Intrigued

by Bertrice Small

  Shouldn’t she be embarrassed, Autumn thought, as he viewed her nudity with open admiration? But she wasn’t. Instead she pirouetted audaciously before him, striking a bold pose, one leg upon a settee, as she turned to look at him over her shoulder. “You are pleased, then?”

  He could not keep his hand from reaching out to fondle an impudent buttock. “Oui, madame la marquise, I am pleased,” he responded.

  “Then,” she said, “it is my turn to disrobe you, monseigneur.” Her fingers slipped the buttons from their buttonholes with surprising dexterity, and his doublet was quickly gone. Her hands now moved to his black velvet breeches, and to help her, he kicked off his shoes. She pulled at his breeches, surprised to see he was wearing short, white silk drawers beneath them. He stepped from the breeches and drawers.

  “You are very good at this,” he said.

  “I’ve never done it before,” she assured him, and then began to unlace his shirt. When the laces were undone she slipped her hands inside the garment and ran her palms over his smooth, warm flesh. Then she pushed the shirt off his shoulders, and it slid down his torso to the floor. Autumn now stepped back to observe him as he had her.

  He was so beautiful, she thought, smiling to herself that she had used such a word to describe a man. But there simply was no other phrase that expressed it so well. Everything about him was long—his torso, his arms and legs, which she noted were very hairy, although his broad chest was smooth. His waist was narrow, his hips slim. Unable to restrain herself, Autumn reached out and caressed his manhood. It was, like the rest of him, long. She looked past his lance d’amour to his feet. They, too, were long and slender. Then it was true, she thought. Her brothers had not been teasing her: A man’s feet indicated the size of his more manly part. Their eyes met, and she could see his were filled with laughter.

  “What is so amusing, monseigneur?” she asked.

  “I know what you are thinking, cherie, and I promise you that feet have nothing to do with it. ’Tis naught but an old wives’s tale,” he told her. Then he turned, saying as he did, “You have not examined all of me yet. I was once told my flanks are one of my best features.”

  “Whoever said it was not lying,” Autumn agreed, giving his buttock a small smack of appreciation.

  He laughed, and then said, “Sit down, madame la marquise. I would remove your shoes and stockings now. The sight of you makes me eager to lay with you, to caress those adorable little breasts, to have your maidenhead so I may teach you what passion really is.”

  Autumn felt a quiver deep within her innards. Her legs were suddenly weak, and she sat almost gratefully upon a small blue velvet chair, her legs set primly together.

  Her bridegroom knelt before her, running his big hands up her legs to her knees. Then, carefully, he removed each one of her shoes, setting them aside beneath the chair. Unfastening the first garter, he dropped it and slowly unrolled the silk stockings down her leg, kissing the shapely limb as it was revealed to him. Sliding the stocking off, he cradled her little foot between his two hands, fondling it gently, finally kissing it. He then removed the other stocking in the same seductive and sensuous manner. After he had kissed her second foot he leaned forward, kissed each of her knees, and gently spread them wide open to his sight.

  She was already half-swooning with his attentions. Now she was unable to control the faint trembling that began to overcome her.

  “Don’t be afraid, Autumn,” he told her. “I want to see your treasures.” His two thumbs tenderly parted her nether lips to his view. His gaze was intense; his look almost pained. Finally, in a forced voice, he said, “Mon Dieu, ma cherie, but you are so perfect there.” Leaning forward, he placed a kiss upon her flesh.

  It was too much. Autumn crumpled forward, but Sebastian quickly caught her and held her close as he whispered soft and soothing words.

  “There, my little virgin, ’tis all right. Did you not know that every part of a woman’s body is meant to be adored?” He kissed the top of her dark head. “I cannot resist you, cherie. Did your mama not explain to you what is involved between a husband and a wife?”

  “M . . . Mama explained,” she managed to reply, and then, as the breath seemed to fill her body again, she continued, “and Charlie’s wife told me more, but there is a difference between the words and the reality, monseigneur. Do it again! It was so very exciting!”

  His laughter was low. “I can make it even better,” he tempted her. “Do you want me to, ma petite epouse?”

  “Oui!”

  “Then do as I tell you, Autumn,” he said as he sat her back upon the chair. “Put your pretty legs over my shoulders. Ah, that is right, cherie. Now I will pleasure you.”

  Fascinated, she watched his dark head push between her thighs. His thumbs opened her again. Then she felt it! His tongue was licking her sensitive flesh. She could feel the broad sweep of that wicked little organ teasing at her, caressing her intimately until she felt she was melting from the heat he engendered within her. Then his tongue found her little bouton d’amour and began to flick back and forth over it with relentless determination. Autumn gasped, surprised, as she felt a sudden tension growing within her. Unable to help herself, she moaned, but the sound, even in her own ears, was one of distinct pleasure. It was even better than the first time he had done this to her with his fingers. The pressure built and built, until it finally exploded with a force that rendered her giddy with the ensuing pleasure that filled her.

  He felt her release and groaned with his own desire. His nostrils were filled with the scent of her, all sweet and pungent. His mouth was filled with the piquant taste of her. He slid his hands beneath her buttocks and pulled her down to the floor beneath him. His big body covered her. “I can’t wait,” he half-sobbed in her ear.

  “Don’t!” was all she said, and opened herself wide to him, feeling his hard length as it slid easily within her well-prepared body. She gasped at the sharp sting of her lost maidenhead. Tears slipped down her cheeks, which he kissed away while whispering words of apology and love into her ear. She wrapped her limbs about his torso, enabling him a deeper passage, then gave herself up to the dizzying splendor that began to overcome her.

  He plundered her sweetness, reveling within her tight, hot sheath. It welcomed him, opening to his advance, closing about him tightly to embrace him. Her soft little breasts gave way beneath his chest. Her silken thighs gripped him firmly as she would have gripped her mount. Now he began to piston her with a careful, measured cadence. He plunged and withdrew over and over again until he felt the storm rising within her. When he thought he could bear the tension no longer she cried out, and he released his love juices, flooding her body.

  “Too sweet! Too sweet!” Autumn cried, her head thrashing back and forth. “Oh, I cannot bear it! Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu!” She shuddered violently, and then her body went limp.

  He rolled onto his back and lay there a few moments until his ragged breathing began to slow and grow more even. Staggering to his feet, finally he picked his wife up in his arms, stumbled into her bedchamber, and lay her gently upon the bed. As he lifted her, he saw the blood upon the carpet that had been beneath them, the smears of crimson upon her milky thighs. Looking down, he could see his manhood bore traces of her innocence. Climbing into the bed, he cradled her in his arms, and Autumn sighed with contentment against him.

  “Je t’aime,” she murmured, and then fell asleep.

  “Je t’aime aussi, ma cherie,” he told her softly, and closed his eyes, but he did not sleep at first. Instead his mind went back to his wedding night with Elise. How coy and shy she had seemed. It had taken him almost a week to breach her, for she wept and demurred and sobbed that she was afraid. He had been just seventeen, and his father had always told him a gentleman never forced a lady. So he had played her waiting game, and when he had finally had her it had been a disappointment. And, he seemed to recall, there was no show of blood. He had not known then that there must be blood to prove virginity.

>   After that Elise could hardly seem to get enough of passion, yet she never seemed to be satisfied. He noticed suddenly that other men were beginning to look at him pityingly, especially men of his own station. Then one day his late mother’s best friend, Madame St. Omer, had told him the rumors. He had investigated and learned them to be true. He had been angry at the older woman, but then Elise found herself enceinte and was unable to identify the sire of her babe. It had been providence that she had died trying to rid herself of the child. Now, he found, he owed Madame St. Omer a great debt for putting Autumn in his path. Sebastian d’Oleron believed in fate, and it was obvious to him now that Autumn Leslie was his destiny. Turning his head, he watched her in sleep and knew he would never love anyone more than he loved her.

  When he awoke several hours later it was to find Autumn seated upon his chest, her back to him, bathing his male member. “Madame,” he murmured sleepily, “what are you doing?”

  “Washing it,” she replied, not bothering to turn around. “I have been taught to bathe one’s private parts after passion. It makes the next bout of Eros ever so much nicer, Mama says.”

  “And you are ready for another session of lovemaking with me then, madame la marquise?” he asked her.

  She swung about to face him, tossing the cloth in her hand into the basin by the bedside. “Aren’t you, monseigneur?” she replied, leaning forward to brush her nipples over his chest before straightening up again, her odd-colored eyes twinkling at him.

  Reaching up, he fondled both of her round little breasts. His silvery eyes narrowed speculatively. “So, madame,” he said, “once is not enough for you?”

  “My brothers are prodigious lovers, or so their wives claim. Mama says at least twice a night is good for one’s health, Sebastian,” she answered him seriously.

  At first he wasn’t certain if she was teasing him or not, but he erred on the side of caution. “Twice is pleasant, and I will admit that after several hours of rest I am contemplating the idea of coupling with you again, madame.”

  “Merely contemplating, monseigneur?” she murmured, wiggling her bottom provocatively against him as his thumbs teased her nipples.

  With a swift motion he rolled her beneath him, his long, hard body pressing against her. “What I want, madame,” he growled into her ear, “is to pinion you into the mattress and drive so deep inside you that I lose myself.” His mouth found hers and he kissed her deeply, his lips conveying to her the intensity of his desire as they demanded an equal commitment from her.

  Her head spun, but she kissed him back fiercely, and then with the pointed tip of her tongue she ran over his lips tauntingly. “I have wanted you inside me ever since we met,” she admitted boldly. “You excited me that day in the forest. I was yet a child, and still I had the most erotic thoughts of you that I hid from everyone, even Mama, but I think she suspected. My brothers all warned me to marry only for love, but is this delicious lust really love, Sebastian?”

  “It is part of it, cherie,” he told her. “Do you know how jealous I was of your two other suitors?” He began to kiss her slowly again, his lips wandering over the soft flesh of her neck and shoulders. “The thought of either of those two popinjays touching you drove me mad!” His teeth sank into her shoulder, but then he licked where he had bitten her. “If you ever look at another man, I will kill you, Autumn!”

  “I am not her,” his bride said, refusing to even acknowledge Elise by name. “I want only you, mon coeur. Only you!”

  He jumped suddenly from their bed. “We need wine to toast our love, ma cherie!” he cried, and hurried into the salon. Returning quickly, he brought with him a decanter and two silver goblets engraved with grape leaves and bunches of grapes. Filling the goblets, he handed her one and said, “To us! To Sebastian and Autumn d’Oleron and their love, which will last forever!” Then, entwining his arm in hers, they drank to seal the toast.

  “Ummmm, this is delicious!” Autumn exclaimed as the pale golden wine slipped down her throat.

  “It is even better tasting this way,” he said, pouring a libation onto her torso and licking it up slowly. “Merveilleux!”

  “I want to do it!” she told him and, laughing, he lay upon his back as she poured a stream of wine onto his torso and began to lick at it. “Oh, it is good this way!” she enthused, chasing after a thin stream of the wine as it rolled down his frame. She licked his body clean of the vintage, smacking her lips as she did so, but then a movement caught her eye and she drew back with a cry.

  His manhood stood straight and tall before her. She had had no time to consider its size before, but now she was faced with the reality of it. Fascinated, she reached out and stroked the blue-veined pillar. It was as hard as marble. Her fingers drew his foreskin down as far as it would go, and she marveled at the shiny ruby head of the beast that had one shadowed eye. She could say nothing.

  The marquis pushed her back upon the pillows. He kissed her lips and nuzzled her breasts, lapping at a rivulet of wine between them that had earlier escaped him, now licking her nipples until they stood frozen and hard beneath his tongue. He nudged her knees apart and slowly entered her body a second time. “You, madame la marquise, are mine and mine alone,” his deep voice rumbled in her ear. “Mine!” He thrust hard. “Mine!”

  “And you are mine, mon coeur,” Autumn told her husband, and she gave herself up to the pleasure their bodies were engendering.

  In the months that followed it was obvious that the Marquis and Marquise d’Auriville were a love match. Charlie Stuart remarked upon it to his mother, pleased that his sister had found happiness. The English king had finally escaped Cromwell’s men to arrive in France. His adventures—hiding in an oak tree beneath the noses of the Roundheads and riding pillion disguised as a servant—were widely recounted. The main thing was that he was safe, to the relief of the many English nobles who had joined his mother in exile.

  All of this information came via a letter to the not-so-royal Stuart from his friend, Lord Carstairs. Charlie knew he would have to join his royal cousin sooner or later, and open his purse to help support the king. The royal Stuart was quite impoverished upon his arrival in Rouen, where he had come ashore. At first he had been taken for a tramp. Even his old tutor, Dr. Earle, failed to recognize him, so gaunt and thin had the king grown in the six weeks since Worcester, while he had been on the run from Cromwell and his men. The young king was depressed, but despite all that had happened his spirit had not been broken. He tried hard, Lord Carstairs wrote, to be cheerful, but the situation was so grim that it kept returning to haunt him.

  He could not speak of those who had aided him in those very long six weeks. Most were still in England. King Charles thought it a poor form of gratitude to endanger them. His friend, the Earl of Derby, who had been with him when he had escaped through the north gate at Worcester and had last been seen at Whiteladies, a safe house, had been caught and executed. Now the king found himself forced to accept the charity of his mother, who was accepting the charity of the archbishop, Gondi. It was a difficult situation. The French-born English queen was so poor that she made an account of what it cost to feed her son each time he ate at her table. By the time the French government had decided on what they could afford to give their own king’s cousin, he owed it all to his mother, and found himself even poorer than she.

  “At least our assets are available to us,” the Duke of Lundy reminded his mother.

  “Only because we are wise enough to do business with the Kiras and do not hold their faith againt them,” Jasmine said sharply. “Your royal relations, Charlie, never considered the possibility that they might be driven from England. Why did not King Charles the First make provision for his wife and children when she fled? The queen has been gone from England several years now. Louis was not in control when she came, and he has still not gained a firm grip on France. He will, of course, but what will happen between now and then is a moot point. What is our king to do now? How will he regain his throne and his k
ingdom? He has left it all to Master Cromwell and his Roundheads.”

  “The people love him, Mama,” the duke replied.

  “Perhaps,” she said, “but he did not understand them, else he would not have come down from the north at the head of a kilt-wearing, pipe-skirling army. It is to be hoped he knows better now,” Jasmine concluded dryly.

  Her son laughed and nodded. “He does. When royal Charles returns, it will be to England. He’ll not go to Scotland again if he can avoid it. It was very bad, Mama. Bigots are the same the world over. Each time the king’s forces met with some kind of defeat the Covenanters would blame the king because he did not accept their form of worship in his heart of hearts. Everything was God’s judgment upon the king for his intransigence to their ways, but it was the Scots government that was intransigent. My cousin worked hard at compromise. I do not blame my brother Patrick for refusing to have any part in it all.” The duke sighed. “He misses his father greatly.”

  “As do I,” Jasmine reminded Charlie.

  “Mama, I do beg your pardon,” the duke said quickly and, taking her hands in his, kissed them.

  She pulled away and caressed his cheek. “Oh, Charlie, I know you meant no harm. It is just that I am still angry at your father for getting himself killed. He had no right running off to Dunbar. I will never understand why his sense of duty and honor caused him to do such a foolish thing. I suppose he did not expect to be killed.” She touched his cheek again. “Do not let yourself be killed,” she warned him. Then she said, “If this conflict is not quickly resolved, I shall send for your children. They should not be raised in the wilds of Glenkirk by your brother and his rough-spoken wife. They will be totally unfit for proper society if we leave them there. Besides, they will really be safer in France. Master Cromwell has a long reach. If he should eventually learn where your children are hidden, he will come after them so he may use them against you. Bess’s parents were cowed by me when her father came to demand the children’s whereabouts, but I am no longer in England. The earl could now go to his Puritan friends for what he believes is justice. Having looked to Henry and found nothing, he may look to Patrick next. I think perhaps the sooner we bring the children to France the better.”