The Oath of Falkenheim

The rain fell so thickly and heavily beyond the windows that its ceaseless roar resembled a river in full spate, muffling every lesser sound within the private study. The girl strove to remain perfectly still, yet each peal of thunder made her start so sharply that she nearly lost her balance.

“Stand still!” he barked, rapping his pen against the desk without looking up from the document before him. Just as he had foreseen, the command produced precisely the opposite effect. He wished she had let out some small whimper, but there was time enough for that. He had the entire evening at his disposal, and Baron Severin Falk invariably got what he wanted in the end.

The paper he pretended to read was merely one more item in the interminable procession of soul-destroyingly tedious correspondence he had inherited after his father’s death the previous year. Until then, Severin’s life had consisted of balls, hunting, sailing, military exercises and escapades with his friends. His father had often grumbled that Severin was nearly forty and might at least take a wife and provide Falkenheim with its next baron.

Once, before an older cousin and half the senior servants, the old man had called him an ornamental heir—fit to decorate a ballroom, but not to be trusted with a ledger. He had then dismissed Severin from the room and conducted the estate’s business without him.

Well. He was master now. Marriage, ledgers and all the rest would come when they came.

Lightning washed across the walls of the study, illuminating shelves crowded with books that were never opened, dusty and forgotten. In one corner brooded the castle’s oath mirror, half concealed beneath a heavy throw. The mirror itself was said to be older than Falkenheim, though it had found its way into the Baron’s study for no more exalted reason than convenience: Severin liked having a looking-glass near at hand.

The Baron allowed his gaze to wander from the gas bill to the trembling girl and examined her from the floor upwards. Black ankle boots; a long grey skirt of plain wool; a cream-coloured blouse with a high collar; a grey-green walking jacket. She was neat and clean, at least, though her boots were worn and had plainly been resoled more than once. She wore neither rings nor necklace, and her brown hair was pinned up without ornament. She looked to be about nineteen, he judged—pretty and sweet-faced, certainly—yet there was something in her eyes. While every other part of her betrayed fear and discomfort, something altogether different shone there: a spark of stubbornness and unyielding strength. That contradiction had roused his interest.

His gaze left her eyes and settled upon the leather portfolio she clutched against her breast.

“Well, then, young Miss Venn.” He leant back in his creaking chair and lit a cigarette as the gas bill slipped from the desk and drifted to the floor. “You have taken it upon yourself to remove a document from its proper place in the castle archives. Without permission, I might add. Some would call that theft.”

The girl swallowed, but tightened her hold upon the leather portfolio. “I did not take it for myself, Baron. I retrieved it for you, in accordance with instructions left by my father.”

“Your father. Yes. Your late father, who is therefore no longer this castle’s archivist and librarian.” He cast a contemptuous glance at the dusty books lining the walls, then held out his hand. “Give it to me.”

The girl took a step towards the desk but kept the portfolio pressed firmly against herself. “My mother died giving birth to me, Baron, and from my earliest years I followed my father through his work. I know the castle archives better than anyone.”

Some of the tension left her shoulders. “I watched him file every piece of correspondence, Sir. I helped him examine every balance sheet, copied promissory notes and mortgage deeds, and arranged the demands for payment according to their due dates. I know which lands have already been mortgaged, which debts fall due before winter, and which creditors no longer intend to wait.”

The Baron’s face darkened. “That is not the sort of thing young women ought to rummage through.” He crushed his cigarette into a crystal ashtray. “Give me those papers before I have you spanked!”

The girl did not move. “They also show that everything has grown worse during the year since your father, the late Baron, died, Sir.” Her eyes flicked towards the gas bill upon the floor. “You are only weeks away from losing everything, my lord.”

He rose so abruptly that his chair scraped against the floorboards. “Give. Me. The papers. Now.”

The girl merely patted the leather portfolio. “The ledgers, mortgage deeds and demands for payment remain in their proper places in the archive, Baron. You may fetch them yourself. What I have here is something else.”

Severin sank back into his chair. The insolence of the creature. Fetch them yourself, she had said. She must have gone mad from trailing after her father through that dust-choked archive. She did not appear to possess the faintest understanding of how the world worked.

Though she plainly understood the castle’s finances well enough. A cold draught seemed to creep along the back of his neck.

The Baron let out a deep sigh. “And what, precisely, has clever Miss Venn brought me in her little portfolio?”

With something approaching reverence, she opened it and withdrew a collection of old, yellowed papers and sheets of parchment, arranging them carefully before him. Beneath them lay a much newer instrument, neatly engrossed in her father’s hand and consisting of four closely written sheets, each bearing spaces for a signature. Her fingertips paused upon the final sheet and followed the slope of the handwriting before she laid it flat. 

“These are records of earlier occasions upon which the castle stood in danger, Sir. You are not the first Baron to find himself in such circumstances. This newer instrument invokes the old provision.”

Her fingertips rested upon her father’s handwriting. “He made me promise that I would not place the instrument before you until every ordinary remedy had failed and the danger could no longer be denied.”

He glanced over the headings. They were written in archaic hands and couched in language of exhausting ceremony. One name caught his eye more than once: Elin. It appeared in ink faded brown with age, then again in a hand written perhaps a century later. A common enough name, he supposed.

“What does all this mean?”

The girl drew herself a little straighter. “In short, Baron, they are instructions left by former Barons. The most recent were written by your great-grandfather, Baron Severin the Second.”

Severin recalled that his father had always spoken of that ancestor as an incompetent. More than once, the old man had compared Severin with his elder namesake, and never to the advantage of either.

The girl continued. “If Falkenheim stands in danger, whether through financial distress or a threat from some external power, its management may be transferred to a sworn steward, Sir. The deed before you appoints that steward and defines the authority of the office. Once executed before the oath mirror, it forms part of your inheritance and cannot simply be dismissed or argued away.”

He stared at her. “A steward?”

“Yes, Baron. One person assumes the management of Falkenheim—its accounts, contracts, lands, servants and expenditures. Until the danger has passed, the Baron himself is placed beneath that person’s authority.”

“The Baron—subordinate to a steward? That is the stupidest thing I have ever heard. And who, pray, is this steward meant to be?”

The girl closed her eyes for several seconds. When she opened them again, she looked directly into his.

“Me, my lord.”

A long silence followed, filled by the thunder of the rain. Then Severin began to chuckle. The chuckle grew into laughter, and the laughter swelled into such helpless mirth that it drowned out both rain and thunder. The girl remained silent and watched him.

When at length he had mastered himself, he wiped at the corner of one eye. “My dear young woman, you must be quite mad.”

“You do not believe me, Sir?”

“Oh, I believe my great-grandfather may have landed himself in difficulties. I scarcely believe, however, that Falkenheim was saved by some little archive maid.”

“But you do not believe I possess sufficient knowledge, Baron?”

“I believe you possess sufficient knowledge to poke about among old papers. I believe you know how to stand there looking pretty and repeat clever phrases borrowed from people who understand such matters. Yes, I believe that.” He smiled. “But I do not believe you possess the slightest knowledge of anything that matters in the real world.”

The girl nodded. “I understand, Sir. I am merely a foolish young woman who has spoken far too boldly to the Baron.”

“Precisely. You are making a fool of yourself.”

“And the Baron himself is a man of the world, my lord. A man who understands how things work and how they fit together.”

“Quite so.”

“Then perhaps the Baron would not be afraid of a little wager, Sir?”

Severin rubbed his fingertips against his temples. The girl was correct in one respect: there was a slight difficulty with the available funds. That much was true. Falkenheim would be granted an extension, of course. A castle could not simply go bankrupt. The very notion was obscene, unnatural.

It could not happen.

He would not allow it to happen.

But what had she said—a wager? What was the girl after? Why was she still standing in his study?

“A wager?”

She inclined her head towards the mirror. “We both stand before the oath mirror, Baron, and swear that for half an hour we shall take turns doing whatever the other commands and answering every question truthfully.”

“Anything?”

“Anything that can be done here and now, causes no lasting injury and requires no crime. Neither of us may command the other to surrender a turn, alter the rules or extend an order beyond the half-hour.”

He smiled. “And what are we wagering?”

“If I refuse one valid demand, I shall give you the portfolio and leave Falkenheim tonight. I shall never trouble you with its finances again.” She rested her fingertips upon the new deed. “But if the half-hour ends and you then ask me, freely and without the mirror’s compulsion, to give you one more command, you will sign this instrument and appoint me steward.”

For a moment he could only stare at her. Then his smile broadened. The matter was now beyond dispute: the girl was mad. The oath mirror was an ancient heirloom, older than any reliable account of Falkenheim. According to legend, it had existed before the first stones of the castle were laid, and any oath sworn before it had to be kept; once spoken, it could not be broken. Superstitious nonsense. There was no place for such things in the modern age. This was an age of gaslight and airships.

Yet a small thrill stirred low in his stomach. If she believed the legend, the wager might provide an agreeable little diversion amid the darkness and rain. She would be put in her place. She would flee the castle with her tail between her legs, and he would show her who was the Baron and who was merely an insolent archive girl who knew altogether too much about matters she had no business knowing.

More to the point, there was no possibility that he would beg her for another command when the game was done.

“Or are you afraid, Sir?”

Her voice recalled him to the room. “Barons are never afraid. Come.”

He rose, took hold of her arm and led her to the mirror. Pulling aside the throw that still veiled one half of the glass, he positioned them both before it.

He was a handsome man, his dark hair only now yielding its first threads of grey. He wore a moustache and cravat, a silk shirt, a blue coat and a green waistcoat; a gold watch rested in his pocket, its chain gleaming across the cloth. He was tall and slender, with clean white hands. Beside the girl in her simple clothes, he appeared almost another order of being.

And, in a sense, he was. He was a baron. She was not.

Her eyes remained fixed upon the mirror. Her dark lips were slightly parted, her breathing deep and audible. For her, this was real.

“Well,” he said calmly, “how does this work? Are we to say hocus-pocus?” He waggled his fingers with theatrical solemnity.

The girl smiled and met his eyes in the glass. “No, Sir. Nothing so extraordinary.”

She drew a deep breath. “Upon the terms we have agreed, I swear that for half an hour I shall do whatever Baron Severin commands and answer every question he asks me truthfully.”

She nodded for him to continue.

“Upon those same terms, I swear that for half an hour I shall do whatever the girl beside me commands and answer every question she asks truthfully. Will that suffice?”

She nodded again.

Nothing happened. Not that he believed in magic, of course, though he had almost expected the two of them to shimmer or the glass to emit some mysterious light. He did not feel so much as the faintest prickle.

Elin glanced at the clock upon the mantel, fixing the position of its hands in her mind. “The half-hour begins now. You may begin, Baron. You are the nobler of us.”

“Naturally.”

How deeply did she truly believe in all this? Would she really allow him to make her do anything at all? The very notion sent a flicker of heat through him. 

“Stand on one leg and bark like a dog.” Best to begin gently.

The girl nodded. She lifted one leg, and her skirt rose just enough to reveal a glimpse of grey-stockinged calf. She made five small hops, barking once with each. Adorable.

She looked him slowly up and down. “Now it is my turn. You will call me Elin, Baron.”

“Elin?”

“That is my name. Not little Miss Venn. Elin.”

“I understand. Elin.”

It felt peculiar to address a commoner by her Christian name. Such familiarity was reserved for those who stood above one—or for the company of fellow aristocrats. Elin. The name sat strangely upon his tongue.

“Your turn, Baron.”

He perched upon the edge of the desk and grinned. “I should like to know whether Elin is a virgin—or whether she has allowed her desires free rein.”

Colour rose in her cheeks, but she held his gaze. “It has been a long while since I was a virgin.” She appeared to have finished, yet after a moment she continued. “Desire has always followed me.”

She looked almost surprised by her own admission, but merely shook her head.

“My question is this, Baron: are you troubled by the state of the castle’s finances?”

The question pierced him like a knife. Of course he was not troubled. A baron was never troubled, and he would certainly never admit such a thing to a commoner. He opened his mouth and said with perfect confidence, “Yes.”

Wait. What had happened? Why had he said that?

Bewildered, he scratched his head. The girl—Elin—had thoroughly unsettled him. He must be tired. Yet somewhere within him a small spark of warmth had kindled. It was a relief to have spoken the truth. He had concealed it even from himself.

It was a low trick, however. His answer had given her precisely what she wanted and made him look a fool. That was neither permissible nor tolerable. She would pay for it.

“Take off your jacket, Elin.”

To his humiliation, his voice cracked upon the final syllable. He sounded like a little pup.

Elin did precisely as he commanded. She unfastened the four buttons and slipped off her grey-green walking jacket. She now stood before him in her cream-coloured blouse, and beneath its thin, worn fabric he could make out the shape of her nipples. She draped the jacket over the back of his chair. Bold.

She walked several times around him. For once, he found himself absurdly speechless.

“Fall to your knees, and do not rise until I give you leave.” Her voice was soft, but she did not hesitate upon a single syllable.

Without a moment’s thought, he sank to his knees.

It was a strange experience. He was accustomed to sitting behind his desk and issuing orders to incompetents who stood before him cap in hand, shifting their feet in terror. This was altogether different. Elin towered over him, much too close. He felt... small.

For the first time in a very long while.

She inclined her head, inviting his reply.

“Open your blouse.”

She gave no answer, but smiled and began to unfasten the five buttons, one after another. When the last was free, she drew the edges teasingly apart, allowing him a glimpse of her rounded breasts and the dark suggestion of her areolae.

Lightning struck somewhere close by. Severin flinched, but Elin stood like a statue before him. For an instant, the lightning seemed to shine through her skin, and a grinning skull looked down at him from within her face.

He shook himself. His imagination was running away with him.

She shifted slightly, and he saw her nipples brush against the fabric of the open blouse. “How does the anxiety over the castle’s finances make you feel?”

From his place upon his knees, he looked up at her and considered the question. How ought he to answer? What would be proper, given his birth and the situation in which he found himself? What might offer him the best means of escape? Yet before he could decide, his mouth had begun to speak.

“It weighs upon me. It feels difficult—as though all the responsibility rests upon me.” He stopped, already aware that he had said far too much, yet still the words came. “And it is my fault. I am ashamed that I have not been able to make myself face the problems.”

The last words seemed to remain suspended between them. Severin waited for Elin to seize upon them, to accuse him or laugh. She did neither.

His gaze fell to the gas bill upon the floor. He had stepped across it twice that afternoon. Earlier in the week he had hidden a letter from the bank beneath a silver tray because the sight of its red seal had spoiled his breakfast. Only yesterday, he had left a solicitor acting for one of his creditors waiting in the antechamber until the man finally gave up and departed. 

These had seemed like separate, temporary inconveniences. Spoken together, they formed a pattern he could no longer mistake.

“I knew the demands were there,” he heard himself add. “I knew every day that I did nothing made them worse. But whenever I opened one, I heard my father telling me that I should make a ruin of Falkenheim. So I put it aside. Then I hated myself for proving him right.”

He bowed his head. The carpet pressed harshly through the cloth at his knees. He had imagined confession would diminish him in Elin’s eyes. Instead, under her steady attention, the burden inside him seemed for the first time to possess edges. Something with edges might be lifted. It might even be taken from him. 

He had told Elin more than he had ever told anyone, more even than he had admitted to himself. He had laid himself completely bare and supplied the very confession she needed. The stewardship, the provisions bound into his inheritance—was he about to lose control of his own castle?

He needed to reassert himself. Elin’s command kept him upon his knees, but he could at least remind her that he remained clothed while she did not.

“Undress, Elin. Take off everything.”

“As you wish.” She moved away from him and returned to the desk. Placing one boot upon his chair, she began to undo the laces. The Baron grimaced but said nothing. With maddening deliberation, she loosened the worn black leather and removed both boots.

Next she raised the hem of her skirt just high enough to unfasten the plain garters above her knees. She rolled down her grey woollen stockings, one after the other, revealing pale calves and two small bare feet. The stockings joined the boots beside the chair.

She drew the open blouse from her shoulders, bringing her breasts fully into view. They were small and firm, and her nipples—dark red, the same colour as her lips—stood erect as the cool air stippled her skin.

Then she reached behind her and undid the fastening at her waist. The skirt fell open, revealing itself to be more simply made than he had imagined: a broad length of wool gathered and wrapped about her hips. Severin had never given the slightest thought to how a woman’s skirts were constructed. A moment later, the wool lay pooled at her feet. Beneath it, she wore no drawers.

She stood naked before him. Her skin was milk-pale, and there was nothing meagre about her; she possessed the wholesome softness of a young woman in good health. Scarcely a yard from his face lay the dark triangle of hair between her thighs, concealing what rested beneath. He had seen many naked women over the years—at cabarets and circuses, at private parties and in brothels. This was different. Elin seemed fiercely, startlingly alive. Within the great ring of thunder beyond the windows, it felt as though nothing remained in the world but Severin and her naked body.

The Baron swallowed. He had expected her to be ashamed of her nakedness, perhaps even to refuse him and flee. Instead she stood before him with perfect assurance, as though this were her natural place in the world. Far from diminishing beneath his gaze, she seemed to grow taller by the moment.

She drew out the pin that held her hair in its knot and allowed the brown tresses to fall across her shoulders. “I want you to tell me precisely what you feel now.” She shook her head, and the long, gently curling hair settled about her. “From your heart.”

He tried to gather his thoughts before his mouth began to speak, but found it almost impossible. “I feel free. Speaking from my heart has lifted a weight from my shoulders.” He paused before continuing. “And, strangely enough, following Elin’s instructions feels liberating.”

The admission left him trembling. He expected disgust to follow it, or at least the shame that ought to attend such words. A Baron did not confess relief at being governed by an archive girl. His father would have despised him for it.

Yet Elin’s expression held neither mockery nor astonishment. She merely listened.

That was worse—and better—than praise. It made him want to continue.

“When you tell me what to do,” he said slowly, testing each word before surrendering it, “the choice is no longer mine to ruin. If I obey and matters go badly, at least I have obeyed well. If they go rightly...” He looked at her bare feet and then, with effort, raised his eyes to her face. “Then perhaps I have been useful.”

Useful. His father had never called him that. Handsome, charming, extravagant, ornamental—yes. Never useful.

Elin reached down and placed two fingers beneath his chin. The touch was light enough that he could have turned away.

He did not.

She lifted his face until he was looking directly at her. Something in her gaze made the titles, the ledgers and the years beneath his father’s judgement recede. Severin felt an absurd, almost painful longing for her approval.

It was entirely true. He now looked forward to her instructions more than to devising commands of his own. He had also noticed that, since he had gone down upon his knees, she had ceased addressing him as Baron, my lord or Sir. The very omission pleased him. He could not understand what was happening. Her nakedness and composure were making him feel like another man.

She fell silent and waited.

Severin could think of nothing he wished to say or ask. He no longer wanted to decide anything; he wanted to discover where Elin intended to lead him. Yet the silence seemed to demand something of him.

“Come a little closer.”

Elin immediately took a step towards him. Now scarcely a few inches separated them. Her body was so near that he imagined he could sense its moisture in the air.

Her eyes flicked briefly towards the mantel clock. Then she looked down at him again.

“Tell me what you want to do more than anything else at this moment.”

He made no attempt to think. He merely allowed the words to pour from him as freely as the rain beyond the windows.

What did he want most? He wanted to fling himself between her thighs; he wanted to unburden his heart; he wanted to pour out every cruel judgement and humiliation his father had ever inflicted upon him. How was one to put all that into words?

“I want to do whatever Elin wants me to do,” he heard himself say.

“Oh, my dear Severin.” Elin’s voice was warm and gentle. She cupped his head in her hands and drew it against her sex, her hair tickling his cheeks. Her touch seemed safe; he surrendered into it.

After a moment, she released his head, took a step back and sank to her knees opposite him.

“Why do you think you answered as you did?”

He considered. The mirror. The oath mirror. It was the mirror that had made him confess everything, that had forced him to empty his heart.

She seemed to read his thoughts, for she gave a slight shake of her head.

“Look at the clock, Severin.”

He did. Only then did he remember where its hands had stood when they swore their oaths.

“The half-hour ended before I asked the question,” she said. “The mirror held no power over your answer. That was only you.”

He stared at the clock. She was right. He could have refused to answer. He could have risen from his knees and ordered her from the room. Although he did not believe in the mirror’s magic, it would have been comforting to lay the blame upon it.

The thought should have restored him. Instead it frightened him more profoundly than the mirror had done.

He shifted his weight and brought one foot beneath himself. The movement was awkward, but nothing prevented it. No invisible hand forced his knee back to the carpet. Elin remained opposite him, watching without command or warning.

One push, and he would be standing.

His gaze travelled past her to the bell-pull beside the fireplace. A single tug would bring a footman. He could have her wrapped in a coat and escorted from the castle. He could burn the deed, return the old records to the archive and spend the remainder of the night persuading himself that nothing unusual had occurred.

He nearly did it. His thigh tensed. His heel pressed into the rug.

Then he imagined the study after she had gone: the portfolio absent, the gas bill still upon the floor, every unopened letter waiting upon the desk. He imagined himself alone before the oath mirror, restored to his proper height and his proper rank, with no one to tell him what came next.

The prospect was intolerable.

Slowly, Severin withdrew his foot and settled upon both knees again.

Elin had not asked him to remain. She had not even smiled. There was no triumph in her face—only patient attention, as though she had shown him an open door and wished to see which side of it he chose.

He had chosen the floor.

“Who are you—really?” was all he could ask.

“You know my name. I am Elin of Falkenheim. There has always been an Elin here. Not the same woman, and yet the same.”

It was not her name he had asked for. Yet her words drew together something that had been troubling him: Elin, written again and again upon papers separated by generations, each signature bearing the same peculiar hook. For one impossible moment, he seemed on the verge of understanding. Then the thought slipped away.

She rose and returned to the desk. Still naked, she gathered the old records into a neat pile and laid the waiting instrument on top. Instead of taking the chair behind the desk, she seated herself in the smaller chair opposite it and began to read.

Severin remained upon his knees as she crossed the room. She neither ordered him to follow nor dismissed him; she merely settled the portfolio before her, as though his presence required no immediate attention.

From where he knelt, he could not see the writing upon the sheets. He could only watch her lay one of the older records beside the instrument and move her gaze between them.

The quiet turning of pages mingled with the rain. Once she paused over a figure and rested one fingertip beside it, but she made no mark and gave no sign of what she thought.

Several minutes passed. Pain spread through his knees, a steady reminder that no oath now compelled him to remain. Elin turned another page. He stayed. At last, his need overcame his pride.

“I—I... what am I to...” His mouth had grown dry. “Does Elin have a command for me?”

She raised her eyes from the page and looked at him. Her smile was small, almost tender.

“There it is,” she said. “Freely asked, after the half-hour. The wager is mine.”

He remembered the terms. He ought to have been horrified. Instead, relief moved through him so swiftly that he nearly laughed.

“And this is my command, Severin. Come to the desk and sign the instrument appointing me steward of Falkenheim.”

He rose, though his legs had stiffened from kneeling, and came to the desk. Elin did not immediately give him the pen. Instead she turned the first sheet towards him and laid one finger beneath the title.

“Read it.”

He had intended merely to sign. Obedience would have been easier if he had not understood precisely what he surrendered. Yet her command admitted no such refuge.

The first sheet appointed Elin Venn sworn steward of Falkenheim and placed all accounts, contracts, lands, servants and household expenditures beneath her authority. Severin read each clause. The legal language was dry, but its meaning was not. From the moment he signed, she could countermand his instructions, dismiss those he appointed and refuse any purchase he wished to make from the estate’s funds.

“All of it?” he asked.

“All of it.”

For one heartbeat his hand tightened around the pen. Then he wrote his name. The nib scratched loudly across the paper: Severin Falk.

While the ink dried, Elin sat upon the edge of the chair and rolled on her first stocking. The plain grey wool travelled slowly over her calf. She fastened the garter, rose and placed the second sheet before him.

This one transferred custody of the ledgers, seals, correspondence and keys. He was to surrender every unopened demand for payment, every private agreement made in the estate’s name and every account he had neglected since his father’s death. Concealment would constitute a breach of his oath.

His face burned. “You mean to examine everything?”

“Everything.”

There would be no locked drawer, no bill pushed beneath a pile of invitations, no month in which he could pretend that sums were merely marks upon a page. She would know the price of his horses, his wine, his cigarettes, his journeys—every pleasure purchased while Falkenheim sank around him.

The shame almost made him set down the pen. Almost. Then Elin lifted one bare foot and began to draw on the other stocking, entirely unhurried, as though she could wait all night for him to decide what manner of man he meant to be.

He signed.

She wound the skirt about her hips and secured it at the waist before presenting the third sheet. It acknowledged her authority over Severin’s personal expenditure from the estate. Until the debts were paid, he could draw no money, sell no property and enter into no agreement without her consent.

“Even my own allowance?”

“There is no allowance while the servants’ wages remain overdue.”

The rebuke struck cleanly because she spoke it without cruelty. He thought of the kitchen maids lowering their voices when he passed, of the stablemaster who had asked twice for funds to replace rotten harness, of the gas bill lying upon the floor. 

“Show me where.”

Elin pointed. He signed a third time.

She sat long enough to pull on her boots and lace them, then drew on her blouse and buttoned it from the waist upwards. While he read the fourth and final undertaking aloud, she slipped into her grey-green jacket and smoothed its sleeves. His voice was unsteady at first. He swore to obey the steward in all matters concerning Falkenheim, to place the estate’s preservation before his comfort and to submit any dispute between them to the oath mirror. The authority would endure until every debt was discharged or Elin herself relinquished the office.

Years, he thought. This might last years.

Elin fastened the last button at her throat. “You may still read it again.”

He knew what she was giving him: one final pause in which to feel the full dimensions of his defeat. He read the undertaking a second time. Nothing in it had changed. He remained the Baron. The castle, the lands and the title would still be his. Only the decisions would belong to Elin.

Only the decisions.

The phrase should have terrified him. Instead his shoulders loosened.

He signed.

As he added the date and pressed his signet into the warm sealing wax, Elin pinned her hair into its modest knot. By the time he laid down the pen, she had become once more the neatly dressed archive girl who had trembled before his desk. Yet the transformation deceived him no longer. The clothes made her appear smaller; they did not make her so.

The ink glistened wetly in the strokes of his name. Lightning flashed beyond the windows, and for a moment the signatures shone gold before the light sank away.

Elin examined the instrument sheet by sheet. On the final sheet she made a brief notation in the margin and signed a small E beside it. Standing close enough now to see, Severin recognised the same peculiar hook that had appeared in signatures separated by centuries. Before he could look more closely, she covered the sheet with the others and raised her eyes.

“Good, Severin.”

Elin gathered the signed sheets and carried them around the desk. This time, she did not return to the smaller chair. She drew Severin’s chair towards herself and seated herself in his place, then began sorting through the remaining papers, drawing a slide rule and several pens towards her. Severin merely stood and watched. The desk had always seemed designed to shelter him from consequences; beneath Elin’s hands it became an instrument of work.

Several minutes passed before she glanced up. “You are still standing there.”

“Yes, Elin.”

“And waiting for a command?”

“Yes, Elin.”

“But you have done your part now. Falkenheim and all its affairs are mine. You may run along and do whatever you please—under strict financial supervision, of course.”

A terrible cold seized him. Was it over now? He had surrendered his authority over Falkenheim, yet he still belonged to himself. The thought frightened him.

“I want to surrender myself completely to you, Elin.”

“Are you serious?”

“I am serious.”

“Then prove it.”

She returned her attention to the papers.

“How?” he asked.

“If I tell you, you will only be obeying another command.”

The answer left him strangely desolate. He had expected a task, some difficult or humiliating thing through which he might earn the right to remain near her. Instead she offered him nothing—not even the shelter of instruction.

“You say you wish to obey,” she continued without looking up. “Show me what that means when no oath binds you and no order tells you what to do.”

His gaze moved to the oath mirror. It reflected his fine clothes, his gold watch-chain, the polished boots and careful knot of his cravat—all the insignia by which the world knew what he was. For once, they looked less like privileges than armour.

He strode to the mirror. In its glass he saw a man of nearly forty, clothed in silk and wool, with a title, an estate and a lifetime of privilege still wrapped about him.

One by one, he cast them aside: coat, waistcoat, cravat, shirt, trousers and drawers. Naked, he faced his own reflection. Nothing about him now declared that he was a Baron. He might have been anyone.

He was anyone.

In the mirror, he could see Elin seated at his desk. She watched him, waiting.

“I, Severin Falk the Third, Baron of Falkenheim, do freely and solemnly swear to obey Elin in all things. Her word shall be my law, her wish my purpose, and her slightest gesture my command. She is my mistress, my sovereign and my everything. I am hers.” 

He met her eyes in the glass. She raised one eyebrow.

The faint gesture checked him more effectively than laughter would have done. His oath sounded immense in the gaslit room, but already he heard the vanity in it: the sort of splendid declaration a man might make at midnight and regret over breakfast.

Elin said nothing. She did not rescue him by accepting the words, nor dismiss them as the ravings of an excited man. She merely waited.

He could still qualify the promise. He could say that she was his everything for this evening, until the debts were settled, until Falkenheim was secure. He could preserve some small chamber within himself into which she would never be admitted. The old Baron’s voice seemed to stir inside his skull, calling him weak, ornamental, unfit to command.

Severin looked at the man in the mirror. Naked, kneeling in all but posture, he no longer cared what that voice would call him. He wanted no hidden chamber. He wanted the door shut and the key placed in Elin’s hand.

“For as long as I live,” he added.

This time the mirror truly did glimmer. Severin felt something within his mind close like a lock—something that would never open again.

He turned. Elin had drawn up her skirt and sat with her legs apart. She pointed between her thighs. “Come now, Severin. Tongue out. Show me whom you belong to.”

He moved at once. He had taken no more than a single step when Elin said, “Stop.”

Severin froze.

“Crawl.”

He sank to his knees and began to crawl naked across the hard oak floor towards her. Once again, she seemed to grow before his eyes. By the time he reached the desk, she appeared to tower over him.

Just as he drew near, Elin turned back towards the papers and slipped her legs beneath the desk once more. Severin stopped and looked up at her, uncertain.

“Well, crawl under,” she said with a trace of impatience.

With considerable difficulty, he squeezed himself beneath what had, until moments ago, been his own desk. Her skirt remained gathered about her waist. She let him part her thighs, exposing herself fully to him.

Severin put out his tongue and drew it slowly along her open cleft, from the wetness below to the small, sensitive bud above. He had scarcely begun to tease it when her voice came down to him.

“No. Not yet.”

He lowered his tongue at once and returned to the slow, obedient motion she had permitted, tracing the length of her slick folds without touching the place that would give her the greatest pleasure. Above him, papers shuffled to and fro and a pen scratched steadily across the page. Time passed, and still his tongue moved up and down. She tasted musky and faintly sweet; when her hair brushed his face, it carried the dry scent of paper and dust. Not once did she betray the slightest sign that his efforts pleased her.

Only after a long while did the work above him cease. Elin leant back in the chair.

“Now.”

By then his tongue was nearly numb with exhaustion. He pressed it flat against her and shook his head violently, trying to force life back into the aching muscle. Elin caught his head in both hands and pulled him harder against herself as her hips began to move.

She rode his mouth with slow, deliberate movements. Severin fought for breath, snatching it in the brief moments when her body drew back from his mouth. Gradually her movements grew harsher, faster and less controlled. He strained to keep his exhausted tongue working.

Her climax took her in hard, shuddering waves. A single small whimper escaped her.

When at last she released him, she looked down between her thighs. “That was not especially good. It never is, in the beginning. But you have your whole life to learn.”

The papers began to rustle again. Elin made no attempt to let him out from beneath the desk.

Severin was painfully hard. He wrapped one hand around his cock and began to stroke himself slowly, as he had done so many times before.

“No,” Elin said, laughter in her voice. “You may forget about that until every debt is paid.”

His hand fell away at once. He rested his cheek against her thigh and closed his eyes.

Above him, Elin’s pen resumed its steady scratch across the papers that would decide Falkenheim’s future. Beyond the windows, the rain had stopped.