She blinked and started to speak but her word ran out and she said nothing. His smile widened. ‘How wise, my love. You were going to tell me how I have once again changed the subject, because I wish to avoid confrontation and will not discuss the incongruity of respectability and marriage for a man in my career.’ He began very, very slowly to pull at her nipples through the soft white material, teasing them into even tighter knots. His voice sank lower. ‘But I am not changing the subject at all, little one, for the subject is still you. What I want from you. What I am prepared to do, to keep you. How much I wish to please you. How much you please me.’ She could not meet his eyes, and closed her own. The heat, for the bedroom hearth blazed with fire although the day had been warm, made her dizzy. Andrew continued to murmur and his voice became part of the unreality. ‘Through the translucence of linen, your skin is very white. Your breasts are shimmering pale, but the nipples stand dark. And if I do this – and this – very softly at first – and then a little faster – but never too hard – then I control you and you sing to my music, and I pluck you as though I pluck the gittern strings.’
As he continued to tease, his fingers wandering, one hand dipped beneath the hem of her shift and he raised it, slipping both hands immediately beneath. Then he smoothed across her hips and belly, fingers amongst the curls at her groin, climbing the ladder of her ribs, again nuzzling her breasts, and down again between her legs. He pressed his mouth to her cheek, and his voice tickled, hot and soft. ‘Now I see my own hands on you, all through the pale haze of your chemise. I am spectator, removed and separate, and yet equally as aroused as the player himself.’ Tyballis sighed and leaned against him. She no longer had any desire to speak. Her only desire was wrapped up in his explorations and his breath and his voice. ‘Now, here, my beloved, once again I watch the secrets of your body unfold. I touch – and you quiver, and open. Your belly contracts, your thighs tense and beneath my fingers I see your body obedient and responsive.’
At last she said, ‘Am I not – always – obedient?’
He chuckled. ‘Your body obeys me. Not your mind. But if I touch you here – like this – moist and sweet and yielding – then you are wondrously obedient. You close around me as my hands demand, tightening and squeezing, just as I desire it – and so my body responds, and becomes obedient to yours.’ And immediately he swept her shift over her head and crushed her nakedness firmly against him.
There he made love to her – slow and languorous and playful – whispering softly to her as he examined and discovered, tracing the light and shadows of the fire across her flesh. And when, eventually, after he brought them both to climax, he laid her gently beneath the bedcovers, the pillows beneath her head, kissed the fading marks around her neck and stretched his own strength behind the tuck of her legs.
He heard when she slept. He knew the rhythmic change in her breathing and felt the slowing of her heartbeat beneath his hand. Then he carefully slipped away from her, leaving the bed and her curled within it. He bent over a moment, listening to her sleep. It was earlier than he had intended, but he considered the importance of his information warranted this, so he quickly retrieved his clothes from where he had previously discarded them. When he was ready to leave he sat a minute on the edge of the bed, and kissed her again.
‘Marriage, my sweet? Would that truly please you, even with a man so clearly unsuitable, so absurdly ugly in both appearance and behaviour, sadly lacking in moral virtue, and without coin, land or prospects? Yet in my mind we are married already. And perhaps, if it would suit you, we will exchange vows once my duke is safe in his council chamber, and the risks to our country all tamed.’
Chapter Sixty-Two
Richard, Duke of Gloucester, Lord High Constable of England, Great Chamberlain, Lord High Admiral, Lieutenant General of all England’s Land Forces and now Lord Protector and Defender of the Realm, had not retired to bed that night. He remained at his writing table throughout the small hours, and Andrew Cobham, crossing briskly from the annexe where he was housed, was admitted immediately, despite the early hour, to the duke’s official studio at Crosby’s Place. His lordship smiled. ‘Not yet dawn, Mister Cobham. Only you wander the moonlit hours as sleepless as I, and have the temerity to acknowledge my habits as bad as your own.’
Andrew bowed. ‘Your grace, I have passed most of the day in the Marquess of Dorset’s company. I have news of specific messages smuggled into sanctuary, and of those smuggled out. I believe your grace will find my information of sufficient interest to excuse the hour.’
‘You had better sit, Cobham,’ nodded his grace, ‘and tell me everything. Yet I invariably find the good marquess’s intentions somewhat predictable.’
‘Then I must begin by begging your forgiveness, my lord,’ said Andrew softly. ‘Much of the news I carry is, as your grace predicts, wearisomely repetitive. But some is not. Some will not please your grace, nor even, perhaps, appear immediately credible. If your grace then directs, I shall continue my investigations until I obtain verifiable proof.’
‘Proof, Cobham? You obtained proof, and it was destroyed before it could do its business. Is proof this time imperative? Or simply appropriate?’
‘That is for your grace to decide. As yet I have no proof, only my word and the evidence of Lord Marrott’s attempts to eliminate both myself and my – assistant. I do not expect to see Lord Hastings again, unless your grace specifically orders it. But much of my information now concerns him.’
‘Indeed?’ queried the duke. ‘Hastings is less than content with me these days. Although I have honoured Buckingham, giving him a place at my right hand, I have bestowed nothing at all on Lord Hastings since I took office as Protector. Nor will I do so until he accepts his culpability and my trust in him returns. His attempts at self-preservation facilitated my brother’s death. Now, since poison cannot be incontrovertibly proved, let alone identify the hand that administered it, my own accusations remain silent. But I have spoken to his lordship. He knows my mind.’
Andrew sat before the small oak writing table, his height diminished. He chose his words carefully. ‘Yet the Woodville faction widens, my lord, and Lord Hastings explores newly offered possibilities. It seems he no longer considers Dorset his enemy.’
‘There is no advantage in being obscure with me, sir.’ The duke leaned forwards. ‘Speak clearly.’
‘My lord,’ Andrew continued, ‘you are already aware of one Mistress Shore, a favourite companion of his late highness, and more recently of both the Lord Hastings and the Marquess of Dorset. Under pretext of delivering supplies, she freely enters sanctuary, carrying messages. She is the intermediary between both her masters.’
Andrew remained closeted for many hours past dawn. At first the chamber, shutters closed, was deep in shadow and no man took account of time’s passage. The candles burned, guttered and were replaced. Wine was served, and drunk. Finally the sun rose, the shutters were taken down, light flooded the chamber, and still they talked. The duke laughed once. Andrew had said, ‘I had the pleasure of confiding to Dorset your grace’s intention of reinstating Earl Rivers in a position of authority. Begging your pardon, my lord, I explained how your grace considers Rivers’ cooperation essential to peaceful and profitable future government, in particular due to his young highness’s friendship and reliance on his Woodville uncle. I mentioned that Rivers’ temporary incarceration merely serves a warning. Naturally the marquess was delighted.’