The Girl in the Brothel Ch. 06

Thara could feel his eyes boring twin holes into her forehead as she sat by the empty hearth. It was unnerving. The last time someone had stared at her with such intensity was when she was thirteen and unknowingly ripped the seat of her pants while playing boats with her brothers at the lake. Her brothers hadn't let on (at her expense), and she couldn't figure out why some of the lads kept staring at her in a way that suggested they couldn't help themselves.

She wished she could feel as merry and vibrant as Regina was at dinner in her colorful, plumed dress. But despite having been "rescued," as Ardon had called it, and brought to a wonderful city, despite being told her mother had done very well for herself and her family, and that she would no longer have to scrape a living working the streets as a maid or shopgirl, Thara felt she had been given another short stick.

It wasn't as though she had dreams of being someone. She didn't really know what she wanted to do yet. Her mama had always told her she was a bricky girl and would sort things out in time. But until then, she had at least imagined herself settling in a nice town somewhere and buying a house, maybe opening up a shop. A bookshop, perhaps. She'd always liked to read. She had also imagined having a husband and two children to share that house and shop with. That picture, of her sitting around a table at Christmas with her imaginary family laughing over a meal of roast fowl, had pasted itself into her mind as she bounced from employ to employ.

But now it could never be. Because she was here, in Aldochor City, engaged to a man who would take her mother's wealth and confine her to a life of embroidery and party planning. A life of cursed frilly skirts and silly hairstyles. And no pants. Well, sod that. Maybe she would run away again and become an actress like Regina. She seemed happy and free and independent. Her husband hadn't barred her from the stage after they married. She had Horace wrapped around her little finger. A shrew, Thara thought, but not in a mean way.

Irritated to see that Ardon was now staring at the lace hem of her petticoat, which had ridden up slightly because she was slouched in her chair, she shot him a look of pure loathing and got up to peruse the bookshelf. She didn't know why she was angry with him, and suspected it was a mixture of frustration at her own horrible situation and his apparent lack of empathy over dinner.

The bookcase housed several encyclopedias and a smattering of plays, philosophical treaties, and fictional works. Thara flipped through some of them and moved further along the shelf, forgetting about the others in the room.

"You look upset." His deep voice startled her and she jumped, feeling goosebumps erupting down her arms. Ardon had joined her, and now stood towering over her left shoulder reading the title of the book in her hand. "A Study of Botany. How interesting." His tone suggested the exact opposite.

He had no right to look the way he did, Thara thought, her eyes taking a quick peek before turning back around to studiously ignore him. His chest was wider than her shoulders, enveloping her back with a warmth she could feel right through the silk. It reminded her of their night ride to the train station, galloping down the road with nothing but the moon above their heads and her back pressed tightly to that hard wall of muscle.

"It's quite interesting, actually." Thara ignored his thrust because she didn't want to get into another argument tonight. She opened the book and pretended to be engrossed in the illustration of a sprig of cow parsley. "Not many people realize how useful weeds can be. Medicinally, I mean."

"I'm sorry if I upset you over dinner." He was whispering so that the others wouldn't hear, but they were too busy playing dominos to notice. "I was only jesting."

"It's easy to jest when you aren't being led to shackles as I am." Thara snapped the book closed and set it back in its place.

"You're aren't being led to shackles. You can choose to leave and take the money you already have."

Thara huffed. "As much as I'd love to, I can't. This company is all I have left of my family." She watched Horace whoop from across the room as he won a round, before turning around to look properly at Ardon, and was yet again struck by how blue his eyes were, like the color of the sky on a hot summer day, clear and cloudless.

"I've seen women who wear dresses like this." Thara looked down at herself. Ardon did the same, although from a much different vantage point—one that gave him a generous view of her décolletage. "They sit around all day eating cookies and complaining about how their dresses don't match their bonnets." She spat out the last word like it was a curse. "I don't want to be like them."

"I believe you just insulted my sister." Ardon grinned.

"I don't care," Thara said bitterly. "She obviously doesn't like me, and for the stupidest reasons." Before he could ask what those reasons were, she began to list them on her fingers. "I offended her by arriving in my night dress, which by the way was your fault, I shouted at her, I wore her clothes and I don't cut up my breakfast sausages. I'm sure there's more, but I can't remember at the moment."

"You don't cut up your breakfast sausages." He was looking at her like he had outside The Rosey Bush. Like she had two heads.

"Manners." Thara said patiently. "I don't have manners." When he continued to look blankly at her, she offered, "I'm a pig in a dress."

"You are not a pig in a dress." His voice was gruff, dismissive. "As for the lack of manners, that is something that can be taught. Manners are not inherent to people, they are silly rules made up by crotchety old men so that the wealthy can feel like they are better than everyone else."

Thara was stunned by his outburst. "But you have them." She took in his starched cuffs and tails, unconvinced.

He shrugged. "I have them because I must, when I am in the city. When I travel elsewhere, to places where that kind of formality is nonexistent or not practiced often, it matters less." She guessed he was referring to his work. Elles had said he was sometimes called away for periods of time.

"Where do you travel?" she asked curiously.

"Everywhere within the Triple Crown and outside. Mere, Reada Nar, Giullay..."

It all sounded glamorous. Thara began to feel a little more excited about working for her mama and Elles's company. Would she also be required to travel? It was a topic Elles had glossed over at breakfast, choosing instead to hand to Thara a manual on ladies' etiquette before departing for a call. It was currently buried beneath a pile of dresses and hosiery beside her bed.

"...not appropriate for young women." Ardon adjusted his cuffs, his eyes fastened on the game of dominoes just over her shoulder.

"What's not appropriate for young women?" Thara asked sharply. She mentally backtracked but could not remember what Ardon had been talking about.

"My work." Ardon peeled his gaze from the game and looked at Thara in a way that made her wholly uncomfortable. He looked quite grim, and very serious. "What I do is not appropriate for young women." He paused, eyeing her. "It's not appropriate for young ladies being bred to run companies."

Thara bristled, narrowing her eyes. "And why not?"

"It's dirty work. If you want to be CEO, you cannot muddy your hands in my fish pond. You'll stay at the office, and learn the business of running Lidelle."

There it was. More golden bars. She was like a bird trapped in a gilded cage. A pig in a dress, trapped in a gilded cage, she corrected herself. She clenched her teeth, her thoughts drifting to visions of herself sitting before a desk buried under mountains of paperwork while Ardon adventured to foreign lands, lands where manners didn't matter and he could wear whatever he wanted, lands where he could wake up to turquoise skies and sup before fiery sunsets, perhaps accompanied by beautiful, buxom young women with doe-eyes and luxuriously long hair woven through with orchids and wildflowers.

Thara put a hand to his broad chest and pushed him aside, unable to look at him. Her cheeks were on fire with barely suppressed anger. "What I do with my hands when I am CEO is my prerogative. If I want to stick them into your fish pond I bloody well will!"

***

Thara shut the door to her bedroom with a scowl, her heart thudding an angry rhythm in her chest. I am not to going to sit behind a desk for the rest of my life. Her parents had made it very clear early on that they would be raising children with intelligence and fortitude.

Being brought up knowing how to dress wounds, balance numbers, butcher a hog, and wrestle men twice her size (so what if they had been her own brothers?) set Thara apart from most other girls her age, and suggested an expectation of independence and ingenuity that was absent in the upbringing of most of her female peers. It was the reason why, after the death of her papa, Thara had spent long hours in his shop with Edwin to help close out the commissions left unfinished, and then, once that had been done, begin the lengthy process of shuttering the store. It was why, after the death of her family, Thara hadn't been a sorry mess. Instead, she'd packed her things and left to find a new life, taking whatever job came her way, even selling penny slices of melon and pineapple as a street trader.

Having been raised on such foundations made it all the more confusing as to why her mama wanted her to marry and become a high society domestic. The thought of living out the rest of her life conforming to someone else's expectations terrified Thara beyond reason. She felt very strongly that she should, by rights, be able to do things like eschew a hat when going out, and eat food right off the end of a knife, and that it would not affect her ability to run a company one whit.

Her thoughts running along this trajectory, Thara kicked off her gold slippers, sending them tumbling across the rug. Tomorrow, I'm buying new clothes, she thought to herself firmly. She had made her first withdrawal of Egs from her account, the notes of which sat folded inside the new coin purse on her dresser. As soon as she was done with breakfast, she would go into town, to the men's clothing emporium she had spied on her way to the seamstress's shop this morning with Elles. A couple pairs of trousers and shirts would do nicely. Maybe there would be time to go to a bookstore, or find a bakery that sold almond croissants.

Feeling better, she cracked open her door to peer into the hallway. Finding it empty, she silently stole out and made her way to the library to retrieve a book she had been reading earlier this afternoon. It was a romance novel about a young assistant scribe who falls in love with a handsome doctor. She seldom read romances, but it had been the only novel of interest in the dusty room, which was filled with monotonous tomes on Egan law and Morithian climate patterns.

The chambermaid, however, had been quite thorough in her cleaning of the upstairs rooms. Apart from hanging up all of Thara's new clothes and subtly putting the etiquette manual on her nightstand where she was sure to see it, the girl had also gone through the small library and tidied up. Thara's book was nowhere to be seen. No matter. She remembered that it had been on the bottommost row of shelves in the far corner, behind the blue velvet couch.

Thara crouched down, ignoring that she was stepping on the hem of her dress, and ran her fingers over the leather spines, finding the familiar gold lettering almost immediately. Leaning forward, one hand on the recessed shelf for balance, she reached for the book. There was the soft but unmistakable sound of a catch releasing. Thara paused, confused. She looked around, but did not see the source of the noise. When she reached for the book again, the entire recessed bookcase pivoted out and she fell forward onto her knees with a yelp.

***

A rush of cool, stale air hit her face. Thara gasped, staring into the dark passage hidden behind the bookcase. Bringing her attention back to the lower shelf, her fingers searched until they found a small lever in the corner. She must have inadvertently pressed it when she was reaching for her book.

Thara stood and pushed on the bookcase. It moved with difficulty, revealing more of the small hallway. The walls and floor were made of smooth gray stone, and it looked less cobwebby than she expected. There was a bracket affixed nearby for a lantern or a torch. Currently, it was empty. Her mind raced with possibilities. How far did the passageway extend? Where would it end? She imagined being spit out into the back gardens, or perhaps the stable house. Think bigger, Thara! Maybe the passage extended far past the manor and into the heart of the City, opening up into the cellar of a tavern, or shop. Perhaps it led to an underground room for a secret society!

Thara locked the door to the library and grabbed the oil lamp on the desk. She eyed the narrow passage with a critical eye. The dress would have to go. The petticoats alone were too wide to fit, and the fabric would be rubbed to damage on the stone. Without a chambermaid, it took her longer than she would have liked. She had to twist the bodice around to get at the remaining button loops, but finally she was in her borrowed chemise, drawers and stockings. At last! Taking up the lamp by its handle once more, Thara strode into the darkness.

She moved cautiously at first, wary of cobwebs, rats and whatever else she might encounter. But finding only cold blank stone, she began to edge forward with more purpose, trying to deduce where she might be in relation to the rest of the manor. If she were claustrophobic, she would never have walked more than two feet in before turning back. The passage was quite small, barely wide enough for two people if they stood side by side, but not large enough to transport anything of substantial girth. Her earlier thoughts of a smuggling ring were dashed. There wouldn't be enough room to carry anything larger than a suitcase. It was clearly an escape tunnel of some kind.

Thara walked several meters before she came across a large square of wood fitted into the stone wall. Running her hands over it, she spied a small peephole to one side, and couldn't resist looking through.

It was one of the manor's guest bedrooms. Moonlight shone through the open windows, casting a faint blue glow over the neatly made bed and armoire. An Oriental rug lay before the fireplace, and several portraits of flowers graced the walls. She felt like a secret agent for the Crown. Albeit one on a mission in her underthings. What secrets had been witnessed in this room from this spy-hole?

Thara came across a few more spy-holes along the winding passageway, which showed mostly empty rooms, before coming to a fragile-looking wooden staircase winding in both directions. She was about to descend when she noticed, further down the passage, a tinny beam of yellow light streaming from another spy-hole on the opposing stone wall. It was the spy-hole to the bathing room.

The Mereguildes were wealthy enough to have had installed a shower bath in one corner of the tiled room, but she had been too intimidated to use it, preferring the familiar tub instead. Now, though, she could hear the shower running as she neared, and, stealth and curiosity being her companions this night, she bent to look through the spy-hole. What she saw stole her breath away.

It was Ardon, and he was half-undressed. He had draped his socks and braces over the lip of the enameled tub and was undoing his necktie, standing before the mirror in his trousers and dress shirt. His hair, which had before been tied up in a queue, was hanging loose about his shoulders, framing his face like a dark lion's mane, black and gleaming in the lamplight.

Once the tie was off, he unbuttoned his shirt and slid his arms out of the sleeves, revealing tanned skin and far more muscle than should be allowed on a man. Thara had the strange urge to stick her tongue out and lick all down his front, like a cat. A hemp cord bearing a black stone disc hung from around his neck. Perhaps a trinket from his travels to the fringes of the Three Kingdoms? She watched it swing forward as he folded his shirt and draped it carefully alongside his braces.

Don't look Thara! a small voice warned. How would you like it if someone spied on you? Recovering some of her wits, she straightened and stepped back from the spy-hole. But curiosity won out and she stooped to look again, setting the lamp on the ground, her heart racing. He was now standing with his back to her in the shower, adjusting the taps sticking out of the wall. Water spouted out of a hose above his head, sputtering at first, then shooting out in a steady stream like a fountain. Her eyes took in the angled planes of his shoulder blades and the play of exquisite muscle extending down the length of his back before coming to rest on his buttocks. She didn't realize buttocks could have dimples. His did, and they puckered as he moved his powerful legs.

She swallowed, aware that her breathing had become unsteady. She had never seen a naked man before. Not a properly naked man, anyway. Drawings and statues weren't a good stand-in for the real thing. Seeing the male anatomy second-hand was quite different than seeing it in person—why, Ardon looked nothing like those marble statues with fig leaves covering their private parts. He was...he was breathtaking. Those statues had been empty form, with white eyes and blank intentions. Ardon was a living, breathing man. He had scars and hair in places where the statues had none, he had dips and clefts of muscle that rippled when he moved. He was not conventionally handsome, she knew that, but there was something arresting about his face that caught her attention from the first moment she laid eyes on him.

It's those damn eyes, Thara thought in annoyance. They were a shade of blue that spoke of tropical lagoons, or balmy summer afternoons. Those eyes were dangerous. I could lose myself in them. And to think, just several nights ago, she had been prepared to stab one of them through with a trowel.

Throughout this inner monologue, a part of Thara considered that she might be disrespecting her future husband by looking at another man in the nude, but she quickly dispelled the thought. Disrespecting my future husband implies that they should first have my respect to begin with. And since she hadn't afforded any to the nameless old badger, she didn't see why it should be a problem. Moreover, she refused to already be obliged to the man before she had even seen his face.

Summarily convinced, she watched as the Adonis before her began to wash, scrubbing his body into a soapy white lather. The muscles of his arms bunched and glistened in the lamp light as he turned to the side to reveal a chest that Thara could only describe as delectable. You had your cheek on that chest several weeks ago, she thought, studying it with interest. It look like shiny marble, hard to the touch, but she remembered it had been quite warm that first night at The Rosey Bush when she had knocked him to the floor—soft even.

Her eyes fastened on an angry-looking bruise on his right set of ribs. It was purple and red, and looked fresh. Where had he gotten that? Ardon washed the area carefully, wincing slightly. Then he turned the other way, shielding the injury from her eyes. The soap slipped out of his hands and he bent down to retrieve it, much to Thara's delight. Those dimples would be the death of her.