Shivers brought gooseflesh to my arms. Henry. He was always watching. Always cunning.
Jean let go of my hand and draped his arm around my shoulders. “That’s when he chose you. He decided that very night who would wear the blue dress, signifying his future Queen.”
“Did Francis say why Henry would go through all the trouble?”
“Yes, he did,” Jean began. “It was a masterful game for a bored and lusty king. He gained a beautiful new, young wife, and his subjects gained a Queen. Both were achieved in a very public way.”
I nodded and tried not to feel like a fool.
Jean continued. “Also, he increased the number of ladies at court. Mistresses, if I may be so blunt. Virginal mistresses. And he intended to enjoy them all.”
The same hot bile that had surged the day I found myself lost in the castle and at King Henry’s command burned in my throat again. “Please Jean, tell me no more.”
“May I tell you that you’re beautiful? And that every moment away from you tonight was akin to a lifetime spent in the torture chamber?”
Jean’s warm breath caressed my ear with his whispers and his words melted away the hurt and fear I’d been trying to ignore.
I turned to speak, to say something. Anything. Before the sounds escaped my lips, his mouth covered mine. His passion fueled deep kisses that reminded me of adventures we’d shared together behind the waterfall. A welcome tightness brought a groan to my throat as Jean’s strong fingers untied my filmy blouse.
Sweet kisses from my husband’s lips trailed fire down my neck. My hands cupped his stubbled face as he proceeded to explore the body he’d known so intimately only the night before. The dampness between my thighs was discovered as Jean deftly removed my billowy night pants.
“I love you,” I purred, as his kisses tickled my stomach.
The last glowing log fell in the fireplace with a thunk and cast us in only the faint, silvery darkness offered by the moon.
“Oh, my Bridget,” Jean breathed against the inside of my thigh. Carefully, he pressed my knees apart. I shivered with anticipation. “If only you knew how much I loved you.”
His kisses explored higher as I lay back against the bedspread. “If only you knew.” Jean’s voice was a throaty rasp as his fingers entered me and sent a spasm through the secret places that only Jean had ever discovered. “You would never feel fear again.”
I ignored his odd choice of words and closed my eyes as my husband’s lips met the slippery folds of my body. His fingers played a song of pleasure inside me that only the two of us would ever know.
My breath came in jagged gasps as Jean’s kisses elicited a series of sparks that threatened to choke a scream from my dry throat. Before I could summit, Jean rose up from between my knees and, illuminated in the moonlight like an earthly angel, atop me. I grasped his waiting hardness and drew him into me.
“No,” he said.
I stopped and tilted my head. “No?”
“The answer to your question from earlier. No. I should never in all my days on this earth take a mistress.”
Freshly impassioned, Jean drove himself into me. I let go a throaty shout. “Jean!”
With his head tilted back, my husband growled a low growl that mimicked my own. Our breath accented each other in the night’s stillness as we breathed together, harder. Faster. Deeper.
With my back arched impossibly high, I took my husband into the deepest recesses of my body again and again as we rocked together in our sensual dance until the peaks of passion were again at our mercy.
†††
“Are you asleep?” I was careful to keep my voice at a whisper, in case he was.
Jean squeezed me closer to him in our nest of fine French blankets. “No.”
I’d been tracing the lines of his chest with my fingers since we’d collapsed into the sheets, both cloaked a sheen of sweat and heavy with exhaustion. Despite sleep tugging at my eyelids, restful slumber continued to elude me.
“Tell me why things were so lengthy with Francis. And so secretive.”
The words rolled off Jean’s tongue and sounded more French than Welsh. “King Francis is a shrewd host, Bridget. A stupid man he is not, and he will, like Henry, use everything around him to his advantage. And his personal gain.”
Jean paused a moment. In the bright white offered by the moon as it emerged from behind a black cloud, I saw him turn his face away. “In exchange for our safe lodging in France, I must lead the French Army on a surprise invasion of England. And perhaps even an attack on King Henry himself.”
I swallowed hard, but the lumps that appeared with Jean’s words still threatened to choke me. Every woman I’d ever known who loved a soldier did so in vain, because when a husband went away to war, he never returned. “A surprise invasion?”
“Yes.” He turned back to me and let his arm fall across my middle. “I’m sure you know that you mustn’t breathe a word of this outside this room. On pain of death. My death.”
I nodded and fought the tremble in my lip. “When, Jean? When shall this take place?”
“Therein lies the torture. I will not know until the day comes to depart for England. I must be ready at a moment’s notice.”
A lone tear tracked from the corner of my eye.
“My love, why do you cry? This is but a small and worthy price to pay to secure your safety, and mine, far from the wrath of Henry.”
Somewhere in his words, hid a kernel of truth about our safety being most far from King Henry, I was certain of it. However, it remained elusive to me as I finally lost the battle to my exhaustion and drifted off to sleep.
A New Home
Pas-de-Calais, France—April 1542
T
