Chapter I Agnes in Love #2
But the chapel was not the bleak and dreary place it had once been; with the passing of years, it had evolved to meet the needs of the two lovers who met there every evening.
There were sprigs of lavender to perfume the air, tapestries to adorn the walls, and most important, a velvet couch, upon which Liuprand bore Agnes down.
Their coupling was not so frenzied now. There was time and more time for tenderness, for words of devotion whispered between kisses.
Gently Liuprand swept back Agnes’s hair, fingers slipping through smooth black strands, baring her nape and her throat.
As he trailed his mouth across her skin, down to the swell of her breasts, he murmured, “You feel new to me each night, as if I am born again in your arms.”
Agnes turned his chin up with one finger, forcing him to pause his ministrations. “You are my first thought upon waking, and my every dream in the dark.”
Liuprand smiled tremulously, almost shyly. He looked boyish to her sometimes in these secret moments, though he was now a man nearing thirty.
She kissed him on his earnest mouth, working at the ties of his breeches, while he pushed up the skirt of her gown to her hips. Even after all this time, after all their countless couplings, Agnes was left breathless by the size of him inside her, how he filled her so completely.
His thrusts were slow, dragging, the most exquisite torture. Agnes gasped as each one touched that place of pleasure within her. Liuprand lowered his huge body so that their foreheads were pressed together, and he stuttered around his release as she came, keening, too.
But these were Agnes’s most treasured moments: when the fever-pitch of climax receded but the fog of bliss still remained, as heavy and sweet as incense.
Liuprand shifted so that he lay on the narrow couch beside her, arms circling her waist, pulling her flush against his chest. She felt the staggered beating of his heart, thrumming unevenly until, with time, it grew steady again.
Agnes let her lashes flutter shut, sleepy and content. She could have drifted then into her dreams, but she was interrupted by Liuprand, who reached out and grasped her hand.
He held it up to the light, carefully extending all her fingers.
The scars that laced her skin were a faded, shimmery blue-white, scarcely visible to the eye.
Agnes recalled the event that had caused them only at odd and banal times, when she made to pick up a quill but found it slipping from her clumsy, trembling grip.
Though her left hand was not reduced to complete uselessness, Pliny had not succeeded in restoring most of its more delicate functions.
Yet now so many years had passed that she had trained her right hand to do all the tasks she had once done with her left.
Her quill raced nimbly across the page again.
And the memory, the agony—all banished, like the rest of her ghosts.
But Liuprand did not mean to make her look at the scars. He turned her hand over so that the band of pearls showed around her ring finger.
“It shames me,” Liuprand said softly, “that this is the only thing I have ever given you.”
“You have given me more than can be put to words.”
Liuprand shook his head—it was not what he meant and Agnes knew it.
But she also knew that they were edging closer to a precipice of danger.
It was not such a simple thing for him to give her a gift.
Should courtiers or servants notice that the lady Agnes wore a new brocade or jewels while the princess was bereft, it would cause whispers, which could grow into suspicions, which could grow into threats.
Anything Liuprand gave to her would have to be subtle, unnoticeable to the perfunctory eye, or something she could treasure only in the privacy of her chambers or the darkness of the chapel.
Once, Liuprand had been a creature without indulgence, and Agnes had been a creature without greed.
But now that they had given in to the desires of their hearts and their flesh, new needs had flowered up within them both, red as poppies, quick as marigolds.
Why should a noble lady not want for fine jewelry and fine dresses?
Why should a husband not want to lavish such bounties upon his wife?
“I have been thinking,” Liuprand said, twining their fingers, “that there is something I can give you after all. Something that will bring us even greater joy here in the dark. We have created a few small comforts here, but there is more that can be done, with a bit of aid.”
Alarmed, Agnes sat up. “No one else can know of this place. Only Pliny and Waltrude, who keep our secret.”
Liuprand rose, too, pushing himself onto his elbows. “Do you not trust that I can force someone into silence?”
There was a faint prickle of cold on the back of Agnes’s neck.
When Liuprand’s arms were around her, she felt safe in their strength, and his largeness was a comfort to her.
But when she recalled that moment in the dungeon of the House of Blood, his size and his power, the boons of his Seraphine heritage, felt vaguely sinister to her.
It seemed the natural order of the world that everyone who encountered Liuprand should shrink from him.
That the people of Drepane should cower before him, just as they had all once succumbed to Berengar’s blade.
“No,” she said, swallowing, “I only mean that…it is a risk.”
“It is not a risk that should trouble your mind.” Liuprand shifted her with near-inhuman dexterity into his lap, her thighs spread about his hips. “I will never let harm befall you. Never, ever. Of all the vows I have sworn, you must believe this one, above all others.”
Slowly, Agnes nodded. “I do.”
Leaning forward, Liuprand kissed her on the mouth, on the throat, and bowed his head to the valley of her breasts. He was stiff again already and slid inside her, and she was so slick that there was only pleasure, heady as summer wine, not even a glancing pain at his intrusion.
Agnes buried her face in his shoulder, muffling her gasps and mewls.
In the fevered haze of passion, it was easy to forget, but just as easy to remember, the one gift Liuprand could never give her, no matter how forceful and prevailing his love.
No matter how often he filled her with his seed, it would never take root.
Never, never. The ghost of her grandmother was gone, but this relic of her cruelty remained.
And yet, despite that, Agnes was not lost to her bitterness and grief.
Joy pervaded her. She could scarcely even fathom that Castle Crudele had once felt savage and inhospitable.
Now when she walked its halls, shadows fled, phantoms dissolved into dust, and warmth, which radiated from her proudly bragging heart, chased away the coldness of iron and stone.
The violence that constructed this great monument was less real than a dream.
All because of this—Liuprand panting into the curve of her throat, whispering his devotion between breaths.
Agnes was in love: with the boy who regarded her as mother, with her husband, who had wed her by secret rite, and with her world, which seemed to enclose her in its gentle embrace, like the velvet petals concealing the bud of a rose.