Chapter 24 #2
“No,” he agreed mildly. “No sensible reason.” She was standing behind his chair, her hands on its carved and smoke-darkened wood. Meditatively, he said, “I did tell myself I would make common sense my watchword, after the battle at Saint-Aubin.”
“I am married.” She didn’t know why she said it. He didn’t turn.
“As am I. My wife has never let me into her bed, and you have never met your husband. And he is still in love with a ghost.”
Anne stepped carefully around the chair and stood before him. He tipped his head back. She let herself slip to the ground as Isabeau liked to do, where the rug was warm and thick, flecked with cinder-marks, and then she leaned her head against the arm of his chair.
She felt his hand move, felt him hesitate. Then she closed her eyes as his fingers slipped lightly through her hair. She had not had it plaited up again after Madeleine finished combing. The fire crackled and popped softly to itself.
Anne shook his hand loose, rose onto her knees, and turned to face him. She was almost between his knees, their eyes on a level.
His face changed. She flushed, imagining what she must look like. Her hair seemed to be everywhere: in his lap, clinging to her face, falling over the bodice and sleeves of her gown. The smell of perfumed oil drifted in the shrinking space between them.
“What’s in your hair?” he asked her low.
“Myrrh.”
He leaned forward, lifted a stray length of it, and pushed it back from her shoulder. His fingers grazed her collarbone. “Anne—”
She put her mouth on his.
She’d imagined how it would be, wakeful in bed, and sometimes in quiet moments, walking through Rennes or in long, tedious councils.
How warm it was, to be so near someone else, how it burned to touch.
His knowing eyes and knowing hands, the calluses of rein and sword-hilt.
How he’d taken the sacrifice upon himself, a gift she had never wanted because she’d never been able to imagine it.
But now he was tense, hardly breathing under her hands.
She drew away at once, biting her lip, embarrassed. Hurriedly, she climbed to her feet. “I am sorry. I— You must be tired, chambers can be found for you, I—”
He stood when she did; now he stared at her as though trying to read her face. Then he half-laughed, incredulously. “Can you think I do not want you? Anne?”
“Do you?” She had fetched up against the tapestried wall, beside the fireplace, and now she could hear the effort he made, controlling his breath. His eyes were on her face, his hands open as though he did not know what to do with them.
“Yes.”
“Then why—?”
“I was surprised.”
“Do you want to go?”
“No.”
Only then did she remember that she was being unbearably foolish. “Then— But— I am— I cannot— I must be a virgin still.” It was part of her worth, it would factor into her marriage-contract. To touch him at all had been the work of an unwise impulse. Again, she was embarrassed.
“I know. I—” He stopped, considering her. Perhaps he realized how longing in her was mixed up with wariness, how her life had taught her many things, but not this one. “I know,” he said again, more gently. “But it’s all right. If you will trust me?”
Unspoken between them was the knowledge that they might never in all their lives be alone like this. And yet there was this moment, here and now, sparkling like sugar stirred into wine.
Anne almost laughed, surprising herself. “What is trust if not for someone to hold you while a unicorn comes at you both, horn-first?”
He smiled at the memory, but he did not move. She took one step, cautiously, and then another. “Where is trust born if not in sacrifice?” she whispered. She put her forehead against his shoulder and leaned against him, pressed herself close. “I will trust you.”
She didn’t know what to expect, and made a small sound of surprise when he picked her up and sank again into the great chair before the fire, holding her crosswise.
His eyes drank her in, her hair spread shining over them both.
He paused to press his face to it. Solicitously, she asked, “Aren’t you tired from riding? ”
“No,” he said shortly.
“Are you—” She broke off as he drew careful fingers along the angle of her jaw, the ridge of her collarbone, the scented place behind her ear, so lightly that she found herself pressing up into his hand, the better to feel it.
The questing fingers dipped beneath the neckline of her gown, and a bolt of fire arrowed through her.
She closed her eyes, then opened them on a new thought. “Someone will come.”
His laughter was muffled against her hair. “You did say you’d trust me, goose. No, they won’t. Madeleine knows very well what is happening. Henri too. Why do you think there was all that scowling?”
“Oh,” she muttered, flushing. He ran a finger along the single lace, tied spiral-fashion, that held her gown, untied it so he could loosen her bodice. Then, just as slowly, he undid the strings at the neck of the chemise beneath, and now she was finding it hard to breathe.
Orléans added, “They both know that duty alone is a bitter cup. More now, since the two of them have fallen in love. And they love you.”
“How I am to see them married, I’ve no notion; the sieur de Chateaubriant is going to be—”
“Hush. I am wholly indifferent to the sentiments of Chateaubriant just at present.”
He pushed bodice and chemise off her shoulders, pulled her to him again, let his mouth drift over hers. He was being careful, testing her reactions.
She moved restlessly in his lap and bit his lip, felt his hand close tight in her hair. Her chemise had half-fallen, now he cupped a breast in his hand as though to learn the weight of it, his fingers dark against the linen and pristine skin. She pressed herself against him.
“Wanton,” he said, and pushed the linen down so that her breast was bare and rosy in the firelight. He was unbearably tense beneath her.
Blushing, breathless, she marshaled her wits. “Am I? Better than weeping at our separate dooms. That is nice.”
“I should hope so. You weren’t made for grand tragedy.” His eyes were on her face and he smiled a little when his thumb moved, and she gasped into his throat. “You will find ways to be happy.”
It was perhaps true. But his arm round her back was possessive, and when he bent his head and took her breast in his mouth, that was possessive too. “Oh,” she said.
He paused. “Just ‘Oh’? You who never stop talking—”
But she lifted her breast to him in offering, and he didn’t finish his sentence.
The dark of his eyes had swallowed all the rest and his hands and mouth returned to her skin, drove her remorselessly now, right to the edge of madness.
She was still crosswise in his arms. He drew back a little, leaned his forehead against hers, both of them panting.
He kissed her and resettled her in the curve of his arm, reached and cupped her foot in his free hand, closed it round her ankle, beneath her hem.
She stiffened, incoherent with want but only half understanding. He waited.
“I don’t—” she started, and then stopped.
“Trust me, Anne?” he said, and in his voice, for the first time, was a note of pleading.
“All right,” she whispered. Some of the stiffness left her and she let his fingers glide to her knee, to the ties of her stockings, and higher still to tease at her inner thigh and, more delicately still, to the hollow place between, and he put his palm there the way he had on her breast, and they both stared at each other, ferociously intent.
His touch was almost too light to feel, his fingers snagging on the sensitive skin there, his breath deep and slow now, against her neck. “I don’t know what you want,” she admitted.
“No?” he whispered. “Then I shall have this of you; is that greedy of me, love?”
She could hardly think. But as he touched her, he talked to her, his voice as insistent as his hand.
“Is that good—and that? There? There, then. Come, will you part your legs for me? More. There—” His voice was fraying, just as her breathing did, as he found the center of her, and dipped his fingers, slid them down and back up again, as though he could draw the knots of longing and dread together and break them.
Something was climbing in her flesh, some great nameless thing, nearer and nearer, and then it was upon her, and she cried out as the tension broke, and she clung to him, wet silk against his hand.
She drifted for a moment, and when she came to, he was playing with her breasts, still bare above the neck of her gown, and she arched back involuntarily into his hands, wondering if she had made a mistake.
For he had lit a fire in her and also slaked it, but she would crave it again.
She did not know now how she could pretend that her body was not her own, but only barter for her realm’s need.
She closed her eyes and savored his touch, then pulled his mouth down to hers again.
Finally his hand fell away, although he watched her still: breasts and throat and lips and eyes. She said, her voice hoarse, “I will carry that like a brand. I think you knew it.”
He said, “Not for us the bloodless self-sacrifice, I fear. You will remember me. I will look in your eyes and see you remembering. And I also will remember.”
“Yes.”
Breathless he sounded, and rueful. “Do you regret it?”
“No,” said Anne. “But I—I don’t—I don’t know how to please you. As you did me.” She said it with determined composure, but she knew he could see her flush.
“Praise God,” said Louis dryly. “For you have driven me near enough to madness as it is, my dragon-tamer, my unicorn-hunter.”
He kissed her one last time before he set her on her feet and steadied her. The coiled tension had not left his body, but his voice was composed again, creating a little necessary distance. “I need a horse,” he said, “if I am to joust for you. My Kestrel is still in Nantes.”
She looked up. “Of course. And you may ride with my favor if you ask, but it will not make France more likely to forgive you.”
“I am not asking their forgiveness. Brittany is not France. Nor was Orléans, nor Burgundy. The old king and Marguerite his daughter seized them because they could. The world understands only strength, and your father and I were not strong enough. And now you must try to buy strength elsewhere that I cannot give you, and the coin is your flesh and your inheritance. Do you wonder that I am angry?” His studied calm had frayed.
His mouth almost touched hers, close enough that she could whisper a truth of her own into the space between them.
“I am also angry,” she said. “I will go to my wedding angry that all my roads led me there, to a loveless bed and a life lived far from home. But there is nothing to be done. I will try to be happy, whatever happens.”
He was silent. Then, with a very visible effort, he let her go and left her there.