I have not a moment to prepare myself. Like a warrior charging into battle, Henri gives a mighty thrust and disappears inside me—stopping only when his loins collide with mine.
In all the months we feasted on stolen kisses, all the evenings he fondled me and crooned words of love, all the frustrated moments I longed for this and could not have it, never did I properly imagine the exquisite feeling of his flesh inside me. As he draws himself in and out, covering my face and neck with kisses, nipping and teasing my nipples with his lips and teeth, I am overcome. I want to touch every part of him. My hands run along his back beneath his shirt. My legs entwine behind his buttocks. I cry out in pleasure and the sound of my own voice excites me further. I want to shout to all the world that he is mine.
Harder and harder he presses me, his face growing fierce. I wonder if he will go through me and touch the silken sheets I rest upon. I close my eyes, helpless in the face of my own sensations. Without warning, the tunnel of my flesh, which he occupies so fully, begins to spasm. I keen his name, and as I do his voice joins mine, joyous, strangely strangled and shouting. Collapsing on top of me, he rolls onto his back, taking me with him. With my head resting on his chest, I can hear his heart racing faster than horse ever galloped. I can feel his hand stroking my hair.
“Dear God,” he murmurs, “I must have you night and day. Must dwell inside you. I swear your body was made to please mine.”
He is pleased! The thought fills me with pride and thanksgiving. He loves me, he has taken me and I have pleased him. Should my heart stop beating in this moment, it would be enough.
CHAPTER 15
January 1572—Paris, France
Another year has begun. I am to be painted by Clouet. It has been more than ten years since he made a portrait of me, dressed in cream. This time I will wear black. How fitting. Jeanne d’Albret has left Pau and moves ever northward, bringing with her a will to come to terms, and my detestable cousin.
After a year’s delay I felt certain the Queen of Navarre had no real interest in a marriage between myself and the Prince of Navarre. I started to feel safe. But I underestimated Mother. When wheedling and bribing failed, she turned to her favorite method: threats. Her Majesty intimated she would seek a papal investigation into the validity of Jeanne’s marriage to Antoine de Bourbon. Such an examination would call into question my cousin’s standing as First Prince of the Blood.
Who can say if there was any true defect in Jeanne’s union? The Queen of Navarre, as a member of a reviled sect, may simply have despaired of a fair hearing from the Holy Father. Whatever her reasoning, Jeanne wrote saying if His Majesty would confirm her son’s position, the Prince of Navarre would wed me. Without a miracle, I will be my cousin’s wife before we see another autumn. So my heart is as dark and heavy as the gown I am fastened into for my portrait.
I am not the only one in a black mood. Ruggiero il vecchio predicts Mother will die near Saint-Germain. All work on the Tuileries has been halted because it lies in the diocese of Saint-Germain l’Auxerrois. And even such a precaution does not lift the pall that has settled on Her Majesty. I am not sorry. Mother has blighted my life. I am glad that her happiness has been taken by this prophecy, even though I am not quite wicked enough to wish her dead.
If delight in another’s distress were all I had to sustain me, mine would be a miserable existence. After another prolonged absence, however, my love, my Duc, has again returned to Court. He has been au Louvre daily—letting his wife, pregnant again, languish at the H?tel de Guise, clutching a basin and heaving, while he flirts with me. Mother casts us warning looks but seems willing to tolerate the renewed attention we pay each other. I cannot understand this indulgence on her part, but I do not care to delve too deeply into it.