Work Text:
Lady Comstock’s husband was not in bed. He’d gone out in the early evening—not telling her where, but he rarely did—only saying he’d be home before late. Now it was nearly midnight, and still she had no word. Far from the first time Mr. Comstock had been kept out with no explanation, but if his wife had anything to say about it, this would be the last.
Before the so-called miracle child’s arrival—she would not say birth—he’d hounded her day and night for a husband’s right and duty, to the point where she felt more resignation than love in the act. His current neglect must be her punishment for that. Since he’d acquired the heir he sought, her husband hardly touched her, hardly looked at her or spoke a word, as if he had no more need of a wife. Overnight she’d gone from a glut of marital attention to a famine; for more than a year now, she’d starved.
Annabelle knew men. No man would be content with the paltry handful of nights they’d spent together. Was her husband abstaining, so as to clear his mind for holy meditations? She thought not. More likely he satisfied himself elsewhere.
Refusing to prepare for bed herself, she’d paced and prayed, repeating the same lines of Scripture until their meaning blurred, watching the hours pass with mounting fury. She may even have raided her own pantry for the cooking sherry, the only alcohol her husband would permit in his home. A far cry from the hard liquor she used to prefer, but after nearly five years of honest sobriety, its warmth was a comfort.
Finally she could distract herself no longer. She fetched her coat to guard against the winter chill, and followed her suspicions to the Lutece house.
That woman played the role of prude for the public’s benefit, but her act never fooled Lady Comstock. The snooty accent and the buttoned-up exterior couldn’t disguise the loose morals beneath. She knew the type—these modern females, eschewing the bonds of matrimony and motherhood, who thought themselves exempt from a woman’s proper place. No reverence for the sanctity of marriage, and no qualms about tempting a God-fearing man to stray from the righteous path.
Lady Comstock wanted to trust her husband. Her beloved Prophet, whom she should hold second only to Almighty God. She’d allowed him to tell her the woman was only a tool in his divine plan. She’d overlooked how closely they worked together, resisted questioning how he poured money into her ‘science.’ However much Lutece might seem like a common strumpet, leading her husband by the nose—or another part—just to get to his pocketbook, she reassured herself that Zachary Hale Comstock would be above such conduct.
The murders showed her he was above nothing. Forty dead in a single night—not just men, but wives and children too, whole families expunged for the sin of contradicting his will. She’d thought, at the very least, that bloody sunrise would put an end to his late evenings. Assuming it had been political machinations keeping him out late, and not some baser need.
But now his enemies were gone, and still the Prophet left his wife alone in her marriage bed.
She’d wanted so badly to believe in him. If he’d pulled the wool over her eyes these last several years, she’d allowed it. No longer.
Approaching the house of ill-repute, she saw a single light in an upstairs window. Her husband kept a key to the place, so that he might access the woman’s ‘device’—whether literal or euphemistic, she would find out. Easy enough to borrow it without his notice. Did it not absolve him that he’d left the key at home? Of course not. Not when his mistress would simply let him in herself. Skin crawling with dread, Lady Comstock unlocked the door and slunk across the threshold.
The ground floor lay dark and silent. Where was the brother? She’d trusted him too, perhaps foolishly—from the moment he’d arrived in Columbia, he never left his sister’s side, standing in as a convenient chaperone. She’d breathed somewhat easier knowing her husband was no longer alone with that woman. But however genteel he might seem, Mr. Lutece was also a man, and a man could be outwitted. Or bought. Either her husband knew he’d be out for the evening, or he’d paid generously to keep him out.
Slowly, footsteps muted on the carpet, she crept up the stairs. Light bled out from under a single door at the end of the hall. Approaching it, she heard voices behind. Two voices, male and female, their tone hushed and intimate. A woman’s seductive chuckle—and then, distinctly, Lutece said, “Let’s put that mouth to good use.” She heard the shifting of bedclothes, followed by a long, comfortable sigh, as if settling into a bath. “Much better.”
Revulsion squirmed in Annabelle’s stomach. With it, memories arose unbidden, of the days before her redemption—of hot breath on her thighs, and the rasp of stubble against soft skin. She would never ask something so vulgar of her Prophet. Appalling, that he’d offer it to someone else.
Petrified in shocked disgust, she could only listen to the most revolting lapping sound, punctuated by the occasional wordless purr. As it went on, the breath mounted to moaning, and she felt her eyes drawn by some perverse urge to the doorknob. And its keyhole. She stooped to it.
The door did not open directly onto the bed, so she would have seen nothing, were it not for Madam Lutece’s vanity against the opposite wall. Its mirror, at a level with the bed, hid the figure kneeling before it, but flagrantly displayed the woman herself. Clothed like Godiva in only her long hair, she perched on the bed with her legs spread wide, arms braced behind herself in a pose that brandished her body to the unseen supplicant. Her head hung forward, eyes closed, mouth open, in an expression of animal gratification; freed of her customary updo, copper tresses fountained around bare shoulders, bare breasts, drawing the eye inescapably down. As Annabelle watched, one hand fell out of view between her legs to stroke her lover like a faithful pet.
Nothing could have prepared her for this debauched spectacle. Some small mercy, that she could not see her husband prostrate in worship of this heretic goddess. Already she was unable to look away. The harlot’s hips rocked, her brows knitting, as a tight groan warned of impending release—
In tandem, a snarl ripped from Annabelle’s throat. One hand slammed into the closed door. Then, rather than face the snakes in their nest, she turned on her heel and fled.
In the bedroom, the pair froze like startled deer. Both heard the footsteps thudding down the stairs.
Rosalind’s heart jumped into her throat. Caught! Thinking the same, her twin whispered, “Shit. Shit.”
With her legs still hooked over his shoulders, she felt him start to stand, and tried to pin him with her thighs as she grumbled her displeasure. He shushed her. Soft but still protesting, she whined, “Robert.”
“Rosalind.” Equally soft, but he’d brook no argument.
She tried anyhow. “Only a minute.” If they were about to be run out of town, she might as well squeeze in one last orgasm. She’d been so close.
But heedless of her needs, he pried her off, and reached for her discarded nightdress. A flurry of fabric hit her across the face. “Go and see.”
She clutched it to her chest, indignant. “You go. I’m not decent.”
“And I am?” He was pulling up the trousers of his pyjamas, but they couldn’t hide his erection.
She glared—most annoyed at being denied it—but couldn’t argue. “Fine.” He fetched her wrapper as she pulled the chemise over her head, so that she looked halfway presentable; as he belted it for her, she whispered, “Your face, Robert,” and wiped her own wetness from his mouth with a sleeve. Two pairs of hands began to button her up—just as a crash rang out downstairs.
Out of time. Identical eyes met, both picturing a righteous mob. Rosalind went. “Careful,” Robert hissed after her, but she let the door close in his worried face.
Downstairs, she found the front windows intact. She had no time to notice more than that—
“There you are, you Jezebel!”
—Before dodging a saucer hurled at her head. It shattered against the front door, joining the matching teacup in shards on the mat.
“How dare you!”
Annabelle had stopped herself in the foyer. Would the First Lady of Columbia run from this disgrace? Would she suffer this insult in silence, like she had so many others? No. She would not.
“Lady Comstock.” Rosalind knew well the power of keeping her voice level in the face of hysterical rage. “What brings you calling at this hour?”
“Don’t pretend to be civil with me!” The woman was volcanic, red-faced and trembling. “You have my husband in your godforsaken bed!”
That raised Rosalind’s eyebrows. “I beg your pardon—?”
“Carrying on behind my back, as if I don’t know what you are—and then you pawn off your shame on me! Over a year I’ve kept your brat while you pretend your innocence—”
“Are you suggesting I bore your child?”
“Not mine! I won’t keep your filthy secrets any longer!”
In the face of her wrath, Rosalind felt her own anxious belly unclench. Not caught. Whatever Lady Comstock had witnessed, she’d ascribed it to her own paranoid jealousy—and that was hardly new. In her mind, women and men could relate over only one thing. “I’m afraid you’re quite mistak—”
“Enough! You—you whore!”
In the bedroom, Robert’s eyes were darting back and forth, pulled in ten directions at once. He’d shrugged on a dressing gown, but perhaps he should dress properly. He should pack what he could carry, in case they had to flee the mob. He’d really rather finish between Rosalind’s legs, but no time for that now—even with the wolf at the door, he struggled not to think of his twin’s glorious body, the taste of her still on his tongue. Until he heard “Whore!” shrieked from downstairs.
His stomach dropped. Cursing himself for letting Rosalind go alone, he knotted his robe tightly around his waist and rushed out after her. From the top of the staircase, he caught the tirade as it continued—
“I want her out of my house!”
“Sist—” No, he corrected himself—if they’d been rumbled, he’d better not emphasise their relation. “Rosalind! What’s the matter?”
She sounded calm as she called back, “Lady Comstock is under the impression—”
“It’s high time people knew the truth about you. The whore of Columbia! Poisoning this city with your falsehoods and sin!” The lady in question did not.
He raced down the stairs to find Rosalind mercifully safe, and composed as ever, staring down the harpy in their front hall as if Lady Comstock were no more threatening than a kitten. Instinctively he moved to her, but for propriety’s sake she stepped away. “We have a slight misunderstanding.”
“I know what I saw!”
At that—despite the cold shock of being found out—he did throw an insistent arm around his twin, taking his place firmly at her side to face the intruder. If the jig was up in earnest, they’d weather the consequences together. “Madam—”
“And you! Some chaperone you turned out to be, whoring out your own sister!”
It stunned him like a slap. Rosalind sensed his flare of outrage without even seeing his face—while fighting her own urge to laugh at the absurdity. In her jealousy, Lady Comstock was blind to the most scandalous part of their bedroom farce.
She ranted on, heedless of the irony she’d stumbled into, “Is my husband hiding in your closet now? Or have you sent him out the window like a thief?” She called past them up the stairs, “Zachary! Do you hear me? This ends now!”
Robert had choked on the insult, but now found his voice. “I beg your pardon!”
Lady Comstock rounded on him. “Is mine the only one, or do you sell her to half the city? Luring God-fearing men from their beds like a bitch in heat! I bet the Fink brothers are outside, waiting their turn!”
“That is quite enough.” As he stepped forward between the lady and his sister, Robert’s voice dropped low and dangerous, a tone Rosalind had heard only once before—when she’d told him of Comstock propositioning exactly what his wife suspected. It had surprised her then, but now she knew it for what it was. The growl of a male defending his territory.
Rosalind Lutece was not property to be defended, but it gave her an animal thrill all the same. Immediately upon his arrival, her twin had appointed himself her guardian and protector, an instinct that redoubled after they’d given in to their more-than-familial feelings. Even the chaste social dances they were obligated to at parties made him grit his teeth. The thought of what he’d do to any man who laid a hand on her—not to mention what he’d do to reassert himself as soon as she had him alone—! Hidden behind him, she couldn’t resist splaying her fingers on his lower back, running the hand up his raised hackles. Her twin made a fine guard dog.
Lady Comstock, standing her ground, let her lip curl in a contemptuous sneer. “Is the brat even my husband’s, or would anyone’s bastard do?”
Rosalind felt the impulse in Robert’s muscles, and stayed him with the lightest touch, resting her other hand on his arm an instant before he backhanded the woman. “Brother.” She could almost pity the poor creature fuming before them, the unwitting butt of this joke. “She has been lied to. Her anger is justified—however crude she might be.”
Lady Comstock showed no gratitude at this. “Admit it!” she spat. “I dare you!”
Rosalind bit the inside of her lip to keep a straight face. She glanced to Robert beside her. “Shall I confess my sins?”
Her face betrayed nothing, but the knowledge in Rosalind’s half-lidded eyes filled Robert with a guilty red heat. Which sin did their conduct qualify as? Not that it mattered, when incest and self-gratification were both taboo. Carefully, he answered, “Would that be wise?”
An accusing finger pointed past him. “I want to hear you say it!”
“She deserves to know.” Rosalind stepped out from behind him to address the other woman directly. “I brought the child into this world. Using our machine.” She nodded through the doorway to what used to be the dining room, where their contraption dominated the main lab. “I rent open the belly of causality, and pulled her from it. By blood, she is your Prophet’s, as much as a child of your body would be. I was the midwife, nothing more.”
Lady Comstock narrowed her eyes. “You expect me to believe that?”
“Frankly, no. But it is true.” Rosalind’s arms folded. “If you wish to rid yourself of the offspring you so longed for, take it up with your husband. Your family affairs are no business of mine.”
Annabelle’s gaze flicked between the two near-identical faces. Both remained impassive as cats—even with the man’s flare of aggression, his face had hardly changed. She felt certain they were mocking her, but couldn’t see how, as she struggled to find a retort to their stone wall.
The brother slid an arm around his sister’s waist. “I think it’s time for you to go, Lady Comstock.”
She snorted. “No doubt Madam Lutece has her next appointment.” His mask wasn’t quite as stony as his twin’s; cracks began to show around his glowering eyes. She chipped away further. “Do you like to hear her fornicate? Do her johns let you watch?”
“I said enough.”
“Maybe you’ve had a turn yourself! If a bitch isn’t kennelled, she’ll breed with anything.”
That provoked a reaction from the whore as well as her pimp—her face went white as his went red. She made no move to stop him this time. He strode forward, fists clenching reflexively, making Annabelle stagger back before he bowled her over. “Out. Now.”
“You’re disgusting, both of you. Both of you!”
She’d never noticed how big the man’s hands were. What gripped her shoulder felt like the paw of a bear. “Madam, I will not strike a woman. But when it threatens my sister, I might strike a dog.”
“Unhand me!” She tried unsuccessfully to shrug him off.
His grip only tightened in response. “Now will you be leaving under your own power, or mine?”
“Brute!”
“Right, then.” As she struggled, he frogmarched her to the door, which his sister held open. A bodily shove sent her reeling over the threshold. “Goodnight, Lady Comstock.”
The icy flagstones slipped beneath her shoes, but caught her when she fell, a cold hard shock against her palms. For a few heartbeats she could only clutch at them, steadying the world as it lurched and swayed.
“And Annabelle?”
She looked up to see the whore of Columbia standing over her in the doorway, glaring down her nose as if the First Lady were yesterday’s trash. The brother stood at her shoulder. Both faces had smoothed again, once more inscrutable as a pair of sphinxes.
“As I told your wretched Prophet, when he asked—” Was that the hint of a cruel smile on her lips? “I wouldn’t touch him for the price of ten Columbias.” It wasn’t. She said it flatly, as a fact. Then the door shut in Annabelle’s face.
She stayed there a long moment, on her hands and knees in the January night, waiting for the words in her spinning head to solidify into sense. Compared to her husband’s ever-changing falsehoods, Lutece seemed as coldly solid as the stone beneath her. As though she didn’t care enough to lie.
Slowly, Annabelle Comstock picked herself up and staggered into the dark.
Inside, R. Lutece waited a few breathless moments longer, listening for footsteps on the street. Rosalind went to the window, to peer out through a slit in the curtains. “Gone.”
Robert was still glaring daggers at the door. “Whoring you out!”
“Stuck on that, are you?”
“Whoring you out! If she were a man I’d have boxed her ears.” His hands still clenched with the urge. An outside observer might call his face stony, but the set of his jaw and his flashing eyes told her what seethed under the skin.
She, meanwhile, felt her pulse pounding with a wholly different need. More than half her mind had never left the bedroom; all through the lady’s tirade, she’d been mercilessly aware of her own nakedness beneath her nightdress, desire still slicking her thighs. The thrill of a near miss left her thrumming with adrenaline—ample tinder for the spark of her arousal. Drawn to him, her hands slipped under his robe, going to work on his modestly buttoned nightshirt.
He seemed not to notice. “How on earth did she get in?”
“Pilfered Comstock’s key, I’d wager.”
“Comstock has a key to this house!”
“It may be time to change the locks.”
“High time.” In his fury, he couldn’t keep still, pulling away from her to pace before she could untie his dressing gown. “I shan’t sleep a wink knowing he could barge in at any minute. Not to mention that woman! How dare she!”
“Pity her. Poor fool.”
“Pity,” he spat. “She makes a perfect match for that contemptible husband. Vile, spiteful, filthy-minded shrew—she’s the one who needs a kennel! I’d like to see her—”
“Brother, if you keep going on about another woman like this, you shall make me jealous.”
“You’re jealous!” His gaze locked on her, hard and thrilling. “The very thought of you with that man in my bed!”
‘My bed’—the nerve of him! Only months since they’d begun sharing it, and she’d delighted in the recent shift from hers to ours. In the morning she’d chide him for his presumption. Now, she only grinned. “The very idea.”
“It’s appalling!”
“You’d never allow it.”
“I’d see him hanged first! Maligning your virtue, to even suggest—!”
“My unsullied innocent virtue, yes.” Her hands on his guided him under her own robe.
He pulled her close, gripping possessively tight, but indignation kept his mouth from better pursuits. “Half those deplorable Founders would like nothing better than to degrade you. And Comstock is the worst of the lot!” As he went on fuming, she nosed under his chin to brush her lips against his neck. “After what he’s said to you! It’s more than a man ought to bear—keeping a civil tongue in my head, knowing what he’d do given half the chance.”
“And what would you like to do?” she murmured in his ear.
“I’d pitch him off the edge of the city, and his horrid wife with him.”
“Robert.” She pulled back to look him in the eye. “If you don’t take me to bed this minute, I shall find our wretched Prophet and prove her right.”
She caught the slightest twitch of warning on his face—“Is that so?”—and then squawked as he caught her about the waist and hefted her over his shoulder. He took no care toting her up the stairs to the bedroom, knocking the wind from her protests with the point of his shoulder in her stomach.
She hit the mattress with an inelegant oof. “Rob—!” A firm kiss cut off her complaint, which melted into a laugh against his lips. With greedy hands and spread legs, she pulled him down on top of her.
His mouth released hers to murmur, “Need I remind you who you belong to?”
“I belong to myself, thank you.” Electricity snapped between them as gleaming blue eyes met.
“Precisely.”
Both experts in multitasking, they resumed the kiss while making short work of their nightclothes. Rosalind had only managed two buttons at her collar, which yielded to him easily, allowing him to ravish her exposed throat. Every nerve alight with pleasure, no part of her remained to object—a high-collared blouse tomorrow would suit her fine. At the same time, his hand slipped past the hem of her nightdress. In one motion, he pulled both layers up to bare her from the midriff down, leaving her unkissed for barely a moment before he resumed his attention below.
This did, however, leave the skirts to fall over her face. “Robert!” She felt him chuckle against her skin.
His mouth trailed down her belly to nibble at her hipbones and the soft inner flesh of her thighs. As she squirmed out of her sleeves, her indignant noises turned to gasps when he hit something ticklish. Between kisses, he growled, “Whoring you out! As if I’d ever—” a nip, a squeak “—ever share you. As if another man could—”
“Less talk, brother, please.” Her legs spread wider.
“It’s an outrage! Why aren’t you outraged?”
“Hardly the first time I’ve been called a whore. And it must be said—Lady Comstock has accused the wrong accomplice, but as to the crime, my guilt is irrefutable.”
His eyebrows bounced. “Is it?”
“Wanton extramarital relations that would shock Columbia?” She cocked her head at him with a smug smile. “I’m afraid I am quite shamelessly guilty as charged.”
He matched her grin. “Good lord, I am a Jezebel.”
“Luring men into perdition.”
“If this is perdition—” He stroked her with one finger, and found her so wet she opened at the slightest touch “—I’ll gladly be damned.” She rocked her hips to take him, her breath spasming as he entered her with just a fingertip; a second joined the first, tracing her parted lips, and she purred. The sound became a whine when he withdrew to lick them. “Are we impatient?”
“We were interrupted,” she huffed. “You ought to be in perdition by now.”
“True.” He sat up between her legs, making his own excitement obvious. “Shall I remedy that?”
In answer she rolled over onto her belly and sat back on her open knees, arching her spine to offer herself from behind. “Please.”
His eyebrows raised again. “I thought you objected to this position.”
“I object to the terminology. But she did call me a bitch in heat—and I rather feel like one.” Her hips gave a little wiggle.
“If I didn’t know better, I’d think you like being insulted.”
“I like being fucked.” She snaked a hand between her legs in desperation.
Mock-scandalised, he laughed, “Why, Madam Lutece!”
“I shan’t argue with whatever word applies.”
Watching her, he felt downright entranced. She was dripping wet, glistening on herself, her fingers so slick he could hear every motion. He simply could not resist dipping his head for another taste. With a moan, she pressed back onto his face as his tongue cleaved her open; he laved her fingers as if eating a ripe fruit from her hand.
Much as she enjoyed his mouth, though, it wasn’t what she craved now. “Robert, I shall scream.”
It only made teasing her more fun—lifting his head, he purred, “That was never in question,” and smacked her across the arse, earning another indignant squeak—but far be it from him to deny his dear sister. He replaced tongue with fingers just to occupy her in the moments it took to position himself, which her grasping hand eagerly assisted. Poised to enter, he drew out the anticipation until she whimpered with it—and her next complaint became a yelp as he plunged into her.
She pushed back hard, hands braced against the mattress, taking him to the hilt in a single stroke. The delicious sound she made started high and breathy, and dropped low as he slid inside, ending with a guttural groan of satisfaction as he filled her completely. He voiced a similar sound, buried deep within himself, holding in place to savour his own cunt. She fit him like a finely tailored glove. No doubt she’d resent the implication that her body had been made for his, when the reverse was at least as true, but at the moment she lacked the presence of mind for such semantic arguments. Columbia’s foremost intellectual titan spread her legs wider, and he felt her weight shift beneath him as she began to bounce on her own cock.
In comparing their histories, she’d confessed to limited experience with the opposite sex, though more than none; a woman with her aspirations could ill afford the risk. From his own experience, though—having taken his turn in her position, with other men—he knew this took some skill. Was she more practised than she let on? Natural talent? Or yet another advantage of their affinity? They had discovered an uncanny instinct for one another’s bodies. Following her lead, he matched her rhythm effortlessly. She moaned her appreciation with every thrust.
“You know, I see where Lady Comstock made her error. You do look rather whorish like this.”
He teased, but saying it felt blasphemous, demeaning the glory of this libertine goddess—stretched out prone before him, her spine bowed like a cat’s, loose mane flowing down to pool around her head, the perfect bare curves of her arse insistent against his hips. She indulged in sex like an opiate; her face, half-hidden behind a curtain of hair, was one of brainless bliss. He adored her brain, the only one on earth that matched his own, but found a particular satisfaction in pacifying it, like taming a tigress to his hand.
Tame? No. She could still rip his heart out if he displeased her—but that made the reward of her trust all the sweeter. This most intimate part of her was a secret revealed to him alone.
The world saw Madam Lutece, stiff-necked and formidable, with a rapier-sharp tongue and a spine of steel; only he saw Rosalind. Only he could unfasten her armour to free her soft, ardent heart. The thought tightened something low in his core—only he fucked her.
The idea of her with other men—with Comstock, of all people—was as offensive as it was preposterous. She’d no more bed Comstock than he would. Sliding a hand around the curve of her hip, he delved between her legs and provoked a bestial moan. Let the man covet all he liked; let him stew in his jealousy. Rosalind Lutece belonged to no one but herself.
She gladly reaffirmed it now. Not in words, as he reduced her to yowling, but her body was more than eloquent enough. Always, only, entirely his.
And, of course, he was hers in return, as much a part of her as her own hands. An extension of her, body and soul. Braced on top of himself, he splayed her hand over his as it clawed the sheets, while the other pleased her with her own fingers. She threw his hips back against him, driving her cock deep into his cunt, both halves pumping like a piston until, as one, R. Lutece began to tense. One ragged breath, one racing pulse, one heart thundering in two breasts. Trembling at the edge, two throats loosed the same rough cry—as, with a last tandem thrust, they spilled together into one orgasm.
The moment seemed to stretch. Later, they would have some wholly unscientific conjectures about time dilation. Now, they could only ride out the climax in thoughtless ecstasy, their bodies locked together as if trying to merge. After an eternity, it released them, leaving them still panting in unison as they collapsed into a heap of human flesh, one atop the other.
The one on the bottom let out another oof. She remembered language first, to complain. “Do you mind?” He only grunted, not caught up yet, although he seemed aware enough to nibble her shoulder. She wriggled under him, trying to shift his weight, but he wouldn’t budge. “Lummox.”
“Hm?”
“Get off.”
“You’ll have to let me go, first.” Her ankles had hooked around his at some point, and her hand still squeezed his laced fingers. Not to mention where their bodies still joined. Rather than release him, she whined again, so he only shrugged and rested his head on her neck. “Goodnight, then.”
“Robert.”
“Rosalind?”
“I can’t kiss you like this.”
He nuzzled into her hair. “The one drawback of this position.”
“I can name a second. You are heavy. And sweating on me, a third.”
“I’m powerless until you let me up.”
Disentangling was by far the hardest part. Steeling herself, she released him, and he rolled off her—both of them sighing with a pang of loss as he slipped out. Neither could stand to be parted. It took only a few seconds for them to rearrange themselves comfortably in one another’s arms. They kissed. “Much better.”
“Much.”
No chance of putting their nightclothes back on now. Modesty disposed of, and already starting to drift off, R. Lutece curled up under the sheets. Rosalind pillowed her head on Robert’s shoulder. “I do pity the poor woman,” she mused. “Can’t have had a good orgasm in years.”
“Enough to make a shrew of anyone. You yourself, for instance.”
“I beg your pardon!”
When she looked up, he kissed her nose. “I’ve heard you were quite fearsome before I came along.”
“I’ll have you know I’m as shrewish as ever.” She nestled into his neck. “And I’m more than capable of pleasing myself.”
“Aren’t you just,” he purred, and pulled her close. Wearing nothing but identical smiles, slight but fully self-satisfied, they settled in to sleep. A last thought made him snort into her hair. “God-fearing men.”
“Gods should fear us.”
.
The following Sunday, when they returned from the funeral, the mood in the Lutece house was considerably more grim. Robert fetched the tea in silence, and in silence they both drank, until they were left staring into the bottoms of empty cups. The day following Lady Comstock’s visit, they’d braced for repercussions, but breathed easier by evening when none came. On the morning of her murder—waking blissfully in one another’s arms, unaware that she already lay dead—their biggest concern had been that this tea service now had an odd number of settings.
Who could believe the story about that poor maid? There was only one killer in Comstock House, and it had not been Miss Fitzroy; she was no more a murderer than those dead children had been seditionists. The hand that steered Columbia was steeped in blood. His people called it heroism when he slaughtered their enemies, but with no outsiders left in this idyllic prison, who among them would be next?
Both sides of one debate passed through their heads unspoken. Each knew the other could be thinking of nothing else.
Finally, he broke the quiet. “We cannot leave.”
Without disagreeing, she countered, “It isn’t safe to stay.”
“Clearly Comstock has no qualms about harming those closest to him.”
“When they know too much.”
“And we know all.”
She set down her teacup, still not looking at him. “I fear I’ve brought you into a viper’s nest.”
He rested a hand on her knee. “Better here with you than safe alone.” His fingers squeezed. “Far better than you alone with him.”
“Better still the two of us without him, but…”
“But.”
“Yes.” Her hand folded over his, but she couldn’t lift her eyes.
“We are responsible.”
“I cannot simply leave her to Comstock’s meagre mercy.”
“Without even a mother, now. As poor a one as Lady Comstock was.”
She glanced at him, realising. “You mean the girl.”
He glanced back. “You mean the city.”
Perhaps she ought to feel guilty for thinking of her own creation before an innocent child. She felt more guilty at her lack of remorse. “It’s no wonder where we feel our duties lie.”
“But we are agreed.”
“Yes.” She squeezed his hand in return. “We brought these innocents to Comstock, and we must safeguard them as best we can.”
R. Lutece took comfort in their own company—together, undiscovered, safe—and tried not to question how much longer it would last.