lover had always been vague about her family, and Ysanne, knowing how deep familial scars could run, had never pried.
Clotilde cast a panicked look at the bedroom door. "I have to go to him. He'll break in if I don't."
Ysanne climbed out of bed, and pulled on a silk robe, knotting the cord around her waist. "I would like to see him try." She cupped Clotilde's cheek. "Are you afraid of him?"
Clotilde didn't reply.
"Look at me," Ysanne said.
Clotilde did.
"Why is he here?" Ysanne asked.
"I left home a year ago. He's come to take me back."
"Why did you leave?"
Clotilde shrugged. "I wanted more from this life than he would allow me."
"Reading," Ysanne guessed.
When she'd first met Clotilde, the other woman hadn't been able to read a word. Ysanne had taught her, like she'd once offered to teach Edmond, and many evenings over the past few months had been spent in bed together, surrounded by books.
Clotilde nodded. "I know that one day I'll have to settle down with a husband, but I'm not ready."
"Why do you ever have to be ready?" Ysanne asked, ignoring the continued hammering at the front door.
"Because . . ."
"You could stay with me," Ysanne said, taking Clotilde's hands.
"Forever?"
"Why not?"
"But we can't. He's found me now."
"So we'll go somewhere else, somewhere he can't find you."
Clotilde didn't seem to know what to say.
Her father wasn't giving up, and anger seared Ysanne's chest.
"Wait here," she said and strode from the bedroom.
She marched through to the entryway of her small house and flung open the door. The man who stood outside was red-faced with anger, his hands bunched, his chest heaving with violent breaths.
"Who are you?" he snarled.
"I own this house," Ysanne said.
"Where's my daughter?" He tried to barge past her past, and Ysanne put out an arm to stop him.
"I own this house," she repeated, "and I don't take kindly to people who don't respect my property."
He gaped at her. Ysanne was willing to bet that no woman had ever spoken to him like that.
Bare feet shuffled behind her; Clotilde stepping into her periphery. Her face was pale.
"What are you doing here?" she said.
"What the hell do you think? I'm taking you home," her father snapped.
"I don't think she wants to go home with you," Ysanne said.
"I am her father –"
"I wouldn't care if you were the King of France himself. If she doesn't want to go, you're not taking her," Ysanne said.
He clenched his fist, half-raising it as if to strike her, and Ysanne pinned him with a frigid glare.
"Try it," she warned, her voice low and lethal, and he hesitated.
Not completely stupid, then.
He looked past her to Clotilde, and his face darkened. "Come with me," he commanded.
"She doesn't want to," Ysanne said, moving so she blocked the man's view.
"I'm warning you, woman –"
"No, I'm warning you –"
He took a sudden swing at her. It was impressively fast, but not fast enough. Ysanne slapped his hand aside, and his whole body spun with the movement. He reeled against the wall.
Clotilde squeaked, pressing both hands to her mouth.
"You have no right to keep her," Clotilde's father blustered, clutching his arm.
"You have no right to take her," Ysanne countered.
He took a step forwards, and Ysanne's anger flared bright and hot. Maybe he was stupid, after all.
Grabbing his arm she dragged him to the front door and threw him out onto the street, so fast that he didn't even realise it had happened until he was lying in the dirt.
His mouth made furious shapes, but he couldn't seem to find actual words.
He started to get up and Ysanne slammed the door in his face.
She was so sick of men like him, who treated women and girls like they were mere objects, like their dreams and desires didn't matter. She had hoped that attitudes would change over the centuries, and she'd been sorely disappointed.
Tears swam in Clotilde's eyes. "Why did you do that?"
"To protect you, of course."
She shook her head. "You don't understand. He'll come back."
"Then I'll throw him out again."
"No. You don't know my father. He always gets what he wants."
Ysanne smiled thinly. "Your father doesn't know me. He will take nothing that I am not willing to give."
"But –"
Ysanne gently kissed her. "Do not worry. I won't let him hurt you."
Suspicion flickered in Clotilde's eyes. "How is it that you're so strong?"
Ysanne blithely shrugged, and took Clotilde's hand, hoping to steer her away from that train of thought. But even as she led Clotilde back to the bedroom, her lover was casting anxious looks back at the front door.
This wasn't over yet.
Clotilde's father returned the next night, and he did not come alone.
This time, he didn't waste time knocking. His friends simply broke down the front door and marched into the house, where Clotilde and Ysanne were still sleeping, curled around each other in their bed.
This time, it was Ysanne who didn't move fast enough.
Clotilde's father froze in the doorway, his eyes bulging at the sight of his daughter in bed with another woman.
"What is this?" he breathed, his hand falling to the dagger at his hip.
Ysanne was out of bed in a flash, flames roaring in her heart. "Get out," she said, her voice cracking like a whip.
Clotilde's father sneered. "I don't take orders from women."
"And I don't tolerate thugs and bullies."
The men that he had brought with him laughed at this, nudging each other as if her words were amusing. Ysanne looked at each of them in turn, letting a little of the predator peer out through her eyes. Some of them were wise enough to fall silent. One of them grabbed his crotch and leered at her. Ysanne stared at him the longest.
"I think someone needs to teach you a lesson," Clotilde's father said, drawing his dagger.
The man who'd grabbed his crotch laughed, and there was violence in that sound.
Clotilde sobbed softly, huddled on the bed.
Ysanne met her father's eyes, and lifted an eyebrow. "Come for me, then, if you think you can," she challenged.
His grin faltered, some instinct warning him to be careful, perhaps, but arrogance won out in the end.
Ysanne was not a tall woman, and her build was slight; clad only in the loose shift she wore to sleep, she did not look like a threat. But a predator lived beneath her skin, hungry and waiting, ready to spring to life.
Clotilde's father strode forward, smug and sneering, and maybe he had forgotten what had happened yesterday, but once again he took a swing at her face. Last time, Ysanne had pushed his arm away. This time she grabbed it and wrenched it at a painful angle, twisting until the man fell to his knee, groaning. His eyes widened, black with fear and rage.
Clotilde screamed, and Ysanne whirled around. One of the men was dragging her off the bed.
Letting Clotilde's father go, Ysanne grabbed a handful of the other man's hair and yanked his head back. Someone else seized her arms from behind, trying to twist them behind her back; she easily broke free and turned, slamming the heel of her hand into his nose, shattering it. He screamed.
"Get on the bed and stay there," Ysanne told Clotilde, giving her a little push.
Her father stormed towards them, dagger in hand, and Ysanne moved easily to avoid the blade. Another knife flashed in the corner of her eye, and she shifted her weight to avoid that one too, but then Clotilde screamed, and Ysanne turned to her again.
The man who had grabbed his crotch was dragging Clotilde off the bed, tearing her shift in the process. Or maybe he did that on purpose. Clotilde tried to cover her breasts, and he forced her hands down to her sides, his face flushed with ugly excitement. One hand came up, touching her where she had not given him permission to touch.
A memory flashed through Ysanne's head – a tall man on a dusty rural road, forcing her to the ground and lifting her skirts, the rough cruelty of his fingers trying to force their way inside.
Red filled her vision.
The predator slipped free.
One punch broke the man's wrist and he let Clotilde go. She fell back on the back, weeping. Ysanne seized her attacker's throat, spun him to face the wall and slammed his head against the stonework, again and again, and she didn't know if she intended to kill him or if she had lost control of her own strength, but after the third blow, his skull cracked like an egg, and blood and brains were smeared across the wall and sprayed across her face. She could taste it in her mouth, and her fangs slid out.
She turned.
The room was frozen in horror, and then Clotilde's father pointed a shaking hand at her. "Kill her," he whispered. "Kill her."
They tried.
Two of them charged her, knives in hand; Ysanne broke the closest man's jaw with a single punch, and kicked the other in the knee, wrenching it out of joint with a wet pop.
A third man grabbed her hair, and she snapped his fingers like twigs. The smell of blood was thick in the air, driving her on.
A snarl ripped from her throat as she grabbed Clotilde's father by the throat and lifted him off his feet.
"Do you still think you can take me?" she growled.
His face was the colour of spoiled milk, and his heart raced in her ears, frantic, terrified.
Movement shifted behind her and she glanced back to see Clotilde picking up one of the knives that had been dropped to the floor.
"Let me handle this," Ysanne told her.
Clotilde's face was stained with tears, and her mouth trembled, but she raised the knife and pointed it at Ysanne.
"Let him go," she said.
"What?"
"Let him go." The last word was a strangled scream.
Suppressing another snarl, Ysanne dropped her captive. He scrambled back, trying to get away from her. Clotilde edged towards him, giving Ysanne as wide a berth as possible, and the fight drained out of Ysanne.
"Clotilde?" she said.
Her lover's eyes were wild with fright. "What are you?"
Ysanne raised her hands. "Let me explain –"
"You're a monster."
Ysanne tried to deny it, but the words lodged in her throat. Her face was painted with the insides of a man's skull.
"I was protecting you," she said.
"You're the only one I need protecting from," Clotilde declared, and Ysanne's heart cracked.
"Don't say that. I would never hurt you."
Clotilde crouched by her father, offering him an arm to help him stand.
She had been afraid of him, just last night, but now it was Ysanne that she was afraid of it, and the knowledge of it was a shard of ice in Ysanne's heart.
She couldn't blame Clotilde, not after what she had just witnessed, but the suddenness with which her lover had slipped through her fingers made her head spin. One moment Clotilde had been blissfully ignorant, still living in Ysanne's heart, the next, she looked at Ysanne as if she loathed her.
Tears stung her eyes, and she hardened herself against them.
This wasn't how she'd wanted things to end, but she'd always known that it would end.
She'd had Clotilde sit for a portrait, just as Eustacie, and Edmond, and Artus had done before, and from now on, that would be all that remained of the woman who had chased away the clouds.
Clotilde helped her father to the door, the men that he had brought staggering after them. Except the one Ysanne had killed.
Her eyes met Clotilde's once more, and there was the faintest flicker of the woman she had fallen for, the woman she had taught to read, who had and laughed with and loved her in this room, whose skin Ysanne had learned as intimately as her own.
Then Clotilde's expression hardened. She said nothing as she backed out of the room, and she didn't need to. The fear on her face was more painful than words could ever be.
It was only when they had left the house, the front door swinging shut with a dull thud, that Ysanne sank onto the foot of her bed, buried her face in her hands, and started to cry.
Next week, we're going to be delving into the darker parts of Edmond's past :D