The Maiden and the Unicorn (46 page)

The players worked hard: they sang, they tumbled, they quarrelled, they juggled, they disappeared stealthfully one by one and returned as a host of devils to plague the two remaining actors who were mincing up and down as fat merchant sinners. The tridents went everywhere, lifting hems, prodding purses, scaring the dogs until the noise deafened and the two kings rose with their hands over their ears.

Afterwards, Richard drank with the players, learning of their meandering travels and whence they were bound. By the time he had done with them, they were happy and soused like herrings. He let them delay him before he finally left the hall, no, not with a swagger—he abhorred swaggards.

The laughter and carousing had strapped him with a breastplate against the despair of a night alone. The wine followed by beer had numbed the aching. All for the best. The Almighty, with the charming waywardness of the Delphic Oracle, had confirmed that celibacy was to be enforced and endured. But the bells of the cathedral sounded lonely and the river Maine was a cold band of silver beneath the moon before he felt his way up the unfamiliar stairs without a candle. The thick stones of the walls were substantial, rough against his fumbling fingers, and for an instant he would have sworn on Our Lady's mantle that he had the wrong room.

Moonlight forced its way through the shutter, missing the coverlet. Margery, trundleless, lay like a question waiting to be answered, the tendrils of honey hair curling over the edge of the sheet. He held his breath. Was she sleeping?

Only a cricket rasped through the stillness. His senses told him she was still awake. He divested himself swiftly of his clothing as if it was aflame. There was no bolster.

Incredibly, neither warp nor weft sheathed her silken skin. The pristine snow slope of back and thigh lured his fingers to slide, and slide he did, one possessive hand between her thighs.

Surprised, she squeaked and wriggled but he held on, testing the moistness of that delightful chasm. What he found there pleased him.

"Your hand is cold, sir," she protested, albeit sleepily.

He brushed his lips against the creamy skin below her ear. "So, my firkin of desire, am I to slake my thirst with you now or do we quarrel first and beget a child later." He felt her tense with anger, and, grinning, he withdrew his hand and turned her over, but the sheet came with her. She let her breath out as if deliberately calming herself. Her eyes, wide, watched him, but her expression, her mood, he could not read. Not yet.

Slowly he pulled the sheet away from her coy clasp and eased his gaze over the lovely curves, grateful that there was enough light to make out the contours of that delicious country. "You are curiously amenable, mistress. Are you ailing?"

"I am trying not to joust but the kerchief is down." Her voice was husky. Like scenting rain across a meadow, tears were near he guessed. Confusion, if it might be named an emotion, perhaps tormented her.

His smiling mouth found a corner of hers and teased. "I promise..." He made her part her lips, tasted her sweetness, then drew away to feast his sight again upon her body as he brushed his thumb over the dark peaks of her breasts as if she were the frets of a lute. "I promise that I will not argue with you for the present but as to jousting, lady..." His fingers stroked down her belly, across the soft tangled mound to the most intimate part of her. "As to jousting, I have a lance that needs must penetrate beneath your hauberk."

He felt her gasp and moisten further at his words.

"You are—"

"What?" He bent his head to one sensitive peak.

"Outrageous."

"And very comfortable with tournaments of this nature, if you are thinking of unhorsing me in mid-gallop."

Her fingers burrowed into his hair and forced him to bring his mouth up to hers. She opened her lips beneath his.

He tormented her, one instant demanding, the next withholding, while his fingers echoed his lips until she was slippery and unfulfilled. Her fingers also grew adventurous, caressing him until he was groaning and unable to withstand her. He thrust her hand away and swiftly moved between her legs.

"Richard." She gasped, arching and writhing as his fingers worked at pleasing her, dragging her gently to the abyss. "Please, have mercy." He laughed, exquisitely torturing her before he plunged his shaft towards her womb. He felt her tremble and then sweetly convulse, bringing him his own release.

Afterwards, emptied, satiated, he collapsed beside her, his face in the pillow, his breath short.

"Richard." A little hand shook him. "Please, speak, are you ill?"

"Do you mean have I splintered my lance?" He raised himself on his elbows. Of course, one forgot the lady was inexperienced in love making if not in dissembling.

"I suppose I do." He heard the frown in her voice even if he could not see it in her face. "Does it hurt afterwards? Are you in pain?"

"Not any more. Give me time to recover and you may alleviate any further discomforts I have yet to suffer before morning."

She gave a little sigh of relief at his laughter and then added, "We have to talk before morning."

He cursed inwardly. "You and I do not talk, Margery, we argue. You know very well that there will be no resolution of differences by the morning. Just because you think you can beguile me between your thighs does not mean that there is any peace between us. This night is but an honest admission of desire on both our parts. At least your father can cease scolding like a grandam."

She thumped her pillow testily for answer and turned on her shoulder. He smiled and edged close so that his body fitted against the softness of her. She wriggled in protest but he held her close, delighting that his strength could encompass and overlap hers. He buried his face in the web of her sweet-smelling hair. This pleasure could be his every night if there was sufficient privacy—if he could forget that although her body might be his by law, her loyalty was to King Edward.

"Richard, if this meeting tomorrow should result in an alliance, will you support it?"

He tensed. What was she after now? He had already given a wealth of thought to this cause already. Now he had no wish to air the matter and certainly not with Margery Neville.

"Let it come to pass first."

"I hope it does not. Did you see how moved Anne was? Ah, I forgot, of course, you are in her confidence."

"Peace, you shrewmouse. Am I not the fortune seeker you think me?" He sighed, shifting to rest his head back upon his crossed wrists. "I wonder how my Lord Montague will view this alliance if it comes to fruition. He loves King Edward well and it will be a bitter thing to have to choose between his brother and his friend."

"And, of course, your brothers must choose also. Will they support Lord Montague's decision?"

"Our family have always fought on the Nevilles' side. Mayhap they will consult our father in this, should a decision become necessary."

Turning onto her side, she faced him, her fingers teasing the dark curls upon his chest. "What about you, Margery? Who will you pray for? Your father or the wonderful Ned?"

She withdrew her hand. "I will do anything to prevent this alliance which is why I will go to England." She was reminding him of the pit that lay between them because he had rejected her, always the constant jab of her duty to the infamous Ned. Could she not grasp the nettle at last and see that
he,
her husband, had the ordering of her life and would outmanoeuvre the King of France yet.

"Hmm. And if I decide to support this alliance, lady, and command you to support it also?"

"You cannot order my conscience." She rolled over to rest upon her elbows, her delectable breasts creating an adit which beckoned to pleasurable depths.

Running a finger down the valley of her spine, he quoted softly:
 

      
"I wish her well, she wills me woe,

      
I am her friend but she's my foe."

"
Are
you my ally, Richard?"

"That depends on you trusting me."

She gave it some consideration before she added, "Would you be brave enough to stand before the King of France and tell him you will not let me go?"

"Perhaps if I offered him a white crocodilus and a phoenix."

"I do not believe in such creatures. You do not have the stomach for it, do you?" She wriggled angrily away from him.

Must she be always testing me, he wondered irritably. He turned his head. "Do not provoke me, mistress. I shall do whatever suits my purpose." She lapsed into silence at that. He did not want to think about why he had indirectly driven her to King Louis nor why she was willing to suddenly be so dutiful. If the wench would fall in love with him, then she would be like clay to be moulded.

"I should like to meet your third brother. Is he also a riddlemaster?"

"John is the epitome of charm and possesses a pleasing wit. Unlike me."

"Oh, but you are very charming when it amuses you to be so and I am grown used to your humour. When you asked me at what time I wished you to deprive me of my virtue at Sutton Gaveston, I thought you were in earnest."

"How do you know I was not?"

"Because to do so would have dishonoured you."

She was right, his little witch. So she thought she had fathomed him, did she? He needed to tug at the reins again, to remind her who was lord in this marriage. His hand skated down her flank. "Mayhap there is now a child taken root within your womb." The lovely curve beneath his hand quivered and he laughed softly at the success of his stratagem. "You are grown suddenly silent, lady."

"How many children are you expecting?" she asked in a small voice.

"Well, there's the babe I whelped on a cordwainer's wife in London, and, yes, I am sure I told you the recorder's married daughter in Gloucester has twins swelling beneath her girdle. Her mother was a twin also, she tells me, and then there is a noble widow who lives on a fine manor outside Doncaster. Ouch!"

Margery was leaning on her arm, glaring at him, one lovely nipple thrust entirely too close for his peace of mind.

"You really do know all these women, do you not?"

"Yes."

"You seduced them under their husbands' noses."

"It was a close shave sometimes. Once I had to escape over the thatch. But it was all in preparation for you, mousekin." He touched the tip of her breast and felt her shiver at the sensation. Her answer, however, was shaky with indignation.

"No wonder you think so poorly of women, especially married ones. They fall off their trees into your lascivious hands like plums."

"It is true, I have met few honest women."

"You are very cruel."

"No, merely honest."

"Have you some bastard children?"

"I do not know, lady, nor, I suspect, do their mothers."

She clouted him at that and he laughed as he thrust his fingers into her hair, tugging her face down to him. "I can hear the trumpets."

She tried to draw back but he held her still. "W-what trumpets?"

"The kerchief is down again."

"Such a swift recovery, sir?" Her disbelieving fingers crept like scouts down the hair of his chest and belly to discover the position of the enemy and found he spoke the truth. He knew that if it had been day, he would have seen her cheeks turn to rose.

"You see," he said softly, and had her on her back again with swift strength. "I said you were
'mon seul desir
'." Her soft mouth yielded willingly beneath his lips. Her giving astounded him; the gentleness and the passion were the heady brew that he had dreamed of.

"Do you want me, Richard?" she asked when he let her breathe again.

"Yes, as the earth needs sunshine, but alas, the morning will come all too soon and Truth will hide her face again."

She pushed him away. "But do you want me for me?"

"Of course." His fingers were teasing the luscious berried tip of her left breast to a ripe perfection.

"No, I mean, do you care about me?"

"I think I have been asked that by every woman I have ever bedded," he answered with deliberate arrogance and in return received a punishment that was both instant and divine.

* * *

Margery woke with Huddleston's arms imprisoning her. Somewhere a rooster was issuing proclamations. She freed herself at the risk of awakening him and wriggled out of the sheets.

"This is where we have another devastating argument and come close to strangling one another." His voice found her at the window.

She turned around deliberately, no longer embarrassed to be as naked as Eve, aware of the full power of her body over him. Her gaze deliberately studied the dark river of hair that ran down the centre of his chest and disappeared beneath the sheet about his waist.

He raised an eyebrow as if amused at her newfound confidence. "I cry you mercy, lady. You cannot have more. The petards and the pennons are all down and the crowds have gone home."

She frowned and sought a chastising answer. "My father will at least be pleased at your capitulation."

"What!" He was out of bed and joined her by the window, grabbing her wrists as he had done at his most bitter, so that her belly was against the skin of his. But the manacles of flesh were gentle this time. For an instant she had been afraid, and then he laughed and kissed the tip of her nose and let her go.