“Because I’m a better lover?” He laughed. “No, Joanna, there is no great secret to it. I told you once that most men pay little attention to the female brain. Well, even though they think about the female body for most of their waking hours, they do not really know much about it. Some of them never learn that men reach the top of the mountain faster than women do. It is simply a matter of giving a woman the extra time she needs to get there.”
When he put his arm around her, Joanna slid over, resting her head in the crook of his shoulder. “Sometimes with William, I’d be left wanting more, but I did not know exactly what that was. Not until tonight.” After a moment, she began to laugh again. “I was just thinking of all the qualities I wanted in a husband. That he’d be highborn, of course. That he’d view the world with humor and if he had a temper, that he’d hold no grudges. That I’d find him pleasing to the eye. That he’d be a Christian; I’d taken that for granted until Richard offered me to Saladin’s brother. But never once did I think that he ought to be good at climbing mountains!”
He smoothed her hair back from her forehead and brushed his lips against her temple. “I can see that you are going to do wonders for my male pride, love. And if you harbored any misgivings about whether I was a secret Cathar or not, I trust that I’ve put them to rest.”
She studied his face, surprised to realize that he was only half joking. It must be a heavy burden at times, knowing that so many suspected him of heresy. “If I’d had such doubts, you’d have dispelled them quite spectacularly tonight. But I did not, Raimond. As I see it, you are guilty only of exercising tolerance, and in Sicily that was not a sin.”
She’d assumed that all men wanted to go to sleep soon after lovemaking, for that had certainly been true with William and other women had confirmed it, too. She was pleased now to see that Raimond showed no such inclination. Instead of rolling over and bidding her good night, he rose and began to prowl about the chamber, saying they must surely have thought to leave out some food. Finding a bowl of dried fruit and nuts, he poured a cup of wine for them to share, snatched up a towel, and brought his booty back to the bed. Handing her the wine cup, he slowly patted her dry, making each touch of the towel feel like a caress. Reclaiming the cup, he said, “Wait . . . did you say Richard offered you to Saladin’s brother?”
He listened in obvious delight as she related her brother’s creative scheme to drive a wedge between the sultan and al-Adil, shaking his head in wonder once she was done. “How lucky he was that the French never found out about that. Instead of him being exonerated at Heinrich’s court, they might have burned him at the stake!”
Joanna agreed, intrigued to see that Richard had just gone up in Raimond’s estimation. “At the very least, it would have convinced the Germans that what our enemies say about us is true, that we trace our descent from the Devil’s daughter.” So then she had to tell him about Melusine, the Demon Countess of Anjou, confessing that her brothers had liked to boast about her, to the horror of any churchmen within earshot. “And what I did tonight will only add to our family’s black legends,” she said, giving him a look that managed to be both teasing and seductive. “I slept with Lucifer!”
He laughed so hard that he almost overturned their cup. “And the night is not over yet. Lucifer might well tempt you again, my lady.” He leaned over then to give her a long, wine-flavored kiss. “How right I was to take you on faith, love!”
Joanna was no longer smiling. “It is true I did not give William a son, a living son. Yet if I conceived once, surely I can do so again.”
“Joanna—”
“No, hear me out, for I need to say this. I know I am no longer young, for I turned thirty-one earlier this month. But if I’d feared I could not bear children, I’d have discussed it with you ere we were wed. Whilst my womb never quickened after my son died, I did not have as many chances to get pregnant as you might think. William had a harim of Saracen slave girls, and he—”
This time he stopped her by putting his finger over her mouth. “That was not what I meant, Joanna. I have no such fears. It is more likely it was William’s fault, not yours, for none of his harim concubines ever got with child, did they? When a man spills his seed into so many different women without any of it taking root, the seed is the culprit, not the women.”
Joanna had consulted with several of the female doctors at the famed medical school in Salerno after she’d failed to become pregnant again, and they’d told her the same thing, that sometimes the husband could be the one at fault. But she’d never heard a man acknowledge such a possibility until now. “No, William sired no other children,” she confirmed. “And I did wonder at times. . . . But what did you mean, then, about taking me on faith?”