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  If he had not been so anxious, he would have done so. Alphonse could not understand why it was so important to him that these men, so close to the French king, be witness to his wedding and bedding. King Louis would accept their word against any other, no matter who tried to find cause to annul the marriage. Ridiculous, Alphonse thought. Who would want to interfere with his marriage? He was allowing the political tensions of this accursed realm to seep into his personal life.

  Still he felt sick with doubt. Perhaps he should not have allowed Norfolk to supply the bride gift. But during the celebration Barbe had seemed hardly aware of it, not touching it or drawing attention to it. She had been kind and gracious, not a hint of anger in her face or manner, not a hint of a blush or a doubt either. Stupid, Alphonse told himself, Barbe was no fearful maiden. She was a woman with years of experience in court. But she was worried, her smiles had been as false as his. Why should she be worried?

  Even as King Henry was led toward his private chamber, Bohun, Norfolk, and the two French emissaries came toward Alphonse. Others rose to follow, throwing off the shock and doubt the king’s emotion had caused them and beginning to laugh and jest as they approached. The increasing levity assured Alphonse that King Henry was gone, and he buried his own doubts and anxieties, smiling and shaking his head at his father-by-marriage who was asking dryly if he needed help to stand.

  By the time the wedding party reached the lodging on St. Margaret’s Lane everyone had sobered enough to begin suffering the lowering of spirits that follows too much drink. All tried to hide it to spare Alphonse and Barbara, but no one had any desire to linger after the witnesses were assured there was no hidden fault in either bride or groom and they were set into their bed. Somehow jests and laughter sounded hollow, even cheap and ugly, when at the back of every mind was the image of the prince being led away to confinement and the old king weeping helplessly.

  Only Barbara and Alphonse were not touched by those visions. For each, this moment was far more important than king or prince, and the little time the witnesses remained was too long in their opinion. The guests were not aware how eagerly their departure was desired because the face of the groom was filled with false merriment and that of the bride was blank. Both knew those expressions were a polite mask, yet though each saw only the other and there was no lack of light, many candles being lit and the bedcurtains drawn back to catch any breeze, neither could read beneath the mask.

  The moment the door closed behind the last of the witnesses, Barbara said, “Alphonse, what—”

  But he dared not let her finish and he covered her mouth with his, pressing her back, flat on the pillows, and leaning over her so that his greater strength held her in place. He felt her stiffen and ran a hand down her right arm to her wrist, extending his last three fingers to tickle her palm. It was a playful, sensuous gesture, and it also immobilized her right hand and arm so that she could not use it to push him away or strike at him. He felt her shudder, but she made no attempt to free either the right hand he held or her left, which was pinned against her side by his body.

  Alphonse was torn between his knowledge that Barbe would never have married him if she did not intend to honor her vows and his jealous conviction that she had unwillingly sacrificed herself to some purpose. In this moment knowledge became a thin wraith beside the solidity of his jealous fear. To release her arms seemed to him still too great a chance to take. He could feel the tension in her, as if she might try to fight him off. He could not allow that. He must possess her. What he was doing now could be excused as playfulness. To take her after she had fought free of him would be rape and unforgivable. But the wraith of knowledge beckoned temptingly. Perhaps, it whispered, she was only suffering last-moment fears. Perhaps she had no deeper reluctance that was making her desperate.

  He lifted his lips enough to whisper, “This is no time for words. There are better things to do with your mouth.”

  The invitation gained him nothing. Barbe did not respond to what he had said in any way, but neither did she turn her head to avoid him. And when he barely touched her mouth and then bent farther down and kissed her throat, she shuddered again. He tried the tactic of moving his lips in butterfly touches here and there on her face and neck and breast. She began to shiver continually, sucking in her breath in shaking sobs and letting it out in long, broken sighs. By then Alphonse was almost certain she would not try to refuse to couple, but there was no way to tell whether her reaction to his caresses was owing to eagerness or to fighting her revulsion.

  He kissed her mouth again and lifted himself cautiously on one elbow at the same time releasing her wrist. She lay quiet except for her trembling, and he stroked her arm from the shoulder down, touching her breast. A sharper gasp broke the uneven rhythm of her breathing, and when he brought his hand up again, cupped the breast, and brushed the nipple with his thumb, a soft moan—of pleasure or protest?—rose from her throat.

  Releasing her lips, Alphonse quickly brought his mouth to her breast to replace his hand. She jerked under him, uttered a wordless cry, and raised her knees. Alphonse pushed them flat and brought a leg over to hold her, which permitted him to slide his hand between her thighs. Carefully, he cupped her nether mouth, pressed gently, released and pressed again, then bent one finger to invade. The broken breathing grew faster, and to Alphonse’s surprise he found Barbe’s lower lips were full and very wet. Her body was ready for him.

  Before he had time to wonder, she cried, “Oh, be done! Take me and be done!”

  There was a kind of desperation in her voice. Alphonse knew that was wrong. Love should lie down only in joy. Had Barbe not been his wife, he would have tried to lighten her mood. If he had failed and a mistress took offense because he seemed to make light of her trouble, there would have been an end to the affair. But he could not chance that kind of offense with a wife, whereas obedience to her demand would be easily excused. And he was achingly ready himself so that her words brought him to a state where he could not resist the invitation.

  For all her readiness, though she opened her legs for him and even rose a little to meet him when he had placed himself, his gentle thrust did not get far. Poor Barbe cried out once more, this time in simple pain and surprise, and he had to hold still and soothe her before he thrust again. The second time he drove hard and found himself seated. The impediment was fragile, but Alphonse had no doubt of having thrust himself where no man had been before. She was so tight that he almost spilled his seed at once in a mindless physical reaction.

  An equally mindless habit saved him, the habit of not taking his own satisfaction until he was sure his partner was also content. This restraint was an absolutely necessary behavior pattern to a man who had little wealth and a very fastidious taste in women, and it had gained him his reputation as an irresistible lover. Instinctively, as the urge to spend came upon him, Alphonse fought it. He lay still and kissed the least erotic part of his partner—her face—not completely aware for a few minutes of who she was. As the worst of his need receded, he remembered that his new wife lay under him, and he thanked God that his many sins had provided him with great skill.

  Now he lifted himself, supporting most of his weight on one elbow and caressing her breast with that hand. With the other he stroked her thighs, tickled her ears. Soon she twitched under him and her movement wrung a groan of pleasure from him, but that was half policy. Alphonse knew that open evidence of a man’s lust often excited a woman. As if to confirm his thought, Barbe twitched again and he lifted his body a little to give her more freedom. She followed, and when he did not thrust again, she began to push and squirm against him, her breath coming in harsh gasps quicker and quicker until she wailed aloud. He loosed his will then, letting sensation drown him, hardly aware that he too cried out as her voice stilled.

  When sense returned, he slid off her and sat up. Her eyes were wide open under their heavy brows, and she looked—terrified. “My God,” he whispered, “why are you afraid? Did I not pleasure you at a
ll?”

  Chapter Fourteen

  The anguish in Alphonse’s voice and expression wiped every consideration other than the need to make him happy from Barbara’s mind. “Too much,” she cried. “You gave me too much pleasure.”

  The profound relief Alphonse felt over what he knew was an honest confession translated immediately into irritation. “There cannot be too much pleasure in loving!” he exclaimed. “How can you say such a silly thing?”

  Barbara did not answer, her sympathy for him already replaced by wariness and by a fear that she had made herself cheap. Had his hurt even been genuine? Or was that another practiced gesture in an old pattern of conquest? No matter if it was, she thought bitterly, she was as weak as any other woman he played like a fish. She dared not try to test the truth of her questions. She dared not hurt him or even give him an excuse to look hurt. To see his pain, real or pretended, reduced her to idiocy.

  Alphonse’s irritation was as ephemeral as his relief. He was glad indeed that she had come to joy in their coupling. With that as a beginning, he could win her love. But before he could find the path that led to the fulfillment of his deepest desire, he had to uncover her trouble and cure it. Barbe had been desperate when she urged him to couple with her and terrified after coupling. Neither emotion fit any pattern familiar to him.

  Alphonse did not find any significance in her silence. His question had been rhetorical, and he had not expected any answer. After a brief pause in which he studied her face, he continued suspiciously, “You have not let some overholy priest convince you that all natural pleasure is sinful, have you?”

  “No, of course not,” Barbara replied, thrown off balance by the accusation. “You are more in danger of being converted to that view in Louis’s court than I am in Henry’s.”

  The answer brought him no closer to an understanding than had her earlier silence, and Alphonse suddenly felt ashamed of trying to manipulate Barbe as he would a harebrained, discontented mistress. If he wanted an answer from a woman he loved, whom he wanted to trust him, he needed to ask a direct question. “Then what did you mean when you said I had given you too much pleasure?”

  Barbara had been waiting for that. She knew Alphonse too well to believe he would forget a problem that puzzled him. Fear lent agility to her thoughts, and she had found a suitably ambiguous reply. “I was surprised,” she said. “I did not think a broaching could be anything other than painful for a woman, and…and it seemed to me from what my friends have told me that, for a woman, love is necessary for pleasure.”

  Since she had already admitted her passionate response to his lovemaking, she hoped he would take the implication that it did not mean abject devotion, but the ploy was dangerous. If Alphonse asked her outright whether she did not love him, she would have to tell the truth. But she remembered his teasing talk with women and knew he always avoided direct questions and statements. His eyes flicked away, and he did not speak of love, but his next remark was direct enough to catch her off balance again.

  “You did not look surprised,” he said slowly. “You looked affrighted. Why, Barbe?”

  “Because I felt myself helpless in that—that cascade of joy. I was enslaved,” she answered, more truthfully than she had intended.

  He stared down at her, his face frighteningly without expression for one moment. Then he sighed and let himself drop flat. She had given him an honest answer. It rang true, more especially because of her long freedom from any domination through her senses.

  “But Barbe, I was equally helpless, equally enslaved,” he said softly. “You must learn to trust me and I to trust you. What we share, one cannot use against the other.”

  “If we share.” Barbara’s voice was hard, her memory bringing up images of one woman and then another preening herself under Alphonse’s flattery. Had not each of those women heard these same smooth words?

  Alphonse misunderstood her completely, associating the reproach with her precoital desperation. “If you were concerned because you felt your anger slipping away while I gave you plea­sure—”

  “What anger?” Barbara asked, so surprised that she sat up. Then she felt still more surprised when Alphonse’s dark skin reddened.

  “I should not have let your father provide that bride gift, but—”

  “I was not angry.” She laughed. “I almost got down on my knees and thanked God for your good sense. Those who love me were near tears, and the envious were licking their lips over my shame when it was near time for the church and nothing had come.” She reached down and touched his face, growing serious. “I thank you, my lord. You were generous to abate your own pride so that mine would not be hurt. How could I be angry?”

  She seemed sincere, but women set such store on mementos that marked great days in their lives that Alphonse felt he had to probe further. “I will return them to your father, of course, and you may choose what you like, new from a goldsmith,” he said.

  “Oh. I suppose Papa does not really wish to part with his mother’s jewels.”

  Barbara was disappointed. She had always rather coveted the necklace and armlets. No one did work like that anymore, not blandly beautiful but haunting, as if some magic spell was in the pieces if one could only read them aright.

  “No, love, no.” Alphonse sat up, too, and put his arm around her. “They are for you. Your father wanted to give them to you in any case. But when I remembered—too late, after squandering away the few free hours I had in a stupid celebration instead of trying to find a bride gift for you—he offered to present them as my gift. I only said I would return them because I was afraid if I did not you would always feel cheated of a bride gift. But you will not be. I swear it.”

  “I trust you for that.” Barbara laughed aloud and let her head rest on his shoulder. “No one ever called you ungenerous, Alphonse.” Then suddenly she sat up straight and pushed him back so she could see his face clearly. “Was that what you were worried about? Oh, you idiot! You frightened me half to death by the way you looked at me all day, as if some disaster had overtaken us and you dared not tell me.”

  “I frightened you to death?” Alphonse repeated indignantly. “What about the way you looked at me when I took your hand at the altar? I thought you would repudiate me right there in the cathedral.”

  “What had you to do with my being worried?” Barbara asked, thoroughly exasperated. “The king—”

  “I was the groom!” Alphonse interrupted with haughty dignity. “It is generally conceded that when a bride looks frightened at the altar, the cause is the man who will be her husband.”

  Barbara burst out laughing again. “Well, yes, but you should have known better. We have been friends for more than ten years. I would need to be an idiot to suddenly grow afraid of you.”

  Alphonse did feel foolish for a moment, not for being concerned about the bride gift but for what now seemed a senseless fear of losing her completely. She was so much at ease with him, not trying to shield her nakedness, her eyes glinting blue rather than bleak gray when a gleam of candlelight caught them that Alphonse almost laughed too. But then came a memory of her strained voice crying “Be done. Take me and be done.” The contrast with what she said was too vivid to put aside. He shook his head.

  “It was to do with me when you bade me take you. And you were not crying out in eagerness.”

  She bent her head, but she could feel his anxious gaze on her and could not lie. “Yes, it was eagerness.”

  Her blush rose up from her throat to dye her face and ran down to her breast. It was the latter stain that caught Alphonse’s eyes and what he saw stifled the hot denial he had been about to utter. As she whispered what he thought a lie, Barbe’s nipples had swelled before his eyes. That mute testimony proved her confession was the truth and showed him to be a fool. Alphonse did not think even the most practiced whore could order that response.

  “I was ashamed.”

  The second whisper, even lower, made him put one hand on her shoulder and raise her chin
with the other so that he could look straight into her eyes “Not about joining with me,” he said. “Never feel shame. No part of you is other than beautiful to me. Nothing you desire is other than pleasing to me.”

  And nothing different from any other woman either, Barbara thought bitterly, but what she said was, “I felt myself to seem no better than a common whore to you, to be so consumed with pleasure of the body only.”

  “I know very little of common whores,” Alphonse replied, “but I doubt they feel any pleasure at all, a good reason why I do not frequent them. Barbe,” his voice took on a pleading note, “do not hide your joy from me or seek to crush it out. I love you. I cannot have true pleasure if you have none. You will turn the need of my body into poison for me.”

  “Oh, no,” she said, “I could not bear that.” It was the truth. Barbara knew quite well the quickest way to drive a husband into another woman’s arms was to be cold abed. “I want us to be happy as man and wife, and I will gladly learn of you anything that will increase your joy abed or abroad.”

  He drew her close and she came willingly, swaying forward at his light pull. Alphonse kissed her forehead tenderly, more joyous over this victory than any he had ever won on the tourney field. Neither gold nor jewels nor honor could compete with Barbe’s offering. She might not love him, but she had taken away all fear that she resented their bonding. She wanted to be happy and make him happy! Then she was halfway down the garden path that led to the bower of love.

  “So you wish to learn of me?” he murmured. “Then we will play un jeu de la queue leu leu—do as I do—and we will see who wins the prize.”

  As he bent his head to kiss her lips, he wondered what she would do. But as his lips parted and hers opened also, as she moved with him to lie down again, as his hand slid over her belly to her mount of Venus and hers found his swollen shaft, he had just time enough before he drowned in a fiercer pleasure than he had ever known, to remember that she had warned him already. She had loved and trusted him for years. She would do exactly what he urged, anything he did, she would try to imitate.