Death's Mistress (Dorina Basarab, #2)(80)

“What about her?” I asked harshly.

“She was a beautiful woman,” he told me calmly. “You look a great deal like her.”

“You’re keeping the Senate waiting to tell me that?”

“She came to us when she was seventeen,” he said, ignoring me. Mircea would get to the point when he damn well felt like it. “Her father had been a wood carver, but he died early, and her mother had a hard time of it thereafter. She eventually found employment in our kitchens, and when Helena was old enough, she joined her there.”

“And you saw her and took her.” It wasn’t hard to imagine. Servant women were pretty much easy prey back then, particularly one with no close male relatives to defend her. And most would have thought themselves lucky to attract the attention of the family’s handsome, generous elder son.

“It was not quite as simple as that. When I first noticed her, I admit I did try to steal a kiss.”

“And?”

He blew out a thin stream of smoke, which drifted slowly skyward. “And she slapped me. Hard.”

I blinked. “You could have had her beaten for that. Or worse.”

Romanian women of the time had had few rights over the males of the species. A woman could not join her husband at the dining table, but had to stay behind his chair, waiting to serve him. She ate what was left—which in peasant homes wasn’t much—when he was finished. She walked behind him when they went out, and if she went alone and a male walked in front of her in the street, she had to wait to continue on until he passed. Even if she was wealthy and he was a beggar.

Women’s lib hadn’t been big in old Romania.

Mircea had been tapping his ashes into a crystal tray, but at my comment he stopped and looked up, his face blanking. “Sometimes, Dorina, I wonder what it is you think of me.”

I didn’t answer that, since half the time I didn’t know myself.

And the other half would only get us in another argument.

After a moment, he continued. “She informed me that she was not there to be a gentleman’s amusement, but to save money toward a respectable marriage. And that she did not intend to lose her virginity price over me.”

I’d almost forgotten the old custom of rewarding virgins the Monday after the marriage for their chastity. They received jewels, clothes, and sometimes money, which they were allowed to keep even if the marriage ended in divorce. It had been a lot more effective than the modern virginity pacts for ensuring abstinence.

Well, that and fearsome Romanian fathers.

“And what did you say to that?”

He shrugged. “I was young and foolish, and had yet to realize that my vaunted success with women was due at least as much to my name and position as to my person. I informed her that I would gladly reimburse her for any losses she might incur.”

“I take it she agreed.”

He arched an expressive brow. “No. She slapped me again.”

“And you found that attractive?”

“Oddly, yes. Most of the women I had encountered were docile to the point of boredom. It was a chore to get them to so much as look at me when we were speaking. I had been intimate with women whom I do not believe could have described my face in any detail had their lives depended on it. That was especially true of noblewomen, who were taught from childhood that good breeding meant utter passivity.”

“So she was a challenge.”

“She was alive, Dorina, in a way none of the other women, and damn few of the men, I knew were. She fascinated me. She infuriated me. . . . Eventually, she enchanted me.”

“I guess she got over the slapping part.”

“Never entirely.” He smiled again. A soft, odd expression on a face that so seldom wore any at all.

I stared at him. I had never considered that he might have felt anything for her; I had always just assumed that she’d been one in a long line of conquests, easily made and easily forgotten. And maybe she had been. Maybe I just wanted to believe that his expression meant something else. Wanted to think that at least one of their kind was capable of something like real affection.

God, I must be drunker than I thought.

“After we finally began a relationship,” he said, “I bought her a house in her village and visited her there rather than keeping her in the castle.”

“Because you were ashamed to have a servant girl for a mistress.”

“No, Dorina!” He regarded me through a cloud of smoke, his countenance impatient. “I was never ashamed of your mother. I was fearful for her. And my fears were eventually realized.”

“You couldn’t have known Vlad was going to do what he did.” I blamed Mircea for a lot of things, but not that.

“No. But I knew she would be a target, should anyone realize that she was important to me. Some would have used her to attempt to influence me; others would have harmed her to hurt me. It was a cutthroat time, and one’s family was never safe. I would not let circumstances pro-scribe my life to the extent of choosing my lover for me, but I was careful. I was cautious. I was discreet.”

“Ah. Light dawns.”

“Louis-Cesare must occupy one of those empty Senate seats,” Mircea said, dropping the analogy. “I need someone I can trust, and I need his vote to help sway others during the war. Anything likely to prevent that is unacceptable.”