Chapter Eleven – Esme
Chapter Eleven
Esme
Osric doesn’t come down to breakfast. I try not to stare at his empty chair.
I butter my bread, drink my tea, and I look out the window at his car, which is parked exactly where he left it.
“He’s probably still sleeping,” Darina says.
“Oh?”
“You’ve checked the stairs four times.”
“I’m allowed to do that.” I take another bite and keep my eyes on my plate. “He can sleep for as long as he likes. It makes no difference to me.”
My throat goes warm at the base, the spot that gives me away when I lie, and I’m glad Darina is taking her plate to the kitchen instead of watching my face. I join her later, when I finish eating. She studies me while she dries her hands.
“You said you wanted to work someday. You and me, earning our keep in some mysterious city.”
“I did say that.”
“Then we start today.” She takes the broom from the corner and holds it out to me. “Cleaning begins with the floor.”
I look at the broom, then at her.
“I know how to sweep.”
“Show me.”
I take the broom and push it across the stones the way I saw the maids at home do. Dust scatters ahead of the bristles, rises, and settles back down exactly where it was.
“You’re chasing it,” Darina says. “You have to gather it. Short strokes, toward you, into a pile.”
“That’s what I’m doing.”
“You’re fencing with it. Move your hands down the handle.”
I move my hands down the way she shows me, and the next stroke actually pulls the dust into a line instead of throwing it over my ankles.
“Oh.”
“There. Keep the pile ahead of you and work toward the door.”
I sweep. The pile grows, and I grow bold with it, then one long, proud stroke drives the whole pile into the sunlight.
It rises in a cloud and drifts back down over everything I’ve already cleaned.
I sneeze twice and stand there holding the broom while Darina laughs so hard she has to grip the table.
“Who decided brooms should work this way?” I demand.
“People who sweep,” she says. “Again.”
I sweep all of it again, and this time, the pile goes out the door where it belongs.
She hands me a cloth next and points at the shelves.
I learn that dusting means carrying the dust away in the cloth, not waving it into the air to land somewhere new.
I sneeze about a dozen times more, while Darina folds her own cloth into quarters and wipes a shelf clean in three passes. Just to shame me.
The dishes are the worst of it. Darina fills the basin, and I decide that if a little soap cleans, more soap cleans better.
I pour until the water disappears under the foam.
Foam covers my arms to the elbows and spreads across the counter.
A cup slips out of my grip twice, and on the third slip, I catch it against my chest, which soaks the front of my dress through.
“What are you even doing?” Darina asks, exasperated.
“The cup is slippery.”
“Because you used too much soap. Rinse, then stack.”
She steps toward me, slides on the wet stones, and catches herself on the counter. We burst out laughing.
I scrub a big platter, rinse it the way she taught me, and hold it up to the window.
“Look at this. You can see yourself in it.”
“You’d see yourself in anything. You’re vain.”
“I made it clean. With my own hands.”
“You made half the kitchen wet with your own hands.”
We mop the floor together, which is a lesson I didn’t ask for but get anyway.
When it’s done, I stand in the doorway with my sleeves soaked and my hair coming loose.
I look at the swept floor and the shining counter, and take stock of how I’m feeling.
I should feel humiliated, right? Because I wasn’t raised to clean after myself, let alone after others.
My arms ache, my back aches, but oddly enough, I’m not bothered by it.
I’m pleased with myself. Because I did this.
The morning passed in a blur. We realize we’re hungry, which makes sense since it’s lunchtime already.
Darina ladles stew into three bowls. While she’s busy setting the table, I decide to go upstairs and see if Osric would like to eat. He hasn’t come down yet, which is strange for him. Usually, he spends his day working in the garden.
I haven’t seen Nim, either. Maybe she got spooked by our cleaning earlier.
I knock on his door.
“Lunch is ready,” I call.
There’s movement inside, a rustle of sheets or clothes, then a shuffle of steps across the stone floor. I straighten my back and wait for him to open the door. He doesn’t.
I can hear him breathe on the other side, rough and loud enough to raise goosebumps on my skin. Then I hear a low grunt, short and clenched, the sound of a man in pain trying to stay quiet.
I raise my hand to knock again but stop with my knuckles barely grazing the wood.
“Osric?”
No answer.
I press my palm to the door. I don’t know why, it’s like I’m trying to feel him through it, get closer to him this way. He knows I’m here, and he isn’t opening. Whatever is wrong with him, he’d rather not tell me.
“All right, well…” I take a deep breath and release it slowly, trying to not take his attitude personally. “Come down whenever. There’s food.”
Then I turn on my heel and go back downstairs to join Darina in the dining room.
“Is he coming?” Darina asks, setting down the bowls.
“No.” I sit next to her. “He didn’t answer. I heard him, though. He was breathing hard, and he made a sound, like a grunt. It sounded painful.”
“Should we bring food up to him? Maybe he’s sick.”
“He heard me and chose not to open the door or even talk to me.” I push the stew around my bowl. “I don’t understand what’s wrong with him. He’s been coughing and clearing his throat, did you notice?”
Darina eats a few spoonfuls before she speaks again.
“Are you starting to feel guilty?” she asks.
I set my spoon down.
“Guilty about what?”
“I only asked.”
“I have nothing to feel guilty about. He bought me, but I owe him nothing. He said so himself. I can leave whenever I want, I don’t owe him the credits he spent on me, and us living here is only temporary.”
“All right,” she says, and passes me the bread.
She doesn’t sulk, and neither do I. We’ve never known how to stay cross with each other.
After lunch, I find Nim curled in the warm stone hollow by the terrace door.
When she hears me, her ears perk up. She watches me with narrowed eyes and a suspicious scowl as I approach and crouch a little way off to hold out my hand slowly.
I imagine this is how you’re supposed to make friends with an animal.
“We live in the same house,” I tell her. “We should be friends.”
She strikes so fast that I barely have time to pull my hand away. I hear a hiss and her teeth snapping shut where my fingers were just a fraction of a second before. I cradle my hand against my chest, checking to see if I still have all my fingers.
“You nearly bit me!” I stare at her. “I’ve been nothing but polite to you.”
Her ears flatten against her elegant skull, and I lower my voice.
“Is this about him?” I ask her. “Because I haven’t done anything to him. If he’s upset, it can’t be because of me. You know that. You watch everything in this house.”
I go to fetch a scrap of meat from the kitchen and offer it to her on my open palm. She looks at the meat, looks at me, growls low in her chest, jumps out of the hollow she was comfortably lying in before I dared to disturb her, and disappears into the desert.
I sigh. It’s hot today, unbearably so. The merciless sun dried my dress where I spilled water and soap on it, but now the fabric is sticking to my back with sweat. I go inside before I get heatstroke and drink a full glass of water at the kitchen counter.
The house is quiet. It feels too big, too empty. I go looking for Darina and don’t find her in her room, nor in mine. I find her in the library, leaning against the shelves with a book open in her hands. Her eyebrows are raised, and her lips parted in an expression of shock. That takes me aback.
“You have to see this,” she says. “It’s in English.”
“Are you sure? We checked.”
“I went shelf by shelf this time. It was hidden behind a row of thick books. Look at the title.”
She turns the cover toward me. A Practical Guide to the Mating Rituals of the Scorpii, Written for Human Brides.
We look at each other, and then we’re both on the loveseat with the book between us, shoulder to shoulder, reading.
The language is plain and simple, no emotion behind it.
It explains the clicking first: a sound the male makes in his throat when his body has recognized his mate.
Apparently, it’s involuntary and impossible to fake.
It explains that when the time comes, the female runs, and it’s not a custom the couple can skip, because the run is part of how the bond is finalized.
The male gives her a head start, then hunts her by scent, sound, and by the heat of her body. Where he catches her, he claims her.
I read the word claims three times before I can move on to the next line.
Beside me, Darina has gone red to her ears. She stands up.
“I should start dinner,” she says, not looking at me.
She’s out of the library before I can answer, and I don’t call her back.
I keep reading.
The guide describes the hunt step by step, and I find it hard to keep calm while reading it.
Heat gathers low in my belly. I press my knees together, then my thighs, and rub them against each other.
The pressure eases the ache and makes it worse too.
I’m wet. I can feel it, the same slick warmth that shocked me when I cornered Osric the day before.
I remember the sound he made deep in his throat, the clicking that caused me to shudder, melt, and soak my panties.
Now I know what it means. It’s a mating call. I heard it, up close, aimed at me, and it made me wet. Remembering it makes me wet now.
I should be frightened. I am. My hands hold the book too hard, and my mouth has gone dry.
But under the fright, there’s a curiosity that scares me more than anything, because it’s aimed at Osric.
He’s handsome. Every time my thoughts wander to him, I have to admit it.
He’s built strong, he moves quietly, and even his tail and stinger fascinate me to the point where I have to look away because it’s such an intimate part of his anatomy, even if it’s on display.
He apologized for touching my hand at the silk stall. He told me I could leave whenever I wanted, and he meant it. Dangerous and kind at the same time… I don’t know what to do with a man like that. I never wanted a man at all. But he is… He’s simply different.
I close the book and slide it back onto the shelf where it was hidden. I walk out of the library and decide to pretend like I never read it. Pretending is easier than dealing with the onslaught of feelings it’s caused.
Darina and I eat dinner later, talk about random things, nothing at all, really, and neither of us says a word about the library or the guide. I go up to bed early.
In the dark, on my back, I can’t stop thinking about the hunt: the head start, the run under the night sky, with my breath loud in my own ears and him somewhere behind me, tracking me by scent and heat, unhurried, because he knows I can’t outrun him.
I think about what it would be like to be caught. By him.
I hear him clicking in my memory, low and rhythmic, and an ache starts low in my belly and slides down, down… My hand follows it, brushing over my ribs, across my waist, then lower. When I reach my pelvis, I catch myself and yank my hand back.
My face goes hot. I shove my hand under my pillow and keep it there. I’ve never touched myself. I wouldn’t even know how. I was raised better than this, and I’m furious that I have to admonish myself under his roof, with my thighs pressed together.
I huff, turn over onto my other side, and shut my eyes.
Sleep doesn’t come, though, because I can’t stop imagining the chase. The fear of it, the adrenaline, the anticipation of him catching me, pressing me into the dirt and landing on top of me.
I let out a frustrated groan and press my burning face into the pillow.