Almost Innocent

by Jane Feather

  She no longer mentioned it to Guy because he would chide her for being fanciful and untrusting. She behaved toward her cousin with superficial courtesy for the same reasons, struggling to hide her detestation under a casual archness. She indulged in a certain sharpness of tongue and wit on occasion, although she realized that that sharpness angered her cousin. He always disguised his annoyance with a smile or a laugh, but the smile never reached his eyes and the laugh carried little humor. It satisfied her to annoy him, though, and she continued to do so, always under the guise of a flirtatious wit, and always swiftly glossed over as if it had meant nothing.

  But Guy would not have accused her of distempered freaks and childish mistrust, because he sensed, as Magdalen did not, the true nature of d’Auriac’s feelings toward his cousin. Perhaps because Guy also was touched with her magic, he found it easy to see the effect in others. He had seen it worked upon Edmund, and now he saw another man’s burning eyes following her as she moved, fixed upon her when she was still, and he read the hunger therein and understood it. What man would not be touched by the warm, vibrant promise of her? By the grace of her movements, the suppleness of her body? But it was more than that. It was something contained in Magdalen herself, something that welled from deep within her, a knowledge of her own sensuality that came out to meet a man whether she would or no.

  Charles d’Auriac was not deceived by Magdalen’s apparent compliance. He did not understand why she remained impervious to all his efforts to gain her confidence. Women were in general susceptible to his charm and the light courtly play at which he was skilled. He had made no move to frighten her, had kept his ardor well leashed in her company. He thought he had made it clear that he was simply playing the conventional games that made courtly life so pleasant, but he was convinced she was only polite to him because Guy de Gervais had insisted that she be so. He could feel her repugnance, the shrinking of her flesh when he stood close to her, yet it did nothing to lessen his desire for her. If anything it added spur and rowel to an already galloping steed. But it made little difference in the long run, he decided. How she felt about him was of no importance, and could not affect either the fact or the conduct of her abduction.

  Guy de Gervais evaded him also. Charles could not fault the hospitality offered him, yet he knew himself to be mistrusted. On the surface, there was no cause for mistrust when a man came extending the hand of friendship. The de Beauregards had not once attempted revenge for that long ago night in the fortress at Carcassonne. It had been a secret defeat, one known only to John of Gaunt and themselves, and it was Lancaster who had chosen to throw down the gauntlet in the shape of this child of Lancaster and de Beauregard.

  But as Charles had half expected, de Gervais looked beneath the surface. He must have been alerted to the possibility of a de Beauregard move against Lancaster, a move that would involve his daughter. D’Auriac was in no doubt as to the quality of his present opponent. Forewarned and perspicacious as he was, Guy de Gervais would not be lightly lured away from his charge.

  But Charles d’Auriac believed that he held a knowledge regarding Magdalen and Guy de Gervais that could only play into his hand, once he realized how best to play the hand. Knowledge of mortal sin was a powerful arrow to have to one’s bow.

  On the twelfth day of his visit, he decided no more could be achieved at present and informed his host at the supper table that he would take his leave on the morrow.

  “Do you return to Roussillon?” Guy inquired. “The winter roads are ill for traveling.”

  “No, I go on to Paris, to make reverence to the king,” d’Auriac replied. “It is but eighty miles and the highways are in good repair around the city.” He turned to Magdalen. “When you are delivered, lady, I assume you also will journey to Paris to make reverence to Charles of France.”

  “I imagine my husband will do so, sir,” Magdalen said calmly. “If the present truce continues between our two countries.”

  Charles realized that he had slipped. He said, “Your mother’s family owes fealty to Charles of France, my lady. I meant only that it would be right for you also, as chatelaine of Castle de Bresse, to acknowledge your double allegiance. That your husband will do so goes without saying.”

  “You assume my husband has a double allegiance,” she said, playing with the crust of her bread. “On what basis?”

  “There is now no quarrel between our two countries,” Guy interposed swiftly, praying that Magdalen had not noticed Charles’s revealing slip. “So talk of allegiances, single or double, is hardly relevant.”

  There was a warning note in his voice that ensured Magdalen’s silence, although she had been enjoying the sparring. It wasn’t as if her cousin didn’t know the situation perfectly well. He must be aware that Edmund’s ransom had been forgiven and he had been gifted with a wife of the Plantagenet line in order to buy his exclusive loyalty to England.

  “How true,” Charles said with a light laugh, as happy as his host to change the subject. He did not believe the lady had noticed anything amiss, but what of Guy de Gervais? “But you will enjoy a visit to Paris, my lady. It is a great city.”

  Magdalen meekly acquiesced and retired from the conversation, puzzled over Guy’s warning. Later that night, once Guy bade Stefan and Theodore good night and the door closed behind them, she pulled back the hangings around the bed and brought the subject up again.

  “Why did you not wish me to talk of Edmund’s fealty?”

  Guy, in his long robe, was looking over papers on the table beneath the window. So she had not noticed her cousin’s slip, the implication that he knew Edmund de Bresse was not alive to make reverence to Charles of France. Relieved, he appeared to debate her question for a minute, then turned to the bed. Magdalen was sitting up, hugging her drawn-up knees, her expression both curious and just a little disgruntled.

  “Charles d’Auriac may be your cousin, but like all the de Beauregards he is fiercely loyal to France. I saw little point in entering a possibly acrimonious discussion.”

  Magdalen remembered again that Guy had taken the trouble to discover the identity of the man who had accosted her at Calais, while apparently dismissing the incident as easily as she had done herself. That sense of there being something awry hit her anew. “I believe there is something else,” she declared with unthinking candor.

  “Are you giving me the lie?” His red-gold eyebrows met in incredulity.

  “No, of course I am not,” she denied hastily. “But I do not think you have told me everything.”

  “Perhaps I consider that you have heard all you need to hear.” It was said very gently.

  Magdalen flushed. “I am no child, my lord.”

  “No,” he concurred, “you are not, and as such you should understand the unwisdom of discussing fealties with one who could as easily be enemy as friend in different circumstances.”

  “You do not trust him, either.” The statement had an accusatory note to it, her attention abruptly switched from the previous issue to this more immediate contentious certainty.

  “I never said I did. I said only that you should trust me.”

  “But you chided me for my fears.”

  “For the ill conduct your fears encouraged,” he corrected.

  “Why would my mother’s family wish me harm?” She frowned, plucking at the quilted coverlet, her loosened hair hiding her face from him. “My mother was declared by Rome to have been wedded to my father. There was no acrimony, was there, between my father’s family and my mother’s?”

  Should he tell her the truth? Again he asked himself the question, wondering how long the truth could be kept from her anyway. But still he felt a deep repugnance. It was for John of Gaunt to tell his daughter that story; Guy de Gervais had already shouldered too many of his prince’s burdens in this regard. He would never forget the atrocious distress she had suffered when he had told her the truth of her parentage. He would not subject either of them to such a hideous experience again.

  “It
is simply a matter of politics,” he said. “Your mother’s family are for France, your father’s for England. Either side would go to some lengths to gain your allegiance. Now that you have no husband, only you hold Bresse for England.” He turned back to the papers on the table.

  “I do have a husband,” Magdalen whispered, but so low he did not hear her. She was as sure of that fact as she was that Guy had still not told her everything there was to tell.

  But it seemed that he was not going to, so she tossed aside the questionable issues with a shake of her head that sent her hair rippling down her back and contemplated the real reason for her presence in this bed.

  “Are you intending to be at your papers all night, my lord?” The dulcet tones told him to his relief that she had laid the contentious matter to rest for the time being.

  Deliberately, he did not answer immediately, instead seeming to be absorbed in his work.

  Magdalen nibbled her lip thoughtfully. Then she slipped from the bed, tiptoed across the room, and with a deft wriggle interposed herself between Guy and the table, then agilely hitched herself onto the table, sitting very firmly on top of his papers.

  “That will do them no good at all,” Guy observed.

  “I believe I am worthy of at least as much attention as some dusty parchment,” Magdalen declared, the paper crackling beneath her.

  His eyes narrowed speculatively. “You may have to convince me of that fact, lady. Let us discover whether it is indeed so.” Lazily almost, he stretched sideways and withdrew one of the feathered quills from the holder. “Now, I am accustomed to applying quill to parchment. Since I have a most novel parchment in place of the usual, it will be interesting to see whether the results are the same … or,” he amended, “as interesting.”

  Magdalen quivered, a jolt of desire deep in her belly setting her nipples burning with anticipation as she waited to see what he would do. “You have no ink upon your pen,” she murmured, hearing the throb of excitement in her voice.

  “So I have not.” He dipped the tip of the pen in the pitcher of water standing on the table. “Now, what message would I inscribe here?” He drew the pointed tip in a delicate curlicue over one cheek, too delicate for her to feel more than the most delicious prickle. “No message, I think, but a portrait,” he said softly. “Shall I inscribe the course of my living model?”

  She shivered, and the papers beneath her crackled again, crisp against her bottom and thighs. Guy seemed unconcerned about the fate of his documents. He dipped the pen again and began with great concentration to trace the outline of her face, the whorls and contours of her ears. He drew around the fullness of her mouth, the pen pricking within her eagerly parted lips, before moving down the straight column of her throat, delineating the sharpness of her collarbone, dipping and circling in the hollows of her neck.

  She sat still on the edge of the table, only her skin moving in shivering ripples as he dipped the pen again, and the thin wet line moved to her breasts, circled the pregnancy-darkened areolas, lifted her nipples beneath the gentle goad. He held the ripe heaviness of her breast in one hand as he wrote a stanza of joy upon each, inscribed his own pleasure on the delicate, blue-veined tautness cupped in his palm. Then, when her breath came swift and the glow of arousal misted her skin, he took her hands, drawing tickling circles on the flat palms, turning them over to trace her fingernails while her body hung in breathless suspension during this tantalizing, utterly entrancing interlude.

  The pen inscribed its message between the deep cleft of her breasts, pricked delicately over her ribs, wrote poetry in the soft indentation of her navel, but it was the feathery silkiness of the top of the quill that brushed over the small mound of her belly, bringing a hushed moan of delight from her as the muscles contracted, her legs shifted, thighs parting in eager expectancy.

  She wanted to lie back, to make all of herself open and available for this blissful game. She moved to do so, but with a hand warm and firm at her waist, he held her upright, dipping the pen point again into the water as he drew the tapering keenness finely over her thigh, moving ever closer to the dark fleece concealing the moist, heated core of her. A soft moan escaped her as the fleece parted and her opened body lifted to the punctuation marks of the pen. Now she could not master the need to fall back, to unfold herself utterly to the alternating sensations of the nerve-tingling prick of the pen tip and the brushing joy of the flickering feathers.

  Only then did Guy move his hand from her waist, easing her backward, so that she lay in sprawled abandon upon the table, feeling the parchment crisp and crackling beneath her, a sensation that simply melded with the others. Her skin was alive, every nerve ending at the exquisite point where pleasure bordered pain. The quill slipped between her widespread thighs, and she no longer knew which end aroused her now to an extremity of pleasure, a swirling, heart-stopping whirlpool of bliss in which she tossed and tumbled, to come only slowly back to the awareness of the candlelight on the mantelpiece and of her body, surfeited with pleasure, incapable of movement.

  Gently, very gently, as if he would not disturb the magic of her lethargy, Guy lifted her from the table and carried her to the bed. He laid her down and covered her with the quilt.

  “But you—” She whispered a beginning, but he stopped her words with his mouth.

  “I took my pleasure from yours and I would not tax you further this night, love. Not after such a dissolution.”

  She would have protested if she could, but there was no sinew to body or brain, and the words would not come. In truth, she was not sorry to be left alone with the slow and smoky embers of her pleasure. Her eyes closed.

  Guy stood looking down at her. He was smiling, but shadows lurked in his eyes. The deep shadows of knowledge, of the expectation of the pain of loss. How long would it be before John of Gaunt declared his daughter widowed? And even when he had done so, Guy de Gervais could not expect to be gifted with the prize. He had received one wife from his overlord, and the wealth and power that accompanied that union. He was owed no more, and, in truth, there was nothing he had to offer his overlord as inducement that Lancaster did not already have from his vassal.

  He drew the bedcurtains to shield her from the candlelight and went back to the table, straightening the crumpled papers, inhaling the scent of her, feeling her body warmth beneath his fingers. Such sensations were not conducive to work, but he drew the candlestick closer and sat down.

  Magdalen awoke filled with the sense that something wonderful was going to happen. She had felt like this once or twice as a child, but usually without adequate reason, she reflected without undue resentment. Now, she lay for a second before she remembered. The Sieur Charles d’Auriac was leaving today. Her spirit lifted as if the burdens of the world were gone from her. She and Guy would be alone once again.

  He was sleeping heavily beside her, and she could see from the guttered candle and the still glowing fire that he had sat up long into the night. Her body still burned with the memory of what he had done for her, what he had given her before she had so selfishly fallen asleep and left him to his papers.

  Propping herself on an elbow, she leaned over him, gazing at his face in the dim gray light of dawn. In sleep, the tautness of mouth and jaw was absent, giving his mouth a full, well-shaped curve that invited kisses. Red-gold hair waved thickly on his broad forehead, and she wanted to brush it aside, trace the thick line of his eyebrows, kiss the tip of his nose. But she did none of those things, unwilling to disturb his sleep, not even to repay some of the pleasure he had given to her. She would repay the debt with interest soon enough.

  She lay down beside him again, but her blood was dancing, her muscles quivering with the urge to be up and doing on a day that seemed to promise only the very best of things. Silently, she slipped from the bed, drew on her robe, and left by the inner door, her heart skipping at the thought that in a few short hours she would see the last of the loathsome man she was obliged to call cousin.

  In her own apartme
nts, she leaped into the unslept-in bed for form’s sake and rang the bell for her women.

  “I am ravenous,” she greeted them without preamble. “I would break my fast with coddled eggs and meat, and I will bathe this morning.”

  “Yes, my lady,” Erin said placidly, well aware that the appetites of pregnant women were unpredictable and should always be indulged. “Margery will fetch food and have hot water brought up from the kitchen.”

  She went into the adjoining privy chamber to assemble bath necessities, and Magdalen jumped from the cold bed and followed her.

  “Sprinkle lavender on the water, Erin.”

  “I always do, my lady,” the woman said as placidly as before. “I understand the visitors are to leave this day.”

  “Yes, indeed!” Magdalen affirmed with an enthusiasm she realized was not entirely appropriate in front of Erin.

  “There’ll be some sorry to go,” Erin said with a chuckle, taking soap and towels from the chest.

  “Why, how should that be?”

  “Young Berthe, my lady,” Erin said. “The laundress in the sieur’s company. Fancies herself in love with my lord’s servant, Olivier.” She shook her head, her mouth pursed. “Can’t imagine what she sees in him. Scrawny little man, he is, always creeping around and turning up when he’s least expected. But they say he’s smitten with the wench, too.”

  Magdalen’s nose wrinkled. She could not imagine finding any member of her cousin’s party in the least appealing. She wandered back to her bedchamber just as Margery came in with a tray. Hungrily, she took a mutton chop from the platter and began to chew on it while continuing to drift from privy chamber to bedchamber, from wardrobe to window.

  “You’re very restless, lady,” Margery observed. “It must be the child, quickening.”

  “I feel nothing as yet,” Magdalen mumbled through a mouthful of mutton, patting the small swell of her belly. “Did you bring buttermilk?”