The Forbidden Queen полностью

I took a comb to my tangled hair, pulling on the knots as if the pain would dissolve my grief. I could not weep. The guilt was mine, choosing to go to the room of a passionate man then fleeing when he had kissed me.

I looked again, turning my head as I saw the abrasion on my cheek. It was red, with the slightest breaking of skin. Of course. His chain of office had marked me. How appallingly apt.

A terrible memento of a disastrous evening.

Guille drew back the heavy bed-curtains that had been witness to my lack of sleep, and halted with a hiss of consternation.

‘My lady!’

‘What is it?’ My reactions, both of mind and body, were slow.

‘What have you done?’ She disappeared, returned and held out my reflecting glass.

And I looked. The abrasion, a minor blemish the night before, was angry and red with the purple-blue of bruising flaring across my cheekbone.

‘Who did this to you?’

I touched the tender spot, flinching at the pain. Here was truth I could not admit to.

‘It was my own fault,’ I managed smoothly. ‘I fell against the bed foot. I had spent too long on my knees at my prie-dieu.’ It was horribly noticeable. I closed my eyes: the last thing I needed was to draw attention to my reprehensible behaviour. ‘Can we remedy it?’ I asked.

‘A day for some clever disguise, I think.’ And Guille, rummaging, lifted a chest of cosmetics from the depths of my coffer.

I rarely used them. My skin was fashionably pale and close textured, but today I needed subterfuge. Guille and I knew enough from my mother, who had been expert in applying glamour to win the eye of a man. My need was to hide from him. Owen Tudor must not suspect that our meeting had left its mark on me.

We spent a useful hour opening packets and phials, finally applying powdered root of the Madonna lily to whiten my face and hide the abrasion. Ground leaves of angelica added a glow to my cheeks and drew the eye from the bruising.

‘It’s better,’ Guille ventured, a frown between her brows. ‘I suppose.’

‘But not good.’ I cast my looking glass on the bed in despair.

‘We can’t hide it completely.’

‘No.’ I sighed. It was the best we could do. I broke my fast in my chamber and absented myself from Mass, but I would have to join my household for dinner, or my empty chair would cause comment. I would have to scrape up what I could of my poor fortitude and pretend that nothing was amiss.

And I would have to face Owen Tudor.

When I took my place on the dais, with no thought of what was on my plate, and no ear for Father Benedict’s blessings, all I could see in my mind was Owen Tudor’s gaze sweep over me, then return, as I had first walked defiantly into the room. The gaze became a stare, his whole stance taut, until he remembered his duties and stalked away to summon the pages to bring in the serving platters. All I was left with was a memory of his stunned expression, for the much-vaunted cosmetics were not concealing the livid bruise to any degree.

I already knew this. My damsels, meeting with me in my solar, had been sympathetic with my plight and full of suggestions from their own remedies, but nothing could conceal the discolouring. Or my remorse when I saw Owen Tudor’s reaction.

Not Master Owen. He would never be Master Owen again. How could I think of him as a man in a position of subservience to me when he had held me in his arms? When his kisses had turned my blood to molten gold? Unfortunately, such was my nature that the gold had turned to lead and I had dealt him the worst of blows. I had encouraged him, only to repulse him.

Throughout the whole length of that meal contrition stalked me, for what had I seen, for that one breath-stopping moment, before he had masked all thoughts? Shock certainly, for he would not have known. But then a sudden blaze of furious anger. It had made my blood run cold, and added to the muddle of my thoughts.

How dared he be angry with me?

And yet why should he not? I admitted as I picked at the plums in syrup and sweet pastry set before me. Did I not deserve it? I had given him to believe that I was willing, kissing him with a wanton fervour previously unknown to me. I had pressed my body to his in silent demand that he could not have misinterpreted. And then, when his embrace had grown too powerful, I had run away, when I should have had enough confidence to conduct an affair with a man with some self-possession.

If that was what I wanted. Even if he was a servant.

And if I did not want it, I should not have responded to him in the first place. Had he not given me the space to withdraw after my first foolish admission?

You need fear no gossip from my tongue.

The fault was undoubtedly mine, and I deserved his ire.