Chapter Thirty-Six Cleves
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Cleves
She tastes of marchpane and autumn. Of rain upon an ocean.
Seymour’s hands tangle in Cleves’s hair as their tongues meet.
When they part for breath, Seymour says, “I have been waiting for you to do that for so long.”
“If I could have reached through the sunscína to do so, I would have,” Cleves replies.
She is about to push Seymour back upon the bench so that she can better explore her body when someone coughs nearby. She and Seymour spring apart. It is Johana, his expression caught between mortification and glee.
“You took my advice for once, cousin,” he says.
“What do you want?” Cleves growls.
“Supper is laid. Should I partake with the Dowager Queen alone?”
Cleves looks to Seymour. They should eat. They will need their bellies full for what Cleves has planned. But she does not want to wait. Her desire is hot and Seymour’s eyes are dark. Then Seymour’s stomach rumbles, and the spell is broken.
“We will join you,” Cleves says.
They follow Johana as he bounces across the gardens.
Cecilia is already seated when they enter the hall.
Cleves schools her expression: it would be deadly for Cecilia to understand what is between her and Seymour.
Such knowledge is power, and Cleves will never allow anyone to hold that kind of leverage over her.
But as the dishes are brought out, Cleves’s gaze is drawn back to Seymour no matter how hard she tries.
Their dinner is less lavish than those at High Hall and Cnothan, but delicious and warm nonetheless.
Stews of lamb, sprinkled with crisp fairy wings from the territory of Hyde.
Tench from the nearby Fietherford, roasted upon beds of roots and river leaves, salty and flaking and pungent with herbs.
And a cake in the centre of the table, one of Cleves’s favourites – Johana must have requested it from the kitchen for her, for it is a specialty of Ezzonid.
A tower of pancakes, layered between melting cheese and honey, drizzled with thick cream and salt.
“Shall I open the negotiations with my brother, then?” Cecilia asks as Cleves tries not to watch the way Seymour licks her lips after a sip of wine.
The truth is, they should not need Cecilia’s help if their plan works, but it would make things easier if Cecilia believes she is still going to get her palace.
“Yes, write your letter,” Cleves says. “We will send it to him, after we have read it, of course.”
“Naturally,” Cecilia says, dipping her head. The submissiveness is out of character. Seymour wipes her chin with her napkin, ever so delicately.
“What will you do to my brother, if he concedes to your demands?” Cecilia says.
She takes a whole fish onto her trencher and digs a fork into its skull, extracting the eye and biting it like a cherry. Cleves can hear the little globe pop.
“In my country, we keep noble prisoners in fine style. He could live out his life in great comfort somewhere in Elben. Maybe you would like him to be in your territory of Brynd?”
“So you would not seek to hurt him?” Cecilia says. She takes a bite of flaky flesh, then pulls a fish bone from her mouth, laying it out upon her plate.
“I think losing his kingdom and seeing the downfall of his family’s legacy would be punishment enough.”
Seymour speaks from the other end of the table: “You do choose the strangest people to care about, Cecilia.”
“I might say the same about you,” Cecilia says sweetly. Cleves stills. Does Cecilia know about them? But then Cecilia adds, “Your love for that upstart Boleyn is well-known. Even my washerwoman back in Perfugi knows you wanted to fuck her.”
Seymour’s gaze darts to Cleves. Cleves shakes her head: the taunt does not affect her. How dare anyone shame Seymour for her heart?
“Does that not reflect more poorly upon your brother’s judgement than upon Queen Seymour?
” Cleves says. Cecilia purses her mouth.
She excuses herself soon afterwards, and Johana follows her, humming his way out of the room in a manner that makes it clear he knows what is about to happen as much as Cleves and Seymour know it.
Their coupling is inevitable, and Cleves savours that certainty, letting the stirring in her belly thread through the rest of her body. She and Seymour continue to eat in silence, the only sound the scrape of forks upon plate and the crackle of the fire.
Seymour is the one to break it. “It does not trouble you that I harboured feelings for Boleyn?”
“Why should it? I too have harboured feelings for others.”
The truth is, her thoughts around Boleyn and Seymour are complicated and myriad.
She is not by nature a jealous person, but she also knows that Boleyn marked a crossroads in Seymour’s life; a hinge around which her destiny rotated.
The Seymour Cleves is attracted to is one who would not have existed without Boleyn.
How can she be jealous of such a person?
And yet … it is hard to seduce in the company of a ghost.
“Ah,” Seymour says, pulling a cake filled with cherries towards her and taking her fork to the whole cake instead of merely taking a slice onto her plate. “And did you flirt shamelessly with my predecessors too?”
“You believe I have flirted shamelessly with you?”
“Well,” Seymour says, pouring cream over the cake. “The way you behaved with me at our first meeting was hardly a little flirtation.”
“Ha!” Cleves says. “You have clearly never been properly seduced if you believe that to have been shameless.”
Seymour sits back in her chair and observes Cleves in a way that makes her want to leap over the table and retreat all at once.
It is a bold look, a challenging look. “I think it must be quite something to be loved by you, angry, angry queen,” she says, in playful mockery of Cleves’s voice.
“And you tell me that is not seduction?”
Something sparks inside Cleves. This is the moment: her chance to satisfy her infatuation with the Queen of Hyde.
How could she have been so frightened of it?
How could she have thought of it as a tidal wave?
If they bed each other, then they will know each other, and there is nothing like knowing to cure an infatuation.
It is not as if she is in love with Seymour.
It is not as if she will never want to let go.
“No, my Lady Seymour, that is not seduction,” she says.
“What would you do if you were truly seducing me then?”
Cleves does not care that it is a ploy to force her into showing her cards. She knows exactly what she wants to do to this woman.
She rises from the table and strolls towards the fire to stoke it up.
“First, I’d make sure the only shivering you’d be doing is because of me,” she says.
“Then?” Seymour says. Her voice is different. Cleves turns to see Seymour crawling across the table towards her on her hands and knees. Her bodice isn’t cut low, but at this angle Cleves has a clear view of the delicious crevice between her breasts.
“Then,” Cleves says, climbing onto the table herself. “Then I would draw upon your skin with my fingers, tracing the edge of your gown.”
They meet in the centre of the table, platters of half-eaten food all around them.
Seymour nuzzles her nose against Cleves’s, her lips so very close, her breath a blessing upon Cleves’s cheek.
Cleves unclips Seymour’s hood, drawing it gently back, revealing her hair.
“Then I would strip you bare and touch every single part of your body, feeling for the places that make you gasp. And those places? I would worship them.”
“Fine words, Queen Cleves,” Seymour says. “But you know I place more stock in action.”
Cleves tangles her hand in Seymour’s hair. Their mouths meet in a kiss that is at first crushingly brutal, but quickly softens into something far more glorious. Cleves cannot help but moan. Seymour’s lips are soft, and she tastes of honey and salt.
Cleves needs every part of her body to be touching every part of Seymour’s. She breaks away from the kiss, breathless, and lifts Seymour to a kneel, wrapping an arm around her waist to pull her even closer.
“Is this enough action for you?”
She trails her tongue across Seymour’s ear and down her neck, inhaling her scent – heart smoke, cloves and a hot, metallic hint of dragon’s blood.
Seymour drags Cleves’s face up to her own and kisses her long and deeply. “I want to undress you,” she says against her mouth.
This has always been one of Cleves’s favourite parts of a seduction. Women have so many clothes. The anticipation, as each piece is removed, revealing a little more skin, is deliciously painful.
She reaches around Seymour to undo her gown, not needing to look to know where to find each dress pin holding the gown in place. Seymour moves her attentions to Cleves’s ear, nipping gently at her lobe.
“Do you want this gown off or not?” Cleves says.
“Treat it as a test,” Seymour whispers.
“You are a test, my lady,” Cleves says, trying to ignore the deep shiver running through her body as Seymour scrapes her nails through her hair with one hand, the other pattering fingers down her chest bone, towards the place where her smock dives beneath her gown.
At last, the gown is loose enough for Cleves to tug the piece over Seymour’s head.
She pulls the sleeves off next, letting her hands run down the bare skin of Seymour’s shoulders as the fabric comes away from the rest of her outfit.
Then the frontlet and the kirtle, abandoned on the table, and Seymour is left in only her linen smock and her stockings.
Cleves runs a hand up Seymour’s leg, but Seymour stops her.
“You still have far too many clothes on, Queen of Cnothan,” she says.
She pushes Cleves around with surprising strength, cradling her back with her body.
Cleves watches the fire hazily as Seymour takes control.
She isn’t used to this – she is usually the one leading the seduction.
She is the one who delivers pleasure, who does the worshipping.
And she has always been at peace with that – it is altogether safer.
Soon Cleves is only in her linen shirt and her breeches. Seymour cups her buttocks and squeezes.
“Do you know the parts of you I have longed for the most?” Seymour says. Cleves flushes.
“Your arms,” Seymour continues, her hands running up to Cleves’s shoulders. “Goddess, those arms, Cleves. They were my undoing from the moment we first met.”
Cleves leans back and kisses Seymour again and again, so Seymour will not see the tears that have sprung to her eyes.
It is one thing to know that you are not unattractive.
It is quite another to feel it after seven years of being told by everyone that you are – even if you were the one who engineered the slight.
Seymour pulls away, perhaps sensing her turmoil.
“Did you ever truly doubt it?” Seymour says.
“Never,” Cleves lies.
Seymour sees the lie. Of course she does, with that sight that is so quiet and so sharp. She climbs off the table, pulling Cleves with her, and moves them to the chair by the fireside.
“What are you doing?” Cleves says as Seymour pushes her into the seat.
“This is my seduction,” Seymour replies. She pulls Cleves’s breeches off and parts her legs, kissing her way up each one. The fire hisses. The warmth Cleves feels as Seymour’s tongue finds the centre of her pleasure is nothing to do with the flames from the hearth.
All reason flies from her mind. All regret at waiting so long to do this, all fear of doing it too soon, or at all, is banished by the rightness of Seymour’s mouth hot against her most intimate part.
They worship each other through the night, sometimes playful, sometimes serious, only ever stopping to stoke the fire.
Fingers on and inside each other, tasting each other and themselves.
They both understand how to pleasure women, and their experience makes their time all the sweeter.
Cleves has never understood men’s obsession for virgins.
The notion of being the only one to possess a body is alien to her – why should it matter?
Seymour’s experience is one of the greatest joys of their coupling.
She knows how to speak to Cleves. She knows where to touch, how to explore, and she knows what pleases her and how to communicate it.
It is liberating, joyful, sensuous, and Cleves has never been more satisfied.
As Cleves lies back in the chair by the dying fire, a slumbering Seymour draped around her and the sun promising dawn through the windows, Cleves knows that the tidal wave is upon her. She is drowning, and it is exquisite.
“This was nice,” she murmurs against Seymour’s hair.
“It was more than nice, you fool.”
Cleves strains to surface, reaches for the shore, “We simply needed to do this, didn’t we? Now we can be allies once more.”
Seymour is nearly asleep, but Cleves thinks she hears her reply through the drowsiness. “If you say so, Queen of Cnothan.”