Rose Bride (11 page)

‘Call me by my name,’ Master Elton murmured in her ear, then kissed her throat. ‘Call me Virgil.’

She was so hot, she was shivering. ‘V . . . Virgil.’

He made a deep satisfied noise under his breath, then abruptly turned his head. Their faces were almost touching now, their lips less than an inch apart, the heat of his body against hers irresistible, a furnace that threatened to consume her own.

‘I have tried so hard not to look at you, not to think of you, not to imagine you naked in my bed,’ he breathed, ‘but it’s no use. I must kiss you or run mad.’

His mouth brushed hers and she moaned.

They both stood silent for a moment, breathing hard, lips just touching. His hands came down on her shoulders, holding her close in that narrow space.

Very daringly, unable to prevent herself, she let her tongue slip out and run along his lower lip. His hands tightened and it was his time to groan, holding himself stiffly as she explored his lips with her tongue.

‘Margerie,’ he gasped.

Then his tongue met hers and slipped wetly into her mouth, suddenly thrusting deep, tasting her.

His hands jerked her hard against him and their whole bodies strained together. She could feel the swollen evidence of his arousal through her thin night shift, and moaned in response, helpless to stop or stifle the noise.

He was not alone in his desire. She was hot and wet, ready for him, her core contracting sharply with pleasure at each thrust of his tongue into her mouth. The court had not lied; she must be a wanton if all it took was one kiss to leave her panting and eager, hungry for more.

His hand pushed between their bodies, first cupping her breast, finding and rolling her nipple erect. She arched against him in wordless consent.

The girl on the other side of the hedge began to moan beneath her courtier, crying out, ‘Harder, yes, harder!’

She heard Virgil’s soft laughter, mocking the unseen lovers as they coupled – or perhaps himself, she could not be sure.

His hand slipped lower, cupping her mound. She too moaned. The thin shift was no barrier to his exploration, nor did she care what he did. Her whole body was on fire for him, utterly shameless in her lust. His finger rubbed up and down that damp narrow cleft through the material, until her shift was wet with her own desire. Standing on tiptoe, she directed his fingers higher, towards that sweet bud that seemed to house every pleasure nerve in her body, then gasped as he rolled it between his fingers, still with her night shift between his flesh and hers.

‘You want me?’ he demanded hoarsely, his face buried in her neck.

‘Yes . . .
Yes!
’

His fingers played her skilfully, taking her higher and higher. She threw back her head, bit down hard on her lip, her hips jerking against his hand, lost in the need for pleasure.

Abruptly, the unknown courtier on the other side of the hedge came to his finish. The man groaned out loud, and under cover of his climax, Margerie cried out too, rubbing herself wantonly against Virgil Elton as her body fractured into thousands of tiny points of light. For a moment she could feel only the driving heat of her flesh, and cared for nothing else, her breasts heaving against him.

It was the same wild pleasure she had taught herself alone in bed, secretly exploring her body, only this time it felt both more intense and more intimate. For a man had brought her to that moment of urgent joy, not her own fingers. A man she barely knew. A man she wished to know better. A man she could fall in love with.

Her scalp tingled, her taut nipples ticked with blood, and her hands slid unbidden up his chest, feeling his heart gallop away beneath her fingers.

‘Virgil,’ she gasped.

Their mouths met and he rocked her aching body against his in the glorious aftermath of her climax, his tongue licking and sliding between her lips. His kiss was hungry, aroused.

She wriggled a hand down and cupped the fullness of his cock, stiff and ready under his night shirt, no codpiece to rein it in. He drew his breath in sharply, and his cock twitched under her hand. Her fingers stroked the swollen head, then played along his impressive length; she was suddenly hot and wet again, imagining how it would feel to take this man inside her. But when she looked into his eyes, seeing the lust there, feeling it hanging in the air between them, thick and heavy, he shook his head.

She drew back, staring, to see his mouth jerk in a strained smile.

‘No doubt I will think myself a fool in the morning. But I wish to enjoy you at my leisure, Margerie, both of us naked and between clean sheets. Not take you standing up in a garden in our nightclothes.’

He kissed her mouth lightly, but she could sense the doctor drawing back already, his tone cooling. ‘And now that oaf has finished his sport, mistress, I must escort you back to your quarters.’

Unsteady, her body still trembling with the pleasure he had given her, she drew the cloak about herself as they stepped out into the moonlight. The guards on the door had either gone or fallen silent. It was suddenly colder than before, and the dew was wet on her bare feet.

A glint of silver on his finger caught her eye. Her heart froze, barely pumping, and she stopped dead.

‘Are you . . .’ Margerie could barely speak; she licked her lips, forced out the cruel words. ‘Are you married, Master Elton?’

He glanced down at the ring, and his eyes widened, as though shocked by her question, almost as though he had forgotten the ring was there. For a moment there was silence between them. Then he looked back at her, and a hardness came into his face.

‘I am betrothed to a lady who does not currently reside at court. We shall be married next year.’ His cool tone gave her no permission to question him further. ‘I know a better way back inside than past the guards. Shall we go?’

CHAPTER EIGHT

‘Something to improve a man’s performance, you say?’ The merchant did not bother to hide his grin, which only faded when he saw Virgil’s expression. He rubbed at his beard, then ran an experienced eye over the heaps of sacks and unopened crates in his dockside warehouse. The ship had only arrived in dock two days before and it seemed not everything had been examined and labelled. ‘We have fresh basil leaves, rocket, garlic, oil of almonds . . . Oh, and asparagus. My father swears by a goodly bunch of thick asparagus.’

‘And I wish him well with it, but I have used most of those common aphrodisiacs before, and the results were not spectacular,’ Virgil explained patiently. ‘Master Ferney, I’m looking for more exotic herbs and spices, those to be found only in the furthest corners of our globe. Not plants I might come across growing wild by the river here.’

‘How about the powdered horn of a rhinoceros, then? That is
very
exotic.’

Virgil raised his brows in disdain.

‘Common aniseed, then. Mixed with garlic oil and mustard seed in a pestle. Very hot and moist, a sanguine mixture that will swiftly cause a man’s seed to rise from the testicles.’ The merchant looked at him speculatively. ‘I once tried it myself, sir, and the results were impressive. Though it is not . . . not so pleasant on the tongue.’

‘I shall bear that in mind. What else do you have?’

‘Very well, let me check the new inventory, see what came in on that last shipment. If you would care to wait, Master Elton, it should not take more than a few minutes.’

The merchant bowed and made himself scarce. There was probably a cosy back room where he liked to sit, sipping ale and waiting for awkward customers like Virgil Elton to tire of their mission.

Virgil wandered out of the warehouse into the bright sunshine and stood looking down towards the arches of London Bridge, its ambitious span crammed with ancient houses jutting over the water below. The Thames ran broad and deep here, a rolling greyish-brown tide washing against mud banks shored up with steadily rotting wooden struts. The smell was offensive this close to the mud, and Virgil wrinkled his nose. But the stench of the river was no more offensive than the open ditch he had passed on his way into the warehouse, stinking and bejewelled with flies.

The back of his hair lifted in the breeze off the river, the sun beating down on his shoulders. He disliked having to visit the city in summer, as did every sensible man. Indeed the royal court had moved out to the leafy and modest palace at Richmond two days before, fleeing an outbreak of plague close to Greenwich. But Virgil himself had stayed behind on a sennight’s leave so he might procure more powerful ingredients for the king’s aphrodisiac than he had been able to find so far.

The infusion he had so carefully prepared for the king’s wedding night had brought arousal, His Majesty had grudgingly admitted, but not stamina. And the king wished to impress his new bride with his virility, not achieve his end within minutes and have to content himself with one hurried coupling every few days.

‘I should have heeded Master Greene and tested that potion properly before giving it to the king,’ Virgil muttered to himself, then folded his arms, glancing back towards the warehouse. The merchant was still nowhere in sight, just two lads dragging a large brown sack through a doorway. ‘I shall do so with this batch. And with a woman this time.’

He had not found an opportunity to test the finished infusion before the king’s marriage to Jane Seymour, other than to drink a few drops himself and observe its effects on his ability to achieve an erection. But in a man of fewer than thirty years, that was no great feat.

No, what he needed was to drink the next infusion before lying with a woman. A woman who was willing for him to perform not once, but several times in a night. A woman who was no virgin, but not a bawdy whore from the streets; he had no wish to infect himself with such inflamed disorders of the groin as he habitually treated in other men who dallied with prostitutes.

Margerie Croft.

He had thought of little else but her firm, pale body since their last heated meeting at Greenwich. Circumstances had kept them apart, but he had to have her. Weeks had gone by and it was becoming a matter of some urgency.

It was possible she was not a wanton. But no lady who wished for a husband would have yielded so readily to such intimacies, surely? Virgil remembered that night in the moonlit rose gardens at Greenwich Palace, and found himself stiffening at the memory of her lips against his, how eagerly she had kissed him back, the feel of her soft red hair under his fingers. He had slid those same fingers inside her later, brought her to climax against him, and she had not protested. What better sign did he need that she was no maid, that her body was available to him sexually?

She was beautiful. More than beautiful. Margerie Croft was captivating. Intoxicating and dangerous to a man’s senses, like the nectar of red Damask roses. What a heady mistress she would make!

‘Master Elton!’

He turned at the sound of his name. It was the merchant, Master Ferney, emerging from the entrance to his warehouse, blinking up at the sunlight as though he rarely saw it. Master Ferney hurried across to him at the water’s edge, his rich red doublet strained over a too-rounded belly. As he reached Virgil, his cap came tumbling off as a sudden gust of wind tore along the Thames, making their coats flap violently.

‘Master Elton,’ the merchant exclaimed, racing after his cap like a schoolboy, his thinning hair blown wildly about, his cheeks flushed, ‘I thought you had gone. I may have found that exotic aphrodisiac you were searching for. Would you care to accompany me back inside, sir?’

Margerie had not meant to rise so early. But she had long since finished the flask of sleeping draught that Master Elton had given her, and now slept fitfully, too afraid to allow herself a good night’s rest in case she humiliated herself with another nightmare or episode of sleep-walking.

The nights felt too hellishly long now, and as soon as dawn lit the women’s chamber with its pale rosy light she was often up and about her business. The other women who woke early would gather for a quiet breakfast, but she could not stomach food at such an hour.

Instead she liked to walk out in the palace grounds, for the pathways were quiet in the soft dawn light and she could be alone there, something next to impossible once the day’s duties had begun.

She had heard from Kate, always her willing spy, that Master Elton was due to return to court any day. But her nerve failed her when she thought of visiting him. She was unsure, for a start, of where he would be lodged at Richmond. Perhaps with the other unmarried physicians, a thought which disturbed her, for it would be most unseemly to be seen calling on him in the gentlemen’s quarters. There was also the consideration that he must think her a wanton now, after the way she had yielded so readily to his caresses that hot summer night at Greenwich.

Margerie shivered at the memory, drawing her woollen shawl closer about her shoulders. She had shown no shame that night, only an unthinking desire for his body. And she had seen in his face that he felt the same for her.

Pure lust.

If only she had realised how life would change at court before leaping so wantonly into his arms. Since the king’s marriage to Jane Seymour, court ladies had been forbidden to wear low-cut bodices, or to cover them discreetly where they had no alternative, and were expected to choose dark or muted colours rather than the bold yellows, golds and reds that Queen Anne had favoured. The wearing of jewellery – apart from a sober cross – was frowned upon, and as for French fashions, they were not to be tolerated. Out went the smart new velvet hoods, so delicately picked out in seed pearls, and back came the old-fashioned gable hoods still popular in the provinces among older women.