Although the shutters had not been raised, nor had candles been lit, so in the darkness he could not see her blushes. “I cannot say,” she whispered back. “I don’t know any words for such places, and nor could I describe – only to say you know where – where you held and touched me before – that one special time – in the castle before we left for Nottingham.”
He laughed, which broke the spell of hushful secrets. “You could explain if you wanted,” he told her. “So instead take my hand,” and he held his fingers out to her, “and put me where you want.” She clasped his hand in hers as gently as if it might break, but he grasped her firmly back, rubbing his thumb across her knuckles. “Without shame – since there is none. Now show me.”
She took a deep breath, released very slowly, and pressed his fingers against her breasts. “Here. You know it’s here. I think you want to shame me, Nicholas. I’ve missed you terribly but you’re so horribly – challenging. And I know you didn’t miss me, but I don’t care about that.”
He was still grinning, and he moved his fingers, tracing them down from her breasts to her belly, and then tucking them firmly into the crease between her thighs. “And here?” he demanded. “So, thinking of me, and needing me, but not having me – did you touch yourself?” He had already removed her little headdress and uncoiled her hair, and now she wore only her shift, loose pintucked linen, cloud white and fine enough to show the outline of her body and the dark shadow of her nipples beneath. Nicholas leaned forwards, rubbing his cheeks against the warmth of those small shadows, and smiling up at her. “Without me to arouse you,” he insisted, “how did you arouse yourself?” His fingers were still pushing between her legs. “Here? What did you do? Tell me.”
“No.” She shook her head. “I wouldn’t – I couldn’t. I thought about when you touched me there – I remembered – I imagined you coming home to me. But I never could have done such a thing to myself.”
He removed his impatient hand, and kissed her. Then he leaned her back against the leaded window frame, watching her. “My dear, you were brought up by a father as different from my own as fathers can surely be. But believe me, there’s no sin in pleasure.”
Emeline gulped. “But self-indulgence can be wicked. First there’s duty and loyalty – and kindness – and respect for parents and –”
“Come here,” he interrupted, and brought her head down against his shoulder. “Because I intend being very, very wicked.” Nicholas wore a short shirt loose over his hose, long dark legs stretched, boots lying discarded across the bedchamber floor, his doublet thrown beside them. Her own gown was tumbled at her feet. Now he clasped her hand again, and brought her fingers to his groin where the stiffened broadcloth of the codpiece lay loose, and he pressed her palm there. “When I missed you, which I did,” he murmured, “I touched myself, like this, as I want you to do now. With your small hand, it is so much sweeter.”
“You only missed me – there?”
“Principally.”
“I missed you in lots of ways. I kept remembering the laughter in your eyes, and how your face puckers when you smile. Do you mind me saying about it – here,” and she reached forwards with her other hand, gently running her fingertips across his cheek where the scar cut deep and dark, dividing the flesh. “When you smile, and laugh, your face tucks up in two nice curled stripes, as if you’re making fun of yourself. I like that so much. I remembered it a lot while you were away.”
He was so surprised, he released her. “What a strange thing to notice. And how perverse. I usually forget the wretched thing is there. But I’ve never expected anyone else to like it. Especially you.”
She was momentarily affronted. “Why especially me?”
“Because,” he said, leaning back, eyes narrowed, “that was one of the reasons, I presume, you hated me before we were married. Wasn’t it? The ugly brother. The deformed one.”
Blushing again, “No, well, not really. Peter told me – but I’d never seen you. I didn’t know what he meant and he never explained very well. I suppose, thinking back to what he used to say, he was a little unfair.”
“A little unfair?”
“You’re laughing at me again. Yes, of course he was wrong.” She sighed, and leaned forwards, taking her husband’s hand again. “But I know something now, which I didn’t realise until you went away. It’s your eyes – and Peter’s eyes. Both such bright vivid blue. But your eyes are so – full. They dance all the time with a hundred expressions. I can watch you thinking. Your eyes are so wonderfully alive. Peter’s eyes,” she leaned back again, and looked down, “they were just the same colour as yours, brilliant as jewels, with such beautiful black lashes, just like yours. But his eyes were empty. Perhaps he hid his thoughts. But they weren’t starry, like your eyes. They just looked. Or they looked away. Open or closed. There wasn’t anything else in them.”
Nicholas chuckled, shaking his head. “No spiders? No battle banners? No blind wandering clouds?”
“No laughter.”
“Peter was a complicated brother. He had some good points and we laughed together as children. He grew more difficult as he matured. But I thought you adored him.” Nicholas stood quickly, then swept her up with him, carrying her to the bed where the covers were already dishevelled and haphazard from their love making before supper. He laid her against the pillows and sat beside her. “But it’s not Peter I want to talk about now. It’s us. And I want you naked before I close the shutters and lose the last moonlight.” Where the bed posts rose straight and unadorned, the shadows swung in curtained folds, held by unravelling tassels, then falling straight and thick in dull sage, lined in cobalt blue. Nicholas reached over, pushing them further against the wall behind. “I want to see you. If I could find a candle, I’d light it. But in your father’s house I imagine they’re hidden, and certainly counted. So now, open to me.” And he tugged her shift off over her head, the little cupped sleeves from her arms, and quickly flung it to the floor. He kissed her breasts, then wrapped his arms around her, hands closing on her buttocks to bring her tight against him, and whispered, “Now – you undress me.”
Her voice was a tickle against his collarbone. “How?”
“Learn.” He moved away abruptly and sat up, facing her. “Struggle. Discover. That’s life. But unlike life, there’s no punishment. Get it right, and I’ll pleasure you with all my heart. Get it wrong, and I’ll do exactly the same.”
“Silly,” she smiled. “tell me how, and then I can do it properly.”
“I don’t want proper.” Nicholas grinned at her, and the tucks in his cheeks curled up as she had described to him. “I want you to explore,” he said, “and find your own way to me.” He shrugged. “I’m not wearing too much, as you can see. And a shirt is little different than a shift, after all.”
“It’s not the shirt that troubles me,” she said. She peered, finding the small corded lacing at the neck, loosened it further, and pulled up the shirt from its neat hem, tossing it over his head and then tugging it from his arms. “See? That’s easy.”
“So – discover the rest of me.”
His hose were dark, wide grey stripes on darker grey, knitting that clung to the muscles of his legs and enclosed his feet tighter than any shoe. Emeline touched the waist where the taut smoothness of his skin disappeared into the slim silken gathers. She slipped her fingers inside. She felt two thicknesses of material, though both were fine and soft and thin. Her fingers roamed, intrigued, down where his body was no longer visible. His skin was harder than her own softness, and a light tickle of hair covered it. Up across his chest, over the button nipples, his body hair was longer and as silken as the stuff of his hose. Being dark, it gleamed, even there within the shadows of the bed. Emeline hooked her fingers further within the waist of his hose and found the narrow end of the lacing. She undid the knot, and pulled the ribbon loose from its ties. The fine tight knit stayed clasped about his hips, but across the taut flatness of his stomach, she could pull it down, finding it attached to his braies, and she pulled them too. Gradually she eased both together down to his groin. The hair she had touched before now seemed to grow into a line like an arrow shaft, beckoning downwards towards thicker, blacker curls. She stopped.