“What is the fragrance you are wearing?” he asked her. It was intoxicating him with its elusiveness.
“I wear no fragrance, my lord, but I do bathe daily,” Cailin told him nervously, stepping away from him. “It is probably the scent of the soap that lingers on my skin.”
“We will bathe together after I have had my wine. The ride was hot, and the city even hotter. Do you like it here by the sea?”
“I was raised in the country, my lord, and lived there until I came to Constantinople. I prefer it to the city.” She answered him calmly, but her heart was thundering in her ears. We will bathe together. If there had been any doubt in her mind as to what position she was to hold in his life before, there was certainly none any longer.
Zeno returned with the wine, and Aspar sat down on the marble bench by the fish pond, sipping the cool beverage slowly and with obvious appreciation. Cailin stood silently by his side watching him. His hair was deep brown, sprinkled with bits of silver. It was cut short and brushed away from the crown of his head. It was a practical style for a military man. The hand holding the goblet was large and square, the fingers long and powerful-looking. There was a big gold ring upon his middle finger. The ruby in it was cut to resemble a double-headed eagle, the symbol of Byzantium.
He felt her stare and looked up suddenly. Cailin blushed, caught at her scrutiny. He smiled. It was a quick, mischievous smile like that of a small boy. His teeth were white and even, and the eyes that twinkled at her a silvery gray. The lines about his eyes that crinkled with amusement told her that he smiled easily. “I think my nose too big. What do you think, Cailin?” He smiled again, and her knees went just a trifle weak. He wasn’t quite handsome, but there was something about him.
“I think your nose very nice, my lord,” she replied.
“The nostrils flare a bit too much,” he told her. “Now my mouth is very well-proportioned, neither too big nor too little. Our friend, Jovian, has a cupid’s bow of a mouth, quite unsuitable for a man, don’t you think? It was probably charming when he was a child.”
“Jovian is still a bit of a child,” Cailin observed.
Aspar chuckled. “So there is a keen eye, and, I suspect, an intellect to go with that beautiful face and form.”
“I was not aware that my face was particularly visible when you saw me last, my lord, and my form was quite contorted, or so it felt,” Cailin said humorously. Then she grew serious. “Why did you buy me, my lord? Is it your habit to purchase inmates of brothels?”
“I thought you the bravest woman I had ever seen,” Aspar told her. “You were struggling to survive at Villa Maxima. I saw it in the blank stare you favored the audience with, and the stoic way in which you accepted the degradation visited upon you in that obscene playlet of Jovian’s.
“The empire that rules the world, or at least most of it, is governed by those same deviates who found your shame entertaining. I am a member of that ruling class, but I find those people more frightening than any danger I have ever faced in battle. When I impulsively purchased you from Jovian—who by the way would not have dared to refuse my request—I was doing so because I felt your bravery should be rewarded by freeing you from the hell you so gallantly endured. Now, however, I think perhaps there was another reason as well. You stir my blood, it seems.”
His frankness amazed her. Cailin struggled for composure. “There must be many beautiful women in Byzantium, my lord,” she said. “It is, I have been told, a city of uniquely beautiful women. Surely there are others more worthy of your attention than myself, a humble slave from Britain.”
His laughter startled her. “By God, I would not have thought coyness a part of your nature, Cailin. It does not become you, I fear,” Aspar told her.
“I have never been coy in my entire life!” she sputtered indignantly.
“Then do not start now,” he chided her. “You are a beautiful woman. I desire you. Since I bought you, there is, it would seem, little you can do except bear with the horrendous fate I have in store for you.” He put down his goblet and arose to stand facing her.
“Yes, you own me,” Cailin said, and to her dismay, tears sprang into her eyes which she seemed powerless to control. “I am bound to obey you, my lord, but you will never have all of me, for there is a part of myself that only I can give, no man can take!”
He caught her chin between his thumb and forefinger, stunned by her honest declaration and moved by her passionate defiance. Tears slipped slowly down her smooth cheeks like tiny crystal beads. “My God,” he exclaimed, “did you know that your eyes glisten like amethysts when you weep like that, Cailin? You break my heart. Cease, I beg you, my beauty! I surrender humbly before your feet.”
“I hate being a slave!” she told him desperately. “And why is it that you can penetrate the defenses I have so carefully built up around myself these last months when no one else could?”
“I am a better tactician than any of the others,” he told her teasingly. “Besides, Cailin, although you tempt my baser nature, I find you fascinating on several other levels as well.” He brushed away her tears carefully with a single finger. “I have finished my wine now. We will become better acquainted in the bath. I promise I will try not to make you cry again if you will not be coy. Do we have a bargain, my beauty? I think I am being most generous.”
She could not be angry with him. He was really very kind, but she was a little fearful of him nonetheless. “I agree,” she said finally.
“Come then,” he said, taking her hand and leading her from the atrium.
Chapter 9
The bath at Villa Mare was unique in that it was not an interior room. It faced the sea, and had an open portico that could be closed off by means of shutters in cold or inclement weather. The view from the room was both beautiful and soothing. The walls were decorated in mosaic. One pictured Neptune, the sea god, standing tall amid the waves, a trident in one hand and a conch shell in the other, upon which he was blowing. Behind him silver-blue dolphins leapt. A second wall offered a scene of Neptune’s many daughters cavorting among the waves with a troupe of sea horses; while the third wall showed the mighty king of the sea seducing a beautiful maiden in an underwater cave. The mosaic floor of the bath pictured fish and sea life of every kind known to the artist. It was both colorful and amusing.
There was a tiled dressing room off the bath, but the main room served all the steps necessary to bathing, unlike the elegant bath complex at Villa Maxima with its many different rooms. The bathing pool was set in sea-blue tiles, and the water gently warm. A corner fountain with a marble basin ran with cool water. There were shell-shaped depressions with drains for rinsing and benches for massage.
Aspar dismissed the old slave who served as bath attendant. “The lady Cailin wishes to serve me,” he told the woman, and she grinned a toothless grin that bespoke pure conspiracy, cackling as she departed.
“Discretion is wasted here,” Cailin told him, pinning up her long hair.
“Remove your chiton,” he said. “I want to see you as God made you, Cailin. Bent over as you were the last time I viewed your charms, I could see little of much note, so covered were you by those Northmen.”