Cicely's King Richard

by Sandra Heath Wilson

  He pulled her even closer, enveloping her in his arms and kissing her as if he would blend her body into his. She had never felt so much, or so completely. He tasted of mint, so cool, fresh and clean, and yet his lips were not cool, they were warm and pliable, cherishing and delighting her senses. She was weightless, adrift on pure emotion, loved and loving . . . until he drew back, brought to cold sanity by the degree to which he had given in. He removed her arms hastily and stepped away.

  ‘No! For you are my niece, my niece!’ Overcome, he ran his hand agitatedly through his hair. ‘You should go, Cicely, and forget this has happened.’

  Tears leapt to her eyes again. ‘Forget? Never!’

  ‘Please.’

  ‘Being your niece does not stop me from loving you as I should not,’ she whispered, so choked that her words were almost incomprehensible. ‘I did not know. I did not know that the feelings within me were of this kind. Until now. Suddenly I see it all so clearly. If I embarrass you, disgust you, I cannot help it.’

  He caught her hand and linked his fingers impulsively through hers. ‘No, Cicely, you do not embarrass me, and you certainly do not disgust me. Do you think I could kiss you so if that were the case? You are not at fault. In your innocence, you did not know this for what it is, but I have known all along.’

  She gazed at him through tears. What was he saying?

  ‘I know what I do, Cicely. I am not an untested boy, and certainly not the innocent you may have thought me to be. Since my marriage I have never played with fire in my private life, because I have seen what it can do. So no matter how great the temptation, I have remained my own master. If that has made me the target of coarse curiosity, I could not care a jot. Your father gave in to temptation time and time again and eventually it ruined him. Forgive me, Cicely, but you know that the man he was in the end was not the man he had been in the beginning.’

  ‘Yes, I know.’

  ‘And now, now, I have permitted fire to enter my private life, and I am in danger of letting it consume us both. You do not deserve that. I am by far old enough to know better. You have every right to expect more of me.’

  She could not grasp his meaning; her thoughts were spinning so out of control that she could only fix upon that one word, ‘old’. ‘You are but thirty-two, I am sixteen. I see nothing wrong in that.’

  ‘In your seventeenth year?’ He trapped her glance.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Cicely, have you not realized what I have just confessed to you?’

  ‘I cannot think. I am in such . . . I do not know what I am in, save that it is more wonderful than I had ever dreamed. I love you, and that is all that matters to me.’

  He searched her eyes. ‘Oh, sweet Cicely, you say I stop your heart, but you have demolished mine.’ He turned away. ‘As for age, if that is what concerns you, you are old enough for it not to be any problem, but that does not matter because I am your uncle. Your uncle, Cicely. It is forbidden, and even if a thousand dispensations were to be granted, in my eyes it would still be wrong.’

  ‘But not in mine.’

  He smiled. ‘No, not in yours, but there are rules, bars that should not be crossed, and this is one of them. I have not set those rules, but I do want to observe them. At this moment I am not doing so. Nor have I for some time. Since you, Cicely. Think back. Have I ever behaved towards you as just your uncle and king? Have I treated you as I have everyone else? The answer is no. I have often wanted to be with you, and have always made the opportunity.’

  John’s words echoed within her. I feel that there is someone else he thinks of. A woman. She stood there, her body and mind still in the grip of his kiss. ‘You have done nothing wrong,’ she said then. Nothing he had ever done to her had been wrong.

  ‘Yes, Cicely, I have.’

  ‘Then so have I,’ she answered with raw honesty. ‘I can hardly credit how blind I have been, but today, at last, I can see. Do you say that my love is the less for being so close to you in blood?’

  ‘Please listen to what I am saying, for I think you do not understand. I feel too much for you, Cicely, and it is wrong. The fault is mine, not yours, because I have done precious little to prevent this, and I am the one who should know better. It was always within my power to stop myself. Now it is too late.’

  He felt too much for her. He had said it, and meant it. The world seemed to move too slowly around her, and she was rooted, unable to do anything but gaze at the man she loved so very much. ‘But you do not really want to stop yourself, any more than I do,’ she breathed. ‘I know it is wrong to feel as I do for you, but it is also too perfect to be wrong. With every second that passes now I am deeper in your heart, as you are in mine. It is what I want. What we both want. Do you not see this love for its beauty?’

  ‘Yes, of course I see it, but you must accept the truth about me, Cicely. I am a hypocrite. Because of you, my love for Anne faltered in the end.’ He paused. ‘Not that she ever truly loved me. I know that. I have always known it.’

  Her heart was igniting as she realized more and more that he felt for her as she felt for him. ’I do not know how any woman could not love you completely, utterly, without hesitation or doubt,’ she said softly. ‘What is there about you that cannot be loved? Nothing. Nothing at all.’

  He smiled gently. ‘Perhaps that is why I am so drawn to you, Cicely. I see in you what you see in me. I have always thought of you too often and too much. I have failed those who mean the most, especially you. And there is John. I behave as if pleased to permit him to marry you, when all the time I want you myself. I love you, Cicely, and not as your uncle.’

  He loved her. He loved her. She could not speak. Could not breathe. All sound had deadened, except for his words. And they were so sweet to her that she could have wept.

  ‘Cicely, my guilt and remorse is such that it weighs upon my heart. If I could turn time back upon itself and put a leash upon my weakness, I would, but now it is beyond my will to undo what I feel for you. It has never happened to me before, this feeling of intolerable need, this worship of your smile, of everything about you. So do not see me as a shining knight, beyond reproach, because every time I look at you, I make a mockery of my responsibilities.’

  ‘No!’

  Richard managed a regretful laugh. ‘Our love is incestuous, Cicely. It is an ugly word, but true nevertheless. It is the self-same sin I stood up in public to deny so strenuously when it came to Bess. The self-same sin I have only just told her I could never countenance. Of course I could not countenance it with her, I do not love her. But I think of committing that sin with you, Cicely. I think of it often, and I long to do it. The gossip was so right, but it alighted upon the wrong niece. My honour is as distorted as my back.’

  New tears sprang to her eyes. ‘Please do not describe yourself like that. In my eyes you are peerless, and if you desire me, then I am the happiest of creatures. I love you as you are, as you always have been and always will be.’

  ‘Oh, Cicely, will you never see me clearly?’

  ‘I always see you clearly,’ she cried, her voice breaking, ‘and never more so than now. If you had another chance, and time really could be reversed, would you not have returned my kiss? Would you have rejected me?’

  His eyes were expressive. ‘I should say yes.’

  She longed to go to him again, to steal another kiss from those lips, but something about him prevented it. She could only stand there, absorbing every beloved feature. ‘I may be like Bess, but I am a thousand times luckier because I know what it is to be kissed by you. Not just a fond buss upon the cheek, or a polite bow over my hand, but a kiss upon my lips. The kiss of the man, not the uncle. The kiss of the lover.’

  ‘Please, Cicely, for each word shames me more.’

  ‘We have not lain together, we have done nothing wrong. A kiss is not a sin.’

  ‘That kiss was, and you know it,’ he countered. ‘I feel so much for you that even now, when everything that has been unsaid is suddenly in
the open, its hazards so manifest, I am in danger of letting my heart rule my head.’

  She gazed at him, so tempting, so alone, so racked with guilt. The passion he inspired in her was almost insupportable. ‘Please do not turn me away from you now, for I could not bear it. I will go to Sheriff Hutton, I will do whatever you want of me, but please do not deny me your friendship. Do not be as cool with me as you are with Bess. I do not know how she can bear it, for I know it would surely deny me the will to live.’

  Her words moved him. ‘How can you still feel this for me? I have used you shabbily. I know how sad you are for me, how warm-hearted and gentle you are, how much you care for me, and today I made you stay with me. I knew it was wrong, that I was courting a danger that should never even exist, but still I did it. I could not prevent myself, because I did not want you to go with Bess, but to stay and feel for me what I feel for you. And you do, Cicely, you do. Now it has led to this. I have what I want—your love—but I cannot have you in the fullest sense of the word. If I could make you my queen, I would. Do you understand? That is how much I feel for you. I would honour you as no other, not even Anne, whom God knows, I loved at first. You rise above everything, Cicely, for you are my soul’s mirror. With you beside me there is nothing I could not do. You make me feel . . . invincible. You comfort me so much that I cannot bear it when you are not with me.’

  ‘You say such beautiful things,’ she whispered.

  ‘Maybe I do, but no uncle should feel that way. You are my brother’s child, Cicely. Too close. Far too close.’

  ‘And you blame yourself for what has happened tonight? I made you kiss me.’

  He smiled. ‘No, Cicely, I let you persuade me. There is a great difference. I surrendered without even a token pretence. For those brief moments I could hold you as I wanted to, kiss you as I wanted to. I knew what I did, that I made you love me even more. It was what I wanted so much. Your love. You.’ He drew a long breath. ‘I will always want you, but it is time to think of you, not me. It may be belated, but I must face my accountability. You need me to behave as I should, not as I wish.’

  ‘As you should? No, that is not what I want! If you tell me to go now, and forget these past minutes, then I will, but without ever forgetting or discarding my love.’ At last she went closer, to touch his sleeve with a hand that shook so much she could only stop it by gripping the rich cloth. ‘Do you want me to go?’

  He was silent for a moment. ‘Again, I should say yes.’

  ‘But will you?’ She made him look at her. ‘Will you?’

  ‘Cicely, I have just told you that I manipulated what has happened here tonight, that I contemplated your seduction and even began it. Do you not realize it?’

  ‘I kissed you,’ she repeated.

  ‘No, Cicely. I enticed you. I played upon your feelings, and knew exactly what I was doing.’ He held her eyes. ‘I want there to be no misapprehension, for it is too important. If I do not say all this now, there will come a day when you finally do realize it, and then you may despise me.’

  She hesitated. ‘Why do you not see that there is nothing you can do that will change my love or regard? You can hurt me, yes. With one word, one cruel dismissal, you could destroy my heart so that it will never recover. But you cannot stop me loving you. Maybe it is now you who do not understand. Whatever it was that you instigated this evening, I am glad of it, because if you had not, we would not be standing here now, saying these things to each other. We would not know we loved each other.’

  ‘Oh, I would still know I loved you,’ he said a little wryly, ‘but if I had left you alone, would you still feel as you do now, I wonder?’

  ‘Maybe not tonight, but I was close to the realization. Just how many more times could I have been with you and not seen the truth? I have always known I loved you, I merely mistook the nature of that love. Even so, I knew it went too far, knew there was something too strong and different. You are an exceptional man, Richard Plantagenet, and if you thought of seducing me tonight, I wish you had, for by now I would have had all of you, and that would make me . . . Oh, I do not quite know, save that I would nurse my good fortune into eternity.’ She ran a fingertip down his cheek, as he had earlier to her. ‘I have been sleeping, but am now awake—to a love that has been waiting to be accepted.’

  He was affected, and although he looked away, she was sure she saw tears in his eyes. ‘It does not matter how we feel, Cicely, we still have to turn from this. It cannot be spoken of again, and we cannot let it be known in any way. To anyone. Certainly not to John.’ His eyes became suddenly anxious. ‘Not to John,’ he said again.

  ‘How can you imagine I would confide this? To do so would hurt him, but it would also hurt you, and that is something I could never do. I still love John. I will be all to him that he desires, but you alone will be in my deepest heart. Not even my confessor will know, for I value it too much to put it in danger.’

  ‘Your confessor would not believe you anyway. He considers women to be incapable of telling the truth.’ Richard observed with faint irony.

  ‘All I am saying is that I will never fail you. Never.’

  ‘I do not deserve you, Cicely,’ he whispered. ‘Believe me, it is best you go now. We should never be alone like this again.’

  She could not go, not just yet. ‘Please, I ask one thing of you.’

  ‘Ask whatever you will.’ His voice shook.

  ‘One last kiss, to sustain me forever.’

  ‘Cicely . . .’

  ‘You cannot cast me away when my eyes are newly opened and my heart is newly bursting with this love. You cannot be so harsh.’

  ‘I do not cast you away, Cicely, I protect you.’

  ‘I do not want to be protected from you, I want to be with you, always, but I know I cannot. I know that if what has happened between us today were to be broadcast far and wide, it would destroy you. I love you too much for that, but I will have one small token, one unbroken kiss that I can always feel upon my lips, always be able to share with you again in my thoughts.’

  ‘Oh, Cicely,’ he breathed. ‘You do not know how you splinter what is left of my heart.’

  ‘Then kiss me. Let me understand, let me feel you close one last time. Must I go upon my knees to implore you?’ Her voice was an almost silent whisper. ‘Please.’ She moved closer, willing him to hold her again, kiss her again. He must grant her this small concession, this boon that would always mean everything.

  She saw how he tried to resist, but his own feelings were too intense. He took her hand and drew her steadily towards him, holding her gaze as he did. ‘We both know better than this, Cicely.’

  ‘I do not care.’

  She closed her eyes as his arms moved around her in that beloved way, only now it was intimate, and she wanted so very much more. If he was reluctant, he gave no sign. The kiss was sweet and true as his parted lips played with hers, teasing, arousing, yearning. He held her to him as if he would never let go, and she was vibrant with love, sinking weakly against him, so lost in desire and emotion that her existence centred only on him. His hair brushed her cheek, his livery collar was cold, his body lean and strong, his arousal tangible. It was a kiss that barely an hour before would have been unthinkable. She would not have believed anyone who foretold it. She knew it was wrong, forbidden, shocking and would be named by most to be unnatural, but she would not deny it. Ever.

  He slid his hand to the nape of her neck again, twining his fingers in her hair as he had before. She closed her eyes and leaned her head back as his lips moved upon the pulse of her throat. She was so fortunate, so very fortunate. He, who was so enthralling and to whom she was so devoted, was in her arms, and she was as close to ecstasy as seemed possible.

  Her hands roamed adoringly over his damaged back, and she kissed the rich cloth on the shoulder that was a little higher than the other. On this man the physical imperfection was astonishingly pleasing. He seemed so delicate, and yet was so strong, and his face . . . his face was so
full of grace. She was kissing the lips she had looked at so often without understanding the wantonness of her feelings. Now she was with him as never before, and she did not want it to end.

  If he had chosen to step further beyond the bounds in those moments, she would have stepped with him. There would be no hesitation, no second thought, no regret. She craved consummation, wanted to lie naked with him and give completely. She wanted him to fondle her breasts, to stroke her, love her, be inside her, need her as she needed him. Those feelings of suppressed emotion, of unnamed, undeniable desires, were now fully recognized for what they were: a need to love and be loved. She had known it of herself before today, but now, now it was tangible fact. At last she had a face to give to the lover she had only imagined before. This man was the reason she lived. No other would ever mean as much.

  But this second kiss was to be as broken as the first, for they were interrupted by a knock upon the door. ‘Your Grace?’ Sir Robert Percy! They broke guiltily apart, and Richard ushered her behind a curtain and put his finger to his lips.

  He paused to compose himself, and then called. ‘Enter!’

  ‘Your Grace, it seems the Lady Cicely has been missed.’ Robert looked curiously at Richard’s flushed face.

  ‘And what has that to do with me?’

  Robert shifted uncomfortably. ‘Well, nothing, Your Grace.’ He could hardly point out that the king had called his second niece back when the first had left.

  Richard indicated the apartment at large. ‘Do you see her, Robert? Perhaps I have her in a cupboard?’

  ‘No, Your Grace, I only wondered . . . if she had mentioned where she was going.’

  ‘I am not party to my niece’s plans, Robert. I am sure she will soon reappear.’ Richard waved his startled friend away, and the door closed quickly behind him.

  Cicely emerged slowly from hiding. This was the only way it could ever be, for theirs was a love that was so secret and unacceptable that it must never be known to others. He spoke of protecting her, but she had to protect him too.