“Oh, my love. I’ve wanted you from the first moment I laid eyes on you. You will always be mine.”
It was 1697, and Cassia was watching the woman who called herself Iro. Her own name was also an odd name for this century, but she’d changed it so many times over the years that she didn’t feel like doing it again. It would be Cassia, and that would be that. Iro was really Irabella, an odd choice for this time and place, and everyone called her Irabella. The only person Cassia had ever heard calling her Iro had been a woman named Mary.
Cassia wasn’t about to set foot on consecrated ground, and she’d come dangerously close to it as she walked past the church. These times were so tricky, she thought to herself. It was well past Henry VII and Mary I, or Bloody Mary, as she had been called when she’d tried to rid England of Protestants after her father’s conversion. Elizabeth had returned them to Protestantism, but there had still been practicing Catholics. James I had kept them Protestant, and on and on it had gone. Cassia was exhausted with all of it. With every woman beingnamed Elizabeth, Mary, or Jane, though, Iro had caught her attention when she’d heard the name shouted by a pregnant woman outside of the church.
She’d watched them, and she’d known. Of course, the child wasn’t Iro’s, but there was love there beyond that of friendship. Cassia, bored with everything as usual, had followed the two of them as they had walked together for a brief time. Then, she had followed Iro to her home, and days later, Cassia knew all she had needed to know. Iro’s father hated her. He treated this beautiful woman like a servant at best and a slave on his worst days, and he was unmarried and seemed to blame that on Iro as well. Cassia had listened to him yell at his daughter and watched Iro as she had hurried into town, trying to cover up where she’d been going. The house she had entered was Mary’s, and Cassia had watched them make love to each other. She’d remained unseen and knew now that she wanted Iro for herself. She wanted to taste her blood and her skin. She wanted Iro’s hands on her body, and she wanted to make Iro come. It had been too long since she’d been able to find a woman who was willing to risk eternal damnation to be with her, and Cassia was more than ready to show Iro her world.
One night, she watched Iro walk into a pub, a new alteration to the human invention, in a way, although Cassia supposed the concept had been around for a long time.
“Hello,” she greeted as she sat down across from Iro.
“Hello,” Iro replied.
“I’m Cassia. And you are?”
She licked her lips, wishing she could taste her.
“Iro.”
“Iro? That’s an interesting name.”
“Yes,” Iro said simply, not trying to elaborate.
“What are you doing here tonight?” Cassia asked her and looked around the room, smelling sweat and blood of men with cuts and abrasions on their hands that worked hard.
“I needed to get out of my house for a while. A friend of mine is having a baby right now, and, well, I’m nervous for her.”
“You’re not there with her?” she asked, already knowing why.
“No. Her… husband is, I assume.”
Cassia looked at her with a smirk and said, “I see. And do you wish she didn’t have a husband?”
“Pardon?” Iro said.
Cassia slowly leaned forward, not wanting to spook her, and said, “It’s all right. I can tell, but no one else can. Can you not tell the same about me?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Iro replied and turned away from her.
“You’re very beautiful,” Cassia told her, testing the waters. “You would be even prettier with shorter hair, though.”
“Thank you. I should go,” Iro said and stood.
“I don’t have a husband.”
“Pardon?” Iro repeated.
“Your friend has a husband. I don’t.”
“I’m sorry for you, then.”
“You shouldn’t be. I have managed for a long time without one, and I don’t plan on getting one in this lifetime, either. I assume it’s the same for you.”
“I should be going.”
“Iro, she is married to a man and is having his child,” she reasoned. “Not yours, dear.”
“I’m well aware.”
