The bathing room of Hartfield Mansion was large.

It had been built for the household’s original occupants — a full aristocratic staff, multiple family members, the expectation of use — and the main tub was accordingly generous. Stone-edged, deep, fed by a copper pipe system that Eliantra’s husband had installed and which was one of the few things his money had paid for that she didn’t currently hate.

Two smaller tubs along the far wall. A wooden shelf of soaps, oils, scrubbing cloths. A rack of towels. A brazier for keeping the room warm, currently cold and unlit.

Rihana looked at the room.

Assessed it.

Began.

"The large tub," she said, already moving toward the copper valve. "We’ll use this one."

"We will use separate—" Eliantra started.

"Wood savings," Rihana said pleasantly, turning the valve. Water began to fill in a low, rushing sound.

"That is not—"

Rihana turned.

Her hands found Eliantra’s robe — the lapels, quick, efficient — and pulled.

The robe came open.

The nightgown beneath it was thin cotton, worn soft with use, and the specific, comprehensive fullness of Eliantra’s body was entirely legible through it — the wide, generous curve of her chest, the thick press of her underneath the fabric, the bra barely managing the architecture it had been assigned.

Eliantra grabbed both lapels back with both hands.

"STOP. My clothes—"

"They’ll get wet otherwise," Rihana said.

"I don’t CARE—"

Rihana’s hands moved to the nightgown hem instead.

Eliantra stepped backward.

The robe came fully off during the step — Rihana had simply not let go — and Eliantra stood in her nightgown and bra with the expression of a woman watching her defenses be systematically and cheerfully dismantled.

Her thick chest heaved with indignation.

The bra, under the nightgown’s thin fabric, clearly contained more than it was comfortable with.

"Lady Rihana," Marta said, from the doorway, in the tone of a senior staff member attempting to assert procedural order. "Perhaps we could be a little more— the Mistress is not accustomed to—"

Rihana turned.

Her hands found Marta’s dress at the shoulders.

"You too," she said. "It’ll get wet."

"This is my only—" Marta started.

The dress was old. The fabric at the shoulders had been washed enough times that the weave had thinned to the specific vulnerability of cloth that has lived a long life.

Rihana pulled.

The shoulder seam gave with a flat, decisive *rip.*

Marta looked down at herself.

The dress had fallen to her waist, bunched there, held by the sash. Above the sash: her undergarment, thin with age, and above that — as the garment shifted with the motion of her arms — her chest, exposed.

Sixty-something years old. Forty years of domestic service. The specific, gravity-affected fullness of a woman who had never thought much about her body because she’d never had occasion to.

Her breasts hung soft and low against her chest, the nipples dark, the skin creped with age, the whole architecture of them the honest, unpretentious evidence of a body that had lived in them for six decades without ceremony.

She looked up.

At Rihana.

"That," she said, with great dignity, "was my only dress."

Rihana was already undressing herself.

Her own clothes came off with the unhurried ease of a woman who had spent the last twelve hours in considerably more comprehensive states of undress and found clothing optional at best. The commoner skirt pooled at her feet. The blouse followed.

She stood in the bathing room in nothing.

The bite marks were immediately visible — rings of bruising across her breasts, her shoulders, the inside of her thighs — the comprehensive record of the past twelve hours written in Viktor’s teeth across a body that wore it with the specific, comfortable ownership of a woman who considers the marks a form of notation rather than damage.

Her breasts, freed, settled full and heavy against her chest — the nipples still showing the faint, dried evidence of the milk that had been producing all morning.

Eliantra stared.

Then looked away.

Then looked back, involuntarily.

At the marks. At the shape of the woman. At the specific, undeniable evidence of — of what Viktor had said. *Bed-warming maid.* Of what had clearly been happening.

Her throat worked once.

"Come on," Rihana said, already at the tub edge. "Jump in."

She looked at both women.

"Ladies."

She picked up Eliantra.

"WAIT—"

One arm under her knees, one behind her back, the full weight of the Mistress of Hartfield County lifted with the casual ease of a woman who has recently had her physical capabilities significantly upgraded by twelve hours of supernatural seed and is enjoying the discovery.

"PUT ME DOWN— RIHANA— THIS IS MY HOUSE—"

Splash.

"AAAHH~—"

Then Marta.

"Lady Rihana, I must absolutely protest—"

Splash.

"—oh."

Two women in the large tub.

Eliantra surfaced, sputtering, her wet hair plastered to her face, her nightgown now transparent and clinging to every line of her body with the specific, comprehensive betrayal of wet cotton. Her bra, beneath it, still somehow intact. She grabbed the tub edge. Glared upward.

"STOP HER," she said, to Marta, who was three feet away and also wet.

Marta wrung water from her hair.

"I already told you, my lady. She’s very strong."

"She’s A MAID—"

"I am," Rihana agreed pleasantly, stepping into the tub herself. Her body entering the water with a settling completeness that produced a small wave. "His maid."

She reached for the soap.

The door opened.

Viktor entered.

He was already unbuttoning his shirt.

The three women in the tub turned simultaneously.

Eliantra made a sound.

Marta made a different sound.

Rihana made no sound because she had been expecting this.

His shirt came off and fell somewhere behind him. The body beneath it — the six-pack, the breadth of his shoulders, the nail marks and bite marks layered across his skin in three different women’s handwriting — stood in the warm, steam-hazed air of the bathhouse with the complete ease of a man who has never once been self-conscious about his body and has no plans to start.

"I brought soap," he said.

He held up a bar.

It was slightly different from the soaps on the shelf. The same shape, similar color — but with the faint, sweet undertone of something that was not quite standard soap chemistry.

Marta’s nose twitched.

Her eyes went to the bar.

Her hand moved toward it — the professional reflex of a woman who has managed a household long enough to know what goes into it — and she took it from his hand before he’d fully extended it.

She looked at it.

Sniffed it.

Her expression: ’this is not standard soap.’

She set it on the far edge of the tub, away from the main washing area, with the quiet, efficient discretion of a senior staff member managing a situation she will address later.

Viktor watched her do it.

Said nothing.

Eliantra, meanwhile, had arranged herself in the tub with the full dignified posture of a woman making the best of an impossible situation — seated upright, the water to her collarbone, both arms crossed over her chest under the waterline, her wet nightgown tucked around her thighs.

Her face: composed. Her eyes: firmly directed at the far wall.

She heard his trousers.

The slide of fabric. The specific, soft sound of clothing being removed.

She did not look.

"Aren’t you going to the other tub?" Her voice came out steadier than she felt.

"Save the water," Rihana said.