On My Lady's Honor (All for one, and one for all) (40 page)

He snorted as he tossed his own boots aside.

She turned her back on her husband.
 
“Help me with these buttons, will you.
 
I cannot reach them all myself.”

He undid her buttons one by one, his large fingers surprisingly deft.
 
When he had done, she laid her dress by on a chair.
 
She eyed the bed longingly.
 
How she longed to have her husband join her in it.

Whatever path she chose to take, he would not be walking beside her for much longer.
 
He was a Musketeer still, and in high favor with the King.
 
All he needed to do was keep his part in this affair secret from the world and he would continue in this favor.
 
He had no need to share her exile.

Until they reached Paris, though, he was hers.
 
She needed to feel his arms around her again.

She fiddled with the ties of her petticoats until they dropped to the floor.
 
She stepped out of them and laid them over her gown.
 
“And he is quite handsome really.
 
I could do worse than go to Coventry with him.”

She could not sleep comfortably in her bodice.
 
“Unlace me now, if you would.”

His fingers were warm on her cold back.
 
“You seem to have forgotten something, wife.”

She slid the straps of her bodice down her shoulders, tossed the garment aside and turned to face him.
 
“I have?”

He took her breasts in his hands as she had hoped he would, as she had been longing for him to do.
 
His hands burned her with their touch and she felt ripples of pleasure shimmer though her body.
 
“You cannot go to Coventry with Hugh.
 
You are my wife.”

God, how she wanted him.
 
How foolish of her only to admit this to herself as she was on the eve of losing him forever.
 
She took his shoulders in her hands, feeling the hardness of his muscles under his jacket.
 
She would make the most of the time they had left to them – clinging on to him while she still could.
 
“I could have the marriage annulled in England.”

A slow smile spread over his face.
 
“You could, could you?”

She nodded, her mouth dry.

He held her naked body to him with a strong arm.
 
“Then I will have to put it out of your power to do so, won’t I.
 
I will have to make you my wife tonight in deed, as well as in word.”

Her eager fingers helped him out of his jacket and undid the buttons of his linen shirt.
 
In no time at all he was standing before her, as naked as she was, the candlelight glowing on the golden muscles of his body.
 
His manhood stood up proudly, a drop of moisture beading its tip.

She brushed it gently with her fingertips and he groaned.
 
“Come to bed with me, wife of mine.”

They slid in between the crisp, white sheet, hugging together for warmth.
 
He took her breasts into his hands again and bent down to suck tenderly at her nipples.
 
“You have the most beautiful breasts in the world,” he murmured against her skin.
 
Shafts of desire shot up her spine at the touch of his lips.
 
She wanted him as she had never wanted anything before.

She felt the hardness of his proud manhood against her stomach and she squirmed against him, wanting to feel him closer.

His hand reached in between their bodies and touched her in between her legs, in the secret spot that made her cry out with wanting him.

She writhed against him as he tormented her with his touch, thrusting first one finger, then two, into her in a gentle rhythm that drove her to a frenzy.

His eyes were pools of desire.
 
He lifted himself over her body, his manhood at the entry to her channel.
 
Slowly he guided himself into her, until he was sheathed inside her, his sword in her warm, wet scabbard, welcoming him home.

She felt full.
 
Filled to the brim with her husband.
 
She wanted him to stay there forever, filling her with his presence, loving her with his body.

He withdrew a little and she ached for his presence again, but he had withdrawn only to thrust into her again.
 
She arched her body to meet his thrust, urging him into her.

She was breathless now, gasping for air as he filled her again and again.
 

The tension in her body was unbearable.
 
As he moved in her, she could feel herself coiling every tighter, until with a cry, the coil inside her snapped and her body was flooded with waves of release.

His body on top of hers went rigid and he cried out as spasms shook his body.

She felt the warm fluid of his essence flood into the core of her being.
 
She lay back exhausted with happiness.
 
She would never be lonely again.

“You would go to Coventry after this, wife of mine?”
 
His voice was thick with sleepy satisfaction.

She snuffed the candles and snuggled down to sleep in his arms feeling loved and protected as she never had before.
 
“Never.”

They reached Paris too soon for Sophie’s liking.
 
Though she slept next to her husband every night, curled up against his warm body like a cat, she had not got enough of him.
 
Every time he touched her she wanted to weep, thinking how few were the nights they had left for showing each other a glimpse of heaven.

Her desire for him was like a fever in her blood that could not be quenched.
 
Every sight of him made the fever in her soul burn hotter and brighter.
 
She would never tire of him – not ever.
 
She loved him so well her heart was nigh to bursting with it.

Now they were in Paris – near the end of their journey.
 
Very soon now she would have to summon up the courage to bid him goodbye.
 

First she would rescue Henrietta.
 
She would not allow herself to be distracted.
 
She would not think of their final parting until her mission was done.

The Bastille loomed out of the night in front of them, gloomy and forbidding.
 
Its walls were so high they reached almost to the clouds.
 
Sophie shuddered as she looked at it.
 
She could not imagine rescuing someone from this place of death and horror.
 
It was indeed impregnable.

Hugh was unaffected by her fears.
 
He simply stood there and looked at it for some minutes without speaking, his chin on his hands as if deep in thought.
 

Finally Sophie could stand it no longer.
 
“Well?” she demanded in a whisper.
 
“What do you think?
 
Can you get her out?”

His teeth gleamed white in the darkness.
 
“Have faith, Madame.
 
I have never failed yet.”

“So, what will you do?
 
How will you rescue her?”

“Go to my chamber in the house of the delightful Widow Poussin, eat my supper, and sleep and think.”

King Louis kneeled before her in the filth of the dungeon and took her hand in his.
 
“Henrietta, I beg of you to stop this foolishness.
 
Just one word from you and I can release you from this hellhole.
 
Just one word and you will be a princess again, living in all the luxury that the might and wealth of France can acquire for you.”

So, now he was trying to blame her for her imprisonment.
 
Naturally, since he was the King, his actions had to be infallible, and all the blame had to lie with her.
 
She had no patience for him or his deluded, self-seeking arguments.
 
She would rather be left alone in the dark than listen to his nonsense any longer.
 
“You could release me any time you pleased, if you had a mind to.”

He got up from his uncomfortable perch on the floor and paced up and down her narrow cell.
 
“Say you will be my mistress, the idol of my heart, and I will release you gladly.”

She eyed the guard standing over by the door with interest.
 
He was new to his post, younger than the others she had seen before, with a look of youthful fervor rather than the stolid cynicism of the older guards.
 
He seemed to look on her with an eye of pity.
 

She hated to think what she looked like after a fortnight in the Bastille with little food and no water for washing.
 
She felt gaunt and thin already and her velvet dress, once so grand and gay, now hung on her weakened frame in dirty folds.
 
She felt the grime of the prison cell in every pore of her body.
 
What wouldn’t she give just to wash her hands, even just her fingertips,
 
in a bowl of clean, sweetly-scented water?

She did not even have a comb to brush her hair.
 
She had always been so proud of her hair.
 
Unlike other women, she had never had to spend hours with heated tongs and curling papers to give her coiffure a fashionable look.
 
Her hair had always hung naturally in perfect corkscrew curls around her white neck.
 
She had tried to comb it through with her fingers for the first few days she had been imprisoned, but the effort had made so little difference she had given it up.
 
Her once prized hair now lay in matted tangles over her shoulders.
 
Even if she were ever to get out of prison, it would never be the same again.

With a little bit of luck, maybe she could turn her bedraggled state to her advantage.
 
The young guard seemed to be her best chance yet of escaping this putrid dungeon.

She waited for the King to leave with more impatience than usual.
 
As self-absorbed as was his wont, he did not notice her distraction.
 
He trod up and down her tiny cell, blathering on at her until she thought she would scream.
 
“I have been waiting for many weeks for you to give up this foolishness.
 
I am running out of patience, Henrietta.”

“What do I care for your lack of patience?” she spat at him, suddenly sick unto death of the torment of his presence.
 
“I care naught for you, you foolish old lecher.
 
You disgust me.
 
Even if I did not love the Comte de Guiche with all my heart, I would never take you to my bed.”

The King stopped his ranting and looked at her as if seeing her face for the first time.
 
“Beware the words you speak to your King.
 
I am slow to anger, but when roused my ire is terrible to behold.”

She laughed in his face.
 
“What else can you do to me?
 
You have torn me out of the arms of my lover, locked me up away from the sunlight and the air, and starved me half to death.
 
What more can you do to me save take my life?
 
Even death would be preferable to a life wasting away in this cell.
 
Do your worst.
 
I care not.”

“That is your last word?”
 

She spat at his feet.
 
“That is my last word.
 
I will die rather than become your lover.”

The King shook his head as if he were truly saddened by her words.
 
“I am sorry for it, Henrietta.
 
I have ever loved you dearly and would have made you mistress of the world.
 
If I cannot have you, then no one else shall either.”
 
With these words he left and the guard with him, shooting home the bolts on the other side of the door behind him.
 
One pair of feet clumped loudly down the stone corridor.

Henrietta stood close to the door and sighed loudly.
 
She would work on the youthful guard without delay.
 
She feared her time was running out.
 
“Ah me.
 
How much is wrong with the world when a poor young woman is imprisoned in a freezing dungeon and fed on bread and water only for refusing to give in to the base desires of her King.”