I looked down at the curled toes of my slippers—they were the loveliest shoes I’d yet imagined, cloth-of-silver set with diamonds and sapphires. The dress I wore was similarly magnificent: heavy blue satin and cloth-of-silver draped and swaged across wide whalebone panniers, the low neck embellished with a veritable waterfall of fine white lace. They were clothes fit for an empress, finer than anyone in the kingdom had ever seen. But they did not make me happy.
Well, let me amend that. The clothes made me happy, but not so happy as my Julian did.
Something of my thoughts must have shown in my face, for Etheldred laughed. “Go to him, Cat.”
A moment of doubt arrested me. “Do you think he will still have me?”
“He is a man, isn’t he? If there is one thing I have noticed about the male sex it is that their brains go all to mush when you are near.”
I smiled, my confidence restored.
I took my leave of the queen, and ordered a carriage brought round. I stood before my mirror for a long while, trying to devise an ensemble that would send Julian flying into my arms the instant he saw me. But try as I might, no matter how wide the panniers, or how high my coiffure, nothing seemed exactly right.
Finally I decided on a simple dress of black silk velvet without flounces, swags or panniers. I left my hair unbound and slipped boots of soft red leather upon my feet.
Julian did not come out to greet me when my carriage rolled into the courtyard of Carabas Keep. Nor did he come immediately after one of his servants showed me into an elegantly appointed sitting room to wait. The servants must have remembered my last visit to the keep, for they brought me a glass of warm milk to drink while I waited.
When the sun had marched an hour closer to the horizon, I heard his footsteps in the hall. I stood and faced the doors, wanting him to see me at my best when they opened.
He entered, and it was not he who gazed his fill, but I. Julian looked the very image of masculine beauty. His tall, hard body provided the perfect canvas for the clothier’s art. He wore a lord’s finery—close-fitting breeches and a well-fit waistcoat of gold jacquard with coat of bronze satin embroidered all over in gold thread.
He wore no wig or powder, but his sun-kissed hair was held back from his face with a bronze velvet ribbon. His long-lashed eyes were a deep and soulful brown as they beheld me, and in them was a look of such longing as made my pulse pound within my veins.
“You should have sent a note ahead. I would have been here when you arrived.”
I shrugged. “I cannot write, and I am too proud to ask another to write on my behalf.”
“You are too proud, entirely.” But he smiled as he said it, which gave me hope.
“I am not too proud to ask if you will still have me. And if you deny me, I am not too proud to beg you reconsider.” I looked down at my feet, at the toes of my red boots, so very like the ones I had worn in my feline form. “I love you, Julian. I would be honored to be your wife.”
“I would be honored to be your husband, Cat.” He opened his arms to me, and I ran to him. “On these conditions.”
I stiffened. “Yes?”
“Do not make my choices for me. Do not lie to me, do not deceive me—even when you think you do it for my own good. Do not manipulate me, nor flatter me. Do not do as you have been used to doing with everyone else. I am not everyone else. I am—”
“You are my dearest friend, and my fondest dream.” I repeated the words he had spoken that day in the moat. “I trust you with my life.”
“It is yourself you don’t trust. You must trust yourself with my heart. You will not break it.”
I buried my face in his shoulder. “You cannot know that. I have broken hearts before. I have broken hearts and never thought again about it. They were good men and I was their misfortune. I do not want to be yours.”
“Have a little faith.” He wiped my tears away. “I do.”
I would have spoke more—enumerated my doubts until the sky grew dark with them—but he silenced me with a kiss. He pressed his lips to mine, and I opened for him, able to deny him nothing.
Our tongues met and made merry. His hands moved on me without hesitation, as though I belonged to him, and always had.
I ran my hands over his body. His muscles tightened as I explored him, divesting him of his clothes as I went. His was the body I had imagined years ago as I lay beneath lesser lovers—firm and fit and knowing. His were the hands I had yearned for when the only touch upon my skin was my own. When at last he knelt naked beside me, I let my eyes roam and my lips follow, taking him with my gaze, and then my tongue.
He was heat, caged in flesh; strength, sheathed in skin. Every inch of him was perfect, taut and tense with anticipation, and I could not wait to make him scream with it. I found his staff with my mouth and applied myself to his pleasure with the single-minded dedication I granted no other endeavor.
Sweat broke across his skin. His breathing quickened. He pushed me away.
An exclamation of disappointment and surprise caught in my throat as he grabbed me and bore me to the couch behind me. He levered his body above mine, not touching me but watching me. He took his time at it. Far too much time for a man who had a woman such as I trapped naked beneath him.
Yet he hesitated. No. He waited. Amused at my annoyance, aroused by my need. Oh, he was a canny one. He knew how to make me writhe without so much as a caress. The innocent kindness that had, heretofore, marked his character was nowhere in evidence. In its place was the man who knew me better than any other. The man who knew how to touch me and tease me. How to make me wild with wanting him.
He laughed as he watched these realizations dawn on me. And then he set about to drive me mad with an art parallel to the one I had earlier applied to him. The difference was that I had not the strength to turn the tables on him when my pleasure became too great. Though I writhed and begged him in breathy whispers to free me from the silken torments of his tongue, he granted me no quarter. He showed me no mercy.
I cried out. He rose up and covered my body with his. Covered my lips with his. There was no sweeter flavor than the taste of my passion on his tongue. He was truly my Julian. Meant for me and made for me. Every inch of his body fit against mine as though we were two pieces of a whole.
When he entered me I could only sigh his name. He was mine and I was his, friends and lovers, with a shared life ahead of us.
A very long time later, we lay at our ease in his bedchamber, clothes scattered to the four corners, trays of food demolished at the bedside. My head rested above his heart and his arm draped over my shoulders.
“Will you mind, very much, being the Marchioness de Carabas? It is a step down from Lady Catriona, Consort to the King.”
It was on the tip of my tongue to say something endearing like, “I would not mind being Catriona Miller, so long as I were with you.” But it wasn’t true. I would have minded not having a title a great deal, and I had agreed I would not deceive Julian again. Fortunately, I did not need to rely on Julian’s title for my consequence. I had earned one of my own.
“I shall have my own title. I am to be Lady Catriona, Councilor to the Queen.” I laughed softly. “She trusts my judgment, if you can believe it.”
“I do,” he said. “Did you not promise me to make me a noble with the Lady Catriona at my side? Did you not promise to save Etheldred from the ogre Galfridus and see her crowned queen?” His arm tightened on my shoulder. “You are a woman of considerable judgment and ability.”
“I would have lost all, if not for you.”
He pressed his lips to my forehead. “I would have lost all, had I lost you.”
I sighed. “I love you, my Julian.”
“Yes, my love,” he whispered against my cheek. “I know.”
Chapter Thirteen: The Ever After
I will not tell you we lived happily ever after, for we are not yet finished with living, and who can say what the future will hold? I will say that we are enormously happy to
gether, my Julian and I. Of the two friends I have made, he is the dearest. I enjoy his company, even when we are not in bed.
A few months ago, he took it upon himself to teach me to read and write. I quickly got the knack of it, and though I still do not believe reading is the most fun one can have by one’s self, it is a fine entertainment.
Despite my lack of formal learning, I have made a great success of myself as the queen’s councilor. Though Etheldred is sometimes wont to say I make things more complicated than they need be, she cannot deny that I have every member of the council twisted round my fingers, save Prince Osmont, and he is on his niece’s side in all matters, anyway, so I’ve no need to sway his opinion in the first place.
Next week the council will vote to approve the queen’s consort. Etheldred shocked the kingdom by putting forth that ginger-haired girl—why can I never remember her name? The nobles made a row about it until I convinced several opinion leaders that such relationships were considered the height of sophistication in kingdoms more civilized than our pleasant backwater. It has since become fashionable to take a lover of one’s same gender. So fashionable, in fact, that Livith and Hildithe have set up house together, and they seem to be the happier for it.
When I look at all the good I have done, I feel very like one of those fairy godmothers from Julian’s book of tales. Except, of course, I am not old or round, or adorably homely as are those fictional creatures. Instead I am young, beautiful and impeccably dressed.
Thanks to the ogre’s magic ring, I am, by far, the most beautifully clothed woman in the kingdom. Other ladies try in vain to discover the identity of my dressmaker, my milliner, my shoemaker, but, of course, they never do. I do not purchase clothes anymore, at least, not for myself.
I did, however, procure the loveliest pair of slippers the day before yesterday. Of blue leather embroidered with silver thread, the slippers are as fine as anything I have ever worn, but tiny. Not quite small enough to fit a cat, but small enough to fit a newborn babe.
Julian was beside himself when I told him I wanted a child.
“Cat,” he said after he had kissed me, “why buy the slippers when our babe is yet a glimmer in your eye?”
I laughed. “Oh, my darling Julian. Every grand plan begins with the right pair of shoes.”
About the Author
Bettie Sharpe is a Los Angeles native with a fondness for hot weather, classic cars and air so thick it sticks in your teeth. When she’s not busy attempting to metabolize smog into oxygen, she enjoys romance novels, action movies, comic books, video games and every other entertainment product her teachers said would rot her brain. She loves to write almost as much as she loves to read. As a child, she dreamed of seeing her name in shiny gold cursive on the cover of a luridly titled paperback book.
Bettie and her husband share their house with two cats, numerous computers and the possum in their palm tree. Her other writing credits include the action paranormal sci-fi erotic romance adventure novella “Like a Thief in the Night” and “Ember,” a romantic retelling of the Cinderella story. “Ember” is available for free on Bettie’s website.
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ISBN: 978-1-4268-9663-7
Copyright © 2011 by Bettie Sharpe
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