Lady Mildew was still angry and spluttering as he got Rissa out of the tub and dried her off thoroughly with a large, fluffy towel. But since James continued to ignore her old chaperone, Rissa was determined to do the same.
“Have the goodness to reattach my Chastity wire, please, Lady Mildew,” she said coolly, stepped in front of her and holding open her towel. “I am most fatigued from tonight’s ball and I would like to get some sleep.”
The sour look on the other woman’s face would have curdled fresh milk, but she finally snapped the silver wire back in place and pointed the remote at it to turn it back on. Which of course, it failed to do since the device seemed to be permanently broken.
“Oh! Ouch!” Rissa gasped, pretending that the wire was shocking her. “I must still be damp from the bath—that’s hurts!”
A look of satisfaction came over Lady Mildew’s face.
“Serves you right, you dirty girl!” she snapped. “Now get to bed. And mind you don’t reach between your legs, as I’m sure you’ve a mind to!”
“I couldn’t even if I wanted to!” Rissa protested, forgetting for a moment that the Chastity Wire no longer prevented her. “Why do you always think the worst of me, Lady Mildew?” she demanded.
“Because you are the worst, dirtiest, filthiest girl I ever encountered in my whole long life!” her old chaperone snarled. “Now, I must go. Get to bed and try to keep your hands where they belong.”
Then she stumped out of Rissa’s rooms, leaving her feeling almost as bad as she had after dancing with the Duke.
23
“Princess, you can’t listen to her.”
It was clear to James that the old female’s words had deeply affected Princess Ka’rissa.
She looked up at him with wounded eyes.
“But what if she’s right? What if I am a dirty, disgusting girl?”
“You’re not,” James said firmly. He wished there was a way to get rid of Lady Mildew completely. It made him so angry when she upset the Princess and made her feel bad about herself!
Then he realized what he had just thought—angry? Was he having an emotion? Was his damper failing him?
Surely not, he told himself. I’m just trying to protect the Princess—that’s my mission. Of course any threat to her mental wellbeing is unacceptable.
“Have you considered,” he said to Princess Ka’rissa. “That the reason you’ve been taught that you are ‘bad’ or ‘dirty’ is to keep you from touching yourself, thereby keeping you under the thumb of the people who are trying to control you through your Heat Cycle?”
Ka’rissa nibbled her bottom lip, her big, amber-brown eyes filled with uncertainty.
“Do you really think so?”
“I think it’s highly possible,” James said grimly. “Or it could be that Lady Mildew is simply raising you the way that she was raised. Maybe she was taught to believe that a female is inherently dirty between her thighs—while nothing could be farther from the truth.”
“Really?” The Princess still looked uncertain. “What…how do the Kindred view that…that area?” she asked softly.
“With great reverence,” James answered seriously. “My people believe that a female’s sex is one of the most beautiful parts of her.”
“Beautiful?” Ka’rissa shook her head. “Really?”
“Beautiful inside and out,” James assured her. Though he had almost no physical experience with females himself, he was, at his core, Kindred. It was in his DNA to revere females and appreciate their feminine beauty—something he found very easy to do where the petite, curvy little Princess was concerned.
“Beautiful inside?” She was still looking at him with a mixture of both skepticism and hope. “But how can you be sure that I would be beautiful inside, James? I do not even know what…what I look like there. Inside my…my nether lips, I mean,” she added, her voice dropping to a shameful whisper.
Again, James felt himself getting angry—it was a feeling that rose in his chest and made his hands ball into fists and his eyes feel hot and red. It was the same feeling he’d gotten while watching that bastard, Duke Grabbington, holding Ka’rissa too tightly on the dance floor.
This new, strong emotion—if it was an emotion—wasn’t directed at the Princess, of course. He was angry at Lady Mildew and the whole society of Regalia Five which taught that a woman was somehow less than a man, that she was dirty and disgusting in the spot where she was actually most beautiful and feminine. It seemed wrong to him—wrong and reprehensible—to make a female feel ashamed of something that should be a natural, normal part of her body. Not to mention shaming her and making her feel guilty for wanting to explore that part and bring herself pleasure.
“James?” Princess Ka’rissa touched his arm, pulling him out of the strange new feelings that seemed to be swamping him. “Are you quite all right?” she asked softly. “Your face…it’s so very grim.”