She said slowly, "Is gratitude, then, not a barbarian habit?"
"But how have I done wrong?" he asked. He knew very well, and he could not dissemble bewilderment he did not feel. Cordelia's face darkened.
"Go, all you women!" she snapped. "Let no one in here."
They fled, with squeaks of dismay; now Mistress was angry! Cordelia walked slowly toward Eodan across gleaming mosaic. Her knuckles, where she held up the loosened ungirdled stola, were bloodlessly taut.
"If you think so little of me that you will only come on command ... that you will drive cows till midnight rather than even ask me if that is my wish—" She was close to him now, speaking through knotted jaws. "Don't think I have not seen you in corners with that Phryne! If you find me dull, you may as well go back to the fields!"
I find you not dull but a foe, he wanted to say. There is too much blood between us.
Aloud: "Mistress, I did not understand. I thought you would summon me."
Something eased within her. She laughed, low, and put her hands on his shoulders. The gown fell about her feet. It could have been one of the statues he had seen—Venus, in her aspect of hot sleepless nights—that stood before him, save that veins pulsed under this skin and sweat jeweled it in the sun. "Hercules, Hercules," she cried, "can you not get it into your thick yellow head, I want to be the one commanded?"
He stepped back, stammering, feeling the will of Venus but remembering she was Hwicca's enemy. "Mistress ... I cannot ... I am—"
"Tonight," she said eagerly. "Just at day's end. We will watch the sun go down and we shall not sleep before it rises again."