"Hush," he said harshly. "You will do as I say. And we must continue to act ill, even when we no longer feel pain, so the servants don't talk. We have to let them nurse us back to health, allowing everyone to think we've made a miraculous recovery."
My own eyes focused on his green ones, so hard and determined, so desperate, their alluring depths coaxing me in, compelling me to give over everything I knew as right, as moral, as God's will.
I opened my mouth to speak, to give another refusal, as a violent, breath-robbing pain shot through my womb, fanning out with ferocious pressure. With tremendous relief I went under in a faint.
When I woke up later, Damien was out of bed, I heard him by the window, speaking in anger. With great effort, I turned my head and saw that she was in my room. Rosa. The woman in red. She was wearing a ball gown this time, bustled in back, her decollete daring and excessively exposed, her long black hair piled in curls on top of her head.
"You are being rather impossible," she told Damien. "There are objections to your request."
"Why?" Damien, who looked quite fit, hale and hearty, paced in his blood-stained linen shirt and breeches, his feet bare, no evidence of his severe injury.
"First of all, your wife is not dying. She will make a complete recovery. Secondly, she will not consent, let alone ask for my gift, and she must be willing in her role of servitude."
I lay still, not wanting it discovered I was awake.
"What makes you think she won't consent to be with me?"
"While she is quite embarrassingly in love with you, she is still a milksop, Damien. She doesn't want the life you choose."
Despite the insult, I couldn't find fault with her logic. I would never agree to serve the devil, I might be flawed, sinful, ashamed of my recent conduct, but I was not so far gone as that.
"Then free me."
"What?" Rosa gave a startled laugh. "Why?"
"If Marie will not die now, and will not accept immortality, I choose to live out my mortal life with her as man and wife. I have made a bad bargain, which I regret. Release me and return me to who I was three months ago."
She fingered her necklace, the gems not visible in the dark. "You are an arrogant fool. I cannot do that and you know it. And it is not my concern if you have suddenly grown wise to the drawbacks in the bargain we made. You should have thought through all of those before you asked for my assistance, which I bestowed so graciously."
"I am asking you now most humbly to release me," Damien said, sounding anything but humble. His voice was stiff and angry. "Show some compassion for my wife."
Rosa's hands clenched in fists. Her voice rose. " What do I care for your little invalid wife? And if you did, you would have considered her feelings prior to my joining with you on your front porch. You, Damien du Bourg, are a hypocrite, and a stupid rich man who thinks the world is his to order about. Well, the truth is as such—I am the daughter of a demon, and you are a demon's slave. This is what you asked for, and this is what you've been gifted with, and this is what you'll always be, forever and an eternity. My father says God will battle the demons on Judgment Day, and send a Great Flood to save His people from our presence, but until that day, should it ever arrive, you, my darling, belong to us, and you would be wise not to anger me."
She leaned toward him, went to place her lips on his.
Was it a dream? It certainly felt surreal, unnatural, like I was remote and cold and watching from far, far away.
"Fuck you," Damien told her, jerking out of her reach.
And so I wasn't dreaming, as I could never have conceived of such a phrasing in my entire life.
Chapter Sixteen
I didn't die. But that is obvious, isn't it? I am laughing at myself, at how idiotic I am sometimes. I feel a bit hysterical, like everything is bubbling and boiling and spewing inside me, ready to rush forth in hot liquid anger.
Damien will be home soon and I feel frantic to finish my writing. I have been successful in concealing my ramblings from him by sliding the papers under the mattress of my bed every night before retiring. There are many things Damien will do on and around a mattress, but lift it up is not one of them, and thus my thoughts are safe from his prying eyes. What he would do if he read these letters, Angelique, I know not.
There are rules between us, some unspoken, others quite clearly verbalized. I am not allowed into town, or to visit the other plantations for social calls. It has been told to our neighbors that I am indisposed again due to losing our child, but that I am expected to have made a full recovery in time for Christmas festivities.
I am already recovered fully. The tales of illness are a ruse, a fabrication so Damien can watch me, keep me close. He does not trust me, since I have repeatedly told him how offensive I find his pact with Rosa to be. That his unholy role he so willingly accepted is abhorrent and disgusting to me.
Yet that is not all that is disgusting to me. What repulses, sickens, and horrifies me is that I still crave him, want him, physically and spiritually. My heart beats with love even yet, my body strums with anticipation at the sight and thought of him.
Night after night, day after day, I fight with my conscience, my willpower, and each time I fail miserably. I go to him, like the slut that I am, I simper and beg and flirt, display my br**sts enticingly, lean over when no such action is necessary. I put my hands on his manhood and stroke it into hardness, then lift my skirts and climb on him like an enthusiastic rider does with his favorite stallion.
I despise myself, I loathe who I am and what I have become, and yet I cannot stop. I go to him, again and again, with legs spread and body wet, begging for the release that only he can give, and it aches, it hurts, a pleasure so acute that it acts like an opiate upon me, luring me back when I have barely been gone. Do you understand what I am saying? That I would beg and plead and disgrace myself if necessary, that I cannot go more than twenty-four hours without feeling his body inside mine, without being bedded hard or fast or slow or voyeuristically, whichever way Damien should choose that day, and that I am more than willing. I am the instigator, the catalyst, the utterly lost fallen woman. This we do not speak about, we don't put words to my shame, my utter abandonment of all that is good and proper and moral, and if I could be grateful for anything it is that my husband doesn't glory in my wretched state.
He holds me when I cry afterward, when my frustration and shock at my continued weakness overcome me. But it is only balm to the festering gaping wound of my virtue, which has fled in large parts, slowly evaporated in others, and fights the bondage of desire wherever it still remains.