“She admires you tremendously,” Tony continued. “From the moment you returned home and had to upend her and paddle her bottom. I thought you were wrong at the time, but it turned out that you were right, Blaze.”
“Children need boundaries, Tony. Without them they are apt to run wild and frightened. As long as children know what is expected of them, it is easier for them to behave. My mother raised us that way. When you took Nyssa from Ashby and brought her home, you let her run wild, and she grew afraid. Her temper was the result, and I will have to work long and hard to improve that, but how could you know? You are a man.”
“A man who counts the days until the fifth of February,” he said quietly. Then, raising her hand to his lips, he kissed it.
Startled, Blaze looked up at him, her eyes widening in her surprise. “Anthony . . .” Her voice caught.
“You do not hate me any longer, Blaze. I know it.”
“But I do not love you, my lord.”
“Did you love Henry Tudor?” he asked her.
“I was the king’s whore,” she said quietly, “but I am your wife. Even you know the difference.”
“Yet you deny me that which you so freely gave the king,” he answered her.
Blaze sighed deeply. She did not hate Anthony any longer, but she also did not know how she felt about him. She was no silly girl to grow indignant at his unspoken accusations. If she was to be happy with him, she would have to tell him the truth. “You are mistaken, Tony. I gave nothing freely to the king. Henry Tudor takes what he wants, be it a woman or an estate. My chaste behavior is what attracted his attention, and so he marked me for his own as a hunter marks a doe.
“He made it quite clear that on the first of May I would become his ladylove. He had me moved from my little chamber in the Marwood apartments to a large apartment set over his royal chambers. There was an inner staircase, hidden from public view, that allowed him to move back and forth in private between the two places. I wanted none of it. Neither the king, nor his spacious apartments, nor the supposed honor of being a royal mistress.”
“Then why did you simply not leave the court and come home?” Tony asked her.
Blaze laughed. “It is so simple for men, is it not?” she gently mocked him. “I wanted to do just that, but how could I deny my king? I was no virgin with a maidenhead to protect. Besides, he threatened to take Nyssa away from me and give her custody and that of RiversEdge to Thomas Seymour, who had tried and failed in his seduction of me. I do not like the Seymours. They are very ambitious people, and I feared for both Nyssa and her estates. I had no powerful allies to protect me. As long as I obeyed the king’s commands, Nyssa was safe and remained where she belonged.”
Anthony was shocked, for he admired the king. Still, as he thought on it, it was not so surprising. Henry Tudor was a most ruthless man when he chose to be. “Blaze,” he said, “I am so sorry! You were alone, and you were helpless. As Edmund’s heir I should have been there to help you!”
“I ran from your kindness and help,” she said truthfully, “but let me finish. Even so, I resisted the king as best I could, putting off the inevitable, hoping he would lose interest. On May Day, however, the king grew impatient for the night to come, and in early afternoon dragged me off in full sight of the court to his privy chamber. Then he forced me over a library table, and lifting my skirts, took me then and there. After that I did not resist him. What purpose would there have been in it? As long as I was his loving and gentle sweetheart, the king was content, and my child was safe from the Seymours.
“Strangely, I grew to like Hal over the months that I served his pleasures. He is a cruel man, yet there is great kindness in him. He is amusing and educated. He has great wit and even greater charm. Except for our first encounter, he was kind and thoughtful of me; but never, Anthony, never did I aspire to the position in which I found myself.” Then she laughed softly, realizing the double entendre of her words. “I think,” she amended, “that you know what it is I am trying to say to you, Tony. I did not seek to be the king’s mistress, and offered a choice, I would have declined the honor.”
He nodded. “I see now that I have been a fool,” he admitted. “I believed that you had gone to court, and having attracted the king’s attentions, were pleased with your place in life. How could I have been so blind? You would have never done such a thing, and yet I was so quick to think the worst when I arrived at court and learned your place in the king’s life.”
“I am not surprised,” she answered him. “The morality of those who live at court is far different from those of us who live quietly by simpler values in our country homes. You had been at court, and you knew its values. You judged me by those values. Bliss was always remonstrating with me for not enjoying my place, for she was convinced that I should adore living atop the pinnacle of power. She never really understood my unhappiness with my situation. Still, I never used my place in the king’s mercurial affections to gain either wealth or power for my family. There were many that called me the fool for it. I was known as The Quiet Mistress.” She smiled.
“Why did you not use your position in Henry’s life to benefit your family, Blaze?” He was curious, for her behavior was indeed a most unconventional one.
“I did not seek to be the king’s mistress, Anthony, but to have used my body as a weapon once I was his mistress only to gain riches and power for my family seemed to me a dishonorable thing to do, even under those circumstances,” Blaze told him.
“I have been a fool,” he answered her, realizing now how he had wronged her.
“Perhaps we have both been foolish,” she said.
“Do you think you can forgive me, Blaze, for believing that you had chosen to live the life you lived at court?”
“There is nothing to forgive, Tony. As I have said, you but judged me by the values of the court. You did not know me well enough to make any other judgment.”
“But you were Edmund’s wife,” he protested, convinced of his error.
“I was Edmund’s wife, but I was not Edmund. Edmund was like a brother to you, and you knew him as well as you knew yourself. You have never really known me. There is nothing to forgive. Let us put the past behind us, Anthony. It is not important. What is important is the here and the now.”
“Begin anew, Blaze? Is that what you would have us do?” His look was a serious one.
“Aye, Tony. Begin anew. Do you think we might?” Her voice had grown wistful.
His heart was hammering wildly. Begin again! She was trying her very best to make her peace with him. To really settle all the anger and misunderstanding that had been between them. He loved her now more than he had ever loved her, and he longed to tell her so, yet he dared not. She was only half-right when she said he did not know her. He had fallen in love with her the moment he had seen her lovely face and form. He had watched her secretly when she had been Edmund’s wife, and he had believed her to be perfect. How he had envied his uncle then!
When Edmund had died, Anthony had known that he could never allow Blaze to wed with anyone other than himself. He had planned a scenario in his mind in which he would court and win her after her mourning was over. Her flight to court and away from everything she had ever known and loved had confused him. When he learned of her place in the king’s affections everything he had always believed about her had been destroyed, and he had been angered at what he believed was his own stupidity.
Now he was learning the real truth about Blaze. She was not the perfect woman, as he had once thought. A perfect woman was one that was made of marble, that had no warmth or feeling in her at all. There was no such thing as a perfect woman, any more than there was such a thing as a perfect man. Blaze was real! She was alive, and warm, and giving. Her heart was so great that she had even been able to forgive the king his treatment of her, and find something good within Henry’s royal soul. God, how he had misjudged her, and now she was asking him to begin once more!
“Aye,” he told her, “we can
begin again, my angel!”
Then suddenly, to his great surprise, Blaze took his face between her two small hands and kissed him. His head reeled at the warm touch of her lips upon his, and he wanted to clasp her tightly within his arms, but dared he? Not yet. He would not have her believe that his interest in her was only in bedding her, for it was not.
“To seal the bargain between us,” she said as she drew away, and her eyes smiled into his.
“Let me love you just a little more,” he begged her, all his good intentions dissolving.
She was tempted. Dear heaven, she was tempted. He was really a kind and gentle man, so much like Edmund, and yet he was different. She needed to be loved again by a man who truly cared for her, but she did not think he did. He was simply a man, and men needed the pleasure of a woman’s body in order to be happy. She had denied him that pleasure for two months, but she would stick to her original bargain with him. She shook her head. “We are too old, and too experienced in the arts of passion, my lord, to play at children’s games. Let us know one another a little better before we embark upon a voyage of sensuality.”
“What would you know of me, madam?” he demanded. “I would have you learn it quickly, for what I seek to know of you, you would deny me for your lack of knowledge about me,” he teased her.
Blaze burst out laughing. “I have already learned one thing about you, my lord. You have a sharp wit.”
“And you have been known to have a sharp tongue, madam,” he quipped at her.
“I think the court lost a valuable courtier in you, Anthony Wyndham,” she told him.
“I am no courtier, my angel. I am happiest living here in the country with you, Nyssa, and my mother. I long for the day when we shall have a houseful of children to love and to raise, even as your parents have. I seek no glory, nor honors, Blaze Wyndham. I seek your heart and the happiness we shall one day, God willing, make between us. Now, kiss me again, madam. I promise you that I shall restrain my baser nature, but only if you kiss me!”
Leaning toward him, she placed her mouth on his once more, but this time his arms enclosed her in a gentle embrace, drawing her across the settle upon which they were sitting. Gently he ran his tongue across her lips, and they parted themselves for him. Delicately he explored the honeyed grotto of her mouth, and she trembled ever so faintly as his tongue at last made contact with hers. Like two spears of fire their tongues danced and wove about each other, slowly stroking their passions.
I must stop this. The thought fuzzily entered her mind. I must! Yet she could not seem to muster the willpower that she needed to demand that he cease his kisses. They were such wonderful kisses, warm and tender, filling her veins with a voluptuous sweetness that seemed to throb throughout her whole being.
His fingers found the laces to her bodice, and he skillfully and quickly undid them, ignoring her sudden little cry of protest. “Nay, sweetheart, I am in control,” he whispered to her. “Let me! Please, let me!”
A single hand cupped a soft breast, and Blaze felt herself close to tears. It had been so long since she had been touched with such gentleness. It was almost unbearable. Tenderly he fondled the perfumed globe, unable to take his eyes off the delicate ivory flesh with its tight coral tip that almost vibrated beneath his touch. He could feel his own vaunted control beginning to slip away, and then he saw the crystalline tears slipping from beneath her closed eyelids to pearl upon her cheeks.
“Oh, my angel,” he said, “do not weep! You must not weep!” With supreme effort he restored her dress to its proper mode and cradled her in his arms. “Oh, Blaze, my adorable wife, do not weep. I have ceased, and I will not touch you again until you are ready.”
Her quiet tears suddenly stopped, and opening her eyes, Blaze looked at him, saying, “Oh, Tony, do not be such a great fool! I weep because of the wonderful pleasure you have given me, not because you have violated my sensibilities!”
“What? Do you say that I made you happy then, my angel?”
“Aye, my lord, you did. Yet I worry now to wonder what sort of woman I am that enjoys the lovemaking of a stranger.”
“Dammit, Blaze, I am not a stranger! I am your husband! We have known one another since you were fifteen, and you are now twenty! Would you know what kind of woman you are, my angel, then I shall tell you. You are a warm and a loving woman. Do you think that Edmund did not brag of your loving nature to me, for he did. He could not believe his good fortune, for though his first wife was sweet and she loved him, she was cold in the marriage bed. You were not, and he could not resist sharing that knowledge with me.”
“I did not think that men spoke of such things except when discussing other women,” she exclaimed.
“Do not women discuss the men with whom they make love, my angel?” and he laughed when she blushed.
Suddenly a friendship blossomed between them, a friendship that was more than evident to all who saw them together now. Though Blaze worried about her enjoyment of the more carnal side of their budding relationship, she worked hard to put it from her mind, for she was too busy discovering more and more that she liked about the man who was now her husband.
Dorothy Wyndham continued to light her candles in the family chapel, thanking the Blessed Mother to whom she had been fervently praying that Blaze and Anthony would settle their differences, that Blaze would learn to love her son, and that Tony would finally have the courage to tell his wife that he had always loved her, that his story of Edmund’s dying request had been just that: a story. Her prayers seemed to be answered in part at least. In time, perhaps, all of her prayers would be answered.
Seeing that her sister and Anthony seemed to be happy ate like a canker in Delight Morgan’s breast. She was forced to remain at RiversEdge because the heavy winter snows had made the roads virtually impassable. When Anthony’s mother suggested that perhaps she would like to go across the river to visit with Blythe, Henriette had cried and begged that her dearest and only friend in the whole world not be sent away. Blaze had given in, for the two girls kept virtually to themselves, thereby giving her less trouble. Besides, she would not wish the sad and embittered Delight upon sweet Blythe now in the last months of her third pregnancy.
One day when the sun shone for the first time in many days, and the air was softly warm for winter, the two girls, arm in arm, strolled about the January barren gardens. Henriette had learned that Delight was still a virgin, albeit a curious virgin. Delight had shared with her the stories of her little sister Vanora’s spyings from the stable lofts when she was just a wee girl. The way in which she related the tales told the wily Henriette that Delight’s virginity was a frustration to her, and the French girl suspected she could use Delight’s weakness to her own advantage.
“Did you ever watch the servants fucking from Vanora’s loft?” Henriette asked innocently.
“Ohh, no,” Delight said with a blush that turned her cheeks a fiery red.
“Would you like to see a man and woman doing that?” Mademoiselle Henriette tempted her friend. “Doing what you so very much want Tony to do with you?”
“Oh, no,” whispered Delight. “I would be afraid to watch someone doing that. What if I got caught?”
“You’ll never know just what to imagine or how delicious lovemaking really is unless you either see someone else do it or you do it yourself,” taunted Henriette. “As I know you would save your virginity for Anthony alone, the only other alternative open to you is to watch the act. You would not get caught if you watched a friend, Delight. If you watched me!” Her little French face was alight with her mischief.
“You?” Delight was not certain if Henriette was serious or if she were making mock of her.
“Oui, chérie, me! Alas, I was raised at the French court, and a girl has little chance of keeping her virginity much past the age of twelve there. I have found that I have a taste for passion, chérie.”
“But if you are not a virgin,” gasped the shocked Delight, “will your bridegroom not be angry?�
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“He will never know,” laughed Henriette. “Men are rarely that discerning. All a girl need do is struggle and cry a lot on her wedding night, and then later when her bridegroom is asleep, smear a chicken’s bladder of blood on the sheets and her thighs for her proud and unsuspecting husband to find the next morning! It is so simple, ma petite Delight. So tell me now, would you like to see me fuck?”
Delight’s beautiful eyes were wide. “Who would you do it with?” she whispered.
Henriette giggled. “Come along,” she said, “and while you are watching me, just imagine it is you with your beloved Tony!” Taking her companion by the hand again, the French girl led Delight to the stables.
For a moment Delight hesitated, but Henriette laughed again, and pulled her into the dim barns where the estate horses were stabled. It took a moment for their eyes to adjust to the pale light, but when it had, Delight could see no one at all in sight. Still, she followed after Henriette, who seemed to know her way about the place quite well. They moved to the rear of the buildings, and as they did, there suddenly appeared before them a tall young stableman.
“Bonjour, Johnny,” murmured Henriette. “Are you feeling as randy as milord earl’s stallion today? I hope so, chéri, for I am like a little mare in her first heat!”
“Then I won’t disappoint you, mistress,” replied the stableman. “Who’s yer friend?”
“ ’Tis the countess’s sister, and she wants to watch us fuck, Johnny. You will not mind, chéri, will you?”
The stablehand smiled broadly, showing surprisingly even teeth. “Nay, mistress, I will not mind. Maybe she’d even like a little taste herself of Johnny’s big pecker, eh?”
“Nay, chéri,” cautioned Henriette. “My friend is not ready to give up her virtue yet. She will just watch us to see how it is done.” They had reached the back of the stables, where a large empty stall filled with straw awaited them. “You can stand here in the doorway and watch us, Delight,” said Henriette. “Be certain to warn us if anyone comes this way. We would not want anyone else to know our little secret, would we? Madame Blaze would be certain to send you home and away from your Tony if we were caught, and then he could not do to you what Johnny is going to do to me now.”
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