July 11th 1841
Verushka stirred from sleep to a cooling chamber and glimpsed the memory of a fire flickering in the hearth. She shivered under the heavy covers and drew closer to her husband in the dark. A storm still raged outside and flashes of lightening lit the borders of heavy linen curtains to the timing of distant rumbles in the clouds. This Season, the London summer had lasted only two short weeks and many families had already hastened to their country estates to ruminate through the fast approaching winter.
Verushka smiled affectionately at her husband who mumbled incoherently in his sleep. The Duke of Bexley was as endearing in his nocturnal conversations as he was during the day. She drew the tip of her index finger lovingly over the curve of his cheek and his eyes flicked beneath closed lids before snapping open. From sleep to awake in the time it took to fire an arrow. Cupid's arrow. Straight to her heart, she mused romantically.
"Happy Anniversary, my dear." Cain's sleep soaked voice poured over her like honey.
"Happy Anniversary, Your Grace," Verushka whispered against his lips, ruining the effect with a chatter of teeth.
"Are you cold? Shall I call a servant to re-light the fire?" Cain offered already reaching for the bell pull.
Verushka grabbed his forearm and pulled him back into bed. After months of coaxing she had finally managed to line up both the incentive and the inclination for Madam Sheila and Vincent the butler to attempt their first night of courtship. There was certainly no way that she would ruin all her good work with their ill-timed death by 'severe chill.'
"I have a better idea." Verushka grinned as her stomach churned with sudden hunger.
She jumped from the bed and slipped on a long silk dressing gown over her negligee then wrapped a thick woollen blanket about her shoulders and reached for the door handle.
"My dear, where are you going?" Cain called curiously as he lay sprawled over the bed.
"Track me if you can, Sir Hunter. I am going to the one place that I know always stays warm!"
Verushka shut the door and padded swiftly down the carpeted halls until her bare soles flinched over the chilly stone of the kitchen stairs. Reaching the bottom she pushed open the wooden doors to the warm embrace of the pantry and spied a fresh batch of butter biscuits sitting atop the table and perfuming the air with their sugary scent.
She held the blanket around her shoulders with one hand and swiftly filled a kettle with water bringing it to the boil for two steaming cups of tea. She sat nibbling at the corner of a shortbread, its crumbs littering the surface of her lips, when Cain entered the room to wrap his arms around her.
"Already into the baked goods without even waiting for me?" He placed a kiss upon the back of her neck playfully before grabbing two biscuits and swallowing them hastily one after the other.
"Early bird. Worm." Verushka mumbled between bites.
"You know, I meant to ask you about these biscuits before." Cain gulped his tea appreciatively. "They still taste delicious, but the way Cook made them a year ago was simply unbeatable.
A small frown marred Verushka's features and she ceased her chewing. "That's because Madam Shiela didn't make them. Liara did." Verushka lay her half eaten biscuit on the edge of her plate.
Cain felt the weariness in her words. He knew that the loss of his wife's friendship with the other maids had weighed heavily on her and he had done his best to shield her from the void their absence created. On the first occasion that Verushka had found the pantry empty and dank from disuse it had made her silent for a full week. So Cain had instructed the kitchen staff to always keep the pantry warm at night despite not a soul lingering there after dark. Now the ovens permanently burned and butter biscuits were constantly kept on standby. It was the least he could do for his wife while she still mourned the only life she had ever known.
He reached across the table and squeezed her hand warmly.
"I'm okay." Verushka offered him an empty smile. "You are right though, Liara was an excellent baker. I wonder what she is doing now."
"We could always find out." Cain tilted his head as if listening for more than the refusal he knew that she would give him.
"No." Verushka answered unsurprisingly. Amidst the daily tasks of Her Majesty's Secret Service she always kept one ear to the floor. Although the dowager duchess was careful to ensure a certain measure of separation so that the sovereignty of the Crimson Guild was upheld, Verushka knew that Liara was already beginning to make waves as an accomplished courtesan and actress. Mina, however had slipped between the cracks to disappear as adeptly as a thief in the night.
It was always their way. Liara hid in broad daylight and Mina hid in the shadows.
"It doesn't' matter now." Verushka dusted off the crumbs coating her full lips. She smiled again, this time more warmly than before and reached out to smooth the worried lines that wrinkled the corners of her husband's eyes. "I'm fine. I have you."
"That you do." Cain placed a palm over her hand, rubbing his thumb along the slim lines of her fingers. "Come." He laced his fingers with hers and waited as she grabbed her mug before guiding them to the alcove of the pantry where the bricks lay heated as they always did and a stack of books was continuing to grow in the corner.
"What shall we read tonight?" He asked.
"Hmm.." Verushka mused and selected a thin volume of Shakespearean plays. "This one."
"Othello?" Cain arched an eyebrow.
"Mmm hmm." Verushka nodded and nestled into Cain's side, coiling herself around the curve of her mug.
"Interesting choice."
"Well it is our wedding anniversary and Othello and Desdemona were newlyweds." Verushka rationalised.
"You know that Othello murders his wife, right?" Cain eyed Verushka incredulously.
"Really?! I must have forgotten about that." She reached for another book but Cain pulled her back.
"No, let us delve into the cautionary tale of the lack of honesty and openness in a marriage lest you consider leaving your duke after one very long year of marriage." Cain chuckled as Verushka pinched his arm and began to read without cracking the spine of the book he held.
"ACT I. SCENE I. Venice. .'"
Verushka's heart warmed as the rhythmic ebb of Cain's voice soothed her as it always did. She relaxed, letting the heat of the stone ease the knots from her back. Without thinking she reached up to stroke the blond locks that had recently been shorn so close to Cain's head. For over a year the Duke of Bexley had set the fashion for the ton with an almost unkempt long crop of sandy hair that men all over England attempted to reconstruct. However at the end of this year's Season he had taken it upon himself to chop it all off and the effect gave the usual jovial and youthful duke a debonair maturity that stirred something in Verushka's belly.
"'- You're not listening." Cain commented dryly.
"I am!" Verushka asserted with a giggle.
Cain wrapped his arm around Verushka to tickle the small of her back.
She lurched in his embrace spilling tea over her nightgown. "Cain!" she yelled as the tepid liquid seeped into her clothes. "You know how ticklish I am. Now, look at me. I am soaked through."
"Well you had better take those wet garments off then." Cain grinned.
"Really, Cain? This was just an attempt to have me disrobe?" Verushka shook her head exasperated but her fury was betrayed by her smiles. "You needn't have worried with the subterfuge. You could have just asked."
"Yes, but that isn't nearly as much fun." Cain peeled back the silken gown to lick the sweetened tea that pooled upon her crevice of her collar bone.
"Cain," Verushka cautioned her husband warily as she glanced at the unlocked door of the kitchen.
"That's right." Cain slid a questing palm until it stroked warm wet flesh. "Now this time say it with a little more feeling."
Verushka moaned the Duke of Bexley's christian name, but she was most assuredly not thinking of anything particularly Christian at the time.
Several hours later sweat beaded over the surface of Verushka's skin and the heat within the small confines of the pantry seemed at least fifty times greater than it had ever been. She lay with her cheek pressed to the cobbled floor attempting to absorb whatever cool relief it possessed. Cain sprawled panting beside her having paid the price for tickling his wife in a most pleasurable way and then for promising her to never be as rash as Othello had been to his bride.
"Honestly, I don't ever think that I have recited the Bard's works while doing that before."
"I am surprised you could remember it." Verushka smirked.
"I seem to remember you gave me a very particular ultimatum if I could not." Cain's eyes narrowed purposefully.
"Let's call it an incentive."
"Oh, yes. Lets." Cain's masculine laugh rubbed against her tender skin like brushed velvet and Verushka shivered despite the heat.
"At least we know that you would never have your head turned by idle reports and rumours like Othello. What a poor excuse for a hero." Verushka turned over to look into Cain's emerald eyes.
"Agreed, my dear. Desdemona deserved far better but I also cannot imagine a world where you would simper in feminine meekness in the face of adversity. Can you?" Cain brushed a long golden strand away from Verushka's forehead.
"No. That is true." Verushka mused. "But that is no excuse for subterfuge."
"I promise that I have nothing to conceal from my beautiful wife."
Verushka's conscience gave an uncomfortable twinge. She only wished that she could be just as honest.
A year ago she had only wanted one day to enjoy her married life with her new husband before she broke to him the news that she would continue to work for Her Majesty's Secret Service in a much greater capacity than simply as the Queen's Lady in Waiting. But then the business of life took over and one day became one week, which turned into a month and she let herself be convinced that when Cain had grieved his father, the Doorkeepers had been dealt with and Conroy's influence flushed out, that he would be more receptive to the news.
But then, Conroy was found clean of any identifying marks. This meant that the mysterious lightening scarred man that the courtesan Zarina once alluded to as the sower of discord against the Queen had yet to be found. So Verushka waited to reveal her secret as well as the dowager duchess's until the time was right. But then the path to Young England grew cold and Prime Minister Melbourne was set to once again lose his majority government. And when was it ever the right time to tell her husband that his mother and his wife subscribed to the same office that killed his father? In the days following his death Cain became less and less enamoured of the danger that their association with the Queen put his family in and Verushka grew accordingly more silent on the matter.
However laying there on the floor of the room where it had all started Verushka knew that there would always be challenges in their lives. She would not be Desdemona, too weak to speak her truth and nor would she be Othello, so fearful of loss that the fear drove her actions and not her faith.
From a pantry maid to a duchess, Verushka knew dreams could come true if the dreamer had the courage to dream as deeply in daylight as they did at night. It was time to live courageously and tell Cain all the secrets she had stored in her soul. She loved him and he loved her. He would understand why she was choosing to continue his father and mother's work.
"Cain." She whispered his name and the duke's drowsy lids snapped open to rest his gaze upon her face. "You came into my life like an unexpected novel, the kind that wakes a soul with poetry in prose. It was as if I opened the door to a bookshop, ran my fingers along the fragile spines & stopped at the one that had your name embossed in gold."
Verushka placed a palm over his chest to feel the beating of his heart in time with hers. "From a million books on a thousand shelves I would choose you again & again."
Their lips brushed together in a soft sweep of unspoken love. Verushka drew her arms about Cain's shoulders to run her fingers through the short spiky strands of hair. She opened her mouth to confess her most guarded secret and stopped short before a single sound could escape her throat. At the base of her husband's neck, she felt a mark on his body. Something he had managed to keep hidden all this time.
She slid her thumb over it once again in a feigned caress and fought valiantly to keep the shocked expression off her face. Under the tips of her fingers was a jagged scar in the shape of a lightning bolt and her heart stopped beating as if it had been struck.
Continue the story of Liara, Verushka and Mina in Book 2 of the Maid for More series...
Seduction in the Stables