To Be Queen (38 page)

“Do you come to ask for my support against Stephen? You may have it, without asking,” I said. “I have always despised weak men.” I dismissed his rival for the throne of England with one wave of my hand.

“Have you?” he asked. “That must have made your marriage difficult.”

“You are impertinent.”

“But not wrong.”

I held my tongue for a long moment, for fear I might laugh again.

“I have something to show you, if you would do me the honor, my lady.”

I came to his side when he beckoned me, breathing in the scent of sandalwood on his skin. I stepped close, knowing that I tempted him, knowing that I tempted myself. Whatever he thought to show me, we both knew why he was really there. I had drawn a furred cloak around me to hide my lawn shift. His eyes were heated, and he smiled as if he knew what my body looked like, fur or no.

He did not touch me, but opened the scroll on the table before us. He took the lamp, and set it on one side of the vellum to hold it down. In that soft light, I noticed for the first time that his lashes were ginger and bronze, almost the same color as my own hair.

“Look at what I have brought you. What do you see?”

I looked away from him, and down at the vellum spread before me. My lips quirked without my commanding them.

“I see a map,” I said. “A map of my lands, the lands of France, and England, the kingdom you seek.”

“You see far,” Henry said. His eyes were serious now. His lust was still there, but held in check, like dogs snapping at their leashes. I saw that he was a man in control of himself always. It would be no different here in my rooms than on a battlefield.

“When you are done with Louis, these will be your lands again, unencumbered.” Henry traced the Aquitaine and Poitou, and all my other holdings.

“These lands I hold already.” Henry's blunt, callused finger outlined the borders of Brittany, Anjou, and Normandy.

“The Vexin I will reclaim from Louis,” he said.

“Will you indeed?” I arched one brow.

He met my eyes, and smiled. “Give me time, my lady. You will see.”

He looked back to the map under his hand, and traced the outline of England and Ireland, pressing his palm down on the kingdom his mother had lost, the kingdom Geoffrey of Anjou could not hold for her.

“England will be mine, in three years' time,” he said.

“So soon?”

“Sooner if I have my way.”

“And you always get your way.”

“Yes.”

Henry's gray eyes fired with his hunger for me. For a moment, I thought he might drop his hands from the map he showed me, and take me in his arms. I was trying to tempt him to it, but he did not move. I felt the tension in him, as he fought himself. Not even Raymond had shown the control that this man had.

“Lady, attend me. Just one moment more.”

I looked down to the map on the table. Henry cradled my lands and his, those he held now and those he sought to hold, between the palms of his two hands.

“These lands we might claim together, lady, once you are free. If you would have me.”

“Have you?” I asked. “Is that not why you have come here? What have our lands to do with that?”

Already, I saw what he was getting at; I saw where he would lead me. But I would not speak it aloud. It would be he who offered all to me.

His eyes met mine again, and along with his lust, I saw his power. It was as potent as anything I had ever seen. It made me sway toward him, until I caught myself, one hand on the table between us. My palm rested between his, on the center of the map. He raised one hand, and laid it over mine.

“Do you think I seek to seduce you for my pleasure only?” Henry asked. “You are queen. You are duchess. And you are mine.”

I tried to draw my hand from beneath his, but he held me fast. My breath caught, and my heart thundered. I waited until he spoke.

“We will hold these lands, together. Between the two of us, we will build the greatest empire seen since the time of Charlemagne.”

My old dream rose to haunt me, the dream that had died on the road to Antioch. I recoiled from Henry, for I wanted what he offered too badly. He saw my need in my eyes. He did not let me go.

“You will marry me,” he said. “You will be my queen.”

“You wear no crown yet.”

“I will. I promise you. And when I wear one, so will you.”

“I wear a crown already.”

“How many women have said that they wore two crowns in a lifetime?”

“None.”

“You will say it, Eleanor. I will make it so. I will set a second crown upon your head, and we will rule these lands together.”

“As partners?” I asked.

“And allies,” he answered. “When I am in Normandy, you will rule in England as my queen.”

“Your regent?”

“Yes.”

“In name only, while your lords and ministers rule in my stead?”

“You will rule in fact, not just in name. I have heard your name spoken all my life. Now I have seen you, and I know you are my equal. No other woman in all the world can claim that. Say you will join me, Eleanor. Say you will be mine.”

“What you offer is not possible.”

“I have built my life on the impossible. And here I am.”

“Here you are.”

In the end, I did not hesitate. I had never been one to stop myself from taking what I wanted. That moment with Henry was no different.

“If you will be mine,” I said, “I will be yours.”

Henry smiled, raising my hand to his lips. I thought he would kiss my fingertips to seal our bargain, but at the last, he turned my hand over in his own, and pressed his lips to my palm. The heat of his mouth caught at the fire already burning in my body, until I thought I would lose all reason. Still, he stared at me, his own fire raging in his eyes. His tongue darted out, and licked the center of my palm, so that I lost my breath.

“Done,” he said. “So be it.”

He did not draw me to the bed, even then. He raised his other hand from the table, and the map of vellum drew up once more into a scroll. The brush of the pigskin was soft in my ears, a gentle sweep of sound. I stood, transfixed, as Henry drew me closer.

“I have had many women,” he said. “But you will be the last.”

I knew even as he spoke that he was lying. He was more than ten years younger than I was. No man could stay faithful to a woman for a lifetime, save perhaps Louis. But I found that lie was sweet in my ears. I found myself leaning closer, the heat in my belly rising, as Henry's lips played once more against the skin of my palm.

The firelight surrounded us, casting our shadows upon the walls. We were cut apart from the world beyond those stones, from the life of the French court, from the life I had known. I felt as if my father lived yet, and stood guard over us in the next room. I felt as if I had never known fear or loss or death. As if the world and all its folly, the price I had paid for power, the price I would go on paying, could not touch me.

I stepped forward, and raised my hand to his cheek.

It was a gentle gesture, not like me at all. Henry seemed to know it, as he seemed to know me; he understood me from the first. I stayed close to him, my palm on the rough sandpaper of his cheek. He had shaved before coming to me, but his beard had started to grow out again already.

“Eleanor,” he said. “There is someone else in your eyes.”

“No,” I said. “There is not.”

He did not blink or drop his gaze from mine. It was as if I had not spoken.

“You love a man,” he said. “Not Louis.”

I tried never to think of Raymond. It did no good to think of him, so I did not. My mind and heart had done my bidding since I was a very young girl. Only now, with Henry's gray gaze boring into mine, did I feel again the pain of what I had lost when Raymond died.

Of course, I could not tell him that. I opened my mouth to lie, but Henry spoke before I could utter a word.

“No, don't tell me. It doesn't matter. I would have no lies between us.”

“He is dead.”

Henry stared into the green of my eyes. He did not speak, and for a long moment I wondered if the deal was done before it had even begun. I wondered if he would not raise me up, and take me as his wife, even for the kingdom of Charlemagne, even for the lives of all our sons to come.

He raised his hands then, and cradled my face between them. Something beyond lust bound us, something time could not touch. I saw it as we stood alone with no one between us, no kingdoms, no crowns, no children, no losses. That night, there was only Henry and I, alone together in a room.

He was a man with a duchy he had wrested from the dead, a man with a kingdom still to conquer. I was a woman with a broken marriage and a lost dream, with only daughters to show for the last fifteen years of my life. But Henry did not see that when he looked at me. Nor did he see only the Aquitaine, and Poitou, and all the green and fertile lands that lay between them. When Henry looked into my eyes, he saw my soul. Without all else to play for, the fact that he knew me would have been enough.

“Know this, Eleanor. For us, there will be only one another. I will have no rivals between us. There is only room enough in my bed for two.”

I did not answer him at once. I did not fob him off with a smile or a lie or a glib truth. I took him in, the gray of his eyes and the ginger-colored lashes that framed them, and beyond that, his soul, staring back at me. “All right,” I answered him. “So be it.”

Those words were my seal on the bargain that we had already made. Henry drew me to him and I felt his true strength. The warmth of his arms enveloped me, and for the first time since my father died, I felt as if I were protected, shielded from the world. This was an illusion, but I welcomed it.

Henry's lips were soft on mine, tentative, exploring the contours and the curves of my mouth. He tasted of the burgundy we had drunk at dinner, and of the spiced venison we had eaten at the high table. He smelled of sandalwood, and clean linen, sun-dried and crisp. I pressed myself against him, as if his wholesome light might find its way from the contours of his muscles and sinews, into my bones.

He laughed a little, low in his throat, lifting his mouth from mine. He smiled, and I smiled back at him, for he did not mock me, and I knew it. His appreciation and regard for me rang even in the dark softness of his laughter. Warmth flooded my body, until I thought my blood might catch fire. All this he did with just the sound of his voice, his hand on my waist, the other in my hair.

“You have been too long neglected, Eleanor. You will find yourself well loved in my bed.”

I raised my head, and caught his lips with mine. I drew him down with me onto the bed, casting aside my fur wrap, so that my body was clear beneath my shift in the firelight. Henry caught his breath, and his hand trembled as he reached for me. His desire was so strong that I thought he might swallow his tongue. My lust was thick in the air already, shimmering like a mist over my skin. I reached for him and pulled him down to me. He laid his body over mine, his mouth covering my own. Our tongues tangled together, and his hands ran over me, first over my shift, then under it. My skin warmed beneath his callused palms, and I pressed myself against him. He would not be rushed, but drew my shift up and over my head in one smooth motion.

He looked down at me, raising himself on one elbow. He ran one hand over my body's curves, watching my breasts rise and fall with my breath beneath his hand. “You are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen.”

I ran my hands along his chest and drew his own clothes off, first his tunic and hose, then his shirt. He was young, his arms and hands burnished from his time in the sun. His muscles were well crafted, as if by a sculptor. He did not look like the Greek statues I had seen in Byzantium. He was too much of a man for that. But he was beautiful.

I pressed my lips against his chest, running my tongue over his skin until he gasped. I rose up over him, and mounted him, as I would a horse. Young as he was, he was no blushing maid. He knew what I was about, and lifted me effortlessly, until I had taken him in, and sheathed him with my inner fire.

We both lost ourselves then, our bodies moving together as they had on my husband's dance floor. This time we rode together as if in a race, a race where there would be two winners.

I felt my climax rising within me like a tide, like a wave at dawn. Henry drew me beneath him, and rode me hard as that wave swamped me. I shuddered, my breath lost. I could not even gasp his name.

He joined me then, his body trembling over mine. He shook as I had done, but harder, as if an earthquake had squeezed the breath from his lungs, as if he would never breathe again.

He fell against me, as if someone had cut him down on the battlefield. He clutched me, his hand in the bronze softness of my hair. I could not move, for he held me fast, his heavy body on top of mine, as a stone on top of a tomb. Let me be dead, then. I was glad to die, if only he lay upon me.

I laughed at this thought. Henry laughed with me, his gray eyes gleaming. He did not move to let me rise. I could breathe, if only barely, so I let him stay where he was.

“There will be more of that before there is less,” he said. “I will not let you go.”

“Not yet,” I answered.

“Not ever. No other man will touch you again. I swear that, Eleanor.”

“No?” I asked. “Not even my husband? Not even Louis?”

“Do not name that milksop to me,” Henry said, resting his head against my breast. “I am your husband now. I, and no other.”