The Whispered Kiss

by Marcia Lynn McClure

  “No, no, Valor,” she said. Her panic intensified. He was thinking she had meant to murder him! “No! It is only the tainted milk you have given to me each time before you…before you…”

  “I have never taken you, Coquette,” he said, reaching up to cup her cheek with one warm hand. “Surely you know it. Surely if your body did not speak it to you…your mind or heart did.”

  His touch sent pleasure racing through her body. Goose pimples broke over every inch of her flesh! She wanted his touch—his arms around her once more. She desperately desired the feel of his lips pressed to hers, his whisper in her mouth, the taste of his kiss. She had known it! Deep in her soul she had ever known he had never forced intimacy upon her. Why then did he pretend? Yet it was proof enough to her—proof the beast in him could be soothed. Valor, the soothed beast, lay before her in a strange stupor, and she was desperate he not lose consciousness while yet he thought she meant to kill him.

  “Valor,” she began, taking his face between her hands and patting his cheeks until his eyes opened once more. “Valor. It is only the spiced milk you have given to me twice before. I would never…I would never harm you, Valor!”

  “It is all right, Kitty,” he mumbled, smiling at her through narrowed eyes. “I-I no less than fully deserve it.”

  “No, Valor. Please,” she pleaded. “All will be well come sunrise. All will be well. I would never harm you.”

  “Hush, Kitty. Hush and kiss me,” he mumbled. “Let my last taste of life be your sweet mouth. Let it be your mouth—sweet and, best of all, willing. I beg you, Kitty,” he said. “Do not let me die without one last breath and taste of you.”

  “But you are not dying, Valor,” she told him.

  “You deny me?” he asked, a frown puckering his brow, another tear escaping his eye. “That is as it should be.”

  “Valor,” she whispered as she watched his weary eyes struggle to remain open.

  Valor Lionhardt, Lord of Roanan—the handsomest man the world had ever seen. Had Coquette never loved him, still it would be true. And as she gazed at him, peaceful in his belief she had murdered him, warmth and moisture flooded her mouth. She wanted his kiss, wanted to feel the sensation of his lips to hers again, taste the heated flavor of his mouth. He desired the same. He desired it else he would not have asked it of her. She would not let him lie before her, believing she had murdered him, and yet deny his last request—her own greatest desire.

  “There was a time…a time your kiss was all I could ever think of, dream of, and wait for,” she told him.

  He tried to smile and whispered, “It is good to know it, Kitty. Were that it were still as true.”

  “But it is,” she whispered so softly she knew he could not hear. And then, ever so slowly she bent to him.

  Her fingers left his cheek, their sensitive tips traveling caressively over his lips. Moisture flooded her mouth, her heart hammering with anticipation and desire. She could not draw breath, and she cared not for it. Gently, tentatively, she kissed his parted lips. As ever, her body began to tremble as she increased the pressure of her lips against his. Gently, he returned her kiss. Disappointment, sadness, flooded her as she realized his inability to take her in his arms and compel her to submit to a more forceful exchange.

  “Kitty,” he breathed as she drew away for a moment, thrilled as she watched him moisten his lips and open his mouth further, an invitation to a deeper exchange—an invitation she accepted vigorously in the next moment. Mouths melding, he kissed her and she him. The milk had dulled his reflexes, subdued his ability to kiss her with vigorous passion, yet his kiss was as emotionally powerful as ever it had been, past or present.

  Coquette then let the tears flow freely over her cheeks as she kissed Valor. As his mouth worked a bewitching spell over her—an enchantment of pain mingled with desire, joy mingled with sadness—she cried for the knowledge she did not carry his child, never would carry his child. For in those moments, she wanted nothing more than to own a part of him once more.

  His hand at her cheek, his warm mouth separating from hers, caused her to sob as he closed his eyes and said, “Thank you, my beauty…my Kitty. Thank you. And do not feel any bad thing for your having killed me. I died long ago…and I have proved myself worthy of nothing better since. You are free of me…at last.”

  He slipped then into unconsciousness—a deep, peaceful unconsciousness—and she wondered whether he, like her, would remember nothing when he awoke. Would he awaken confused, anxious, and wondering what had taken place? Or would he awaken angry, hateful, and mean-spirited—the beast she had come to know?

  She studied him as he slept, his strong square jaw, the slight cleft in his chin, the dark chestnut of his whiskers, the perfect angle of his nose, and the artistic line of his lips. Oh, how she had loved him! Oh, how desperately she still did love him.

  “I would have married you,” she whispered, caressing his face with the back of her hand. “I would have married you, and you would have been my happiness. I would have been yours.” Coquette brushed the tears from her cheeks. Reaching down, she took one of his heavy hands in her own. Raising it to her lips, she kissed the back of it, pressing her cheek to it as she cried. “I would have gladly been the vessel to give you…to give us both sons and daughters. Sons with your strong chin and dark eyes, daughters with your nut-brown hair.”

  Carefully, though she knew he would not stir, she lay down beside him, let her body stretch the length of his, nestling against him. Wrapping her slender arms around one of his strong ones, she pressed her face to his shoulder and inhaled the scent of him. The sensation was overwhelming! The familiarity of his scent—cedar and leather—it sent new tears streaming over her cheeks.

  “I would have belonged to you,” she whispered. “I should have belonged to you!”

  It returned then—the resentment, the pain, the bitterness she had tasted the day her father forbade her to accept Valor’s proposal. She hated her father in those moments. In those moments, she was glad he was in Bostchelan and she was in Valor’s manor house. She would stay with Valor through the night—sleep next to him. I belong here, she thought.

  Certainly, she would have to wake before the cock crowed. Valor could never know she had stayed the night with him, clung to him as desperately as ivy clung to stone. Still, raising her head, she maneuvered his arm to cradle her against his strong body. She let her hand rest on his chest as it rose slowly up and down with his peaceful breathing. His skin was warm beneath her palm, his breathing rhythmic as some restful, hypnotic ocean wave.

  Coquette was where she had so long dreamt of being, and she slept sound and comforted until the cock crowed and Valor finally stirred.

  The Turn of the Chalice

  Valor slowly opened one eye, then the other. It was unfamiliar to him—to awaken to full-risen sunlight pouring into a room. He felt somewhat stiff, as if he hadn’t turned the length of the night—also weakened and bemused. Had he dreamt he had heard a door open and then close? Had he dreamt the sound of soft fabric moving across the room? And was it his imagination toying with his senses—sending him certain he smelled Coquette’s familiar scent? Or did the faint fragrance of sweetened vanilla truly linger on the bed beneath him?

  Awkwardly, for the weakness he felt was unfamiliar to him, he turned on his side, pressing his nose against the mattress on which he lay. He inhaled deeply the faint scent of vanilla. He was suddenly quite aware—quite aware he was not in his own chambers, but rather in Coquette’s.

  How came I to awaken here? he wondered. Glancing about the room, he was rather unsettled, anxious somehow that Coquette might suddenly appear and find him so disorientated and disheveled. But then, as his mind began to rise completely from the fog of sleep, he frowned. He yet wore his breeches and boots—no shirt and certainly no nightshirt. He bent and inhaled the fading fragrance of vanilla still clinging to the linens beneath him. What had transpired?

  At first, he had no memory of how he had come to be in Coque
tte’s bed still wearing his boots and breeches. He closed his eyes, trying to recall the events of the night before. Coquette had received a letter from her father. Yes. He remembered it well—remembered telling her to retire to his chambers. He remembered his conversation with Victoria—instructing her to mix the sleeping tonic for Coquette. He remembered entering Coquette’s room, taking her in his arms, tasting of her lips. Victoria had come, bringing the nutmegged milk, and he had watched Coquette drink it—had drained his own chalice.

  Panic seized him then, for he knew! Coquette had not been the one to consume the tonic; he had! He remembered then the feeling of freedom, of fatigue, as it gradually had overtaken him. And he remembered Coquette—at least he remembered the taste of her mouth. He felt his stomach tighten, as did both fists, as he realized he had been rendered unconscious in her presence. In his relaxed state, under the influence of the preparation, had he faltered—spoken words so long cached in silence in his dark heart? Had cruel things slipped from his lips? Yet perhaps worse, had he verbalized the barely restrained truth? Had he, in weakness, spoken words of lost love and admiration to Coquette? Instantly he called up his best companions—resentment, bitterness, hate. What had passed between them? What words had he spoken? What action had he taken?

  Remembering the passion and desire blazing in him as he held and kissed Coquette in those moments before Victoria arrived, he could only hope he had quick expired to sleep. Yet what if he had not? His mind ached with fear and worry over what his lips might have whispered to her when his strength and resolve had been compromised.

  Burning with self-revulsion, panicked to near frenzy, Valor rose from Coquette’s bed, fairly running from the room. Pausing not a moment, not even long enough to close her chamber doors behind him, Valor stormed across the hall to his own rooms. His hands, arms, legs—his entire body—shook with consternation and self-loathing. On the two previous nights spent in Coquette’s company, he had played at being a beast. Yet with the turn of the chalice, had the beast been too soothed? Were all his brutal plans of victorious vengeance vanquished? Thwarted or not, he was undone. Entirely undone!

  Carefully, slowly, Coquette entered her bedchamber from her sitting room. The first moment Valor stirred, Coquette had awakened, quickly and carefully moving from her bed and into her sitting room. It was mere moments later, while peeking through the barely ajar door adjoining the rooms, she had seen him bolt upright in bed. He was entirely overcome with confusion. She watched as he ran his fingers through his tousled hair and seemed to sit in miserable lack of memory for a moment.

  At first, she enjoyed feelings of triumph. Let him know what it is to lose an entire night of memory, she thought. In the very next instant, she was awash with guilt and regret. As unsettled and as frustrated as she had been with her two nights lost, she knew such a man as Valor would be entirely undone by it. It had been cruel to allow him to drink the tonic. Though guilt washed over her, regret was easy to fend off, for she had seen glimpses of her beloved in those blessed moments before Valor fell unconscious. In those moments, she had seen Valor, touched him, tasted of his kiss, and that she did not regret.

  She dressed quickly, determined to arrive downstairs and to her breakfast before he had a chance to gather his wits. Some tiny hope had begun to flicker within her. With the turn of the chalice the night before, Coquette had found evidence of Valor still lingering in the beast. Soothe the beast, and Valor would be there. She knew it now. Perhaps her Valor was not lost to her forever after all—and little hope was still better than none.

  

  “Good morning, sire,” Victoria greeted as Valor stormed into the breakfast room. The morning sun streamed in through the open windows, and Coquette sat calmly eating a morning cake.

  “Good morning, milord,” Coquette greeted.

  “What is this?” Valor asked.

  “Breakfast, of course, milord,” Victoria answered, a puzzled frown puckering her brow.

  “And what are you doing here?” he growled at Coquette.

  “Eating, milord,” she answered. “Do you wish me to leave? After all, you did instruct that I begin each day by eating a hearty breakfast.”

  “How is it I came to awaken in milady’s bed, Victoria?” Valor growled. As he had washed and dressed, he had begun to suspect it was Victoria’s intention he consume the tonic. Had she not handed him the chalice with her own hand, rather than serving the drink from a tray and indicating with a nod which he should choose as she had done previously?

  Eyebrows raised in astonishment, Victoria whispered, “Milord!”

  Valor felt his cheeks heat, almost a blush at his realization of the inappropriate nature of his question to his housemistress. He studied her for a moment. Surely Victoria would not intentionally administer the tonic to him instead of Coquette. He scolded himself for suspecting she had.

  “You were somewhat overcome with great fatigue last evening,” Coquette said. “You came to my chamber to speak with me and were overcome. It was very strange. Frightening in truth. I did not sleep one peaceful moment for worry over your well-being.”

  He did not miss the blush that rose to her cheeks, the tremble of her pretty hand as she held her fork poised above her morning cake. “That is all?” he asked. She did not seem any more unsettled than usual. Certainly, if he had spoken anything that he might regret, it would play out on her face before him now. “Nothing more passed between us?”

  Victoria nervously cleared her throat. He was suddenly irritated by her presence. Could he not have one conversation alone with his wife? Still, it was not Victoria’s fault he had no memory of the night before, for even if she had by accident given the tonic to him instead of to Coquette, it was he who had ordered it brewed. No. No one but he alone could be held accountable.

  Coquette sat nervous, anxious he would press her further about what had transpired. Surely he had surmised the chalices had been turned, having twice before witnessed her reaction to the tainted milk. Yet what kept him from erupting into fury? It entered her mind then he was unsettled not merely at his lack of memory but by his lack of knowing what, if anything, had transpired between them. It saddened Coquette to know he did not remember being her Valor for a time, did not remember their shared kisses.

  “I will have my breakfast in the east gardens, Victoria. Will you see to it at once?” Valor asked.

  “Yes, sire,” Victoria said with a nod. She turned and left. Valor advanced toward Coquette.

  Coquette gasped as Valor suddenly reached out, taking her chin in hand and forcing her to look up at him.

  “There is nothing else? Nothing else of the night I spent in your chamber?” he demanded.

  Coquette swallowed, hoping her eyes did not reveal too much too him—hoping they hid her desire for his touch, his attention. “Surely, if there were something else, your mind and body would speak it to you,” she said. He frowned, and she knew her words rung familiar and he could not fathom why.

  

  One day passed and then another. Valor grew silent, pensive, and Coquette began to worry for him. In the privacy of her own thoughts, she mused she missed the beast, for if she could not have Valor, then at least the beast conversed or rode out on Goliath for hours on end. Yet with the beast seemingly soothed, Valor had withdrawn over the days since partaking of the tonic, and it worried her.

  It was nearly every day for a week when out for her own meander through the gardens, Coquette would come upon Valor sitting on the bench at the pond. Ever she did not disturb him, did not let him know she had seen him—seen him rubbing at his temples as if they pained him or raking one hand through his hair as if tormented.

  “He is deep in contemplation,” Victoria told Coquette upon her return from her garden walk one afternoon. “He wonders what was spoken or not spoken between you that night. No doubt he is guilt-ridden as well, for his own deception of you. It is good to see him thus, milady,” she said. “It is man battling with beast.”

  Coquette was
worried still, even for Victoria’s reassurances. Perhaps both would be lost to her—Valor and the beast.

  And then a letter. As Coquette sat in silent dining with Valor one early autumn evening, Godfrey entered with a tray bearing a letter.

  “This has arrived for you, milady,” he said, extending the silver tray to her.

  “Thank you, Godfrey,” Coquette said, resting her fork on her plate and taking the letter.

  “What joy,” Valor grumbled. “Which member of your beloved family has chosen to taint our meal this night?”

  Angry and irritated as she should be, Coquette found she was somewhat relieved at the sound of his sarcasm. Perhaps the beast in him lurked nearby this night. “It…it looks to be in Elise’s hand,” Coquette answered.

  “Then open it and let us see what news of Bostchelan,” he grumbled.

  Coquette paused, studying him with sudden curiosity. She wondered at his wanting to hear the letters from her family read aloud when they so entirely vexed him.

  “Very well, milord,” she said. Breaking the seal, she unfolded the letter and began to read. “Dearest, oh dearest Coquette, Father says you are not to come to Inez’s wedding! He says he has received a letter from you—which I might tell you he refused to read to us—and in it you said you would not be able to travel to Bostchelan for the wedding! I am heartbroken! I so long to see you, Coquette…to know you are well. Naturally, Inez was furious when Father told her you would not come. She was in hopes to be telling people the great Lord of Roanan would be traveling to Bostchelan to attend her wedding. Dominique, however, has explained that with Father’s wealth and our new accommodations, we need no great lord to impress the populace of Bostchelan.”