10
The king removed from Greenwich to Shene Palace before the first of January. The shift in residence was, in part, to allow a different segment of his subjects access to the king’s justice, but also to allow the vacated palace to recover from housing several hundred courtiers, their servants and animals.
Henry presented fine new raiment to his household in token of the New Year, a fresh beginning. Cate, not being a designated lady-in-waiting to the queen, was left out of that largesse. She received, instead, a fine costume of different fabric and design in honor of her coming marriage, and was assured Ross received the same.
The gift was no great surprise. Henry stood as guardian to her and her sisters, and Isabel had received something similar on her marriage to Braesford. Still, the richness of it startled Cate. The gown was of lustrous silk-velvet in an evergreen hue, as befitted the winter season, with slashed sleeves that exposed the gold-embroidered cream silk sleeves of the under shift. More gold lace edged the neckline and the inverted wedge of the split skirt that swept back to reveal the embroidered underskirt. The girdle that accompanied the gown was of gold mesh set with hundreds of small emerald beads, while larger gems dangled at the ends of its cords, hanging nearly to the floor. A fine cloak in white velvet was supplied to ward off the winter chill. Its attached capelet was of ermine, with a hood to cover her hair, which would be worn loose on her special day.
Cate was delighted with the costume, though she’d have selected a more blue-green shade of velvet, given a choice. There was no chance of that, of course. White and green were the colors designated by Henry for his Tudor reign, so were a mark of his favor. She must be content.
Watching Gwynne brush the velvet, fluff the fur and twitch at the wrinkles in the silk, Cate felt a sinking sensation in her chest. The ceremonial presentation of the attire the evening before made the wedding seem more real. The days were slipping past one by one. Soon they would be gone.
She had not slept for the past three nights. A part of her waited, staring into the darkness, listening for the thud of feet, the whisper of another serving woman outside or tromp of a sentry come to tell her that Ross was dead. The dawning of every day was a reprieve. The first sight of him in the great hall, breaking his fast with other men downing their beef, bread and ale, lifted her spirits like the rising of the sun.
The two of them had exchanged New Year’s gifts, more because it was expected, she thought, than from sentiment. She had sewn a pair of gloves for him of the softest deerskin, embroidered with the thistle of Scotland. He had presented her with a silver pomander filled with the dried and spiced leaves of Saracen roses.
It was the only time in these past few days that they had spoken to each other with civility. The strain of their forced marriage, and the exchange between them after the documents were signed, left them uncomfortable in one another’s company.
The thought of Ross’s face as he’d proclaimed his right to bed her seldom left Cate. She could not erase from her mind the possessive promise in the depths of his eyes. Every time she brought it to mind, a tremor streaked through her, straight to the lower part of her belly.
She had half feared he would take Henry’s edict as permission to be as intimate as he pleased with her. She also feared he would not.
Her mind was in such turmoil during these days, so awash in dread and longing, shrinking and anticipation, that she hardly knew what she was about. Eating was impossible, sleep uncertain. She was such poor company that Marguerite deserted her for whatever companionship she could find in the great hall. Left alone, Cate sat gazing at nothing, with her embroidery lying untouched in her lap, or else stared out some high window at the passing horsemen, searching for a familiar figure in plaid.
She should have more pride, she told herself. She was no serving maid, sighing after a pair of broad shoulders. No, she was Lady Catherine Milton, a lady of independent thought and considered decisions. What she should be doing was persuading the stubborn Scotsman to fly for the border while he was still able. Failing that, she should be petitioning the king’s mother for her aid in entering a nunnery, just as she had threatened.
Cate could not make up her mind which action was best. Both were so very final.
They had been ensconced at Shene some days when a messenger arrived from Braesford Hall. He brought with him a bundle of New Year’s gifts that had been long delayed due to a series of snowstorms. He also delivered a letter from Cate’s sister Isabel.
As pleased as she was by gifts she had given up seeing until Braesford and Isabel next came to court, Cate valued the letter more. She waited until she was alone to read it, unwrapping it, breaking the seal and unrolling it with care.
Isabel’s contentment was written into every word. She was growing huge with the child inside her, she wrote, so suspected it was a boy. She prayed it was, as she was certain that would please Braesford, though he assured her in divers satisfactory ways that he cared not at all. Little Madeleine, Henry’s babe, was teething, though thriving otherwise. She was quite the chatelaine of the manse, betimes, providing for landholders, villeins and a full complement of men-at-arms, seeing to their needs like a ewe with her lambs. All that was lacking for her to be completely happy was to have her dear sisters with her. And that brought her to a message she had received from Marguerite. According to their youngest sister, a marriage had been arranged for Cate. Isabel would be pleased beyond words to hear of it, if only she knew her middle sister was pleased, as well.
Cate frowned as she wondered how the news had reached the far north so quickly. A moment later, she realized Isabel must refer to the first time Henry had suggested a betrothal, that she could not know of his latest royal command. Cate began to read again:
Marguerite believes you may think to escape this marriage by appealing to the archbishop, possibly through the duchess, for permission to take the veil. I know not your mind in this matter, but would caution you to think carefully upon it. A life of prayer and good works may not suffice for you, sweet Cate. I fear you are too volatile for such a vocation, that it may chafe you beyond bearing. I would also have you understand the sacrifice you would make. I can summon no words to describe how precious the closeness between husband and wife can be, how very powerful the moments when they are alone behind the bed curtains. These times are magical, the very essence of life, leading to this most glorious of states that I now embrace, the creation of a child. Moreover, to stand at a man’s side as his helpmate, friend and lover, one whom he will protect with his very life, is a boon beyond compare. Do not deprive yourself of these things, I pray you, dear Cate. Or if you must, be certain you have excellent reason.
I am, ever and always, your loving sister,
Isabel
Cate sat staring into the fire with the piece of vellum clutched in her hand for an endless time. Her thoughts and impulses leaped and danced like the flames, flaring and subsiding, only to flare up again. They crackled and spat and spiraled into smoke, but in their center was a glowing red heat that did not die.
How weary she was of other people deciding her life for her.
She must do something.
Yes, she must do something, but what?
Life in a nunnery had little appeal. In all truth, she had no real vocation. Regardless, she could not continue at court if she refused to accede to the king’s wishes.
She might go to Isabel and Braesford, but it would be unfair to force them to defend her, and unkind to set them at odds with Henry on her account.
It was impossible for her to take up residence at any of the properties received as her share of her father’s estate. As a woman alone, unprotected by father, brother or husband, she would be besieged, subject to abduction and exactly the sort of forced marriage she wished to avoid. That, or else kept as a prisoner under Henry’s guard until such time as she felt dutiful.
She could not allow Ross to die from the effect of the curse. Nor could she bear to let him risk it
All in all, it seemed the nunnery was the only sensible choice.
If she must give up her freedom, her fortune and all joy of the flesh to become a bride of Christ, so be it, but first she would have at least a taste of the closeness to a man that Isabel described. Surely God would not begrudge her that much.
When the afternoon was far gone, and evening drawing in, Cate got to her feet and crossed the chamber to step into the hall. Stopping a scurrying maidservant, she sent for Gwynne. When her serving woman arrived, Cate bade her arrange water for bathing, and also a light meal of wine, meat pie and fruit to be served in her room. Shutting herself inside, then, she began to remove the veil from her hair.
In the midnight hour, when the palace had settled for the night, Cate left her chamber. She stole like a wraith through the vast, high-ceiling chambers, once more wearing Gwynne’s plain cloak of gray furze and wool servant’s slippers that whispered over the flooring. A faint trembling seemed to come from deep inside her, and she clenched her teeth to prevent their chattering. She was doing what she most desired, yet it felt as if she watched from a great distance as some other woman moved in and out of the shadows cast by lanterns in niches, paused to allow the patrolling palace guards to pass, swept noiselessly away behind their backs.
Her pulse was hammering in her ears, her heart battering her rib cage, by the time she reached Ross’s chamber. She lifted a hand to scratch upon the door, but barely touched it. To tarry, waiting for an answer, might mean being seen. In any case, she was in no mood to be denied. With a hand on the latch, she pushed her way inside.
The faint, whispering rustle of a footstep on floor rushes was her only warning. Hard upon it, a tall, black shape swooped down upon her. She was thrust backward against the door so fast her breath left her in a rush. Before she could get it back, something rigid and straight compressed her throat. A body as hard and warm as sun-heated armor pressed against her from shoulders to ankles.
For an instant, there was only stunned silence.
A curse, lewd, inventive and rasping with Gaelic, fanned the tendrils of hair at Cate’s temple. The forearm across her neck was released so quickly that air returned to her lungs with a choking, whistling gasp.
“Have you no more sense than to come to a man’s room in the middle of the night?” Ross demanded against her ear.
“I thought,” she began, before swallowing against the dry constriction and trying again. “I thought you would be asleep.”
“So I was, until I heard your kitten scratching. I bid fair to warn you, sweet Cate, if you’ve come to soothe my fevered brow this time, ’tis not what’s needful.”
“And what is?”
She could almost think she felt the same shudder run over him that shook her. Or it could be he shivered with cold. The chamber was chill and damp, with no hint of a fire, and he was quite, quite naked as he held her against him.
“Nothing you would be ready to supply,” he said after a moment.
“How can you say so when you…when you don’t know why I came?”
“If this is a game—”
“No! No, I only want what other women are allowed.”
“And that would be?”
“To be loved.”
“Loved.” That single word sounded strangled in his throat.
“There is so little time before the wedding. You said…” She paused to moisten dry lips. “You said you could, and would.”
“And it must be now, given that you are here? Now, before the wedding?”
Tears drained down the back of her throat and she had to swallow again before she could speak. “So it seems, else it may not be done at all. If you won’t…”
“Oh, I will,” he said, his voice thick as he pressed closer against her so she felt the firm, hot length of him through her skirts. “But you understand this is nothing you can set aside if you change your mind? Once done, why, ’tis done.”
“I know that well,” she said simply. “Do it now, while you can.”
The words had scarce left her lips before he took them. His mouth was warm and questing, slightly open so he tasted her like sipping new wine, taking her flavor, giving her his. He pushed back the hood of her cloak, threaded his fingers into her hair and tilted her head to gain deeper access.
The surfaces of her lips tingled; she caught his sweetness as she inhaled in intense gratification. He swept the inside of her mouth again and again in vital possession, feathering the fine and sensitive inner lining of her cheeks, grazing the edges of her teeth, touching her tongue and retreating. As she advanced to meet him, he shifted so his thigh was between hers, and shoved a hand inside her cloak to draw her closer.
His scent of hot, aroused male surrounded her. The curling hair that mantled his chest was soft and springing under her hands. She flatted her palms against it, enjoying the feel of it between her spread fingers. Her breasts swelled, straining against her gown, while a moan vibrated in her throat.
He slid his mouth away, bent his neck to rest his forehead against hers. “Stop me, Cate,” he said in both plea and warning. “Stop me now, or it will be too late.”
“It was too late when I opened your door.”
“Aye,” he said in gruff acceptance. “Aye.”
He bent to slide one hard arm under her knees and the other behind her back. The darkness swooped and spun behind her closed eyelids as she was lifted against his chest. The effect made her so giddy that it was a moment before she realized he had set her on the edge of his bed and was stripping away her cloak.
His movements were sure even in the dark. A man’s cloak was very like a woman’s, no doubt, yet she could not but wonder how many women he had undressed that he went about it so easily. Her gown, borrowed from Gwynne along with the cloak, was loose and without a girdle. He caught the hem, pushed his hands beneath it. Shoving the fabric upward so it gathered on his forearms, he slid his palms and spread fingers over her knees and then up her thighs. His thumbs met at the juncture, where they tangled in fine curls. He spread delicate folds and played among them.
The sensation was so startling, so exquisite, that she swayed toward him, clinging to his arms. He drew her up with his hands still under her gown, caressed her hips, clasping the rounded flesh like a miser clasping handfuls of gold. Then, in an abrupt move, he shoved the gown up, and her shift with it, stripping both off over her head. Before she could catch her breath or do more than gasp at the cold, he pressed her back onto the bed and followed after her, hot skin against her coolness, stonelike muscle and sinew against her softness, heated hardness against her soft curves and moist hollows. He reached for a coverlet padded with feathers, lofting it so it settled over them. Then he shifted over on the feather mattress and pulled her beneath him.
“Are you cold?” he asked, while nuzzling her neck, dragging handfuls of her hair from under her shoulders so its pull on her scalp was lessened.
“Not…not really.” How could she be, when his heat enclosed her where she was half submerged in the softness of the feather mattress, and his hard body, faintly rough with hair on his chest, thighs and legs, pressed upon her with delicious friction?
“You’re shivering, but never fear. I’ll warm you.”
Oh, yes, she knew he would, as he slid lower in the bed, his head disappearing beneath the coverlet while he tracked a line of moist, hot kisses down her neck, to the hollow between her collarbones, and between the twin hills of her breasts. He made a wet path between them, climbed in a spiral to the peak of one and then down again, began on the other. He flicked her nipples with his tongue, back and forth, while they contracted to near painful tightness, and then, only then, did he take one into the heated suction of his mouth.
She arched beneath him with a shrill cry, pressing her heels into the mattress in the need to be closer. She wanted him inside her, needed him to fill the empty ache there.
He was not ready, not done. It seemed he had only begun.
He moved lower, rasping across the flat surface of her belly with his beard stubble, soothing the scrape with mouth and tongue before the sting began. He inhaled her, blew upon her with his hot breath. With his tongue gently lapping, he delved into the fine curls at the juncture of her thighs, then spread her legs wide to lie between them while he concentrated his caresses, feasting, applying suction, endlessly tasting.
She writhed, the breath sobbing in her chest, while he learned her inside and out, or so it seemed. In her extremity, she trailed her fingers through his hair, spanned his shoulders with feverish hands and explored the width of his back. She was captivated by the hard planes of his body, so different from her own, by the sinuous muscles that seemed to enwrap him like a living shield, by the lethal power of him. He was silk over steel, dominant yet supplicating as he whispered commands, guided her movements, placed her as he wanted her. His mastery was complete as the fury of her need burgeoned inside, bursting upon her in pulsing wonder, leaving her panting and breathless.
Rising over her again, he offered his mouth. Mindless, mindless, she took it, drew his tongue into the depths of her own, wanting more of him, all of him, needing something that hovered unrecognized, just beyond her grasp. She was on fire, melting inside, so heated at the very core that it seemed nothing could soothe the burning ache of it.
He could. He did.
At the very zenith of her most virulent need, he pressed into her moist heat, taking yet giving in slow incursions, withdrawing so she could release the breath she held, doing it again and again until she grasped his hips and dragged him to her again, urging him deeper against the burning sting of it. She sobbed aloud as he broke through the deep internal barrier of her maiden-head and filled her, made her whole.
He set a gentle pace then, a slow friction that made her turn her head from side to side, crying out, wanting more, wanting the wonder yet again. The coverlet slipped away unnoticed while they strained together in elemental need. And when she reached for him again, he pressed her knees wide and gave her everything, sinking so deep that the hardness of bone rubbed against the soft mound of her. He drew back, and then gave himself to her again, and yet again.
It was perfect, a tumultuous pummeling, ever increasing in speed and strength. They moved together with soft thuds that set the bed to rocking on its leather straps, and swayed the bed curtains until they fanned their heated bodies. Every plunge sent waves of pleasure rolling through her, taking away all strain and fear. She met him with stringent effort while seeking for the promise she had been shown, longing for it in simple lust, giving infinitely in order to receive it. And he brought it to her with tireless strength, gave it to her in boundless generosity and sweating effort, as gift and glory.
Afterward, she clung to him with tears sliding from under her eyelids. She tasted the salt of his skin at his neck with a private kiss, pressed her face against his warm skin while she inhaled the raw scent of him, his essential maleness. She absorbed the feel of him into her skin, her bones, the center of her being. She memorized him, this man who had given her such pleasure as she thought never to know again.
She said goodbye.
Ross lay half stunned with satiation, hovering on the edge of an urge for sleep so strong it almost dragged him down into it. The only thing that prevented it was his perplexed amazement. If not for holding Cate’s warm and naked body to his side, he’d have thought the past space of time an unusually fervid dream.
She had come to him.
Against all hope or reason, she had appeared in his chamber with the same thing on her mind that had scarce left his for days on end. She had asked to be loved, and he had obliged her with hardly a coherent thought, because there was nothing else on earth he had ever wanted so much.
Not that it meant anything of great moment. Nay, of course not. They had been thrown into each other’s company, each other’s arms. The prospect of a bedding—the assumption that it would happen—had been there from the first. Some at court were sure it had occurred during the dark and cold of a night spent in the forest. That it had finally come to pass now was a simple matter of two people taking their pleasure, as would soon be their right and duty as husband and wife. No unruly passion came into it, no heart-burning adoration as depicted by poets.
Still, a swift wedding seemed a thing greatly to be wished.
The lady lying so close against him jerked a little as she drew breath. Concern rose inside Ross as he felt wet heat where her cheek rested on his collarbone. Could she be crying? It was not the reaction he usually inspired in the women he took into his bed.
“Are you all right?” He reached to draw up the coverlet as he asked it, covering them and tucking the excess behind her back.
She gave a quick nod but didn’t speak. The conviction grew upon him that she could not without betraying her distress. As carefully as he was able, he brushed tangled strands of hair away from her face. “I never meant to hurt you. I should have gone easier with you this first time.”
“How…how do you know it was my first?” she asked, the words choked as she stiffened in his hold.
“There are ways.” He continued to comb her hair with his fingers. “You were very…tight.”
“I can’t help that!”
“Nay,” he said, his voice grave, though laughter threatened to invade it, “and I’m not complaining, I promise you.”
“Oh.”
“’Twill be easier next time.”
“If there is a next time.”
He paused in his movements while his heart gave a heavy thud. “If?”
“Never mind. I’m sure it will be quite all right.”
It was that damnable curse of the Graces again, he was sure of it. She believed he would not live to see another time. He was not given to auguries and portents, but her certainty made him just a bit uneasy.
Was that why she had come to his chamber—because she meant to have this time with him before he died, because she thought he was due it? The notion was even less welcome.
Not that he had any right to complain. He had taken her up on her request for reasons that went beyond mere lust. He’d longed for her, longed to prevent a brutal initiation from Trilborn. Ross was glad beyond reason that he had been the first with her. And it had little to do with the feud, though awareness of it was always at the back of his mind. He loathed the thought of Trilborn forcing himself on her, causing her more pain and injury. That the bastard would have was certain; to take his enemy’s bride-to-be would give Trilborn a twisted satisfaction.
How was Ross to explain that to Cate? He could not even try. He would wind up sounding as if excusing his weakness, or worse, accusing Trilborn of intending no more than he had just done himself.
At least he knew a way to take her mind from thoughts of death. It was not entirely selfless, but that could not be helped; he did not pretend to sainthood. She had been so sweetly responsive that his body stirred to the point of pain at the mere thought of his aim. She was every soft and tender thing that had been absent from his life for so long, every honeyed joy he had ever tasted. More than that, she was here beside him, warm under the coverlet, sublimely naked in his arms.
“Ah, well,” he drawled as he turned more fully toward her, nudged his knee between her legs the better to press his heated hardness against her while enjoying her wet softness, “if I am to pass away before—”
“Don’t say that!” she said, her voice thick and her fingers clenching in the springing hair on his chest.
He winced and reached to take her hand, placing it on his flank. With it out of the way, he cupped her breast, bent his head to wet the nipple and then blow upon it, smiling as it budded for him. “If I am to pass away,” he repeated, with his lips brushing the peachlike treasure he held, “I may as well taste again the one pleasure I will most sorely miss.”