by Jane Feather
"Cordelia, I was doing that problem!" he protested. "How dare you sweep it away like that?"
"Oh, I do beg your pardon." She looked up at him through her hair. "I didn't mean to be discourteous, but I thought you agreed to play a game." Again, he was certain that she was behaving without artifice. This was the impetuous, high-spirited Cordelia who had thrown flowers at a stranger from an upstairs window.
"I did not agree to anything. You didn't give me a chance to voice an opinion," he snapped. "Put those pieces down and go to bed at once." He smacked the back of her hand as she placed the black king on its square.
"Ow." Cordelia looked injured, rubbing her hand. "There was no need to do that. And why should we both sit alone and sleepless, when we can do something pleasant that will take our minds off the things that are making it difficult to sleep?"
She sounded so rational, her expression radiating bewildered hurt, that Leo felt the now familiar bubble of inconvenient laughter forming in his chest. Laughter and the equally familiar surge of desire at the lines of her body beneath the thin shift. While he was struggling for composure, Cordelia took advantage of his momentary disadvantage. She hooked a stool with her toe and plunked herself down before the chessboard. Removing a black and a white pawn, she held them in clenched fists behind her back, juggling them, before stretching her hands out to him.
"Which hand do you chose, my lord?"
It seemed that short of bodily removing her, he was destined to play chess with her. Harmless enough, surely? Resigned, he tapped her closed right hand.
"You drew black!" she declared with a note of triumph that he recognized from the afternoon's dicing. "That means I have the first move." She turned the chess table so that the white pieces were in front of her and moved pawn to king four. Then she sat back, regarding him expectantly.
"Unusual move," he commented ironically, playing the countermove.
"I like to play safe openings," she confided, bringing out her queen's pawn. "Then when the board opens up, I can become unconventional."
"Good God! You mean there's one activity you actually choose to play by the book! You astound me, Cordelia!"
Cordelia merely grinned and brought out her queen's knight in response to his pawn challenge.
They played in silence and Leo was sufficiently absorbed in the game to be able to close his mind to her scantily clad presence across from him. She played a good game, but he had the edge, mainly because she took risks with a degree of abandon.
Cordelia frowned over the board, chewing her bottom lip. Her last gamble had been a mistake, and she could see serious danger in the next several moves if she couldn't place her queen out of harm's way. If only she could intercept with a pawn, but none of her pawns were in the proper position, unless…
"What was that noise?"
"What noise?" Leo looked up, startled at the sound of her voice breaking the long silence.
"Over there. In the corner. A sort of scrabbling." She gestured to the far corner of the room. Leo turned to look. When he looked back at the board, her pawn had been neatly diverted and now protected her queen.
Leo didn't notice immediately. "Probably a mouse," he said. "The woodwork's alive with them."
"I hope it's not a rat," she said with an exaggerated shiver, and conspicuously united her rooks. "Let's see if that will help."
It was Leo's turn to frown now. Something had changed on the board in front of him. It didn't look the way he remembered it, but he couldn't see… and then he did.
Slowly, he reached out and picked up the deviated pawn. He raised his eyes and looked across at her. Cordelia was flushing, so transparently guilty he wanted to laugh again.
"If you must cheat, why don't you do it properly," he said conversationally, returning the pawn to its original position. "You insult my intelligence to imagine that I wouldn't notice. Do you think I'm blind?"
Cordelia shook her head, her cheeks still pink. "It's not really possible to cheat at chess, but I do so hate to lose. I can't seem to help it."
"Well, I have news for you. You are going to learn to help it." He replaced her rooks in their previous position. "We are going to play this game to the bitter end and you are going to lose it. It's your move, and as I see it, you can't help but sacrifice your queen."
Cordelia stared furiously at the pieces. She couldn't bring herself to make the only move she had, the one that would mean surrendering her queen. Without it she would be helpless; besides, it was a symbolic piece. She would be acknowledging she'd lost once she gave it up. "Oh, very well," she said crossly. "I suppose you win. There's no need to play further."
Leo shook his head. He could read her thoughts as if they were written in black ink. Cordelia was the worst kind of loser. She couldn't bear to play to a loss. "There's every need. Now make your move."
Her hand moved to take the queen and then she withdrew it. "But there's no point."
"The point, my dear Cordelia, is that you are going to play this game to its conclusion. Right up to the moment when you topple your king and acknowledge defeat. Now move."
"Oh, very well." She shot out her hand, half rising on her stool, leaning over the board as if it took her whole body to move the small wooden carving. Her knees caught the edge of the table, toppling it, and the entire game disintegrated, pieces tumbling to the carpet. "Oh, what a nuisance!" Hastily, she steadied the rocking table.
"Why, of all the graceless, brattish, mean-spirited things to do!" Leo, furious, leaped up. Leaning over the destroyed board, he grabbed her shoulders, half shaking, half hauling her toward him.
"But I didn't do it on purpose!" Cordelia exclaimed. "Indeed I didn't. It was an accident."
"You expect me to believe that?" He jerked her hard toward him, almost lifting her over the board, unsure what he intended doing with her, but for the moment lost in disappointed anger that she could do something so malicious and childish. Cordelia's protestations of innocence grew ever more vociferous.
Then matters became very confused. He was shaking her, she was yelling, his mouth was on hers. Her yells ceased. His hands were hard on her arms, and her body was pressed against his. Her mouth, already open on her indignant cries, welcomed the plunging thrust of his tongue. Her hands moved down his body. With an instinctive certainty of what was right, she gripped his buttocks through the dark silk of his britches. The hard bulge of his erect flesh jutted against her loins, and she moved her body urgently against his as her tongue drove into his mouth on her own voyage of exploration, demanding, tasting, wanting. She was aware of nothing but the wanting-an overpowering tidal wave of desire that throbbed in her loins, raced through her blood, pounded in her pulses. Everything she had felt befo�
�re was but a faint shadow of this wild, abandoned hunger.
Leo fought for clarity, but he could feel every line of her body under his hands. Her skin burned beneath her shift, heating his palms as he ran them over her, learning the shape of her, her curves and her indentations. He gripped the loose material at the back of the garment and pulled it tight so that her body was molded by the linen. He looked down at the pink glow of her breasts beneath the white, the hard crowns jutting against the material, the dark shadow at the apex of her thighs. And all hope of clarity was lost to him.
Her lips were parted, her breath swift as he examined her shape. She put her hands on her hips and lifted her head with a challenging triumph, her eyes scorching with their passion and hunger. With a rasping breath, he dragged the shift over her head and put his hands on her body. His caresses were rough and urgent, and she met each hard stroke with a swift indrawn breath of arousal, thrusting her body at him, wanting him to touch every inch of her, to brand her skin with his mark.
She fell back across the chess table under the pressure of his body. The sharp edges of the fallen pieces pressed into her bare back but she didn't notice, caught up in the red mist of this wild desire. Her hips lifted for the hands, now caressing her inner thighs, opening her petaled center, finding the exquisitely sensitive core of her passion. The waves built in her belly, built to an unbearable crescendo when she thought she would die. And then she did, toppling slowly from a scarlet height of ecstasy into a soft blackness that leached every ounce of strength from her body, and she could hear her own sobbing cries of abandoned delight.
Leo held her against him as the shuddering joy convulsed her, his hands under her back as she sprawled across the chess table. He held her until her eyes opened and she smiled, her face transfigured with a wondrous radiance.
"What did you do to me?"
"Sweet Jesus!" He slid his flat palms out from under her and straightened. His golden eyes were almost black as he stared down at her, spreadeagled in such wanton abandon across the table.
"For God's sake, get up!" His voice was harsh. He pulled her upright onto her feet. "Put your shift on." He pushed her toward the white crumpled garment on the floor. The deep imprints of the chess pieces were on her back as she bent to pick up the shift. "I don't believe myself," he muttered, aware of his own arousal now as a painful need.
Cordelia turned back to him, clutching the shift to her bosom. "I still don't understand what happened." Her eyes were bewildered beneath the still-misty radiance of fulfillment. "We didn't-"
"No, we didn't," he interrupted harshly. "But what I did was bad enough. For pity's sake, go to bed, Cordelia, and leave me alone."
For once her impulsive protest died on her lips. She turned back to the gaping bookshelves, still clutching her shift. He tried not to gaze at the long sweep of her back, the perfectly rounded bottom, the slender length of her thighs. He tried, but failed.
At the bookshelf she said over her shoulder. "I really didn't intend to knock over the board. It was truly an accident."
"It doesn't matter," he said wearily.
"But it does. I don't want you to think that I'd do something that despicable." She had one hand on the shelf, her earnest gaze seeking his.
Leo gave a harsh crack of laughter. "My dear girl, in the list of the evening's despicable events, that one is hardly worth considering."
"That wasn't despicable," she said, her voice very low. "Nothing so wonderful could be wrong."
Leo closed his eyes. "You don't know what you're saying," he said. "Now, go to bed."
Cordelia slipped through the gap into her own chamber and pushed the shelf back in place. She needed Mathilde's wisdom, but it would have to wait until the morning. She fell into bed, as limp as a kitten, and was asleep in seconds.
Chapter Eight
Dawn streaked the sky when Mathilde entered Cordelia's bedchamber accompanied by a maid carrying a ewer of steaming hot water. The girl set this on the dresser before turning to rekindle the fire against the early morning chill.
Cordelia slept on behind the bedcurtains as Mathilde laid out her riding habit and repacked the trunk with the clothes she'd worn the previous day.
"Bring the princess a pot of coffee, girl. She'll need something to warm her; there's a nip in the air."
The maid curtsied and left the chamber, where the fire now burned brightly. Mathilde drew back the bedcurtains.
"Wake up now, child. The bell for prime rang some ten minutes ago and breakfast is to be at seven in the great hall."
Cordelia rolled onto her back and opened her eyes. For a moment she wondered where she was. Then the wave of memory broke over her. She sat up, rubbed her eyes, and looked ruefully at Mathilde.
"I'm in love."
"Holy Mary, not with that young musician, I trust!" Mathilde exclaimed. "He's a nice enough lad, but not for the likes of you, m'dear."
"No, not Christian." Cordelia sat cross-legged on the bed. "The viscount."
"Holy Mother!" Mathilde crossed herself. "And since when has this happened?"
"Oh, since first I saw him. I believe he feels something for me too, but he won't say so."
"I should hope not. What honorable man would declare his feelings for another man's wife?" Mathilde pushed a loose gray lock back beneath her starched cap.
"Mathilde, I don't wish to be married to my husband," Cordelia said with low-voiced intensity.
"Well, there's nothing to be done about it, girl. It was the same with your mother. It's the same with most women of your class. They marry where advantage leads them, not their hearts."
"Men's advantage," said Cordelia bitterly, and Mathilde didn't contradict her. "My mother didn't love my father?"
Mathilde shook her head. "No, your mother loved outside her marriage, and she loved with all her heart. But she did nothing to be ashamed of." Mathilde raised a warning forefinger. "She was honest to her deathbed."
"But unhappy?"
Mathilde pursed her lips then she sighed and nodded. "Yes, child. Desperately so. But she knew where her duty lay, and so will you."
Cordelia began to massage her feet, frowning fiercely. "My mother stayed at the Austrian court. There's no freedom there. Perhaps if she'd been at Versailles-"
"No, don't you be thinking any such thing," interrupted Mathilde. "You'll be in trouble worse than a snake pit, thinking like that."
"I think I already am," Cordelia said slowly, pushing her thumbs hard into the sole of her foot, keeping her eyes on her task.
Mathilde sat down heavily on the end of the bed, her face grim. "What are you saying, child? Has the viscount had knowledge of you?"
"Yes and no." Cordelia looked up, flushing, biting her bottom lip. "What you told me happened on the marriage bed didn't happen, but he touched me in… in very intimate ways and… and something wonderful happened to me. B
ut I don't understand quite what."
"Mercy me!" Mathilde threw up her hands. "Tell me what happened."
Cordelia did so, somewhat haltingly, her face burning even though Mathilde had cared for her since infancy and knew all her most intimate secrets. "But if what we did was not intercourse, Mathilde, what was it?" she finished.
Mathilde sighed. This situation was more troublesome than if her nursling had lost her virginity in an explosion of passion. Initiation was rarely pleasurable however passionate, and was unlikely to encourage repetition. But true pleasuring once experienced was a different matter.
"There are some men who are willing and know how to pleasure a woman, child. But for the most part, they're not interested in more than their own satisfaction. You'd best put what happened behind you and forget about it. Be grateful for a gentle husband and as many babes as you can conceive. It's the best a woman can hope for."
Cordelia dropped her foot, saying blunting, "I don't believe that, Mathilde. And I don't think you believe it either."
Mathilde bent over her to take her face between her hands. "Listen to me, dearie, and listen well. You must take what's given you in this world. I'll not watch you fade away from wishing, as your mother did. You're strong, I've made you so. You must look for what you can have, and forget what you can't."
"My mother didn't care for my father?"
"She didn't see what there was to care for in him because she was too busy pining for what she couldn't have." Mathilde released her face and straightened, her expression suddenly hard and determined. "I've not raised you to hanker for the impossible. I've taught you to take what you have and make the most of it Now, get up and get dressed. We don't have all morning."