No Fury

Now: Forty

When his frantic kisses slow, and his hands move to pull my clothes off, I can finally draw enough breath to tell him, "Wednesday last . . . I believe Maria saw me leave."

Harry stills, and then shrugs. It is a slow, syrupy movement. It tells me I am probably right, but he is unconcerned. "What would she do? Scowl at me more?"

"I do not want to hurt her," I urge. "If you believe she cares for you . . ."

He climbs over me. "Do not spoil this Saturday with talk of life outside of this room. I like to pretend it melts away."

And it does, it's true. With his body over mine, everything else does melt away.

The problem is that he cannot remain there, over me, inside me indefinitely. Even with the pleasure of it, and the whispered words of forever and running away. Even with Harry's gasping questions about how I need him, whether it is hard enough, rough enough. Even as our voices grow urgent and hoarse as we come together . . . at some point we finish. As our hearts slow, our bodies will permit thought of something other than this.

Above me, Harry looks down, and by the way he searches my face, I know the world outside has slipped between the cracks in the drafty shed.

"My Cath," he whispers, kissing me with panting lips as he slips from my body. His eyes flicker back and forth between mine. "Was that not good? Can I not distract you from your worries?"

"It was very good." I reach up and trace his pouting mouth with my finger. "It is always good. I am sorry, love. I worry, that's all."

Rolling onto his back, Harry throws an arm over his face and tells me flatly, "She hasn't mentioned anything these past three days. If she saw you, she has forgotten."

"She would mention it?" I ask, surprised.

"Aye." He scrubs his face with his hands. "She asks me all manner of things. Whether I find her pretty, why I do not speak as freely with her as she would like, whether I would like to take her a different way, whether I think that might help."

My stomach boils but my heart also breaks for this girl.

Shrugging beside me, he says, "Surely if she had suspected you were leaving my rooms, she would have said so. There are other rooms up there, Cath. Hers. Father's. Likely, she suspected you were coming from the king's bed."

"How can you be so indifferent?" I ask him, and he turns to look at me, brows falling slightly as he seems to hear himself.

"I promise I am not cold with her," he assures me, shifting onto his side.

His hand comes over my hip, fingers trailing up to my waist and down my thigh, over and over again, memorizing.

"I do try to converse with her," he says, "but she knows nothing more than the weather or what she plans to have for the noon meal."

His eyes drop to where he strokes my side. "And I know you won't ask, but you long to know so I shall tell you . . . I have tried to take her a different way rather than me over her the way I love to take you, but it makes no difference in my desire. Guilt, the idea that I am betraying you every time I am near her, makes me soft."

"Harry . . ." I am sure he can hear in my voice how I long to know these things.

"The problem," he tells me, leaning forward to speak against my lips, "is that I do not love her." He sucks my top lip, and then the bottom one. "Is it so bad that I am unlike Liam? I cannot make love without actually loving."

"It is not so bad," I whisper, gazing up at him.

"I could be a friend to her, but I cannot be a good husband." His tongue touches mine, his kiss deepens until he pulls away just far enough to whisper, "I came into my marriage already married."

I pull him to me for this. For saying the truth so openly, so without motive or guile. I tell him I love him over and over until he falls asleep at my breast, arms wrapped around me.

~~

The week feels endless. Each time I leave the shade of the ale house, my skin hums, as if Douglas may be there, behind me waiting to steal me up to Harry's rooms.

Sunday he does not.
Monday he does not.
Tuesday he does not.
Wednesday, I have given up.

And then Thursday afternoon I am pulled from the path as I carry spent malt from the ale house to the chicken coop.

Douglas is silent, stomping ahead of me, knowing I will follow.

"Keep up," he hisses over his shoulder. "You daft girl."

"Why do you hate me so?" I ask him in a whisper, as he jerks me by the arm just inside the hall.

He turns abruptly and looks at me. "'Hate you'?"

"You treat me like a rag. You left me to be raped."

His face falls. "I did not. I could not fight and win with the duke. His station is above mine, but I am not anonymous. I would have . . ." He shakes his head, irritated with me. "I would have lost, and then you would have been without aid. I thought it was the better plan to fetch Paul."

"The rest of it, then," I say, growing bolder. "What you've said to me. How you regard me, with such disgust. What on earth have I done but everything you asked of me?"

In the dark hallway, Douglas' eyes study me. I hear the distant hum of footfalls all around us, beyond the walls.

"I wanted you for myself," he tells me, finally, baldly. "I believed you were intended for me."

Bewildered, I correct him. "I was intended for Liam."

He shakes his head, sneering. "You are daft. You've only ever had eyes for his Lordship, how would you ever notice the plans for such things? Liam was intended for another until you became too important to the prince."

I am lost. "What?"

Douglas looks me up and down. "And I do not hate you." He leans closer, and I back into the cold stone wall behind me. "How do you think it felt to hold your arms down while the prince took you? To see the tears falling from your eyes into your hair? How do you think it felt to know you needed but one soft word from him? And then," he says, taking one final step closer so I can smell the yeast of his morning bread on his breath, "to see you soften beneath him anyway. To see that you would not come to me ruined, you would never come to me at all."

"I wouldn't," I agree. "You are not a good man."

Jerking his chin toward the stairs, he tells me, "Go. He waits."