Médicis Daughter (34 page)

Henriette, sensing my discomfort, takes my hand. “Let me arrange it all. It will be my little gift.”

I draw a deep breath. Henriette’s tone is light but the gift she offers is anything but little. “Make it soon,” I plead.

Henriette gives a delightful laugh by way of reply.

“And now,” I say, inclining my head as if I do her a great favor, “you may make me as dazzling as you like.”

*   *   *

Never has the ride to the Hôtel de Nevers seemed longer. From behind my kidskin mask I see men working on the monuments for my sister-in-law’s entrance into Paris.
Bless Elisabeth and her coronation
. She is the reason my beloved is in the city. Without her I would not be riding to see him, anticipating his strong arms around me—and so much more. My very flesh is alive with anticipation of the surrender of my virginity. I quiver. I could not eat this morning.

Henriette greets me, drawing me to her comfortable and familiar apartments. Covered dishes are in place and wine has been poured.

“For appearances,” she says. “And you may be famished after.”

My throat constricts and my heart beats inside my ribs like a caged bird. Lifting a glass from the table, I take a gulp. A knock sounds.

“The Duc is prompt,” Henriette says with a smile. She takes the glass from my trembling hand, sets it back on the table, and then calls, “Enter.” A servant swings open the door to reveal Henri. His eyes meet mine. For a moment he is motionless, staring at me as if I am the very queen of heaven.

“Brother, come in. Your meal awaits.” Henriette smiles at Henri. Then she turns to the servant. “That will be all,” she instructs.

Henri moves to me, taking my hand and bringing it to his lips. “Margot.” His voice, usually so sonorous, is low and broken. He pulls me into his arms, his lips close over mine. After five long, lonely months I taste him once again. His breath is my breath. I am engulfed by his delicious smell.

“Ahem.” The sound of Henriette clearing her throat has an immediate effect. Henri and I pull apart, staring at each other, dazed. His cheeks are flushed and I imagine that mine are as well.

Glancing at the Duchesse sheepishly, Henri bows, then says, “Forgive me, sister, but a starving man has little use for manners.”

“Ah, but, Your Grace, I must insist on decorum.” Henriette’s look of mock severity causes us all to laugh. “Have a glass of wine. I will prepare your beloved for bed.”

I cannot seem to get enough air. My stomach spasms, and something else as well, as if those lower lips which man has never parted have come alive.

It appears that Henri is also affected, for as Henriette draws me away, he picks up the nearest glass and drains it.

In Henriette’s chamber the bed is turned back and flower petals are strewn over the sheets. Soon I will slide between those sheets with Henri beside me. We are, strangely, almost reverently silent as Henriette undresses me down to my silken chemise. When only that remains, she leads me to her dressing table. Opening a case, she draws out a necklace of enormous sapphires and fastens it around my neck. “The effect against your skin is beautiful,” she says, beginning to take down my hair. When she has finished brushing my tresses, Henriette loosens the neck of my chemise. Unstopping a bottle on her dressing table, she pours some perfume into one of her palms, rubs her hands together and then, quite unexpectedly, reaches over my shoulders and runs her scented hands beneath my chemise and over my breasts. I am both embarrassed and fascinated to see my nipples harden though the fine silk of my garment.

I climb into the bed, allowing her to arrange the pillows. Standing back, she nods her head, satisfied. “Beautiful. One more thing.” She bustles to her dressing table and then to a decanter of brandy, opening the libation for no purpose that I can ascertain. “I fear from the Duc’s looks that you, my dear friend, are the undoing of his much-vaunted self-control. We must take precautions that, if it is so, your womb will not be quickened. There will be time enough for the Duc to give your cousin an heir once you are wed.” She laughs as if delighted by the thought of my cuckolding the Prince of Navarre.

She holds out her hand. In her palm I can see a small piece of sponge. “It is doused in brandy,” she says. Her explanation means nothing to me.

“What am I to do with it?”

“You must push this past your
dame du milieu,
do you understand? It will hurt, but it will offer your womb some protection.”

I look away as I part my
babichon
and push the sponge inside. It stops momentarily and then, in a single, swift thrust, it is gone. I yelp with the pain of it and my eyes water.

“Good,” Henriette declares, satisfied. And then she is gone.

A moment later Henri enters. He stops just over the threshold to stare. “
Mon Dieu,
you are a thing too beautiful to be real,” he says. Slowly he walks to the foot of the bed, unfastening his doublet as he comes. As he undresses I finger Henriette’s sapphires, arching my neck, hoping to look my best. Henri’s eyes never leave me.

When he stands in nothing but his shirt—a garment as fine as my chemise—I summon him. “Come to me,” I say, opening the neck of my chemise even further. “Lay claim to what should have been yours. To what
is
yours by my own volition. For I swear to love you always and no other.”

He eagerly complies. Lying beside me, his hands run over me—cupping breasts, caressing my waist and belly, slipping between my thighs. “I have dreamed of this since first you caught my eye as a slip of a girl,” he murmurs, kissing the side of my neck. As he pulls me against him I can feel the organ of his manhood pressing against my belly. It is as a rod of iron. Fascinated, I reach down to touch it. As my fingers meet his flesh—surprisingly soft—he cries out in delight. His delight emboldens me and I stroke him again and again. His hands fall to my hips and begin to gather up my chemise.

Rolling on top of me, he asks, “Shall I make you mine, then?”

The tenderness in his face makes my heart ache. I draw up my knees, rubbing them along his haunches. The smoothness of his skin sliding against mine causes me to moan.

“Yes.”

I have not a moment to prepare myself. Like a warrior charging into battle, Henri gives a mighty thrust and disappears inside me—stopping only when his loins collide with mine.

In all the months we feasted on stolen kisses, all the evenings he fondled me and crooned words of love, all the frustrated moments I longed for this and could not have it, never did I properly imagine the exquisite feeling of his flesh inside me. As he draws himself in and out, covering my face and neck with kisses, nipping and teasing my nipples with his lips and teeth, I am overcome. I want to touch every part of him. My hands run along his back beneath his shirt. My legs entwine behind his buttocks. I cry out in pleasure and the sound of my own voice excites me further. I want to shout to all the world that he is mine.

Harder and harder he presses me, his face growing fierce. I wonder if he will go through me and touch the silken sheets I rest upon. I close my eyes, helpless in the face of my own sensations. Without warning, the tunnel of my flesh, which he occupies so fully, begins to spasm. I keen his name, and as I do his voice joins mine, joyous, strangely strangled and shouting. Collapsing on top of me, he rolls onto his back, taking me with him. With my head resting on his chest, I can hear his heart racing faster than horse ever galloped. I can feel his hand stroking my hair.

“Dear God,” he murmurs, “I must have you night and day. Must dwell inside you. I swear your body was made to please mine.”

He is pleased!
The thought fills me with pride and thanksgiving. He loves me, he has taken me and I have pleased him. Should my heart stop beating in this moment, it would be enough.

CHAPTER 15

January 1572—Paris, France

Another year has begun. I am to be painted by Clouet. It has been more than ten years since he made a portrait of me, dressed in cream. This time I will wear black. How fitting. Jeanne d’Albret has left Pau and moves ever northward, bringing with her a will to come to terms, and my detestable cousin.

After a year’s delay I felt certain the Queen of Navarre had no real interest in a marriage between myself and the Prince of Navarre. I started to feel safe. But I underestimated Mother. When wheedling and bribing failed, she turned to her favorite method: threats. Her Majesty intimated she would seek a papal investigation into the validity of Jeanne’s marriage to Antoine de Bourbon. Such an examination would call into question my cousin’s standing as First Prince of the Blood.

Who can say if there was any true defect in Jeanne’s union? The Queen of Navarre, as a member of a reviled sect, may simply have despaired of a fair hearing from the Holy Father. Whatever her reasoning, Jeanne wrote saying if His Majesty would confirm her son’s position, the Prince of Navarre would wed me. Without a miracle, I will be my cousin’s wife before we see another autumn. So my heart is as dark and heavy as the gown I am fastened into for my portrait.

I am not the only one in a black mood. Ruggiero
il vecchio
predicts Mother will die near Saint-Germain. All work on the Tuileries has been halted because it lies in the diocese of Saint-Germain l’Auxerrois. And even such a precaution does not lift the pall that has settled on Her Majesty. I am not sorry. Mother has blighted my life. I am glad that her happiness has been taken by this prophecy, even though I am not quite wicked enough to wish her dead.

If delight in another’s distress were all I had to sustain me, mine would be a miserable existence. After another prolonged absence, however, my love, my Duc, has again returned to Court. He has been au Louvre daily—letting his wife, pregnant again, languish at the Hôtel de Guise, clutching a basin and heaving, while he flirts with me. Mother casts us warning looks but seems willing to tolerate the renewed attention we pay each other. I cannot understand this indulgence on her part, but I do not care to delve too deeply into it.

When Henri and I are together—dancing, stealing a glance across a room or a kiss in some darkened corner, exchanging witticisms—I feel alive as I have not since he left Paris last. But only when he moves inside me is the cause of my soul’s oppression blotted completely from my mind. Henri jokes that I have become insatiable, but he relishes it. And I relish finding new ways to leave him breathless in my power.

The first thing Henri gave me when he returned was a small ladder of a length to reach from my window to the dry fosse below. It is remarkably light. I laughed when he told me it could support his weight and allow him to be with me in secret. But the first time I saw his face appear above my windowsill, I stopped laughing. That night Henri gave me the string of pearls that I am wearing for my portrait. I wear it now as well—it and nothing else—as I wait for the signal to lower the ladder. The blessed low whistle sounds! I swing open my shutters, the cold winter air meeting my skin and invigorating it. Moments later Henri climbs over the sill and drops to the floor. Without a word I take his icy hand and press it to my breast. He tries to pull me to him but I use my other arm to hold him off. I draw his hand up to my mouth and begin to gently bite his palm. He gives a deep groan. Again he reaches out and I swat his hand away.

“Patience,” I murmur. “You made me wait and now it is your turn.”

“I made you wait?”

“It must be an hour since you took leave of the King.” I reach up, draw his head down, and run my tongue over his lips before releasing him.

“I had to allow time to make sure the King’s other guests were safely away and most of those who live au Louvre were abed,” he says pleadingly.

“I thought maybe you’d gone home to your wife.” My tone is teasing but, in truth, I continue to think of the Princesse as a rival.

“Why would I do that?”

I lead him to the bed. “Sit down,” I order. I remove his ruff, his doublet, and then his shirt—all very slowly—pushing his hands away again and again as they seek to help, allowing him only brief caresses of my flesh. Once he is naked from the waist up, I kneel and draw off his boots. As I do so, I can feel his hand in my hair, twisting. I unhook and roll down his hose, then begin to unfasten the front of his
haut-de-chausses
. As soon as there is a large enough opening, his prick pushes out. I slide my mouth over it—something Henriette advised me to try.

Henri cries out. I feel the hand in my hair tighten into a fist. Without warning I rise and lower myself onto him. His head snaps up and his arms close around my waist. Leaning in, I bite his ear, his neck, and then plant my lips on his, kissing him violently. When we are done, we are both exhausted. We lean against each other, our sweat and heartbeats mingling. Then he falls back onto the bed, looking with undisguised admiration at me where I sit upright, his member still inside me.

“God, I will miss you.”

The lingering glow of my pleasure is extinguished like the flame of a candle snuffed between wet fingers. “Miss me? You are not coming to Blois?”

“I must wait for the child.”

Climbing off him, I look for something to put on. “The Princesse has months before her confinement.” Finding a
surcote,
I wrap it tightly around me.

“But the doctors make a great deal of the delicacy of her health. It is not like when she carried Charles—”

“A perfect excuse to leave her here, but no excuse to stay yourself.”

“Marguerite! Would you have me look a monster before the whole Court? I may not love my wife, but I am still a gentleman and value my reputation.” He reaches for me but I take a step back.

“I gave up my reputation for you.”

He has no easy answer for that. “Let us not make this about your honor or mine,” he says uneasily. “I concede you mean more to me than my honor. But the plain truth is Her Majesty would hardly allow me to stand about the halls of Blois while your marriage is negotiated.”

“How can she prevent you coming when the rest of His Majesty’s gentlemen attend him? What reason could she possibly offer?”