Legacy: The Acclaimed Novel of Elizabeth, England's Most Passionate Queen -- and the Three Men Who Loved Her (74 page)

to reveal a simple riding habit. There were no jewels in her hair or at

her breast and her fingers were unadorned, save for the coronation ring

which, like a wedding ring, never left her hand. It was as though she had

deliberately stripped herself of all the accoutrements of majesty, but to his

shocked and bewildered glance she had never looked more beautiful or

truly regal as she stood looking down on him.

To sit in the Queen’s presence, without her express permission, was

an outrageous breach of etiquette and yet he went on sitting and staring

in dazed and frozen silence, unable to move or speak or do anything to

make use of this unimagined opportunity. It seemed an eternity before

he managed to stumble out of his chair and fall on his knees at her feet,

lifting the dark velvet hem of her skirts to his lips.

“Isn’t it a little late to play the devoted subject, Robin?”

He buried his face in his hands and sobbed in a broken voice, “Oh,

God—I never expected this—I don’t know what to do—I don’t know

what to say to you—”

“I suppose,” she said very softly, “you could say you were sorry.”

There was something in her voice which gave him the courage to lift

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his eyes to hers and, as he did so, she held out her hands and helped him

to get clumsily, unsteadily, to his feet. They stood very close, with their

hands linked and their eyes locked together. He did not say he was sorry,

there was suddenly no need.

“I can’t believe it,” he mumbled inadequately. “I can’t believe you are

here—you haven’t ridden alone from Greenwich have you?”

She shook her head.

“Lady Warwick came with me, and a young groom I can trust to hold

his tongue. No one else knows.”

“But why?” he whispered, not daring even now to hope. “Why have

you come to me?”

She bit her lower lip and laid her head against his shoulder.

“Don’t you know?” she said.

For a long time they clung together wordlessly, while Leicester’s dog

regarded them curiously, with his big head on one side.

Slowly, silently, Leicester undressed her in the warm firelight, until at

last she stood naked, with the velvet gown at her feet. He had seen her

in various states of undress, but never entirely naked before and he stared

in amazement, for her body was still a girl’s, straight and slender and

firm, white as alabaster. Shame touched him then, a poignant moment of

regret that he could no longer offer the fine athlete’s physique that had

once been his. He had nothing to give her now but experience and skill

learned in countless beds.

Oh God, let it be enough…

He carried her to the bed and laid her against the pile of pillows

stamped with his crest. She lay very still, watching as he let his robe slip

to the Turkey carpet. Her eyes travelled slowly down from his face to

widen in an amusement that did not quite conceal her alarm.

“The complete man,” she mocked gently, “is well equipped to meet

every demand made upon him.”

He smiled as he lay beside her on the bed, for he was not deceived

by her flippancy; he knew she was terrified. Beneath his caressing hand

her heart was thumping like a hunted doe’s and with some good reason,

he admitted. For he had her now to use her entirely as he wished. There

were no guards here—she had stripped herself naked of protection and

placed herself at the mercy of his goodwill; and for years he had dreamed

of raping her.

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Yet suddenly, inexplicably, he no longer wished to do that; the desire

to humble and degrade her flawless body might never have existed. He

only wished to give and take such pleasure as no man and woman had

ever found before in each other’s bodies.

He loved her with knowledge and infinite tenderness, until her eyes

were a soft gleam of urgent desire and the slow-built, shuddering fire

could be contained no longer. The volcanic eruption of their love flooded

them out of the universe, to a place where time and space had no meaning,

where the outline of known things was dim and the world dwarfed within

the four posters of this sacred bed. There was nothing but their quivering

joy, enshrined for ever in the unimaginable significance of her surrender.

She was his at last and his only, at the very moment when he had believed

her lost to him for good; and he wondered why he had never seen before

that the only way to win this woman was to break her pride and her heart.

When it was over, he cradled her in his arms and felt her tears on his

cheeks.

“Don’t cry,” he whispered. “Next time there will be no pain.”

She laughed shakily against his shoulder.

“Was that pain? God preserve me then from joy!”

“I will show you such joy as you have never dreamed of.”

She turned to him and it was suddenly his turn to laugh. “But not just

yet,” he added hastily.

“Why not?” she pouted.

Hugely amused, he kissed her hair.

“You know remarkably little about men, except how to rule them

with an iron hand,” he said gently. “The male must rest a little before the

next encounter.”

“So,” she sighed, “one is not a flagpole, to be run up and down at a

moment’s notice.”

Oh, he could not believe this. She was like a kitten in his arms, soft

and playful with all her claws sheathed, the Virgin Queen—a virgin no

more. He could not imagine in that moment how he had ever gone in

fear of her.

“Will it take long?” she inquired seriously.

“At least five minutes—if you can spare the time.” He pinned her

firmly back in his arms. “Lie still,” he commanded. “You and I have

many questions to answer first.”

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Involuntarily, she shivered and hid her face against his powerful chest,

listening to the steady beating of his heart. It had come so much sooner

than she had feared, and she was suddenly touched with dread.

“Let’s not ask questions, Robin,” she begged. “Not just now.”

But he did not heed her, did not even notice how thin and anxious

her voice had become. He was the master now and she was no longer

the Queen, just the woman he had always wanted in his bed. He would

never be afraid of her again and he would ask his question, because it had

only one answer. He would hear her say it tonight, as he had longed to

hear it for over twenty years.

“
Why did you come to me
?”

“
Because I love you
.”

She had to say it now—there was no escape from his arms. He pulled

her close, and asked her; and for a long moment she was silent.

Even without answering directly, there was much she could tell him

that would set his heart at rest. She could tell him how she had spent the

long, lonely weeks of his banishment, whipping her resentment in the

hope that her pain and rage would resolve itself into undying hatred.

How every day that passed had been more empty than the last, so that

with each hour the enormity of his crime receded before the bitter reali-

sation that there was no happiness without him. She could tell him how

she had steeled herself to kill him and found she could not do it—how she

had begun to believe and to hope that she would never do it now—for

what more could he ever do against her than to turn away?

So many reasons, all of them true and none of them the right one.

Something else had brought her submissive to his bed, an unshakeable

decision made at the end of those weeks of misery. And this she must tell

him now, because she could not hope to keep it from him; it concerned

him intimately and he had to know.

But she was afraid to tel him, terrified of spoiling the only moment when

their love had met. Given the choice, she would have been entombed in this

bed, safe for eternity, crystal ised in time within his arms. But time would

not stand stil for her, no matter how many clocks were stopped. It marched

on relentlessly even now, stealing the magic moment away from her, while

the unsaid words lay burning on her tongue. She lay stiff on the pil ows,

staring at the tester of the bed as though it were a sword suspended above

her head. In al her life no single sentence had required such courage of her.

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Susan Kay

He repeated his question with a shade of aggression and she turned on

her side to look at him.

“Because I am going to marry Alençon,” she said.

The tiny crystal of their love shattered in a million fragments as he

slapped her face.

“You bitch!” he spat. “You damned, unholy bitch! Was execution too

good for me?”

She shrank away from him on the pillows, holding her cheek in dazed

disbelief; even her darkest fear had not prepared her for the savagery of

his reaction.

“Robin,” she sobbed. “Oh, Robin, let me explain—”

“You don’t need to explain—I understand!”

He caught her by the throat and began to shake her like a rag doll, his

thumbs pressing on her windpipe in a murderous grip. In that moment,

driven by an ecstasy of rage, he would have killed her without another

thought, but the violence in his voice disturbed the big dog slumbering

peacefully by the fire and the animal leapt up, baying like a hound at

the hunt.

That sound, so sudden, so unexpected, so loud, was sufficient to

penetrate his dementia, distracting him in the final moment, as a man

making love may be distracted by just such an interruption to his concen-

tration. He threw her back on to the pillows and flung himself off the

bed, cursing the dog into silence, kicking it brutally in the frenzy of

his frustration. The dog yelped in hurt astonishment, slunk back to the

hearth, and flopped down with his head on his paws; and Leicester turned

to look at Elizabeth, lying still where he had left her, with red marks like

burns on the whiteness of her neck. He picked up the pile of clothes and

flung them at her.

“Get out of here,” he shouted, his lips curled back like a snarling wolf.

“Get out of my bed and my house! Take your damned French prince and

treat him as you’ve always treated me! He can accommodate your death

wish without hanging for it!”

Pulling on his velvet robe, he turned his back on her as he would

never dare to do before witnesses and went over to the hearth, draining

the cup of wine which he had left there with one gulp. Boy sat up with a

quick thump of his tail, cautiously pushing his nose into his master’s hand,

and Leicester knelt and gathered the huge animal in his arms, burying his

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face in the thick bristling fur to shut out the sight of all that hurt him in

that room.

For a long time there was silence broken only by a soft rustle of satin

and the occasional whimper of the dog. Slowly Leicester lifted his head

and looked round. Elizabeth was standing by the side of his bed, pulling

at the fastenings of her gown with hopeless ineptitude. She, whose hand

shaped the fate of Europe, had no more idea of how to dress herself than

a small child, and for some unknown reason that sight cooled the last of

his fury against her. For a moment more he savoured her clumsy struggle,

then he went over and fastened the gown with his own hands. She did

not flinch at his approach, nor at his touch, and when he had finished, he

turned her slowly about until she faced him.

“I almost killed you,” he said with a sort of dull wonder. “Don’t you

realise that, you stupid woman?”

She smiled faintly and touched one of the bruises on her neck with a

gesture that was almost satisfaction.

“I shall have to hide these marks from my women,” she said slowly.

“It won’t be easy.”

He shook his head in amazement, recalling numerous occasions when

she had turned on him like a vixen for a real or imagined fault, a wrong

word, an ill-timed gesture. Even after all these years she could still surprise

him, and he wondered if that was not the secret of her power over him,

the real reason why in spite of everything he had never tired of her, as he

would tire of every other woman in his life.

He put his hands on her shoulders and said with a touch of irony,

“Doesn’t that concern you—just a little?”

She touched his pale cheek.

“I’m not going to punish you for it, if that’s what you mean. I think

you and I have punished each other quite enough.”

“If you marry Alençon—” he began belligerently.

She put her fingers on his lips to silence him.

“Not to spite you,” she said softly. “To make it safe for us to be lovers

at last. I want you to come back to court and support my marriage to

the Duke—”

“
What
?”

“Oh, Robin, don’t you see, there’s no other way. When I bear your

son no man shall dare to call him bastard.”

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His hands slipped off her shoulders and hung lifelessly at his sides. He

had met immorality many times—even indulged in it—but this was his

first contact with amorality, and he was too amazed to be shocked.