Queen of Trial and Sorrow Read Online Free Page A

the invitation he needed.  He leaned over and kissed the corner of my mouth and then my lips.  A tongue of flame darted to my loins.  I moved away with a sigh. 
    “Why do you keep coming back?  Why?”
    “Because you are a Circe, a siren.  Because I cannot resist you.  I think you know you have snared my heart.”
      I veiled my eyes.  “It is to no avail,” I said sadly.  “I know I am not good enough to be your wife but I am too good to be your mistress.”
    At these words it seemed to me he withdrew slightly.
    “Madam…” he said. He had lately taken to calling me Bess but now it was back to formality  “…there is no dishonor in being the mistress of the king.  You would be envied and celebrated.”
    “But I don’t wish to be envied and celebrated.  I wish to be wed and cherished. When I go to a new husband, I hope to do so with an unblemished reputation.”
    “Unblemished!  A liaison with the king would enhance not blemish your reputation.  You have too much pride.”
    I risked a peek at his profile.  I think he was quite mystified that I wasn’t willing to jump into his bed.  He still had the vanity of a boy and I had wounded it. 
    “Please, your Grace – ”
    “God’s Breath, I am a man!  I have needs.  Don’t women have such needs?”
    “Only wantons indulge them lightly.”
    “I assure you, many women, very many, are not so fastidious as you!”
    He was becoming angry now.  I was going to lose him.  I put my face in my hands to hide my distress.  “Oh, why do you come here?  You torment me!”
    After a moment, he pushed my hands away and tilted my chin up.  “Don’t cry, sweetheart.  I can’t bear to see you unhappy.”
    Sweetheart.  He called me sweetheart. 
    I am quite sure he was genuinely perplexed by an attitude he had never encountered before, and went away enduring all a young man’s wretchedness at an unexpected rejection.  When he left me I didn’t expect him to come back, but he did.  He always came back.  I didn’t understand at first why he didn’t move on to an easier conquest. 
    As for me, I was fully aware that I was pushing him away with one hand while beckoning him on with the other.  It wasn’t calculated.  The thought of never seeing him again was unbearable, yet I couldn’t bring myself to yield.  Whenever I saw him coming down the lane my heart sang as sweetly as s thrush in the hedgerow.  Plato says the madness of love is the greatest of heaven’s blessings.  I didn’t want to love him.  God knows, I fought against it.  Why did it have to be him, a man as far above me in station as a distant star and for who I could never be anything but a brief dalliance? 
    He called me his green-eyed goddess and said I had as much ice as ichor in my blood.  I played the part well.  He would have been surprised to know that I yearned for him when he was gone, remembering each caress, each stolen kiss in my lonely bed at night, becoming drenched between my thighs at the mere thought of lying naked in those powerful arms, his long body straining against mine.  I wanted him, ached for him, lusted as fiercely as he, but not for one quick hot tumble, not even for long enough to bear a royal bastard as Lady Lucy had.  But for always.
    “I wish I didn’t feel as I do,” I sighed to my mother.  “I know nothing can come of it.”
    She was snipping early lilies, examining them as closely as she did eels in the market, before placing them in the basket I carried. “That’s how it was for me too,” she said with a smile in which there was more than a trace of lasciviousness.  “Ah, daughter, I well remember how the blood runs hot when a certain man walks into the room.”  My father was notably uxorious, and my youngest sister was younger than my eldest boy.  Perhaps the blood still ran hot.
    “Why do you fight it?  Give him what he wants.”
    “What!  Become his mistress?” I was shocked that she would suggest