You said it so quietly I doubt Magdalena even heard. I nodded mutely. There was no other answer.
“Good,” you said, and disappeared with Magdalena into the hallway.
I didn’t stay at dinner long after that, but I wandered the halls for a while before heading to your bedroom. You would be waiting there for me, I was sure, with Magdalena, probably in some kind of compromising position.
God, what was I allowing?
It felt like something that was happening to me, but I had agreed to it, hadn’t I? Part of me wanted this. Wanted her. I shouldn’t be feeling so dismayed.
I walked circles through the drafty halls, trying to decipher my own feelings for a small eternity. But I knew I had to go into the bedroom eventually. The suspense about what I would find, and no small amount of anticipation, was tangling my insides into knots. I steeled my heart and tried to quiet my fluttering stomach as I pressed silently into your bedroom.
Magdalena was spread out on top of the sheets, her skin a splash of cream on the dark fabric. One of your hands encircled her delicate ankle, hooked over your shoulder, while the other gripped her ass tight enough to leave bruises. The sight seared itself into my memory.
You were fucking her in our bed.
No. Your bed.
I was only ever a guest, every night contingent on my good behavior.
And Magdalena was behaving very well for you. Arching the small of her back and digging her long nails into your shoulder-blades while you drove into her. She made soft, eager noises, rising and falling like the cooing of a dove. Pretty, perfect Magdalena, with her cheeks and nipples rouged for you like a king’s courtesan.
I stepped into the room, silently unpinning my hair as though nothing was out of the ordinary. This was my place, after all, in your room. Nothing, not even the slick circle of Magdalena’s panting mouth, could make me feel ashamed to be there.
You kissed her throat, the tender junction of her neck and shoulder, and then spoke with your lips still on her skin, with your prick still inside her.
“Constanta, I can feel you over there brooding.”
Magdalena gave a little gasp, eyes alighting on me as though I were a ghostly apparition. She had been too engrossed to hear me enter, apparently.
I smiled at her, letting my eyes travel over the lines of her body before coming back onto her face. I would know every inch of her. She would not be able to hide anything from me. Not her nakedness, not her secrets, not her designs for you.
“Will you come to bed?” you asked me, breath ragged as you slid in and out of her. Slow, controlled. The way you liked to start. Magdalena shuddered, biting her lip to suppress a little noise. She must not have thought it seemly to moan in the presence of her lover’s wife.
I watched her squirm while I unfastened the emeralds from my ears and dropped them onto the vanity. It was difficult not to. She was a cornucopia overflowing with carnal delights. My hands itched to touch her, but I maintained my icy mask.
“Am I to be bidden to my own bed like a dog invited to beg at the master’s table?” I said coolly.
You did look at me then, dark eyes erratic with lust and irritation and some other, less pronounceable emotion. Admiration, perhaps. You showed it to me so rarely I hardly knew how to recognize it.
“Constanta,” you said, savoring the syllables like they were a filthy note passed under the pews to you in church. “My jewel, my wife.”
“Getting better,” I said, shucking off my heavy outer dress and draping it over the back of a chair. I loosened the buttons at the nape of my neck and left the length of laces down my spine for your agile fingers to unfasten. My hands were trembling now, my heart beating fast and hot in my throat.
You tilted Magdalena’s chin towards me, showing off her pink cheeks, her silken fall of black hair. The desire that had been slowly uncoiling in my stomach reached my chest, tightening painfully.
“Look at how lovely our new bride is,” you said, nipping her earlobe. “Come and kiss your sister. Show her there isn’t any animosity between you.”
Magdalena, ever-willing, held her arm out to me. Those lovely fingers curled, beckoning me closer.
“Please,” she said, voice sweet as a berry so ripe it was ready to burst.
I was furious with you. You had manufactured my consent every step of the way, a mere formality. This had always been your design for the both of us, we were always going to end up here, in this bed.
But I was also delirious with want, and half-convinced that you had been right all along. It was so much easier to believe that you always had my best interests at heart.