"Among those who remember the old ways." I let my voice drop further, intimate without being improper, the confessional tone of a man sharing something precious and painful. "I used to watch her prepare the oils. She had a blend — something with lavender and warmer things, spices I never learned the names of. She would rub it into her arms, her shoulders, the great curve of herself, and she would sigh as if she were setting down a load she had carried for miles." My hands tightened on my knees. "I always wanted to help her. To do it properly, the way she described. But I was small, and then she was gone, and I never…"
I stopped. Swallowed. Looked down at my hands as if they had failed at the only task that ever mattered.
'He wanted to massage his own mother and never could. Because she was murdered. And now he sits beside me — another woman, round with child, in his mother's place on his mother's bed — and he cannot even finish the sentence. Oh, Elira, you cannot leave him like this. You cannot.'
Her hand moved from her belly to my wrist. The touch was light, tentative, warm.
"My lord. If it would… if it would ease something in you… you may." She faltered, color rising in her cheeks. "That is — if you wish to. I would not want you to feel obligated. But if the memory sits heavily, and if the practice truly helps the child…" Her free hand cradled her belly. "I would not refuse kindness. Not from you."
I looked up. Met her eyes. Let her see gratitude so raw and so carefully constructed that it could have been hung in a gallery.
"You would allow it?"
She bit her lip. The flush on her cheeks deepened, spreading down her throat toward the neckline of her dress. "I… yes. But — my lord, I am not… I would need to…" She gestured vaguely at herself, at the dress, at the reality of what a massage required. "It is not a thing done through cloth. Not properly. Or so I imagine."
"No," I agreed gently. "Not properly."
The silence that followed was thick with the weight of a threshold being crossed. Elira's thoughts tumbled over themselves — a cascade of propriety and pity and the low, unacknowledged thrum of a pregnant woman's body starved for gentle touch.
'He is the lord of this house. If Garrick knew… but Garrick is in the yard with his sword and his sneers, and this boy is looking at me as if I am the first person who has been kind to him in years. And the child. If it helps the child. If the oil and the hands truly ease the way…'
"There is a screen," she said finally, nodding toward a folding partition near the wardrobe. "If you would turn away. I will call when I am ready."
I stood. Bowed my head. Walked to the window and set my back to the room, gazing out at the cliffs and the wheeling gulls and the endless grey sheet of the sea. Behind me, fabric rustled. A soft grunt of effort. The whisper of linen leaving skin. The creak of the bed receiving her weight again.
I reached into the inner pocket of my coat.
The vial was small, no larger than my thumb, made of glass so clear it seemed carved from water. The aphrodisiac oil had materialized that morning when I collected the first points from Martha — fifteen from the left breast, pressed against my face in that moment of performed grief, the system chiming softly in the recesses of my mind as the mark dissolved into warmth and the shop unlocked. I had chosen the oil over every other option. A vibrator was a blunt instrument. Oil was a conversation. It seeped. It persuaded. It turned the body's own language against itself.
The liquid inside was colorless, scentless, exactly as the system had promised. I warmed the vial between my palms.
"My lord," Elira called, her voice smaller than before. "I am ready."
I turned.
She lay on her back atop the coverlet, and the sight of her pulled the air from my lungs in a way I did not entirely feign. She had removed the cream dress and folded it with neat, nervous hands over the foot of the bed. What remained was a woman stripped to her underthings and then past them — her own decision, her own trembling resolve — one arm flung across her breasts in a gesture of modesty that concealed almost nothing, the other resting on the upper slope of her bare belly as if to shelter the child from the room's cool air.
She was beautiful in the way that late pregnancy is beautiful: abundant, exaggerated, unapologetic. Her breasts, full and heavy with the body's preparation for milk, spilled around the inadequate barrier of her arm, the skin stretched smooth and pale except for the faint blue mapping of veins beneath the surface. Her nipples, dark as ripe plums, had widened into broad circles that spoke of the work they would soon do. The belly dominated everything — a taut, glossy dome marked by a dark line running from navel to the modest triangle of brown hair below, the skin stretched so tight it shone where the window light touched it. Dark patches bloomed across the lower curve, the pigmentation of a body deep in its labors. Her hips had widened, her thighs grown thick and soft, and between them, half-hidden by the angle of her legs, the swollen outer folds of her sex pressed together in a plump seam.
She was trying to cover herself and succeeding only in drawing the eye to every place her hands could not reach.
"This is…" She laughed nervously, the sound catching. "I feel utterly ridiculous. You must not look too closely, my lord. I am not… I was prettier before."
"You are extraordinary now," I said, and the honesty in it surprised even me. I moved to the bedside, uncorking the vial. The oil caught the light as I poured a thin stream into my palm, colorless and clean. "My mother used to say the same thing. That she had become a different country. One with stranger borders." I warmed the oil between my hands, the liquid silk-smooth against my skin. "She was wrong to be ashamed. And so are you."
Elira's eyes glistened. She lowered the arm from her breasts — slowly, with the last resistance of modesty giving way to trust — and set both hands at her sides, open, surrendering.
'He means it. Look at his face. He is not mocking me. He is looking at me the way… the way I always wished Garrick would look at me, now that I am like this. Garrick barely glances. He touches the belly sometimes, quick and dutiful, and then he is gone to his yard and his men. And he…'
I set my oiled hands on her shoulders.