“That is to say, Madam, whatever your sins, they must be outweighed by your favors.”
She laughed. “My favors weigh so heavily on thee? If tis jealousy that drives thee, Sir Christofer, then my favors can be thine for the asking. It was not I who ended our arrangement.” He coughed and tugged away. She kept walking while he stood, her gown trailing like the train of a jet-black peacock, and turned back only when her hand touched the door.
“I wish my friend safe,” he said.
Her eyes glittered as she smiled and inclined her head. “You wish more than that.”
“Aye.” A groan. He turned away. “As if something buried, once watered, has sprung into the sun and flowered on a day, and now will not be withered no matter how I scorn and strike it.”
“I could give thee a spell to make him love thee.”
“He loves me well enough,” Kit answered, hating his own honesty. “And that I should be content with.”
Her skirts rustled across the tile as she drifted to him. Her hands encircled his waist, her chin resting on the padded shoulder of his doublet. “Could give thee a spell to do more.”
Kit bit his lip as her breath stroked his ear. Her breasts pressed his back, her fingers demonstrating what he was sure she already knew. She could. The experience that proved it was as painful as the experience that proved it was not just her magic that aroused him, although free of the sorcery he could almost pretend it was the touch alone, nothing more than a whore’s practiced hand. She could give me Will.
“Madam,” he whispered, “What do you take your Marley for?”
She laughed in his ear; he turned in her arms and laid his own around her shoulders, holding her away as much as close. “Anything he’ll offer me,” she said. And then, more kindly: “No, thou wouldst not be my Christofer if thou wert so base as thy Morgan in such matters.”
She smiled and would have stepped back, but his arms restrained her. She turned half a step; they moved as if dancing, her train winding their ankles, binding them together. She ran fingers up the breast of his doublet and touched his lip. He frowned, and she brushed the corner of his eye as if something gleamed there.
“Hard,” she said. “Hard it is to love something, to need something, and to have it taken from thee. There are simples to ease that pain as well.”
“That pain,” he said, “is sheerest poetry.”
“He would not like it if you bedded me today.”
“I do not like that he bedded you last night.”
“There was,” she smiled, her breath against his skin, “no bed.”
“Ah.” And indrawn breath. It cut.
“Come to my room, Christofer.”
He shook his head, but he didn’t step away. “I should go. Go to Murchaud, Morgan. I can smell him on your skin.”
“I know,” she said, brushing her lips across his lips. “I left it for you. Come upstairs.”
As if he had always known he would, he went. Morgan curled against Kit’s side, her sweat drying on his arm. She laid her head on his shoulder, the pearls half worked loose and falling across his throat. Blessedly, she held her peace until his pulse no longer rasped in his ears, and he opened his eye again and turned to look at her.
“Such passion, Kit.” She knotted a fistful of the linen sheet in her hand and dried her face; offered him the same. He rubbed the sweat from her body and untangled the pearls from her hair, laying the strand aside before pulling her down beside him again.
“That was different. Thou wert not ensorceled.” Silly man, her pursed lips said, and he had to agree.
What do I here? Is that all? Enough.
She drew the damp sheet over them, idly toying with his hair.
“Tell me whence comes this sudden affection of thine for poets.” He brushed her bare leg with the side of his foot. A tremendous hollowness still haunted him, something as consuming as a flame, but for now he could set it aside along with the images it taunted him with and draw the silence of his heart over himself as Morgan drew the sheet.
“Not sudden,” he admitted. “I knew it years ago.”
“Oh?” A quiet sound of interest, after a long and companionable wait. Damme, what an intelligencer she would have made.He sighed, and managed not to sound sullen. “Damn you, Corinna. Is’t not enough to have us both? Must also step between?”
She turned against his neck, tasting his skin with her smile.
“There are reasons I stopped going to London.”
“When knew you, then?”
Kit laughed. “He tripped climbing a stair and I almost swallowed my tongue in panic.”
Her fingers coiled his hair and pressed unerringly against the sore places in his neck. “Speaking of falling. You should have come to me after you did.”
His and Will’s ignominious tumble through the Darkling Glass, of course.
“How did you know I fell?”
“The bruises on your arse.”
Their laughter drew the tension out of his shoulders almost as effectively as her fingers; he rolled on his stomach and let her lean over him, working the pain from his back. “The teind is soon,” she said, stressing every other word as she leaned into him, an oddly artificial pattern of iambs. “The sacrifice will have to be chosen.”
“Ow.”
“When you tense, it hurts.” Warmed oil drizzled onto his back; he didn’t ask where it came from, as her hands never left his body.
“How is that done?”
“This?”
“The sacrifice chosen.” He groaned as she ran strong thumbs from the top of his spine to the base, and did not stop there. “Gently, my Queen.”
“Poor Kit. Black and blue from here to here.” Her fingers measured a span bigger than his palm. “Thou’rt lucky didst not break thy tail”.
“Art certain tis unbroken?” And realized he’d thee’d her, and thought, and would it not be an irony to you her so engaged?
“Evidence would suggest.” He gasped, burying his face against her herb-scented pillow, and she laughed.
“Wilt urge me proceed gently here as well, Sir Poet? Will you write me poems on this?” Her hair swept his shoulders; he shivered, jolted from his fantasy of whose touch he labored under.
“When will we know who is chosen?”
“When they bring the horse before the one who will ride him to Hell. There. Is that nice, my darling?” A kiss between his shoulder blades; another brushing the downy, well-oiled hollow at the small of his back. “Are you thinking of your poet now?”
He couldn’t bring himself to answer.
By my troth and maidenhead I would not be a queen.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, King Henry VIII
The Queen’s withdrawing room, revealed through an opening door, wasn’t as grand as Will had expected; rather a quiet sunlit place appointed with rich paintings and more of the extravagant carpets, these in harvest-gold and winter-white, with touches of emerald and sapphire in the plumed weave. A small table stood in the center of it, a cushioned chair at either end, a service of silver-gilt and golden plates laid on linen as white as Morgan’s sheets.
He smiled at the memory and executed a sweeping bow, resisting the urge to reach into his pocket and fumble the scrap of iron nail Kit had pressed upon him before the appointment. The Mebd stood before the window, her hair gleaming under her veil; she turned to acknowledge him. “Gentle William. You brighten our court. Pray rise.”
“Your Highness is most gracious.”
They were seated, and attendants Will could not see poured wine and served them both. Nervousness robbed him of his appetite: his knife shivered on the richly decorated plate. The Queen herself ate delicately; he was surprised to see that what she cut so tidily and placed in her mouth was wine and capon, and not flower petals and dew.
“You hunger not, Master Shakespeare?”
“I am curious,” he admitted with whatever charm he could muster. And now I’ve met three Queens,he thought. And swallowed a broader grin as he also thought, and bedded one.