Chapter 11
“Red is the colour of magic in every country, and has been so from the very earliest times. The caps of fairies and magicians are well-nigh always red.”
We stand in the empty hallway, as Isabeau studies the carved patterns in the oversize wooden door. Her hesitation is obvious, and it stings. I was too honest, and now that she knows me, she pauses. Is it wrong that I still desire her after she abandoned me?
“Can we not keep this pretense? Take me into the library and seduce me as if I were a merchant’s daughter or a noble you don’t already know,” I say.
“Would you rather talk or dance?” Isabeau offers so softly that I am alarmed.
“I want you to prove you are as gifted a lover as you boast. That’s what you do, isn’t it? Seduce women. I hear about them. Lady Iversson most recently?” I hear the bite in my words, and I know she deserves more, but this is what I can offer her.
“I have done so, but I am more than that.” Isabeau’s back is to me now, and I hear the affront in her voice.
“I have no doubt, Your Grace.” I place a hand on the middle of Isabeau’s spine. “Any woman would surely be lucky to have your attention.”
“Then remove your mask,” Isabeau begs.
I pull Isabeau toward me, making her turn to face me.
“I cannot have more with you, Maudite. That is not the fate before me. I can be your friend later, have those conversations, spend time with you. If I do that tonight, I cannot have your touch. Let me have this one night with you? Give me my illusion?”
Isabeau pulls a key tied to a red ribbon from under her shirt.
I realize that the key is hidden between her breasts just as she removes the strange necklace.
In the next moment, the lock click sounds loudly in the silence of the hallway as Isabeau opens the door and replaces the key around her neck and tucks it under her clothing.
The room is opulent, lit lowly by sconces.
Several steps into the room, an ornately carved clock—as tall as a person—stands so that the light from a nearby lantern reflects on a brass and mother-of-pearl face.
The pendulum glints as it swings in and out of the light, ticking like a steady metronome.
I have worked in here since when my feet dangled from a chair, too small to reach the floor. Beyond this room—hidden from everyone else—is the Hunter’s Archive, but I say none of that. Right now, I am a woman with her lover, not the Hunter-in-Training.
“Lock the door.”
Isabeau removes her mask, drops it to a table, and says, “Perhaps, this is a mista—”
“Kiss me, Isabeau.” I step closer and tilt my head upward in an invitation that I haven’t made to her in ten years. I push Isabeau against an overflowing shelf of history books and taunt, “Unless you are afraid? Or uninterested? Have I grown too old? Too ugly?”
“You remain perfect.” Isabeau slants her mouth over my lips, and I swear my body melts.
I part my lips eagerly, giving no doubt that I have, in fact, acquired some measure of experience since our long-ago kisses in closets and pantries. My hands grip Isabeau, one on her back and the other on her hip, melding us together from breast to thigh.
Isabeau slips her tongue inside my mouth.
Yes, my body rejoices, we have needed this, needed her, craved her.
I am boneless at even a kiss, but then Isabeau’s hand tightens on my side, and I jerk away from her.
“Did I hurt you?”
“It’s fine. I have a wound there, so . . .” I step back, trying not to check whether I am bleeding through my stitches.
“A bruise? Has someone hurt you?”
A moment passes before I admit, “Faeries.” I lift the other shoulder in a shrug. “It happens.”
Gently, Isabeau touches my side again. “A claw mark just here. In the park. That was . . . you.”
“Please don’t.” I catch her face in my hand. “As I said, I want seduction, Maudite, not conversation.”
“You’ve grown cruel with time, love.”
My heart thunders at the word, but I say nothing as she leads me deeper into the library, through shelves of art books and leather-bound literature, and deeper still to a chaise longue in the darkest shadows of the room.
Here no windows can spill light. The most precious of books are in a glass case, and across from it is the chaise, covered in a currant-red cloth, as is all the library furniture.
Isabeau gestures. “Please. Sit.”
I perch on the edge of the chaise, and she gently lifts my leg onto the long chair. I let her guide me, so I am half reclining.
“Take off your mask for me, love.”
“I can’t.”
Isabeau bends down and kisses me again, and my hands grip her hair, mussing it with my fingers and holding her to me.
She pulls back just enough to look at me. “Is kissing what you want from me then? I can kiss you until years pass if that’s what you want.” Isabeau pauses between words to kiss along my throat and the bared skin of my décolletage. “I will gladly kiss every bit of you.”
I tilt my head and shift so she has more skin in reach. “Isa . . .”
“Tell me you haven’t craved anyone else’s touch like this,” Isabeau demands. She pauses and drops to her knees to stare into my eyes. “Tell me that you still think about me.”
“No one but you.”
“Then why will you not take off the mask?” Isabeau slides my shoe from the foot that is on the chaise longue. Then she trails her fingertips over the silk stocking that covers my calf, pausing at my knee to raise the skirts and drop a brief kiss there.
“I want you. I have never stopped wanting you, Isa. Isn’t that enough?”
Isabeau pushes up my dress, the petticoat underneath, and the chemise under that. The only remaining barrier is my stockings, which stretch slightly above my knee. We’ve never crossed this line, although I’ve thought about it.
“You are everything I’ve wanted,” Isabeau confesses. “This moment. This precious gift . . . means everything.”
I shiver at the reverence in her voice, or perhaps because Isabeau peppers kisses on my bare skin above where the stocking was fastened.
Isabeau pauses. “May I touch you higher?”
My voice trembles as I tease, “If you are seducing me, you definitely should. If not, I suppose you ought not.”
Isabeau laughs. “I want to seduce you. I think I have always wanted that.”
“Carry on then,” I say in a thready voice.
Isabeau licks along the edge of a scar just above my knee.
“You are lovely.” She kneels on the floor, leaning forward so she is in between my bare legs.
The position puts her face-to-chest with my bosom.
I watch her stare at my chest the same way she did years ago, as if she is about to pray.
She gently cups one breast. “I thought I’d never touch these again. ”
Then she leans closer and kisses my throat, right over my pulse, and whispers, “Does your heart thunder because I kiss you?”
“Your touch does feel magical,” I admit.
“I want to spend days touching you, talking to you, dancing with you,” Isabeau confesses. “I would treat you like my own personal goddess for all my days.”
“Isabeau . . .” I stroke her neck and cheek. “You don’t need to lie to me. I’m not asking for forever. I just want—”
“Maudite!” a voice calls through the door. “Are you in here?”
Isabeau glares at the door. “Occupied.”
The laugh at the door is loud enough to be barely muffled. “Her Majesty does not care. She ordered us to tell you to fasten your trousers and attend the ceremony.”
I scoot back out of reach. “Tell them you will join them so they don’t come in here! If we are seen . . .”
“If you are compromised, you’ll be mine.” Isabeau growls as I try to shove my dress into order again. “You would have to agree to marry me.”
“Please! I would still refuse marriage, but the shame . . . Please, Isabeau!”
“As Her Majesty orders,” Isabeau calls back to the soldier or servant outside the door.
“Thank you.” I stare at her, feeling far too much like my heart is breaking.
“Meet me here later, or at my house . . .” Isabeau stands and extends a hand to me. “Please. We can delay talk of marriage, but I cannot imagine my life without you now that I’ve kissed you again.”
I take her hand, but I release it quickly. “They’re expecting you.”
“Vows. Yes, I am aware.” Maudite stretches like a surly cat in front of the dark-red chaise. “But when should I expect you? We are nowhere near done here.”
I ignore her questions as I straighten my dress, feeling that my laces are still snug enough and everything looks proper. “Does my hair look . . .” I’m not sure of the words. “Does it look acceptable? Do I look . . . fine?”
“You are stunning, although I know that is not what you mean.” Isabeau runs her hands gently over my sides, then across my chest, and down my arms. She grips both my hands in hers. “You do not look like a woman who was writhing with her lover a few moments ago.”
I tilt my head upward, lifting my chin against the flush that burns over my face. “Good.”
“After the vows, meet—”
“That was not my plan. When we do meet again, you will pretend tonight didn’t happen,” I demand.
Isabeau gives me a patronizing look. “Nonsense. I have longed for you for years, my love. To find a woman that calls to me again, and to learn that you are the same woman I’ve yearned for . . . In any guise, I want you, love. I saw you in the park, and I was smitten all over again.”
“Lust is not enough for me, Maudite. Not now.” I try to step around her, and she lurches into my path.
“Is my curse so horrifying that you would reject me again?” Isabeau asks. “I am worthy for a tumble, but that’s it?”
I grab her shoulders in my hands, holding her still. “Your curse is not the reason, and how dare you say I rejected you all those years ago!”
She stares at me and frowns. “Your father said you—”
“You never came,” I protest. “I waited, and you never came, Isabeau.”
“You sent a letter saying you never wanted to see me again,” she says in a desperate voice.
“Because you toyed with me and then you were at the theater with someone else,” I finish weakly.