by Eve Langlais
“In troth, I know not,” she said, flushing guiltily. “I cannot fathom why it is when Don Argemirus commands me, I can do nothing but obey.”
“Did he command my husband, as well?” Sarah asked.
“He suggested,” Bess said. “He suggested he might be able to save you.”
“Every doctor says as much, and yet my husband had not sent you to plead any case but that of Don Argemirus.” The porridge was warm and bland–an invalid’s food, which was fitting because Sarah was an invalid. Sarah set the spoon down. She was not hungry.
The door opened again, this time with no preliminary knock. John Glaston, Baron Marston, stepped in. There was color in the cheeks that had been pale for too long, and the laughing light was back in his eyes.
“Leave us, Bess,” Sarah said instantly to her servingwoman, for she knew that he would come up so near the dinner hour only when he felt the most pressing need to speak to her.
Her eye flicking quickly between mistress and master, the woman curtseyed and murmured, “Yes, my lady.”
John waited until the door was shut tight before he broke his silence.
“Did you bend your ear to the good doctor’s case?”
“I did, my lord. I heard his plea,” Sarah said heavily.
“And does he not seem to you the very image of skill and wisdom?” he prompted.
“The very image, yes,” she agreed. Image was certainly right because there was something about his beauty that was superficial, hollow, as if there might not be anything inside. “But he does trouble me in my mind. I fear that he be a practitioner of some dark arts.”
John nodded vehemently. Though he was not the slight and comely youth who had wooed her fourteen years before with such persuasiveness that she had defied her family to elope with him, time had been kinder to him than her illness had been to her. He still had his dark, handsome eyes and a shapely face under his close–cropped beard, and though middle age was spreading his waist into a noticeable paunch, he still moved with the surety of an athlete.
And to her, he was more handsome than the angels themselves, much less a strange man who seemed to carry darkness in his wake.
“You can sense it, too!” John said. “The power he holds is great, I am sure.”
Sweet John, who grasped at every straw and wished to believe every charlatan who heard of his lady’s plight. Sarah shook her head dubiously, remembering how her pulse had raced at his touch when it had never raced for another before. “But comes it from the angels or from hell?”
John dropped to one knee before her, taking her hands in his and kissing them softly. Sarah swayed slightly at his touch, at the knowledge that all too soon, she would never feel his kisses again.
He was her true love. Years ago, she had sat beside him as he read Plato’s discourse in which Socrates had expounded upon the idea that each human being in the world had another part, another half that would make him whole. She had looked at him then, and her heart had jumped in recognition as she thought, I have found my other half.
And never had she doubted it.
John lifted his head. “I could not bear it if I lost you. I should not be able to go on alone in this world,” he said, his voice low and fervent.
“But you must, John. For the love of your children and for your love of me,” Sarah protested.
“Once more.” Those bright, beloved eyes pleaded with hers. “I know I’ve sworn to you that I should not trouble you mind further with my petitions, but one more time, my dove. One more doctor. One more noxious concoction or noisome poultice. I have forsworn myself to you only because my love is greater even than my honor.”
“Oh, my too fond husband,” Sarah said, blinking against the tears that pricked her eyes. “Never say you that you would sell your honor so cheap, for my love is not worth it. If it please you, I shall grant you your boon. May it be that you not ever say that your wife was less than generous with the heart you have entrusted to her.”
“You shall entertain the good doctor’s proposal?” John asked.
How could Sarah explain to him the fear in her heart and the strange things that man did to her? How could she try to make sense of his proposition when she didn’t fully understand it herself? Don Argemirus was no gentleman, and she would wager that he was no ordinary doctor, either.
Yet with her proud husband humbled at her feet, what answer could she give but her consent, even if it cost her soul? Her mortal life might not be worth her immortal security, but her husband’s happiness was. Their happiness was, if it meant more time with him.
She shuddered slightly at the blasphemousness of that thought, but surely her intentions must mean something. She could be seeing things that weren’t there, harboring fears for no reason at all.
She told herself that she was fencing with shadows. Don Argemirus’ cure wouldn’t work any more than those of the dozens of learned sages who had come before him, anyway. He would turn out to be a fraud like everyone else, whatever strange things he did when he looked at her. And if agreeing made John believe that she had done everything in her power to live, then she must give him that.
But what if she did not survive it? That was another possibility that the doctor had raised.
Sarah judged her own strength, and she felt the faintness of the flicker of her own life, the laboriousness of every breath. So often at night, she struggled up from sleep, half–drowned in the foam that had collected in her lungs. The month was far into the Advent, with Christmas itself a mere week away, and she greatly feared she would not live to see it. If she lost time, it would be no more than a handful of days.
“Aye,” she said finally, heavily. “I shall subject myself to his ministrations and pray for deliverance from mine afflictions.”
“Tomorrow,” John said, squeezing her hands.
“Tomorrow morn,” she agreed.
“By God’s blood, you are the truest and best wife a man could ever wish for,” John said.
He rose to his feet, and in an excess of emotion, he caught her under her arms and lifted her upright, his powerful frame bearing her frail one effortlessly. He caught her in a kiss–and despite knowing the foolishness of allowing him to expose himself to her possible contagion, she kissed him back fully, hungrily. His lips were hot against hers, his tongue urging her mouth open, and she let him in as desire twisted tight and low in her belly.
All the womanly responses that she had feared were forever lost to her sickness awoke to her husband’s touch–woke and roared up, as if to make up for their months of suppression. In his kiss was the earnest almost–boy who had first wooed her and the man who had roared the midwife out of the room when she’d given Sarah up as lost, who had saved her life when no one believed that she could be saved.
His mouth tasted of mead and of him, and her crippled body molded to his as if it were made for him. Sarah forgot the constant ache of her leg. She even forgot some part of her bone–deep weariness. One of his hands came up to cradle her cheek as the other held her more firmly against his body. Her weakness yielded to his vigor, her fragility to his strength. Her womb throbbed with her need to have him, a pain that twisted down to the juncture of her legs.
He broke away, his hard eyes looking deeply into hers, the wings of his brows lowered with such a look of deep desire that her breath was snatched away.
“My lord–” she started, then stopped. What could she even say that could convey how much she loved him, how her heart already hurt with the thought of leaving him?
“My dearest and best lady,” he returned, a shadow of a smile playing around his lips even though his eyes still burned. He stroked her cheek softly.
“Your only lady,” she shot back. “For the nonce.”
“Forever,” he corrected, and he kissed her again.
Sarah wished that she could get lost in that kiss forever and never come out again. But eventually, he broke off, and a squeak was surprised from her as he boosted her up into his arms and carried her to t
he curtained bed, taking care with her sore leg.
When they were young in love, he would fling her upon the bed and dive after, growling, to her shrieking giggles. Now he set her upon it carefully, reverently, arranging the pillows under her back and head so that she stayed up at enough of an angle that she didn’t start to cough again.
“Oh, John,” she said as his hands went to the laces of his codpiece and stockings.
“Do you wish that I refrain?” he asked, stilling instantly.
She shook her head, unable to speak for a moment around the tightness in her throat. She swallowed hard to clear it. “No. By God, no, John. I want you. As I draw breath, I want you.”
“Then that is all that matters.” He loosened codpiece and braies, and he climbed onto the bed after her, pushing up her skirts as he knelt between her legs, easing up over her body while keeping his weight carefully on one elbow.
His kiss caught her swollen lips, and she whimpered into his mouth as it stirred tiny shivers of reaction that chased down into her limbs until her very fingertips tingled as she cupped his face in her hands. This moment would cost her, would cost her dearly, but at that moment, she could not care. That night, when her chest filled up and she could not breathe, she might not wake up at all.
John was tugging at the ribbons that held up her hose, loosening them and pushing them down so that he could caress her thighs, his hands moving on her sensitive skin in time to his mouth. His hands were strong, callused with the work of reins and sword–the powerful hands of a powerful man. But his touch was as gentle as if he were handling a cracked egg.
At his touch, she felt an aching fullness between her legs, and she rocked her hips with his movement, begging him with her body to move up her legs to their juncture. She wanted him–she wanted him with a strength that pounded in her head in the rhythm of his breath, his mouth, his body. But he continued to caress her thighs even as his tongue stroked deep into her mouth until she made a noise of desperate frustration.
He broke off at that, and she cried out again–a tiny, involuntary mew.
“Do I hurt thee?” John asked earnestly.
“Only with my need for thee, thou fondest fool,” she said, halfway between laughter and pain. “John, thou art a tease!”
At that, he smiled down at her, an impish light in his eyes. “It makes the fulfillment all the sweeter.”
At that, she seized his hand and placed it squarely at her entrance. “Then fulfill me!”
He laughed again, then stopped, gazing at her steadily as he pushed deep between her slick folds. Sarah’s body clenched hard at the invasion, a shudder going through her as she breathed in sharply.
“Like that, my love?” he murmured as he push a second finger beside the first.
The muscles in her belly tightened as the ring of muscles clasped him, almost burning with the reaction. Her hand, still encircling his wrist, tightened, and he began to move inside her, sliding in and out as he stroked her. John watched her, his eyes fixed to hers as her breath came faster. She felt her whole body tightening, driving her close to the edge, and her hand spasmed around his wrist.
“Please, John. I want you with me,” she managed to say. She had only the strength to peak once–and it would take the hoarded energy that was meant to last her all day.
John didn’t argue. He pulled away and rested on his knees and elbows as he allowed her to free his cock from the slit in his braies, his cape falling on either side of them like scarlet wings. Sarah clasped its velvety warmth, already at a full stand, and stroked it slowly. It was his turn for his breath to come fast, color rising in his cheeks above his close–cropped beard. Finally, he gave a great shudder and shook his head.
“If I’m to be with thee, thou must allow me to be inside thee,” he said with a ragged laugh.
Sarah giggled, feeling lightheaded, almost young again, and she angled his cock down to her entrance. He pushed into her all at once, and she gasped, her knees coming up on either side to clasp his hips as a shock of reaction pierced her.
“Good?” he challenged.
“So good,” she said breathlessly, her hands sliding up his body to thread through his hair. The last time, she thought. This was the last time that she would ever feel him there, inside of her. Her strength was fleeing by the day, by the hour, even, like a water–clock that could not be refilled. The last time he would fill her, and the last time that she would clasp him inside of her body as if they could become one.
She blinked hard.
“Then why do you weep?” he asked softly.
“I weep only for joy,” Sarah lied.
John ducked his head and slowly, with the greatest devotion, he kissed the tears from her cheeks. Then he began to move inside her, thrusting slowly at first, filling her completely, pushing into her until their pelvises met, kissing her lips, her face, her neck. Sarah closed her eyes, turned off her mind, and let herself go to do nothing but feel–feel him, her husband, who loved her with the adoration of a supplicant.
He broke off kissing her as he sped up, and Sarah’s breath came faster, her body growing tight and thin, as if she might break apart at any instant. And then it came, a tearing kind of release, and she called her husband’s name, a plea to him to be with her forever, to never let her go. With a groan, he followed her into his peak, and she could feel him pumping against her buttocks.
She came down slowly as he slowed his rhythm as he softened inside her. Finally, he stopped and kissed her, long and hard. When he broke away, she raised her hand to her swollen lips as if she could catch the kiss and keep it.
He rolled over then, pulling her with him so that she rolled on top of him, his hand cradling her bad leg so that it wouldn’t be hurt in the maneuver. Sarah burst out laughing–but the sudden shift of position was too much for her lungs, and combined with her breathlessness, she was thrown into another fit of coughing.
Chapter Four
John pulled back immediately. He sat up and gathered her against his body as she jerked the handkerchief from her sleeve and pressed it to her mouth. It hurt so much to cough, her ribs aching from it, her lungs and throat burning, but still the fit continued, every intake of air triggering a new wave until she sagged against John’s body, tears running down her face as her whole body still shook in its grasp.
“Pardon me, my lady,” John was murmuring over and over again. “I beg your pardon.”
And that hurt almost as much as the coughing, that he could regret so sharply what he had just given her–almost certainly their last time together. Her illness had destroyed the sweetness of even that memory for him.
When she could finally breathe without being seized by another fit of coughing, the flow of tears down her face changed from simple pain to grief, and swallowing them down, she turned her face into John’s doublet.
He stroked her hair, still murmuring, until she finally choked back her sadness and raised her eyes to his face.
“Never must you apologize for that,” she said. “It was a gift, John. A great gift to me, for me to carry in my heart. You have given me mayhaps my last moment of pleasure.”
“Soft! Dr. Argemirus shall heal you,” he scolded.
“Let it be as you say,” Sarah agreed obediently. “But if his arts fail, you ought compass that I should never regret your attentions.”
He nodded, saying nothing, but Sarah saw the tightness in his face and the movement of his throat as he swallowed. A moment later, he disengaged himself and stood. After straightening his clothes, he took the basin and pitcher of water from its place on the table and poured a little out, taking his snowy linen handkerchief and wetting it before cleaning her gently, lovingly. He dropped it in the basin and tied the ribbons of her hose again before pulling her shift and skirts down over her legs.
“I wish to dine with you tonight,” Sarah said impulsively as he replaced the bowl and pitcher.
He stilled, facing away from her. “I can dine here with you.”
“No,
” Sarah said. “I wish to go below, to the hall.”
“You have not descended to table these past eight weeks,” he said, unmoving. There was no hint of emotion in his voice–it was wrung free of any hint of what he might be thinking.
But Sarah knew him too well for that to work. “Since I fell. I know.” They had not been together as man and wife since that day, either. Until tonight.
“You should save your strength.”
“If Don Argemirus is to heal me, I will have more strength tomorrow,” Sarah said. But what she really thought was that if this was to be a day of final moments, that was a moment that she did not want to miss. She had not left their chamber since her fateful fall, and suddenly, she was possessed with the fear that she would never leave the room again unless she did it that night.
“So you shall,” he said, finally turning to face her. His face was set in a pleasant expression that did not fool her at all.
“Call you the servingmen to carry me,” Sarah said.
“I have no need of knaves,” he said dismissively. “As I carried you into our home on the day you first entered it, so shall I carry you today.”
He came to her side again and bent, scooping her into his arms with all the ease as if she were a babe. Looping her arms around his neck, she leaned her cheek against his chest. “Do they dine below already?”
He chuckled as he reached the door, freeing a hand to slide back the bolt that held it closed. “We were all but sitting to our repast when Don Argemirus came down from the room. I tried to be a good host, but I perforce had to speak to thee anon.”
Sarah smiled, for John had always had a streak of impetuousness. “My dearest lord husband, I ought chastise you.”
He opened the door and stepped through, catching it with his foot to pull it closed behind him. “It shouldn’t change a thing.”