“Bring her back to Holborn, Peter, if you will. Bring her to me, and I shall love you forever.”
“Papa?”
Richard laughed. With the wind in his face and the rhythm of the muscled back beneath his knees, he was believing in his freedom. “Take your father to court, Peter, and thank our so gracious king for letting me back into the world. I want only Jemima, and my own familiar shadows.”
He was in the grounds when Jemima came to him. Peter had ushered her into the great dark house, and left her there, grinning and pointing. She had sped to the smaller hall, found no one, and encircled the lower levels with her heartbeat drumming in her ears and her stomach half in her mouth. Then she stopped, pausing, and realised. She ran into the garden, and sped to the old oak. Her shoes slipped and slid, her haste leaving a trail in the soft earth. He was there, waiting beneath the tree.
She ran into his embrace and burst into tears.
“Oh, my beloved,” he whispered to the escaping pearl pins of her headdress just above her ear, “there were moments when I thought I might never see you again. There were moments when I forgot the expression in your eyes. But I always dreamed of this.”
Her mouth was pressed hard to his shoulder and her voice muffled, but she said, “Take me to bed, Richard.”
He laughed softly. “I stink of the cell. I must bathe. I’ve ordered hippocras. I need my strength back, my love.”
“Then,” said Jemima, looking up at him, eyes wide, “I shall bathe you. Drink your wine, Richard. Order a steaming hot bath set up in your bedchamber. I shall drink too, so I’m tipsy and strong. Then after I’ve scrubbed every part of you, and kissed every part I’ve washed, we can both fall into bed and stay there until we’re too hungry to stay there any longer.”
He clung to her, laughing. “Will you seduce me, then my love?”
“Oh yes, indeed,” she said at once. “And I know what to do because I’ve been dreaming of it every night too – for more than a month. Crying. And dreaming. And then crying again.”
“I promise you’ll never cry again because of me,” he whispered.
“It’s too early for Socrates,” she answered. “He’s still asleep, I expect. But he’ll stand witness to that, Richard. I never, ever want to cry again as hard and bitterly as I have this month past. And I still don’t really know what they thought you’d done.”
With his arm wrapped firmly around her shoulders, he walked slowly with her back to the house. “They knew very well I had done nothing,” he said. “Except perhaps disappear from court without the king’s permission, and go riding off to the wild southern coast, leaving him bitter and miserable at a time when he wanted advice, sympathy and attention. That was my only crime. Everything else was a fabrication.”
She couldn’t believe it and gulped, “They knew you were innocent?”
“Enough, my love,” he told her. “There’s time for long explanations. But this is the time for joy, for hot water, spiced wine and seduction.”
The fire danced in a scatter of small flames across the wide hearth. The scent of wood smoke was just a friendly dither from grate to chimney, and the crackle of the busy heat was a rhythmic whisper in the background.
Jemima had never before seen Richard’s Holborn bedchamber, and gazed around her in awe. It seemed vast, with painted beams, two hanging chandeliers aflame with candles, a tiled floor spread thick with Turkey rugs, and huge tapestries on the walls. The tapestries were hunting scenes, gleaming many-coloured in the moving lights. Two long windows were thick glazed, their frames heavy with carving, and above the hearth a beam of polished oak served as mantle. But it was the bed which awed Jemima, wide enough for ten cuddled together, and hung with deep ocean blue velvet both as tester and as curtains. The bed posts were also carved, and the several chairs were cushioned in the same blue velvet.
The bath tub had been set up before the hearth, its water a bubble of scalding welcome, scented with mint and vervain. Richard tested the heat with one finger. “You’ll roast me, my love.”
“Then I shall undress you very, very slowly,” she told him. “And give time for the water to cool a little.”
He grinned. “You’ll undress me?”
“Isn’t that how seduction is done?” She blinked back, remembering how she had once thought him a man who never smiled, and never wanted company.
Standing before her, he spread out his arms, still grinning, and waited. “Having no further desire to be obedient to my king,” he murmured, voice just an echo within the hiss of the flames, “instead I choose to obey my future wife.”
“I know you’re laughing at me,” Jemima paused, gazing up at him, for her eyes only tipped his chin, “but you know, don’t you my dearest, that marriage doesn’t matter at all. I lived all my life thinking marriage wasn’t done by normal people.”
“I have never been normal,” Richard said, eyes reflecting the scarlet, “and have no desire to be normal. But I do have a considerable desire to marry you, my own love. Now. Stop talking. Undress me.”
Jemima was not entirely sure how a man’s clothes tied or untied, but she had seen Richard undress himself on sufficient occasions and thought she could remember how it was done. She reached up, knowing herself fumble fingered, and began to pull off the warm outer coat, fur trimmed, which fell in wide padded pleats from his shoulders to his knees. He moved, shrugging his shoulders, allowing the thick coat to fall to the floor in a heap of mahogany velvet and sable, Below his doublet was also mahogany velvet, slashed in cream, and Jemima found the three small buttons, undid them, and pulled the softly lined doublet onto the floor beside the glistening fur.
Richard did not speak. He smiled, moving and facilitating the loosening of each item, withdrawing his arms from the rich warmth of his sleeves, and finally standing to wait, and to watch, eyes bright. The ties on his shirt eluded her, so he pulled it free and tossed it to the ground himself. Then they stood, gazing at each other in silence. The steam from the bathwater condensed around them, hanging in soft damp swirls and making the fire spit. His chest, now naked, shone with the moisture and candle lit reflections. Jemima reached out, tracing his body from the width of each shoulder down the muscled sheen, the soft silk of dark hair around the flat of his breasts and the dark buttons of his nipples, and down further to the waistband of his hose where the codpiece was tied. She slipped one finger within the wrapped knit but could discover no way of undoing it. With a small step back, she gazed up at him.
“Finished?” he asked softly. “No courage to go further?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know how.”
His chuckle was very gentle. “Your sleeves will be soaked. Take them off. And I shall do the rest.”
Nodding, Jemima stripped the ribbons from her sleeves, breaking the tiny threads that sewed them to her bodice. As she let them fall, she stepped towards the wooden tub, sweltering in its wide copper hoops, and its surface reflecting of the chandelier above with its fat wax candles flickering, the whole swaying both above and below, where it seemed another chandelier bobbed, alight and waiting in the glimmering water.
Suddenly she felt Richard’s arms around her. He took her from behind, pressing her back against him and she felt the swell of his erection hard against her groin. His hands entwined around her breasts, and he kissed the little warm dip at the back of her neck.
He released her abruptly and when she looked up, Richard, now quite naked, climbed into the tub and was immediately up to his knees in the gurgle of hot water, the steam like mist around his thighs and the dark hair at his groin.
Jemima said, “You kiss me there when you make love to me. I want to kiss you. Like that.”
Richard stood quite still, his smile almost hidden beneath heavy eyelids, looking down at her. She wrapped both her arms around his knees, her elbows in the water. Leaned forwards and took him into her mouth, kissing him, her cheeks against his legs. When she leaned back again, he reached down and lifted her, kissing her very hard on
the mouth. “One day, my own beloved,” he said very softly, “I shall teach you how to do that. But for now, if you do that again, I will explode and the seduction will be over. I am now far weaker, you see, than you.”
Smiling, Jemima waited while he sat, stretching both arms out around the padded rim. The water tipped his nipples, floating mint leaves sticking to his chest as he leaned back, grinning up at her. Stepping quickly aside, she realised she was standing on his discarded shirt. “I have ruined your nice pleated linen,” she said. “I should fold everything and put it all away.”
“My clothes have spent too many long days in gaol, and smell of dirt and desperation,” he said. “I shall order them burned. But now, my sweet, you will help me forget the misery and the lost hope. You are the proof that hope lives after all.”
The sea sponge and block of hard Spanish soap had been left in a pewter bowl on the table beside the hearth. Jemima pushed up her inner sleeves further past her elbows, clasped both soap and sponge, and knelt beside the tub. “Oh Richard,” she whispered.
“Now, my beloved,” he whispered, “show me your courage.”
She soaped the sponge, leaned forwards and began, with all the joy she felt at his safe return, and all the delight she felt at her own immediate arousal, to wash across Richard’s chest, her fingers wandering behind as though tracing the slip and glide of the soap’s bubbling trail. His arms seemed more sinuous than brawny, but she felt their strength. He lay back, his head against the linen rest, his eyes half closed. The steam continued to float, the fire continued to blaze and the water lapped against Richard’s body where she washed.
Soaping his hair, Jemima tossed down the sponge and used her fingers, massaging, and laughing when he flung back his head and squinted at her, eyes stinging. Sluicing the water from the bath into a jug she then tipped it over his head, rinsing the bubbles, and both laughing as the steam swirled and his hair dripped like black rain around his ears. The silken body hair was shallow, and when she washed there she also leaned low, and kissed him.
“You’re too tall,” she mumbled, “for me to get into that tub and find your feet. If you want me to do a proper job, my love, you will have to stand up.”
His smile was a lazy smile, half seduction and half teasing. “If I emerge from this overheated cocoon,” he said softly, “I may be inclined to do something far more than simply stand.”
She gazed back at him, unblinking. “Should that frighten me, beloved? I think perhaps we could manage both.” Like a swan emerging from the depths, Richard was still streaming water as he stood. He shook his head in a swirl of droplets. Jemima grinned and said, “You’ve no duckling feathers to shake, or fur, like a dog from the stream. Do owls fish underwater too?”
“Socrates has assured me that he avoids the water. He preens, remaining always inviolate.”
Turning to take up the soap again, Jemima found herself swept high, and was carried to the bed, squeaked in surprise, and tumbled damp and dizzy onto the thick fur-covered eiderdown. Richard was on top of her, naked and wet, his weight and his hands forcing her into the soft yielding warmth of the bedcovers. His eyes, flickered with candlelight.
She whispered, “I can see myself in your eyes.”
He whispered back, “And I see myself in yours. It seems, my love, that we have swapped identities. All the fault, I’m sure, of you taking my part and becoming the seducer.”
“You didn’t let me finish.” She wriggled, kicking off her shoes and trying to brush down her skirts. “And now my clothes are so wet. And I wore my very best gown to come here and see you again. I wanted you to think me pretty.”
“I think you beautiful. But even more wondrous when naked.”
She wrapped her arms around him, but he moved a little aside, pulling up her skirts. His arm caught around her thighs, and his fingers probed. She gasped, sank back against the pillows, and closed her eyes.
They woke together, curled in a dampened hollow amongst the blankets. A tickle of dark fur brushed Jemima’s cheek. It was the cover of the eiderdown, dampened from the bath water. She thought instead of the rich brown curls at Richard’s groin and giggled.
He murmured, “What amuses you, my love?” But she refused to tell him.
Instead she said, “is it still day? How long have we slept?” Her clothes, what remained of them, were entwined around her, trapping her arms. Richard was naked, and his body was dry now, and relaxed. “I have no idea what time, but the window shows daylight. We’ve slept two hours, perhaps. Supper time, I imagine. But now I must undress you, little one, and then help you dress again.”
She shook her head. “All my clothes are at the Strand house.”
“Then you must wear my bedrobe, and I shall dress.”
“Your bedrobe fits you,” she pointed out. It will be far too long for me and I shall fall over it.”
“Then stay here naked, and I shall bring you up a hot supper, warmed wine, and my kisses.”
It was later that they talked. The shadows grew long, and because he would permit no servants into the chamber of their lovemaking, Richard hoisted the shutters over the mullions, and lit the candles, threw another log onto the fire, poked at the ashes so that they splattered into spitting crimson crackles, and then lay back, his bedrobe lying open, against the pillows beside Jemima.
“Will you tell me now,” she asked, “why you were arrested? It was so cruel. At least I should understand. And do you swear that the risk is over?”
Richard spoke softly, his hands clasped over his chest as he gazed up at the inner sheen of the tester over their heads.
“It is a sad tale, my love, and not one for those in love, who look forward to happiness for many years. It involved the king and his queen, as so many stories do in this time of royal confusion.”
She cuddled to his warmth, since now she was naked, slipping her arm around him but inside the bedrobe’s thick velvet. “First tell me that we’re safe.”
He said, “Cromwell arrested me on the accusations of Lord Staines. You know why, since he thought your father dead but discovered that I was in company with Captain Thripp’s daughter, and searching for the hidden treasure. An accusation of treason, even when blatantly false, must be investigated. Thus my arrest. But Cromwell knew me innocent and made no investigations. He used me as a test, since he intends arresting others.”
“Because of my father?” She was shocked.
“No,” he told her. “Because of the king. It’s some months since Henry spoke to me of his deepest desire to divorce the queen. He has another waiting beloved to grace his throne, and finds Anne too clever, too shrewd, too talkative, and too much of a disillusion. Before their marriage he thought her an angel. Once he had what he desired, he discovered her to be human. Worse! A smarter human than he is himself.”
“I met the king. I didn’t have time to be excited. They say he’s handsome but he isn’t. He’s big and glorious, but he’s fat and pouty too.”
Richard didn’t laugh. “He has the mind of a ten year old child, spoiled, indulged, but wary of his father’s cold gaze and cruel tongue. Henry lacks confidence, which is why he is so openly arrogant, and why he defends his imagined wrongs with immediate cruelty.”
“Has he ever been cruel to you?”
“Just this time, when he authorised my stay in the Tower to be prolonged, because I had dared travel away when he wanted me at court. He was planning – searching – desperate to find a way out of his marriage. I am one of his tools for advice and he was furious that I left him at such a time, and without permission. Cromwell had already promised me freedom, but my release was delayed. Only one man in the realm can authorise that.”
“And the queen?”
“I believe they have decided that divorce is impossible,” Richard answered.
Jemima smiled. “I don’t know either of them, and I’m sure I never shall. But the king would frighten me. Richard, you criticise both. Are both to blame?”
He frowned. “Blame
for what? For unhappiness? For a failure to produce an heir? Or for poor behaviour and for few attempts to understand the other? And does blame matter in such a position, where only one has power over the other?”
“So the king will have to stay married to the queen.”
“No.” Richard paused, then said quietly, “there are other paths for a man who will be obeyed, whatever the cost.”
Shivering, Jemima closed her eyes, cuddling closer to Richard’s warmth. “Then I know what you mean. But No king executes women and surely not his own wife. Would the country permit it?”
The great tub of bathwater, now cold, stood before the sinking flames of the fire. A dank mist rose from the surface, not steam from heat but haze from condensing chill. The shadows clustered around its bulging wooden circles. Jemima shivered again but said nothing more. She wished to remember only the joy of their lovemaking and the incredible relief of Richard’s safe return. What happened to the queen, she thought silently, was not her business to judge. She hoped simply that even as the wife of such an important gentleman, she would never be required to go to court.
Chapter Forty-Two
Where previously whispers of royal displeasure had named only Richard Wolfdon, and tavern vulgarity had suggested at a coupling with the queen, now far more persistent rumour muttered through the rich loamy green of new spring leaf. Gossip burst from the clear spring skies as the white buds opened to the flutter of blossom. News oozed between the ancient stones of London’s great wall, collected like puddles creeping beneath the moss, trickled like the overflow from the gutters and conduits, flew high like the swallows returning with the spring, chirping like martins gathering to nest in barns and stables, and finally sank in suspicion, black fear and secret doubt like the wriggle of tadpoles in the dark weedy ponds.
Back alley mutter told of several men accused of wicked treason, of the king raging as he paced his corridors, slamming shut his doors in the faces of his courtiers, and refusing to meet with his ambassadors, his council, and above all, with his queen.
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