The Lily Brand Read Online Free Page B

themselves.
    With one hand Lillian drew her coat tighter around her body. The crop, though, was in her way and she wished she could put it down somewhere. But Maurice or Antoine or another of Camille’s men would notice, and thus Camille would eventually hear.
    Such a tight, suffocating web of control. To break it, one had to destroy the spider in the middle. Drip poison into her drink. Watch her writhe in agony on the marbled floor. Or feed the fire in the kitchen, let it rage out of control until the blaze wrapped the house in its bright red bloom.
    The chain and the handle of the crop bit into Lillian’s hands.
    Futile, futile dreams, these. For how could she ever dare lay hands on her stepmother, the woman her father had loved? Besides, she had been taught to heal, not to hurt. This she had done—with one exception.
    Again, she threw a look over her shoulder, watched the man limping behind her. His left leg, it seemed, was giving him pain. Lillian wondered whether punishment had been applied to this part of his body or whether the limp was for other reasons.
    The path now curved and wound, twisting like young Gérard on the table in front of Camille, his torso covered with fruit stains and chocolate scorches. A split opened in the greenery to reveal the statue of the half-naked lovers whom creepers had sealed together forevermore. Their hands were bare of whips or branding irons, their ankles free of chains and shackles. Sometimes Lillian wondered whether a love like that belonged to bygone ages, just like the statue itself.
    Finally, Lillian and the prisoner reached the banks of a still lake, and Lillian followed the track around the slimy green water, where the grass had already been trampled down on earlier visits. What had been created to resemble nature by now had been devoured by nature. The trees stood tall and at places trunk by trunk, branches intertwining. The bushes and hedges had broken from their intended form and were now growing in wild abandon. In summer, when the air was hot enough to flimmer before one’s eyes, the meadows around the lake would be ablaze with grasses and flowers, the deep hum of wild bees the only sound in the new wilderness.
    At the other end of the lake, near the hidden garden wall, an imposing formation of rocks rose out of the water to form the mouth of a cave. At its entrance stood two proud horses of stone, nostrils flaring, and two men, on their knees, were offering them bowls of water. The group, Nanette had said, might once have been part of a fountain because the men had fishtails where their legs should be and one of them was holding a large, winding shell on his lap The water would have flowed from the shell, perhaps, swirling around the horses’ feet before dropping over several dark stone steps into the lake. The only way to reach the mouth of the cave was to take the path of the stepping stones that lay scrambled in the water as if thrown there by accident. During heavy rainfalls, the slimy green liquid would rise to cover them completely. Lillian hoped to be spared the rain over the next few days.
    She gestured to the man to step to a nearby tree. She wound his chain around the trunk and secured it with the snap link at its loose end. After she took off his gag, she sat down on a fallen log. While she considered which poison was best to use on him, she awaited the call of the thrush.
    ~*~
    That evening, dinner served as another lesson.
    Nataraj, who had once lived in India, where the air tasted of spices, was the one chosen to stand behind the mistress’s chair in his golden-brown glory. As the evening ritual demanded, his only garments were the golden breeches and the golden bands winding around his biceps. His hair as dark as night, his eyes coffee-brown, and his fingers swift and clever, he was another of Camille’s favorites. That explained why he was chosen to be the teacher in this.
    Lillian sat straight and stiff, ever aware of the prisoner looming at her