The Watch

Chapter Ten

The car drew up outside a tall, narrow house on Dover Street. An oil lamp hung outside the front door, and lights glowed in the downstairs windows.

'I wonder if Papa is still awake.'

'If he is, perhaps we should pay him a good-night visit.' Draco opened the car door and sprang down. 'I don't know why it is, but I have the unshakeable conviction that your father regards our marriage with a somewhat sceptical eye.' He reached up his hand to help her alight. 'Am I right?'

'Possible,' Virginia said, stepping down beside him. 'One can never be sure what my father sees. In some things he's very shrewd.'

The door opened as they walked up to it. 'Good evening Griffin. Has Mr. Weasley retired?'

'I don't believe so, my lady.' The butler bowed her in. 'He rang for a fresh pot of coffee a short while ago.'

'Then we'll go up and bid him goodnight,' Draco said, shrugging out of his cloak. 'Lock up, Griffin.' He strode to the stairs on Virginia's heels.

'You might wish to send Nell to bed,' he murmured against Virginia's ear as they passed by her bedchamber. 'There's nothing she can do for you tonight that I can't do as well.'

Virginia looked over her shoulder at him, meeting the heat of a gaze that turned her limbs to honey. 'Better, I would have said, Malfoy.'

She turned aside to open her bedroom door. 'You may go to bed, Nell.'

The maid dozing in a chair beside the fire jumped sleepily to her feet. 'Oh, ma'am, I'm quite awake,' she protested with a guilty flush.

'Yes, I can see that. Nevertheless, I have no further need of you tonight.' Virginia smiled at the girl, knowing how terrified she was that she would lose her position at the slightest dereliction. 'Go to bed, Nell. And I'll see you in the morning.'

'Yes, mistress.' The girl curtsied. 'I'll set the fire up, though, shall I?'

'If you please.' Virginia stepped back into the corridor, closing the door quietly behind her. Sometimes she felt as if they were living within a stage set, the limits of their play set in a fixed time and place. Every member of their household was a member of the cast, although only she and Draco knew it. And when the curtain came down, the supporting cast would be out of a job.

But not necessarily, she told herself briskly. If all went well, she and her father would be in a position to staff a household again. They weren't really playing with people's lives, just because they hadn't shared with the household the temporary nature of this employment. Besides, for as long as the play continued, these people were assured of food, warmth and a bed, and thus a great deal better off than the majority of London's population.

It occurred to Virginia that this uncomfortable social conscience that she'd developed had grown out of her own intimate acquaintance with poverty's grim and desperate face. Draco knew that face too, but he seemed less troubled by it. Or perhaps he kept such reactions to himself... as he kept so much.

Now, however, was not the time for dwelling futilely on the world's miseries and Draco's apparent indifference to them. She hurried down the long corridor to the back of the house. She could hear Draco's voice through the open door of her father's room.

'Good evening, Papa.' Smiling cheerfully, she entered the bright, warm room. 'You're up late.'

'I could say the same of you,' Arthur declared, regarding his daughter from a deep armchair beside a blazing fire. He looked well, his tawny eyes clear and sharp, his complexion smooth and pink, his thick mane of white hair luxuriant and glossy. He was wearing a fur-trimmed velvet dressing gown and fur-lined slippers, a rug across his knees. Books were heaped on the floor beside his chair, tumbled off the table at his side, lay open on the arm of his chair. He had a writing table across his lap, a quill in his hand, a sheet of parchment already covered in his spidery black writing.

'We have had an evening of dissipation,' Virginia said. 'Rather different from work. How's it going?' She bent to kiss him.

'Very well, child. Vladimir, do you remember that discussion we were having on Plato? About the influence of Pythagoras on his philosophy? Well I have found the reference I was looking for... in Socrates... I have it here, somewhere.' He began to rummage through the heap of books, from which bookmarks bristled like the spikes of a hedgehog.

Draco took a seat beside the old man, and Virginia perched on the arm of a sofa across from them. Her father's cough had almost disappeared, and as she looked at him now, it was hard to imagine the smooth course of his life had been disrupted. He behaved as if he had no recollection of their three year sojourn in the East End alleys, of the days without sufficient food, the constant lack of warmth, the daily struggle to make and mend to keep adequate clothes on their backs. He had always behaved as if he had no idea how Virginia achieved her small miracles. He'd certainly showed no curiosity about the details of their past existence and had been singularly incurious about this change in their circumstances.

When Virginia had explained to her father that she and Minister Vladimir Shickovavich had married without his consent because he had been too ill and feverish to be consulted, Arthur had offered no comment. Virginia had expected some reaction to this momentous fait accompli, and in the face of this calm acceptance of the new situation, she'd found herself expanding her explanation as if he were as sceptical and disapproving as she had expected him to be. She'd rattled on about how he'd been so ill that she'd felt his health was more important then convention and she'd agreed to a speedy and unceremonious marriage in order to hasten their move somewhere warmer and more comfortable.

Her father had merely smiled, said he was sure she knew what she was doing. She'd always known what was best for herself and if she was happy, then so was he. And he had settled into his spacious apartments on Dover Street as if they had always been his.

Draco had been surprisingly attentive to the old man, certainly above and beyond the call of duty in the circumstances, Virginia considered. And he'd evinced an astonishingly intimate knowledge of the classics that delighted Arthur Weasley. Not just knowledge, Virgina reflected, listening to the discussion. Enthusiasm. He seemed to fin Arthur's forays into the more abstruse realms of classical philosophy as fascinating as her father did.

She, herself, had long exhausted her interest in Arthur's intellectual pursuits. He'd educated her rigorously in the classics, and she read and spoke Greek and Latin with an unusual fluency. Draco, being a Malfoy, had had the conventional education of a wellborn male, would have spoken Latin and Greek in preference to English throughout his school years. But somehow Virginia didn't think the young Draco had a solely conventional upbringing. Nevertheless, he was perfectly at home in the ancient worlds of Greece and Rome.

How he'd acquired that education, he was of course, not saying.

'Now I'm making such progress with this article, I must write to my publishers and tell them how it's going. Alderbury was most anxious I should keep them informed of my progress when we last corresponded,' Arthur said happily, wiping of his quill.

A correspondence that had ceased three years earlier, Virginia reflected. But there was no virtue in pointing that out. It would only offend her father, and who was to say that Mr. Alderbury wasn't waiting with bated breath for the next progress report?

She stood up. 'I think I'll go to bed, it's been a long evening. Do you have everything you need, Papa?'

'Yes, thank you, my dear.' He smiled and kissed her as she bent over him. 'I shall stay up a little while yet. Perhaps your husband would care to bear me company.' He turned to Draco, and there was no mistaking the mischief in his eyes. 'But, then again, perhaps not.'

'I beg you to forgive me, sir.' Draco hid his surprise at that mischievously shrewd look. 'But I find myself a trifle fatigued.'

'Of course, of course. Young people have no stamina these days.' Arthur waved him away, his eyes bright with that same look. 'Seek your bed, Shickovavich, and leave me to my philosophy.'

'Goodnight, sir.' Draco bowed and turned to follow Virginia from the room.

The door closed behind them, and Arthur Weasley smiled to himself. Surely they didn't think he didn't know what was going on. Virginia couldn't really believe him to be such a dumb idiot as to not know that this whole marriage tale was a gigantic fabrication. But fabrication or not, it had returned her to her rightful place in the world. And whatever lay behind this arrangement, it was one that clearly suited his daughter. He didn't care to speculate on what work she'd been doing when she'd leave him for long periods during their sojourn in poorer parts. When she returned, his books were redeemed from the pawnbroker, they dined from the dining table, and there was a fire in the hearth. But whatever she did to achieve those small miracles had taken a terrible toll.

Now the drawn look had left her face, her eyes glowed again and the frisson between her and Minister Shickovavich was as apparent as a rainbow in a shower.

He let the book fall closed on his lap and leaned back in his chair, closing his eyes. Perhaps he should be concerned about his daughter's reputation, about her honour. But such concepts had ceased to have any relevance after the Burrow incident. And if he hadn't questioned her activities in the C.V., he certainly didn't have the right to do so now.

The blackness filled his head as it always did when he thought of his criminal idiocy, and he turned from the knowledge. Too confront it did no good and merely destroyed any chance for peace of mind.

Virginia was happy. That was all that mattered. Arthur shook himself awake and returned to his books.

'You've never said exactly how you intend to accomplish my revenge,' Virginia said, raising her arms to unpin her hair. She was naked, and the movement lifted her breasts, drew the skin of her back taut.

Draco, shoeless but otherwise fully dressed, lay back on the bed, arms linked behind his head, watching with leisurely pleasure as she disrobed. 'The plan is not fully formed as yet.'

'But do you have a plan?' She took off the high pads over which her hair had been piled and shook the scarlet tresses free.

'Most certainly.'

'And you're not going to tell me?' She picked up her hairbrush and studied him in the mirror.

Draco laughed and swung off the bed. 'Let me brush your hair.' He crossed the room, his feet sinking into the Turkish carpet, and stood behind her.

The silk of his clothes brushed against the bare skin of her back, a skin suddenly so sensitive that the silken caress was almost abrasive. Virginia shivered, watching in the mirror as her nipples grew hard and erect.

He took the brush from her and began to draw it through her hair, placing one hand on the top of her head as he puled through the long, tangled curls.

'Are you going to tell me?'

'As yet there's nothing to tell. Now, don't distract me because I'm going to count to a hundred.'

Virginia gave up for the present under the seductive stroked of the brush. Her eyes closed, her head drooped; she slipped into a sensuous trance, her body swaying gently as if she were a willow tree in the wind.

When he stopped brushing, her eyes fluttered open again, meeting his in the mirror. His expression was serious and attentive. Gravely, he placed the brush down on the dresser and lifted her hair off her shoulder, letting it fall forward over her breasts. Reaching over her shoulders, his long white fingers parted the strands of hair, revealing her nipples and the pale circles around them. All the while, he held her gaze in the mirror, his eyes now deep and dark as coal.

His hands slipped around her waist, cupping her breasts before sliding down over her ribs, his palms flattening on her belly.

Her body in the mirror was white as alabaster against the black silk at her back. Soft and vulnerable in its nakedness. Her heart beat faster as his thigh moved against her buttocks, his knee nudging her thighs apart. The material of his pants rustled across the delicate skin of her inner thighs, his knee pressed upward, creating an exquisite friction that made her catch her lip between her teeth. She watched herself grow closer towards the peak, and watched Draco watching her.

He smiled, a long, slow smile of satisfaction, enjoying her excitement as the pleasure built in her belly in ever tightening spirals, and at the instant before she could bear no more, he used his hands on her and the coil burst asunder. She fell back against him and he wrapped his arms around her, laughing softly into her hair.

'I do love playing with you, sweet. You're so supremely responsive.'

'Obedient to your every touch,' Virginia mumbled with a weak chuckle. 'I'm as clay in your hands.'

'In matters of sex,' he qualified with mock solemnity, tightening his arms around her waist, resting his chin on the top of her head. 'I'm not so certain about other matters.'

'And just what does that mean?' She tried to look and sound indignant but failed miserably at both.

'Oh, you know quite well.' He swung her off her feet and over to the bed.

'If you mean I don't accept your mastery without question, yes, I do know what you mean.' She lay on the where he dropped her, her hair a glowing fan around her.

'Well, perhaps I'll just settle for the areas in which I have undisputed mastery,' Draco declared cheerfully, throwing off his clothes with an unseemly haste. 'At least for the moment.'

Naked, he leaped onto the bed beside her and straddled her thighs. 'Now, princhipessa, you may await further dissolution and tremble!'

'Oh, I do,' she said, running her tongue over her lips, reaching to grasp the erect shaft as it brushed over her belly. 'Even my toes are trembling, oh Prince of Darkness.' The pad of her thumb danced over the moistening tip of his flesh as her fingers moved behind, stroking the hard globes.

'What did you mean, 'at least for the moment'?' she inquired, a gleam in her eye as she deepened her caress. His only response was sigh of pleasure.

'Oh, never mind,' she murmured, her thighs shifting beneath his weight. 'I think I've lost interest in both the question and the answer... at least for the moment.'

The clock on the mantel chimed four. The fire hissed and crackled. A gust of wind rattled the windowpane. From behind the bed curtains came low murmurs of delight as they moved into the darkness, their bodies blending in a fusion so complete, it denied the possibility of any dissonance.

'Four o'clock and all's well.' The watchman's repetitive cry faded down the corner of King's Street as Blaise Les Sables emerged from the Revelry among the last of the evenings revellers. She was slightly tipsy, leaning on the arm of some stalwart young gentleman whose glazed eyes and somewhat rigid features indicated his own lack of sobriety.

'Where's my limousine, Lawton?' Blaise demanded, staring down the now rapidly emptying street. 'I sent you to call for it.'

'Oh, but I did ma'am. I assure you I did.' Her escort peered around intently, as if expecting the missing limousine to materialize from thin air.

'Then why is it not here?' Les Sables demanded peevishly, huddling into her cloak as the wind whistled around the alley leading to the King's Place.

'My limousine is at your service, Blaise.'

Blaise turned at the smoothly considerate tones of Lucius Malfoy. 'Oh, I thought you'd gone home hours ago, Lucius.'

'I've been playing at Sphinx's Poison,' he said. 'But the party broke up a trifle suddenly when one of her servant's spotted a troop of the C.V. about to raid the house.' He laughed, the sound clear and hard in the frosty air. 'AA false alarm, of course, but it did rather dampen enthusiasm.'

'Yes, I can imagine. Lawton, you've proved yourself singularly inept. I suggest you take yourself home to bed.' Blaise dismissed the hapless man tartly.

'I did call your limousine... I do assure you,' her erstwhile escort protested. 'Can't think where it could have disappeared to.'

'I daresay it turned into a pumpkin,' Malfoy said. 'Mistress, my limousine awaits your pleasure.' He offered his arm to Mistress Les Sables, and the two went off, leaving the Honourable Michael Lawton gazing at disconsolately and in some bewilderment after them.

'You do know how to endure a lady's comfort, Malfoy,' Blaise observed appreciatively, as the chauffeur spread a rug over her knees and adjusted the position of a wheat pack beneath her feet. 'In your company a woman would never find herself standing in the rain without an umbrella, or waiting for a chair in the wind, or finding her self seated as a bad table in the Piazza. Unlike that poor fool, Lawton.'

'Setting up another flirtation, are you, Blaise?' Lucius inquired casually. 'I can't help feeling sorry for the infant. He clearly doesn't know you could eat him for supper.'

Blaise laughed. 'Oh, I was just amusing myself, Lucius. There was a dearth of entertaining companions this evening... at least after the Vice Minister left. Indeed, I don't know why I persist on going to these insipid affairs.' Delicately, she adjusted a beauty patch high on her cheekbone. 'Of course, one must be seen.'

'Of course.' Lucius agreed. 'And were you amusing yourself similarly with Minister Shickovavich?' The deceptively smooth, amused tone had vanished. He threw the question like a knife.

'La, Lucius, what is it to you?' Blaise said with an artificial and uncertain laugh. 'Shickovavich's a most entertaining gentleman.'

'I like to know who else plays in the same garden,' Malfoy said coldly. 'I'm a trifle fastidious, my dear, in some areas. But I daresay that's quite a novel concept for you.'

Blaise Les Sables whitened with anger beneath the rouge, taking on a garish almost clown-like appearance. 'I don't believe I understand you, Minister.'

'Oh, come now, Blaise, you're not such a fool,' Malfoy said, leaning forward, catching her chin on his forefinger. 'I thought I'd made it plain that I wish for exclusive rights to your body. Apart from whatever demands your husband might make, of course,' he added with a careless gesture of his free hand. 'I do accept that, as an obedient and loving wife, you must accommodate Les Sables in whatever manner he wishes.'

He smiled, an angelic smile of benign understanding, but his fingers now grasped her chin painfully.

Blaise grasped and tried to pull back. The limousine jolted in a pot-hole, and she was thrown forward against Lucius's knees. He caught her wrist with his free hand and held her in that position even as the limousine moved smoothly again. 'I'm perfectly content to end our little arrangement, if you so wish. We understand each other, I'm sure.' He released her abruptly and gave her a push that sent her back onto her seat. 'I don't use whores.'

Blaise stared in shock at the pale glimmer of his face. His possessive streak had become more pronounced of late, but she hadn't taken it very seriously. Her fawning admirers, were always too eager for her attentions to risk annoying her. She knew that Lucius Malfoy was different, it was part of his attraction- that and his generosity. But she had always believed she could control him as she controlled the others. This was something new and frightening. She'd been frightened by men in her time in the Ministry restaurant, but there had always been a bell to ring and a muscular C.V. gentleman on call. Here, in this warm, swaying darkness, in Malfoy's limousine, driven by Malfoy's servants, there was no protection.

'Vladimir Shickovavich means nothing to me,' she whispered, her eyes darting to the window, looking for some familiar landmark in the darkness. The distance from The Reveller to her house on Mount Street should have been accomplished in no more than fifteen minutes at this time of the morning, with no traffic. And yet they seemed to have been journeying for hours.

Her companion made no response to this assertion. He leaned back against the velvet squabs and regarded her, his eyes vacant, expressionless, like grey holes in the serene planes of his face.

Blaise began to shiver. It was not as if she were in the presence of the devil. 'Why are we not at Mount Street yet?' she managed to ask shrinking into the corner.

'Oh, are you in a hurry to be home, my dear? I beg your pardon, I thought you might enjoy a little tête-à-tête.' He smiled.

A suspicion popped into her hair, became certainty. 'What happened to my limousine?'

His smile broadened. 'As I said, I though you might enjoy a little tête-à-tête.'

'You sent it away?' She felt like crying in bewilderment.

'An accurate deduction,' Malfoy said dryly. 'I'm surprised it took you so long to come to it.' He reached up and knocked on the window separating the chauffeur from the passengers. The chauffeur responded to the knock by swing the vehicle to the right.

Blaise clutched the strap above the window. 'Take me home.'

'But of course,' he said, raising an eyebrow as if surprised. 'Where do you think I'm taking you? You should be at your door in about two minutes. By my estimation we should now be turning onto Audley Street.'

Blaise huddled in her corner, nibbling a gloved fingertip. She was too frightened to speak, and when the carriage came to a halt and she recognized her own front door under the lamp, she flung open the door and tumbled to the street without waiting for the chauffeur to lower the step.

Lucius leaned out of the open door. 'Forgive me if I don't walk you to your door, my dear.'

'I'll be calling on our son tomorrow, I would prefer you to not be there,' Blaise declared, her voice trembling but her courage returning with the safety of her own front door a mere three steps away.

Lucius inclined his head in courteous acknowledgment. 'You desolate me, ma'am.' Then he withdrew into the limousine, pulling the door closed.

Blaise ran up the steps to her own front door and hammered on the knocker until the night porter sleepily stumbled to open it.

Lucius smiled to himself as the coach took him home to St James's square. He'd been tiring of Blaise, although he hadn't realized it until he'd seen her flirting with Vladimir. It was time for a new adventure. And who better to have it with than the young, fresh, and very spirited wife of a man he instinctively detested?

He jumped from the limousine with a surge of energy more appropriate for the middle of the morning than the cold, dark hour before dawn. The front door opened before he could knock. The night porter in the Minister of Dark Magic's house knew better than to sleep on duty and had been holding himself in readiness for the sound of the carriage throughout the night. He didn't lock the door behind the Minister, however, since for the household the day's work had already begun.

A boot boy, fresh from his own nights rest on the chilly stone floor of the scullery, slunk into the hall from this kitchen regions, rubbing sleep from his eyes. The second chauffeur, his immediate superior, resplendent in the Malfoy livery, strode behind the lad, a bundle of keys in his hand, preparing to open up the doors to the main salons for the maidservants to begin the day's cleaning.

The second chauffeur saw the Minister the instant before the Minister saw him. He grabbed the collar of the boot boy's jacket and jerked him into the shadows of the staircase until the master was safely out of sight on the stairs. The Minister of Dark Art's gaze must not be offended by the sight of a seven-year-old boy with matted hair and filthy hands, his scrawny body enveloped in a grimy apron, roaming the public area of the house- even at five o'clock in the morning.

Lucius strode into his own apartments, where his valet stood waiting for him, an air of alert solicitude on his face, despite the sleepless night.

'You passed a pleasant evening, master?'

'Yes, thank you.' Lucius flung himself into a chair and extended his feet. The servant bent and removed his master's shoes, then tenderly helped him out of his coat.

One glance at his employer's expression told the experienced servant that conversation would not be welcome, so he went about his duties silently and, once the master was arrayed in his velvet dressing gown, drew back the bed curtains and turned down the coverlet. He stood expectantly beside the bed, while the Minister frowning took a turn about the room.

'Oh, that'll be all, Fredericks.' The Minister waved him away. 'I can put myself to bed.'

'Very good, master.' The servant bowed himself from the room and once outside straightened with a grimace. The Minister was an erratic sleeper, and one could never be certain whether he'd sleep for two hours or six. He'd seemed restless this early morning, which probably meant he'd be ringing his bell again in a couple of hours, and Fredericks would be expected to attend him as fresh and alert as if he'd slept the night away. In the circumstances he daren't risk taking more than a catnap on his sofa in the attic before readying himself for his employer's next summons.

Lucius paced his bedchamber for a minute. The encounter with Mistress Athena Morgan Shickovavich followed by his confrontation with Blaise had excited him, and his loins were heavy, his blood hot with sexual appetite that needed gratification. He allowed his mind to dwell on the lissome figure of Vladimir Shickovavich's wife, on the mischievous sparkle in her eyes that seemed to suggest collusion, on the curve of her mouth, the discreetly veiled swell of her breasts. There was a freshness about her that excited him most powerfully. And she'd seemed inclined to play a part other than that of straight-laced ingénue bride.

How would Vladimir Shickovavich take to wearing horns? The question amused Lucius. His gaze flickered to the door connecting his apartments with his wife's. It was not a question he would ever ask himself.

His blood grew hotter, so that a mist of perspiration coated his skin. His flesh rose beneath his gown, pulsating with the urgency of his need.

He had a wife. An unsatisfactory wife in all respects, but her body was there, available to assuage this need. He strode to the door, flung it open, and entered the dark chamber.

The curtains were drawn around the bed, and he threw them back.

Narcissa had awakened as the door had banded on its hinges, and now she lay shivering under the covers. She knew what he'd come for and closed her eyes tightly as the bed curtains were opened and she felt his presence beside the bed. He always took her in this way, ever since she conceived Mira. Always suddenly in the night, always waking her from sleep, so that many nights she lay awake until dawn in dread apprehension, straining her ears in the dark, waiting for the visitation.

He never spoke to her, except sometimes when he used coarse, vile language as he pushed hurtfully against the limits of her body, and the language seemed to excite him to greater fervency. There was never any pretence that she herself was important. He had a need, and it was her duty to supply that need.

The bed shivered as he dropped heavily onto the mattress. He raised her nightgown, then seized her hands, holding them over her head. He pushed into her, and tears squeezed behind her eyelids at the tight unyielding pain.

When it was over, he left her- without a word, without even drawing the bed curtains again- so that now she could see the first pink streaks of dawn through the window, an offering a new and bright day.

Narcissa's tears flowed hot and strong as she lay in wide-eyed misery. This was her life, and there was nothing she could do about it. No one she could turn to. Her father would never listen to a complaint against her husband. Her husband was her lord and master in the eyes of the Church and the law, and how he chose to treat her was a matter for his own conscience. No one would have anything to say. The world would have nothing to say.