Margaret the First Read Online Free

captured commanders? There were many unmarried ladies at court: some of them rich, quite a few pretty, each hoping to make a good match. William Cavendish had his pick. He picked me, to wide surprise.
    Firstly, he existed in a social sphere far above my own. And I, who rarely spoke, almost never spoke to men. But at thirty years my senior, William knew—unlike noisy young courtiers—how to seduce a strange bright virgin. He watched me in my silence. My reserve? He thought it charming. His attentions made me blush. I could feel his stare as I snuck off with Cymbeline to a corner. “You enjoy reading?” he asked. We walked the courtyard under jealous eyes. He spoke of things that mattered—my brother, books, my home—and had a way of standing, feet spread, so that his brown eyes met my green ones at one level. Then, and wisely, he began to frequent the embassy, where we often met on Sundays, he kneeling beside me, watching my lips move as I prayed. I was to him a new-come bud, so slender and pale. I smelled of roses, or so he said. I turned pink and asked about my brother.
    But just as I began to soften, Henrietta Maria up and quit Paris, taking herself and her court to St. Germain-en-Laye. Her summer château boasted grand suites with painted windows and formal gardens descending to the Seine, with canals and cascading fountains and a cove of faux-grottoes home to clacking metal birds, a bejeweled caterpillar, a golden duck that shook its head and quacked. We smuggled letters. Like clockwork, William composed one poem every other day. I was a “spotless virgin, full of love and truth.” My breasts so plump and young. “If living cannot meet,” wrote he,
    then let us try
    If after death we can; oh let us die!
    And I: “I look apon this world as on a deths head for mortificashun, for I see all things subject to allteration and change, and our hopes as if they had takin opium.”
    And he:
    Sweetest of nature, virtue, you are it;
    Serenest judgement, fancy for a wit;
    So confidently modest, so discreet,
    As lust turns into love, love homage at your feet.
    Summer scorched. Fires burned in surrounding fields posting towers of smoke between the château and Paris. But poetry toils, even in such heat. By the end of the summer, William and I were secretly engaged. Unaccustomed, I troubled. William, brave in secrecy, pressed me against a wall, hands working to get under all those skirts. I hurried down the corridor, locked myself in my room. Alone on the bed, I wished my mother borne across the sea, in through the open painted window, standing on the cold stone floor in France, as if by magic.As others lunched in a tent on the grass, I wrote another note, begging he be patient: “If you shod repent sir how unfortunat a woman I shod be; pray consider I have enemyes.”
    It was true! A swelling noise arose at court, the ladies in a rage. Some said coy Miss Lucas had played the marquess like a song. Others whispered loudly about his numerous past lovers and a rumored decline in stamina. His closest friends opposed the match. I had no dower, the war having taken my family’s wealth. I was of gentle but unremarkable birth. I was odd, that much was obvious, even to idle courtiers. They made no attempt to hide what they said, and soon a different rumor reached me: that the marquess courted another. Naturally, I panicked. I even began to admire Paris because William was in it: “Shurly, my lord,” I wrote in haste, “I shall be content to be any thing you would have me to be, so I am yours; I rejoyce at nothing mor than your leters.”
    I needn’t have despaired.
    One day by the river’s edge he stuck his tongue in my mouth. Unsure, I tugged it with my lips and nearly choked him. An afternoon while others played boules on the grass, he took me for a ride and pinched my nipples. Then it happened: someone leaked our secret to the queen. Her own maid-in-waiting? A nobody in her house? Henrietta Maria swore she’d faint. She