The Folly by the Lake

The folly had been built for lovers. I understood this the moment I saw it...and resented it, a little. That someone had thought to construct desire in stone a century before I needed it.

It smelled of standing water and something sweeter underneath. Rotting lilies, maybe, from the lake. The kind of smell that should have been unpleasant but wasn't...decay dressed up as perfume, the way old secrets smell when you finally open the drawer.

They were already there.

Lady Iselle on the curved bench, pale blue against pale stone. And beside her, close enough that their shoulders touched, the husband's sister. Lady Maren. I had noticed her at the ball...dark hair, a laugh that carried...but I had not thought about her. I had been too busy not thinking about Iselle.

Now I was thinking about both of them, and the way Maren's hand rested on the bench between them, and the way Iselle's fingers lay close enough to brush it.

"You came," Iselle said.

"You knew I would." The words came out sharper than I intended. I was annoyed. At the ambush, at the violation of what I had believed was ours alone. I wanted to ask why is she here but I already knew asking would be wrong. Would reveal something small in me.

Maren watched me with an expression I couldn't parse. Assessing. "He's irritated," she said to Iselle, as if I weren't standing six feet away.

"He'll adjust."

"Will he?"

I said nothing. Let them talk. Let them think I was patient when really I was calculating: what this meant, what they wanted, whether I still wanted it if the shape had changed.

I did. That was the problem. I still did.

"Sit," Iselle said, gesturing to a weathered stone across from them. A command dressed as hospitality. I sat because I wanted to, not because she told me to...a distinction that mattered only to me.

"Last night," Maren said. "Tell me what you think it was."

I looked at Iselle. Her face gave me nothing. "A beginning," I said carefully.

"To what?"

"I don't know yet."

Maren's smile had edges. "That's more honest than most men would be. They'd have called it a conquest. An affair. A moment of weakness." She tilted her head. "You haven't decided what story you're telling yourself."

She was right, and I hated that she was right. I had spent the night trying to frame what happened in the study...what it meant, what I wanted it to mean...and I kept failing. Every narrative I constructed collapsed under its own weight.

"Iselle tells me you listened to her," Maren continued. "That you paid attention."

"I did."

"She also tells me you wanted to take over. Near the end. That she could feel you holding back."

I went still. I hadn't known that had been visible. I thought I'd hidden it...that surge of hunger when she was beneath me, the urge to stop obeying and simply take.

"Yes," I admitted. No point lying.

Iselle spoke for the first time since I'd sat down. "I liked that you didn't."

"But I wanted to."

"I know. That's what made it interesting."

Maren stood. The movement was unhurried, deliberate, and I understood she was showing me something...the ease of her body, the confidence of it. She crossed the small space and stopped directly in front of me.

"I watched," she said. "Last night. Through the connecting door."

The world rearranged itself.

"The music room," I said. My voice came out flat. "You were in the music room."

"I was."

I looked at Iselle. She met my gaze steadily, waiting to see what I would do with this information. I could feel the anger building...at the deception, at being watched without consent, at being made into a performance I hadn't agreed to...

But underneath the anger was something else. Something that recognized, with uncomfortable clarity, that I hadn't hated being watched. That knowing someone had seen me kneel for Iselle, seen me worship her, made the memory sharper rather than shameful.

"You should have told me," I said.

"Would you have performed differently if I had?"

I didn't answer. We both knew what the answer was.

Maren reached down and tilted my chin up with two fingers. Her grip was firm, almost clinical. "You're angry," she observed. "Good. Anger is honest. It's the men who pretend they don't feel anything I don't trust."

"I'm not angry."

"Liar."

She was right. I was furious. And aroused. And confused about which feeling was generating which.

"We share things," Maren said. "Iselle and I. Have for two years. We're careful about who else gets included." Her thumb traced my jaw. "You're an audition. Do you understand what that means?"

"I think so."

"Say it."

"You're deciding whether I'm worth the risk."

"Close." She released my chin. "We're deciding whether you're worth each other. Whether adding you strengthens what we have or fractures it." She glanced back at Iselle. "I didn't like you, watching through that door. You were too careful. Too controlled. I thought you were performing."

"I was performing. For her."

"I know that now. I didn't then."

She circled behind me. I felt her hands on my shoulders, pressing down...not hard, but firm enough to communicate that I shouldn't move. Iselle watched from the bench, her expression intent.

"May I?" Maren asked, and the question surprised me. After everything...the ambush, the revelation, the clinical assessment...she was asking permission.

"Yes."

Her hands slid down my chest. Over my waistcoat, feeling the shape of me through the fabric. "You're thinner than you look in evening dress," she observed. "Good shoulders, though. Iselle said you undressed well."

"She watched that too?"

"She described it." Maren's mouth was close to my ear now. "In detail. How you obeyed when she told you to lock the door. How your hands shook when you touched her. How you dropped to your knees like you'd been waiting your whole life for someone to tell you to."

I felt my face heat. Not from embarrassment...or not entirely. From the exposure. From hearing myself described by someone who had been imagining it while I was living it.

"Tell me something," Maren said. "When you were inside her...when she told you to look at her and remember...what were you thinking?"

I hesitated. The truth was complicated. Ugly in places.

"Tell me," she repeated. "I'll know if you lie."

"I was thinking that I wanted to break something." The words came out rough. "I was thinking that she was trusting me too much. That I could hurt her if I wanted to. That the power she was giving me was real, even if she was pretending to hold it."

Silence. Maren's hands had stopped moving.

Then: "Iselle. Come here."

Iselle rose and crossed to us. She stood in front of me while Maren remained behind, and for a moment I was bracketed by them...caught between pale and dark, known and unknown.

"Say it again," Iselle said quietly. "What you just told her."

"I wanted to break something. When I was inside you. I wanted..." I swallowed. "I wanted to stop obeying and make you feel how much I wanted you. The real wanting. Not the controlled version."

Her hand touched my cheek. Gentle. "Why didn't you?"

"Because you told me not to."

"That's not enough of a reason."

"Because..." I struggled with it. The words kept slipping away. "Because the wanting was better for being held. Because you trusted me to hold it. Because breaking that would have broken something else. Something I..."

I stopped. I couldn't finish the sentence. I didn't know what came after.

Iselle kissed me.

Different from last night. Softer. Almost tentative, as if she were asking a question rather than taking an answer. Behind me, Maren's hands resumed their exploration, sliding lower, finding the fastening of my trousers.

"She wasn't sure about you," Maren murmured against my neck. "After you left last night. She thought she'd misjudged something."

Iselle pulled back just enough to speak. "You were too perfect. I kept waiting for the mask to slip."

"It's slipping now," I said.

"I know. That's why I'm still here."

Maren freed me from my trousers. Her hand wrapped around my cock with a grip that was confident but not expert...she was learning me, the same way Iselle had learned me, but with different methods. More clinical. More curious.

"He responds to praise," Iselle said, watching. "Tell him he's doing well."

"You're doing well," Maren said, and her voice was dry, almost mocking...but her hand tightened in a way that contradicted the tone.

"Don't..." I started.

"Don't what?"

"Don't make fun of it."

She stopped moving. I felt her breath against my neck, warm and close. "I'm not making fun," she said quietly. "I'm testing. There's a difference."

She resumed stroking. Slower now. More deliberate.

"Iselle says you knelt for her without being asked. That you put your mouth on her before she'd even suggested it."

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Because I wanted to. Because..." The thought fractured as her thumb traced the head of my cock. "Because she looked like she needed something no one was giving her. And I wanted to be the one who gave it."

"You wanted to be necessary."

"Yes."

"That's dangerous," Maren said. "Needing to be needed."

"I know."

"Do you?" She released me, stepped back. Came around to stand beside Iselle, the two of them facing me together. "I don't think you do. I think you've been so busy performing devotion that you haven't asked what you actually want."

"I want this. Both of you. Whatever this is."

"That's not specific enough."

I looked at them...Maren with her sharp eyes and sharper questions, Iselle with her quiet intensity and the vulnerability she kept trying to hide beneath composure. I wanted them. But Maren was right. Wanting wasn't enough.

"I want to know what you are to each other," I said finally. "I want to understand what I would be joining. Not just the..." I gestured vaguely. "Not just the physical arrangement. The rest of it. How you decided. What it means to you."

Something in Maren's expression shifted. Softened, maybe, though that wasn't quite the word.

"Two years ago," she said. "Edmund had been my brother's best friend since childhood. I was at the wedding. I saw how she looked during the vows...like she was signing a contract, not making a promise. Afterward, I found her crying in the garden."

"I wasn't crying," Iselle said.

Maren glanced at her. "You were crying."

"I was..." Iselle stopped. Started again. "It wasn't crying the way you make it sound. Like I was some fragile thing you rescued."

"I didn't say that."

"You implied it." Iselle's jaw was tight. "I was angry. I was furious at myself for going through with it when I knew...when I'd known for months that it was wrong. The tears were rage. Not sadness. Not...not whatever damsel narrative you've constructed."

A pause. Something moved between them that I couldn't read...old argument, maybe, or old wound.

"Fine," Maren said finally. "She was furious. Crying furiously. I told her she hadn't given up anything. That marriage was a legal arrangement, not a prison sentence. That there were ways to survive it."

"That part's true," Iselle said. Softer now. "That part I'll give you."

"Six months later, we stopped pretending the comfort I was offering was sisterly."

"Three months," Iselle corrected. "You always say six. It was three. I counted."

Maren's expression shifted...surprised, maybe, or caught. "Three, then."

"And now?"

"Now we're careful. Now we take what we can, when we can, and we don't apologize for it." Maren looked at me steadily. "You would be the first man. We've talked about it...whether it was something we wanted...but we'd never found someone who..."

She stopped. Frowned. Started again.

"Most men hear 'two women' and see a fantasy. A performance for their benefit. They don't understand that they'd be entering something that already exists. That they'd have to fit themselves around it instead of expecting it to reshape around them."

"I don't expect you to reshape."

"No. But you might expect to be central. That's just as dangerous."

She stepped closer. Close enough that I had to look up to meet her eyes.

"If we do this," she said, "you will sometimes be secondary. You will sometimes watch while Iselle and I forget you're there. You will sometimes want things you cannot have because our arrangement doesn't permit them. Can you accept that?"

I thought about it. Really thought, instead of saying what they wanted to hear.

"I don't know," I admitted. "I want to say yes. But I've never...this isn't something I've done before. I don't know what I can accept until I'm asked to accept it."

Maren smiled then. The first genuine smile I'd seen from her. "That," she said, "is the right answer."

She started to sink to her knees. Stopped. Something flickered across her face...not doubt, exactly. Calculation. She was deciding whether this was something she actually wanted or something she thought she should want because Iselle wanted it.

"You don't have to," I said.

"I know I don't have to." Her voice was sharp. Annoyed, maybe, that I'd seen the hesitation. Then, quieter: "I'm deciding."

She knelt.

The stone must have been cold. Hard. She didn't flinch, but I saw her adjust her weight, finding a position that worked. This sharp, questioning woman, on her knees in a crumbling folly with afternoon light catching the places where her hair had come loose from its pins. It did something to my chest that wasn't just arousal.

"Watch," Iselle said, settling beside me on the stone. Her hand found mine. "Watch what she does."

Maren's mouth took me in.

Not like Iselle. Different rhythm, different focus. She wasn't trying to make me lose control...she was studying me. Learning what made me gasp, what made me grip Iselle's hand hard enough to hurt. Clinical. Curious. And underneath that, something hungrier than she wanted to show.

"She's thinking about whether she likes the taste of you," Iselle murmured in my ear. "She's deciding whether this is something she wants to do again, or whether once will be enough to satisfy her curiosity."

"And you?"

"I already know I want you again. The question is whether she does. Whether we fit."

Maren pulled back. Her lips were wet. Her eyes were dark. "He holds still," she observed. "Even when I took him deep. Even when I..." She did something with her tongue that made my hips buck involuntarily. "There. Better. I was starting to think you weren't human."

"Iselle told me not to move."

"I told you not to move last night. No one's given you that instruction today."

I hesitated. The rules had shifted. The ground was less stable than I'd thought.

"What do you want?" I asked.

"Right now? I want you to touch me. While I'm still on my knees. I want to see what you do when you're allowed to act instead of react."

I reached down. Slid my hand into her hair. Darker than Iselle's, coarser. She made a small sound when my fingers tightened...not pain, not exactly. Acknowledgment.

"Better," she said. "Now..."

Voices. Distant but approaching. Laughter carrying across the water.

We froze.

"The boating party," Iselle said. "Edmund's guests...I forgot..."

Maren was already standing, already smoothing her dress, her hands moving with practiced efficiency. I fumbled with my trousers, fingers clumsy. Iselle retrieved my waistcoat from the stone where I'd dropped it at some point I couldn't remember.

"The willows," Maren said. "North path. Go."

"When..."

"Tomorrow. The groundskeeper's cottage past the orchard. Seven o'clock. Tell anyone who asks you're inspecting the property."

"Maren..."

"Go."

I went.

Through the willows, coat over my arm, heart slamming against my ribs. Behind me, I heard them arranging themselves on the bench...the rustle of fabric, the murmur of voices shifting into polished, sisterly tones.

The boating party rounded the point.

I didn't look back.