Yu-Gi-Oh! Fan Fiction ❯ Heatless ❯ The Bargain ( Chapter 1 )

[ Y - Young Adult: Not suitable for readers under 16 ]

Surrey, England, 1800

Oh, if I could only be like you. Crouched behind the hedgerows along the lane the led to magnificent Greville Hall Anzu Mazaki watched the ornate black carriage roll past, the top down, the earl's gilded crest gleaming on the door. Seated on red velvet squabs, his daughter, Lady Nosaka Miho, and her companions laughed as if they hadn't a care in the world.

Anzu stared at them with longing, imagining what it might be like to dress in such beautiful clothes, gowns fashioned on the finest silk, in shades of pink, lavender, and an almost iridescent green-each with a small parasol.

Someday, she thought wistfully.

If she closed her eyes, she could imagine herself in a gown of shimmering gold, her light brown hair swept up in the wind, her slender feet encased in matching kid slippers. Someday I'll have a carriage of my own, she vowed, and a different gown for every single day of the week.

But it wouldn't happen today, she knew, giving up a dispirited sigh, nor anytime in the foreseeable future.

Turning away from the disappearing carriage, she lifted her coarse brown skirts above her sturdy shoes and raced back toward the cottage. She should have been home an hour ago. Her father would be furious if he found out what she had been doing. She prayed he was out in the fields.

Instead, when she lifted the leather curtain that served as the door of the cottage, Whitby Mazaki (don't know Anzu's father name) waiting. Anzu gasped as her father painfully gripped her arm and slammed her against the rough-textured wattle-and-daub wall. Forcing her to look into his puffy, florid face, she flinched as his big hand cracked across her cheek.

“I told ye not to dawdle. I said for ye to deliver that mendin' and get back here as quickas ye could. What were ye doing? Gawking at the ladies in their fancy carriage? Ye was daydreamin' like ye always do-wasn't ye? Wichin' for somethin' yer never gonna have. It's time ye faced the truth, gel. Yer nothin' but a cottager's daughter and that's all ye ever will be. Nothin' but a cottager's daughter and that's all ye ever will be. Now get yerself out in those fields.”

Anzu didn't argue, just ducked away from the fury she read in her father's flushed face. Outside the cottage, she dragged in a shaky breath and shoved her light brown hair back over her shoulders. Her cheek still burned from her father's painful slap, but it had been worth it.

As she hurried across the dusty earth toward the vegetable garden, her apron flying up in the wind, Anzu stubbornly set her chin. No matter what her father said someday she would be a lady. Whit Mazaki wasn't one of those fortune- tellers she had seen last year at the fair. He couldn't see into the future-especially not her father. She would make a better life for her self, escape the dreary existence she now lived. Her destiny was her own, and somewhere beyond her father's dismal patch of ground she would find it.

For now, with her mother long dead. Anzu worked from dusk till dawn. She swept the earthen floor of their two room cottage and cooked the meager fare that was all the small rented plot of ground could provide, gathered potatoes, pulled turnips, worked at hoeing and weeding the vegetable garden, and helped her father in the wheat fields.

It was a dreary, backbreaking, endlessly dull existence that she intended to escape. Anzu vowed it with every ounce of her being.

And she a plan

As he did once each month, Sugoroku Mutou, Fourth Earl of Greville, spent the day inspecting his fields and checking on his tenants. It was hotter then usual today, the sun a scorching white orb burning down across the earth and baking the rutted roads to the consistency of granite. He usually preferred riding one of his blooded stallions, but today, with the weather so warm, he took his light phaeton instead.

He leaned back against the tufted leather seat, grateful for the slight breeze blowing in from the north. At the age of 55, with his olive skin and silver-tinged wavy white hair, he was still an attractive (yeah….sure) man, especially popular with the ladies. In his youth, he'd had more than his share-as heir to an earldom he could pick and choose. But as he'd grown older, his tastes had subtly changed. Now, instead of the skills of a practiced lover, he preferred the tenderness and exuberance of youth.

Edmund thought of his current mistress, Delilah Cheek, of the young woman he kept in London. Delilah was the daughter of an actress he'd once known in the biblical sense. He had been sleeping with Delilah for over a year, and her young, tender body still excited him. Just thinking of her small firm breast and long coppery hair made him hard. At sixteen, when he had first taken her, the girl had been a virgin. Since then, he had taught her well how to please him.

Still, she was reaching her maturity, her body ripening past the slender, almost boyish curves that enticed him, and soon he would grow tired of her. He would yearn for the youth and beauty of an innocent, the way he always did.

God's breath, it was a troublesome predilection.

His mind slipped backward to the days of his youth, and a foul word hovered on his breath. He'd been wed at nine-teen, an arranged marriage that produced only bitter memories of a cowering, frigid wife, long dead now, and a beautiful but worthless daughter, not the son and heir he needed.

Of course there was his bastard son, Atem, that spawn of the devil he had sired with Isobel Bedford, the daughter of a local squire. Isobel had been wild and beautiful, as reckless and hedonistic as he. He might not have believed the boy was his, but the physical resemblance-and the enmity between them-was irrefutable proof of the deed.

As the phaeton turned down the dirt lane that led to his tenant, Whitby Mazaki's, cottage, Sugoroku thoughts smug briefly to Delilah and how he would use her young body when he returned to the city. But at the slight if Whit's daughter, just turned fourteen, his interest focused on a different direction. Anzu was tall for her age, her body reed slender, not yet budding into womanhood. Still, the signs were all there. With her short hair, big china blue eyes, soft, bow-shaped mouth, and heart-shaped face, the girl was destined to be a beauty.

When he came to visited, he was unfailingly kind to her. She wasn't ripe enough to suit him yet, but Sugoroku always liked to keep the doors opened.

Anzu watched the earl's sleek black phaeton roll up in front of the house. She had known he was coming. The earl always came to visit on the same day of the month.

Checking her appearance, she smoothed her plain blue skirt and clean white blouse, freshly washed last night for the occasion. Unconsciously she rubbed the welt on her thigh where her father had taken a switch to her. She'd been flirting withJyoonouchi Katsuya , the cooper's youngest son, he had said. It wasn't the truth.Jyoonouchi Katsuya was over-the-top for Mai Valentine, the butcher's daughter, Anzu's best friend when Whit Mazaki had been drinking, as he was last night, the truth didn't matter.

And in a strange way, Anzu was glad it had happened. It was the final nudge she needed to set her long-thought-out plan into motion.

The carriage rolled up in a swarm of dust. The earl set the brake and jumped down. He was handsome she supposed, with the silver in his thick white hair and those odd gray eyes, at least for a man of his aging years.

“Mornin', milord,” She said, making him a deep, respectful curtsy. She had been practicing for days and was pleased as she executed the difficult maneuver the she didn't lose her balance.

“Indeed it is a fine morning, Miss Mazaki.” His eyes ran over her in that admiring way he had. It made her feel like a woman instead of just a girl. “Where is your father this fine day?”

“He had an errand to run in the village. He musta forgot you were coming'.” And Anzu hadn't bothered to remind him. She had wanted him gone so she could talk to the earl alone.

“I'm sorry I missed him, but I suppose it doesn't matter.” He glanced out across the fields, his expression warm with approval. “I can see the crop is faring well. If the weather stays good, you ought to bring in a very good harvest this year.”
”I'm sure we will.” The earl turned away from her, started back toward his carriage, but Anzu caught his arm.

“Excuse me, milord, but there's somethin' I been wantin' to talk to you about.”

He smiled as he turned to face her. “Of course, my dear. What is it?”

“Do you……..do you think I'm pretty?” She thought that he did, since he always seemed to stare at her in that strange, assessing way, but still she held her breath. Her plan was doomed to fail if the answer was no.

A slow, appreciative smile curved his lips. He studied the shaped of her mouth and the line of her jaw, let his eyes drift to her breast. She wished they were round and full like Mai's.

“You're very pretty, Anzu.”

“Do………..do you think a man……someone like yourself……..do you think-in a few years, I mean-that a man like you might be interested in a girl like me?”

Lord Sugoroku frowned. “There are different kinds of interest, Anzu. You and I are not from the same social circles, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't find you attractive. I believe- in a few years' time -you'll grow into a beautiful young woman.”

Her heart kicked up with hope. “If that is so, I was wonderin'……I've heard stories milord…about the ladies you keep in London.”

The frown reappeared, mixed with a look she couldn't quite read. “Exactly what sort of storied have you heard, my dear?”

“Oh, nothing bad, milord.” She hastened to assure him.

“Just about the girls….that you treat `em real good and buy `em pretty dresses and all”

He didn't ask where she'd heard the talks. It was common knowledge in the earl had kept a number of young woman as his mistresses.

“What exactly are asking me, Anzu?”

“I was hoping maybe you and me could make some sorta bargain.”

“What sort of bargain?”

it all rushed out in a single long breath, as if a dam had suddenly broken. “I wanna be a lady, milord-more than anything in the world. I want to learn to read and write. I wanna learn to speak right and wear pretty clothes-and put my hair up.” She swept the long mass up on her head to demonstrate her words. When she released it, it tumbled back down past her waist. “If you would send me to school so's I could learn all those things…if I could go to one of those fancy finishing schools where they teach you to be a lady, then I'd be willing' to be one of yer girls.”

She watched the surprise in his eyes turn to speculation, rather an unholy glean, she thought, and felt the first faint stirrings of trepidation.

“You want me to pay for your education-is that what you're saying?”

“Aye, milord.”

“And in return, you would be willing to become my mistress.”

She swallowed. “Aye”

“Do you understand what that word means?”

A beet red flush stole into her cheeks, as she knew in meant sleeping in the same bed with the man. What else might entail she wasn't completely sure, but it didn't really matter. She was willing to pay whatever price it took to escape her father and her wretched life on the farm.

“Mostly, milord.”

He studied her again, his pale eyes raking her from head to foot. She felt as if he were stripping away her clothes piece by piece, felt the ridiculous urge to fling her arms up to cover herself. Instead, she endured his scrutiny and stoically lifted her chin.

“That's a very interesting proposal,” he said. “there is your father to consider, of course, but knowing him as I do, perhaps something might be arranged that he would find satisfactory.” He reached down and caught her chin, turned her face from side to side, studying the hollows beneath her cheekbones, the slight indentation in her chin. He traced a finger over the curve of her lips, then nodded approval.

“Yes……an interesting proposal indeed. You shall hear from me soon, my dear Anzu. Until then, I suggest you keep this conversation between the two of us.”

“Aye, milord. That I will.” She watched him climb into his carriage, watched him slap the reins against the backs of his glossy black horse. Her heart was beating fiercely, her palms slightly damp.

Excitement pumped through her, the knowledge that her plan might actually succeed. Uncertainty followed close on it's heels. Anzu couldn't help fearing that in return for the chance at a better life she might have just traded her soul