My loss of Michelle, the space she had left in my heart, took me unawares and caused the tears to overflow and slide down my cheeks as I mourned her anew. And there was Edmund, crouching beside me, drying them with the edge of my sleeve.
‘You must not weep, lady. I should be whipped from your presence for causing you such grief.’
‘You did not.’ I denied, sniffing, pushing his hand away.
‘I say that I did. And I ask pardon.’ For a moment he remained at my side, silent. Then audaciously tilted my chin with his hand. ‘You are too solemn, too circumspect for a beautiful woman of…I wager it’s no more than four and twenty years.’
Still emotional, I ignored the question. ‘I am not allowed to be other than solemn and circumspect.’
‘But today you are allowed.’ He let his thumb stroke slowly, heart-touchingly slowly, along the edge of my jaw, before taking my hand between both of his. ‘And tomorrow. And the day after that—every day until you call a halt. Are you not Queen? Do you not make your own rules?’
I was too astonished to reply when Edmund placed a kiss in the centre of my palm.
‘You are my queen,’ he said before he left me. ‘The fairest of queens. And I will serve you well.’
We wore masks through most of those days. We were enchanted beings, woven about with invisible threads so that we were made subject to Edmund’s clever sorcery. Some mimicked lions, some pheasants, some adopted the gilded features of god-like humans. I kept my silvered angel face, and the wings when the foolish mood took me.
Beware masks. How much freedom they allow us when we are anonymous behind the painted expressions. My features were hidden, and therefore I acted as if no one knew who I might be. Of course everyone knew, but still I acted on impulse, abandoning Gloucester’s strictures. And how strange, my sight narrowed and restricted to the two angelic apertures. How often did Edmund fill that narrow view? Too often, some would say. For me it was a true enchantment.
But there was a time, at last, to take off the masks. It was agreed that, at midnight on Twelfth Night, we would gather for the unmasking in my Painted Chamber. I expect it was a truly festive moment—but I was not there. Waylaid by Edmund, I was effortlessly lured onto the battlements where the frost silvered the stonework and my companion wrapped me and my angel wings in the furred heat of his cloak.
It was there that Edmund stripped the hood from my hair and untied the silver strings.
‘My golden queen,’ he murmured against my cheek as his fingers loosened the ties, at the same time loosing the braids of my hair.
‘You are still a large bird!’ I accused, fighting to keep my breathing steady.
‘That can be remedied.’
He pulled off the golden mask, with its cruel beak. And I raised my hand to smooth his tousled hair. Except that he caught it and pressed it to the rich damask above his heart. It beat hard and steady and alluring against my palm.
I froze, a cry catching in my throat.
‘Well?’ he asked. ‘What are you thinking?’
‘I am afraid to think.’
And he kissed me on my mouth.
‘Do you love me?’ he demanded.
I shook my head, a breath of fear crawling across my skin.
‘Do you want to know if I love you?’ he demanded, his eyes bright in the moonlight.
‘No,’ I whispered.
‘I say you lie.’ His lips stroked over my cheek. ‘Do you want to know if I love you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, I do. Now you must kiss me.’
So I did.
‘So do you love me, Queen Kat?’
‘I do. God help me, I do.’
Edmund had opened his clever, fine-fingered hands and I had fallen into them.
Edmund Beaufort loved me. Tentatively, reluctantly at first, then step by glorious step, I loved Edmund Beaufort. I wanted to experience all I had never known about love, all I had failed to experience with Henry, knowing that I would not be rebuffed. Edmund loved me and made no secret of it. I absorbed every moment of delight. I was truly selfish.
By Twelfth Night I had lost my heart, seduced by his skilful antics and his single-minded assault on my emotions. I had not sought to submit to such an overwhelming longing, but Edmund Beaufort had stolen my heart from me and tucked it away so that I was without power to retrieve it.
When I returned to my room, and Guille removed my wings for the final time, she exclaimed that they were bent and frayed, beyond mending. But what did it matter? I was loved, and I loved in return. I could not sleep for the turmoil in my breast, and dawn brought me no respite from its thrall.
The end of the festivities should have brought with it the end of the magic. Yet Twelfth Night was merely the prologue to a feast for all the senses. I was consumed by love. I fell willingly into its flames, disregarding the lick of pain when he flirted elsewhere, tolerating the searing heat of his proximity, because I would have it no other way. My eyes were filled with him, my mouth tingling with his sweetness as if I had sipped from a comb of honey.
