Margaret Moore (8 page)

And then she remembered she was only wearing her chemise and stockings.

“What ho!” Charles cried. “The bride is not abed?”

Elissa scrambled under the covers. She nearly fell right out again, for the sheets were of unfamiliar and very slippery satin.

She managed to sit and pulled the heavy coverings up to her chin, noting that Mistress Winters stood with the king, while Sir Richard …

The groom was at the foot of the bed, regarding her with an annoyingly inscrutable expression.

“Come, man, do your duty!” the king cried, making everyone else in the room laugh. “To the bed!”

Richard glanced over his shoulder at the gang of men behind him, then smiled and bowed to the ladies. “As I am a loyal subject of His Majesty, naturally I shall obey his command.”

“And right thankful for it you should be, too!” Charles declared.

“I am, Your Majesty, although just how thankful I shall be still remains to be seen.”

Elissa crossed her arms. Then she swallowed
hard as Sir Richard slowly—very slowly, like a prowling cat—began to crawl toward her.

“Gad, man, we haven’t got all night!” one of the courtiers complained.

“All night?” Elissa whispered, staring at her husband.

He ignored her question and twisted to look over his shoulder. “Is the Duke of Buckingham trying to rush me?” he demanded.

“We all of us would rather be about our own business,” the same man retorted, his response drawing a smattering of cheers and vocal agreement from the rest.

“Your Majesty, lords and ladies, gentlemen of the court, I intend to obey the royal command at my own pace, if you please.”

Although his features revealed nothing, Sir Richard sounded a little annoyed.

“Come, come, Blythe, you know Villiers has a loose tongue,” the king chided.

His Majesty gestured at one of the servants, who stepped forward and began to close the heavy bed curtains. “We envy you, Blythe, and we shall await the stocking.”

“What does he mean?” Elissa whispered as her husband sat beside her, his back against the elaborate headboard and his long legs stretched out before him. “What about my stocking?”

As the curtains were pulled to a close by the somber servant, Elissa swallowed hard and
tried not to feel entombed. Outside the confines of their bed, she could hear the courtiers and the king laughing and talking. It was as if they were being haunted by lascivious demons.

Then her husband turned to look at her, his features barely visible in the dark. “It is the custom.”

“What custom? Why do they not leave us? They are not intending to stay here while …” She couldn’t bring herself to finish.

“Yes, they are. Nobody will leave this chamber until I throw your stocking to signify that we have consummated the marriage.”

“They can’t stay!”

“They can and they will. Charles is the king, after all, and what is our humiliation when it amuses the king?”

“It is too … too medieval!” she protested.

“Although I agree with you, I cannot command Charles to leave our bedchamber, and while I am not in favor of obligatory marriages myself, we are wed at the king’s command. Therefore, I intend to make the best of this somewhat awkward situation.”

He shifted closer and his voice dropped to a sultry whisper. “They will be quieter when they have had more wine.”

What kind of man would make love with a crowd in the room? To be sure, the bed curtains provided some privacy, but not nearly enough.

Her mind swiftly envisioned all that was to come. He would thrust himself inside her regardless of her pain and discomfort, roughly caressing her body as if she felt nothing. He would say no word, only breathe heavily on her face until he grunted with release. Afterward, he would roll over and snore.

She tried to steel herself to endure the assault—but she had been free of that torture for too long to simply submit. “Are you then a trained dog that can perform upon its master’s command?”

He moved back a little. “You find me repulsive?”

“No! Yes! That is, I don’t want to make love to you.”

“We are merely pawns in the king’s game, so there is nothing to be done except obey his orders,” Sir Richard murmured as he began to squirm.

“What are you doing?”

“I am removing my breeches.”

“Why?”

“In order to make love with my wife. Come, madam, given that you have had a son, there is no need to act the unwilling, ignorant virgin.”

“Perhaps you have been around actresses so much, you can no longer tell when a reaction is feigned or genuine. I assure you, Sir Richard, I am not
acting
anything.”

“Would you rather disobey the king and risk his displeasure?”

“I would rather have other choices.”

Ignoring her remark, her husband sat up and bundled his breeches into a large ball. He listened to the now-thankfully-hushed voices beyond the bed curtains. Then, leaning over her, he opened the curtains and threw his breeches across the room.

Charles’s rich laugh boomed. “A most excellent toss, Blythe!” he cried. “You hit Villiers right in the head.”

“A thousand pardons, Buckingham. My wife was toying with me at the time.”

Elissa gasped and flushed hotly as the courtiers snickered.

“We are glad to hear you are making progress,” the king remarked. “Now, who has brought the cards? Shall we play cribbage?”

Ignoring his beautiful wife, who apparently wanted nothing at all to do with him, Richard moved back to his side of the bed and contemplated the horrible irony of his situation. Minette and his other former mistresses might consider it just, perhaps, that he should wed a woman who apparently found him utterly unappealing, while he burned with passionate desire.

As Elissa had stood before him clad only in her thin chemise, her bounteous hair flowing to her waist just as he had imagined, he had
thought her the most beautiful, desirable woman he had ever seen.

There had also been a virginal vulnerability about her distinctly at odds with her surroundings and company. Given her subsequent behavior, however, he feared her vulnerability might have been completely imaginary.

And since she had a child, she was most certainly no virgin.

Well, that was something to be thankful for, he thought, his sardonic sense of humor coming to his aid. And there were many worse commands the king could make. Had he not, after all, pledged his sword to the king’s service? Of course, he had had a metal blade in mind at the time.

He would simply have to begin at the beginning.

He reached out and ran his hand up her slender arm. He could feel her tension, and his caress did not lessen it. “You do not have to be so stiff, madam. I should be, but not you.”

“Tell me, Sir Richard,” she said, his attempt at humor obviously completely missing the mark, “do you like to have an audience for everything?”

“I agree that having company in such close proximity is not conducive to intimacy, yet they cannot see us and if we are quiet, will hear little, unless my prowess—”

“I will be quiet. Just do what you must and be done with it!”

“Your current attitude is hardly encouraging.”

“Since when has a husband required encouragement? Or a man of your ilk?”

“My ilk?”

“Your experience, then, or your many conquests.”

“If one’s alleged opponent surrenders eagerly, can it be called a conquest?”

“Are you always so talkative, sir?” Elissa demanded with exasperation. “Or is this what a playwright considers a necessary prologue, like that before the play begins in earnest? If so, given that I am not an ignorant virgin, you may dispense with it.”

“My sweet,” he whispered, inching closer, “there is no such thing as an unnecessary prologue when I am the writer. Allow me to demonstrate how necessary—and pleasurable—a prologue can be.”

Elissa realized he was getting under the covers. In another moment, his naked body would be beside hers.

In another moment, it was.

“There is no need to be so anxious, wife,” he whispered. He took her hand, but did not kiss it. Instead, he pressed it against his warm, bare chest. She felt his taut muscles and the beating of his heart. “You have nothing to fear from me.”

“I am not afraid of you.”

“I am glad to hear you say so.”

He lifted her hand to his chin so that her fingertips rested against his soft lips, while the stubble of his beard was like sand against the rest of her fingers.

It was a simple thing and yet strangely exciting.

Too exciting. She had loved foolishly once; she would not allow herself to believe herself in love or be swept away by what had to be lust.

“No, do not draw back,” he insisted softly, gently grabbing her wrist so that his lips were still against her fingertips. “You smell of lavender.”

“We store our clothing with lavender,” she replied matter-of-factly.

“Ah.” He shifted closer. “Yes, the delightful scent is stronger on your undergarment.”

She broke away, trying to see him in the dark. “What are you doing?”

“The prologue.”

He ran his fingers along the neckline of her chemise, grazing her skin ever so lightly. Her skin seemed to burn where he touched her.

“No silk or satin or lace?” he whispered, as if he were truly interested. “Not even at the hem?”

She tried to subdue a gasp when she felt his other hand on her leg. He slowly moved it upward.

“I put no store in such frippery,” she said weakly.

“A very utilitarian philosophy,” he observed as he took his hand away from her limb.

Of course she was relieved.

She started when she felt his breath warm on her cheek, his lips obviously a mere fraction of an inch away. “Unfortunately, that garment is a hindrance at present—unless you would prefer to leave it on, if you find that more exciting.”

Before she could answer—if indeed, she could have found the words to express her surprise that he would want her naked, something William Longbourne had never suggested the whole of their unhappily married life—he pulled her to him and kissed her.

He kissed as she had always imagined a man in love should kiss the woman he adored, with passion and tenderness in thrilling alliance as if he were gently persuading her to love him, rather than demanding.

As if he would ask rather than commandeer, share rather than horde. As if he wanted her to experience all the excitement he did, or maybe even more.

What kind of equality was this? What kind of freedom was he offering?

She broke the kiss, wanting to think—needing to think, or else she would succumb to the powerful spell of his kisses and caresses.

“What is the matter?”

She decided he was, perhaps, deserving of an explanation. “My husband never kissed me when he loved me.”

“Did you not love him?”

Elissa’s defenses came to the fore. “I meant when he made love to me.”

“And I meant, did you not make love with him?”

“Of course I did. I bore him a child.”

“No, madam, you misunderstand,” he said very gently, and with a new understanding in his voice. “I should ask, did you enjoy making love with him?”

“It is a wife’s duty to submit to her husband.”

“And so, since I am now your husband, if I were to throw myself upon you and take my pleasure of you as if you were a cheap whore, you would not complain?”

A cheap whore.

Although she had never put the feeling into words, that was exactly how William Longbourne had made her feel.

“Yet, as you say, you bore him a child. Everyone knows that for a child to be conceived, the woman has to be passionately aroused,” he said.

“Every
man
believes it, and it is a very convenient way to contradict a charge of rape if the woman subsequently bears a child, but surely I am not the only woman who knows
otherwise. I assure you, sir, I derive no pleasure from the act of love.”

“Yet,” Richard murmured, silently cursing the late William Longbourne for a disgusting, selfish lout.

But he was also thankful that he now knew how to proceed with her: with patience, with every subtle method he could recall to arouse a woman, and with even more self-control than he usually practiced. He would ensure that she enjoyed the act of love as she never had before.

But first, he would get rid of the king and his courtiers and their ladies.

“Give me your stocking.”

“We have not—”

“Let me throw it to them so they will go away.”

Inadvertently giving him a breathtaking glimpse of her naked leg, she eagerly took off her stocking, balled it in her hand and gave it to him.

“Your Majesty,” he declared as if lacking breath, a state not totally feigned, “I am most
extremely
grateful.”

With that, he leaned over her again, opened the bed curtains a little and threw the stocking toward the part of the room where most of the noise originated.

As Richard shifted back to his side of the bed, she realized he was not nearly so heavy as William Longbourne had been. The prèssure
of his thighs was not unbearable and she realized that whatever the women had thought concerning his virility, they had apparently been somewhat conservative.

Suddenly, and most unexpectedly, the king thrust his head between the bed curtains.

“Odd’s fish, Blythe!” he growled, a look of such displeasure on his face, Elissa could scarce believe this was the same Merry Monarch. “Do you take us for a fool? Are we deaf? You have been whispering in here like a pair of spies exchanging information. Now go to it, and don’t throw this stocking again until you have made this beautiful lady your wife. Or God help us, we shall take back your new title and throw you both in the Tower until we are pleased to release you! We shall have no one seeking an annulment on the grounds of nuptial rights denied.”

T
he king vanished as abruptly as he had appeared.

Richard and Elissa sat in stunned silence for a moment before Richard grimly said, “Was that your clever plan, madam?”

“No!” She took a deep breath that did nothing to calm her dismay. “I confess such a scheme never occurred to me—although I rather wish it had.
You
are supposed to be the clever one.”