A Signet On Thine Arm

The baths at La Neyt are very well-appointed, and the waters good for bathing – it might have to do with the location, or some other property of the architecture that is so conducive to their solitude. Solitude being a relative term for princes, but there’s no point in having an island retreat if no one will take the hint to leave you alone.

The books and plates have both been cleared away, and the water is cooling around them like a perfumed lake. Anne feels blissfully boneless – drunk with scent and heat and uninterrupted proximity to the man she loves. She’d nestled in between Richard’s knees for aid in rinsing her hair, and it had progressed to kissing and clipping face-to-face like a couple of – well, not virgins, perhaps idiots – in a slippery knot of arms and elbows and ungainly knees. Early on in their marriage there had been bashfulness, more arm-crossing and inadvertent kicking, but Richard has only gotten more graceful since then, and time has mitigated the bulk of any interpersonal awkwardness.

It might not have, for another woman married to another man. In Prague, Anne had known girls of her own age now, and older, who seldom saw their husbands in any capacity, and England has its own fair share of estranged spouses, sometimes for the best of both parties. But it’s difficult to feel self-conscious around a constant companion of four eventful years, as well as a friend, and so far they’ve had the luxury of rarely being parted. It’s safe to say they are mutually acquainted with one another’s every crease and dimple. All steeped in myrrh and lavender it is very easy to be friendly and to make small adjustments, skin against skin.

He tugs her closer against his lap, nonchalantly drawing aside the mass of her long hair and moving his grip on her to a more companionable place. Anne’s damp breasts spill against him and a chuckle escapes her; it feels odd to be fooling around recreationally without even tying up her hair. As far as compromising between temperature and encumbrance there must be some middle ground between dressing to dazzle side by side, buried under cloth-of-gold and pearl, and slippery nudity in a tub built to fit two. (Or a very friendly group of three, but this is perhaps optimistic on Richard’s part.) Wearing a chemise in the water like a bathhouse attendant would be one compromise, but not a good one. The thought had crossed her mind the first time they had gone in the bath together – with the specter of harlotry chasing after, the fear of scandalizing a very nice boy she’d only just met, and on top of that she’d been too afraid of ruining whatever she wore – some superstitious feeling had lingered about the clothes she’d brought with her, that had nearly been lost at sea. In the end it had been better to bare all, to endure a certain amount of awkwardness, and if she could spend all her days like this one, she’d be happy to surrender anything outside their nest. To be snug and left alone together, plain and fine. She would swear off the whole world – not that Richard ever could, even if he were not a king, but he’d know where to find her.

Richard slips back a little into the water, bearing a little more of her weight without complaint and nosing against the top of her head while his hands rest on her shoulders. Anne’s mouth is well-fitted to his throat and she worries a red spot with her teeth. The sensitive terrain trembles a little under her tongue and it’s a pretty thing to suck a purple bite mark while Richard squirms.

After this brief diversion, Anne draws back to inspect her work. It’s her husband’s curse that he does tend to flush like a ripe strawberry, and her mark is freckled with little bursts of red.

“How interesting. It’s shaped a little like France, actually.” She frames it with her fingers, pressing lightly to see if it’ll change color.

“Is it, Anne?” It doesn’t sound as if he finds it very funny at first, but the strain in his voice is something else entirely and as Anne thumbs at it, he breaks down and giggles. “An omen, then,” and he leans down to kiss her.

When her bent back’s turned a draft creeps between the bath-curtains, tracing like a cold finger against her back and making her twist uneasily in the water – Richard moves to rub at her gooseflesh and to cup her breasts with soft damp hands, while Anne fumbles the gap in the drapery closed. Water sloshes perilously.

“Leave it, leave it–”

Richard laughs against her collarbone and Anne exhales very seriously once the breach has been addressed to her satisfaction.

“Easy for you to say, you’re warmer than you have any right to be.”

She catches him up, hands on either side of his prickly, damp neck – the heat of the water had made him blush at first, and he blazes still under her hands. He’s always had a great deal of heat in him, relative to her own nature that is more or less inert; it’s among his best qualities, particularly on a cold night. His lips catch at hers, his tongue playing against her own mouth like a little flame.

With the curtains closed they have a world of their own, a walled-off garden, a vineyard, a tower.

His broad hand slides under her and fits snug between her legs, palming at the thick curls there with some interest before his long fingers find the soft cleft beneath. Anne laughs against his mouth and slips her arms from around his neck, tracing down his sides with her hands. Between their bodies, upon reaching his lap, she finds him to be patiently half-hard – a definitive display of interest, but not urgency. Her fingers trail up to his navel, following by touch the fine track of hair there – which she knows is less golden when damp, but no less amusing.

“If you’d like,” she says, “we could do it in here. That won’t be too unlucky, will it?”

His face briefly looks astonished – he has no right to look so pink with surprise at her proposition while knuckle-deep in her and doing something devilish with his thumb. He must know that people make love in the bath, that they do more than kiss and pet. That’s the general idea behind roomy tubs and young lady attendants in sticky chemises, anyway, at least before commencing the invigorating scourgings. Richard wouldn’t care much for that part; he doesn’t have much of an appetite for the pains of love, and Anne can’t blame him, though it is nevertheless a shame. There are some illustrations she could show him that’d scorch his cheeks – whether that would follow before or after spoiling the bathwater with various bodily fluids not to be shed lightly, she couldn’t say.

“Unlucky, no. Impractical, maybe. Are you sure–”

Anne rocks against his lap a little in practical demonstration, and Richard sputters delightfully.

“I think,” he says, upon regaining composure, “that we’d be better off decamping for somewhere dry, but not yet.”

His free hand on her waist, her heavy little belly falling against him, her broad flank and her thigh – all damp, all warm, and a good thing too, for if she shivered here under his touch and made him hesitate she would fold up on herself like a book, never to be opened again. So she steadies up her back, trying to be invitingly candid and lifting her hips against the building pressure of his circling touch. His fingers begin to work against her in ways that make her legs shake. It’s a rather awkward angle she’s at – the muscles of her thighs might have twitched a little anyway at the inconvenience – but Richard is a firm scaffold beneath her, her repose interrupted by the maddening insistence of his touch. She spreads her legs a little further, feeling the water part around both their bodies, and murmurs some assent in whatever language comes to her tongue.

Richard can be frustratingly stubborn when he wants to, but he seldom abandons his objectives. Anne is fluttering against him for longer than she can think to count, from the first prickles of stirred-up blood through a pleasure welling up insistently to make her cheeks burn and her toes curl. It would be too much, to cry out, but not doing so makes her throat ache and breath comes to her rapidly, shallow perfumed hiccups of air.

Anne sinks back with a little cry, happily – his slick fingertips are still inside her and there’s something pleasantly lewd about the motion of the water between them as he rinses his hands and withdraws. She opens her eyes again, peering up at the embroidered draperies where they hang like veils. Stitched with pomegranates and feathers, little A’s, little R’s.

A long moment passes there, a quiet one. Things settle and unwind. Richard curls up against her, rearranging his long legs to fold in close and yet failing to disentangle from the web of her hair. Again he rests his radiant face against her breast, her wet hair spread out down his broad back like a net. Her fingers nudge apart the individual locks where they remain in waves.

“You are altogether beautiful,” he says, “my love.” His breath stirs against the skin between her breasts and she wishes she could hold him for ever. A dull ache is rising in her insides, the pleasant aftermath of her own climax, and she feels that she might cry.

“Take me to bed,” Anne says, instead of crying at all; she lifts up his face from her breast and kisses his pink cheeks.

Draw thou me after thee–

And the king of England will take her into his chambers, and there they’ll stay – for as long as they both live, or as long as they can afford until his uncles drag him away again. Or until Robert de Vere rides back into view like a conquering hero and they’re both swept up in that – then once the storm’s passed they will hunt together and dine together and sleep together like man and wife, as often as time permits.

She rises first, flushed and dripping as she wrings out her hair. Richard follows suit, pausing first to dry off and slink himself into a robe – this is a choice of modesty Anne does not observe after a cursory encounter with a fluffy towel. Her hair will be damp for ages and ages, but at least she’s unlikely to catch a chill where they’re headed. Anne will go, and Richard will follow.