Darkwitch Rising Read Free

between his hands.
    Her muscles tensed beneath his fingers.
    He lowered his face until it was but a finger’s distance above hers. “I have no doubt that as I speak our courtiers and ladies, indeed half the realm, stand huddled against the other side of the far door, ears pressed against its hardness, wondering what we do alone in here. What do you think they imagine?”
    His voice was light and teasing, and as its reward, he felt her face relax slightly.
    “Perhaps that we discuss great matters of state,” she said, her voice low.
    “Perhaps, but no. I think not. What else might they consider?”
    “Perhaps that you rebuke me for some childish wrong.”
    “I hope not,” he said, his voice and face now sober, “for that would be a stain on my soul, and I am most sorry I should ever have given them the fodder to imagine such a thing.
    “ I think,” and he lowered his face that final distance between them and planted a soft kiss on her mouth, “that they imagine we sit in silence on our cold thrones, and stare out the windows at the stiff, formal gardens, and wish to ourselves that we were anywhere else but in each other’s presence.”
    “I sincerely hope not,” she said, “for that is not what I wish right now.”
    “Then perhaps they imagine that I have been so overcome by my desire for you—”
    Her cheeks stained even rosier.
    “—that I have begged for solitude so that I might enjoy my wife’s love.”
    “My lord—”
    “Perhaps even now they think I have borne you to that bench by the window—” She giggled.
    “—and there avail myself,” his voice grew deeper, a little hoarser, and she could hear real admiration within it, “of your sweet, wondrous white flesh. What say you, wife? Shall I?”
    “My lord! It lacks but an hour until noon. We cannot—”
    “Parliament may plot to make my life a misery,” he said, “but it has not yet passed that act which forbids the nation’s monarch from making love to his much-admired wife during the daylight hours.”
    “You admire me?”
    “Most particularly during this beautiful hour before noon. What say you, wife. Shall we? That bench looks right inviting.”
    “But…but they’ll know !”
    His only answer was to kiss her neck, and lay his hand on her bosom.
    “Charles…” she said, and he heard the weakness in her voice, and it encouraged him to turn tease into reality.
    And so, atop a beautiful brocaded bench set into one of the great windows of the gallery at Oatlands, Charles I of England made love to his young wife while their courtiers crowded the door outside and a shaft of sunlight broke through the clouds and clothed the couple’s soft movements in gold.
    Although this was not Charles and Henrietta Maria’s marriage night, it was the day on which they made their marriage, and it was also the day during which they conceived one of the greatest kings that England would ever know.
    Far away in London a fair-haired, hazel-eyed boy in his mid-teens raised his face to the sky. He was tall for his age, and too thin for his height, but he held himself gracefully nonetheless, and his face already held hints of the handsomeness it would assume inmaturity. He stood in one of London’s innumerable back alleys, hidden in shadow. At his side stood a solemn-faced toddling girl of some eighteen months. She was a pretty little thing, with soft brown eyes and silvery hair, but her prettiness was marred by a blank look of terror in those dark eyes, and she stood tense and fearful, as if expecting a blow at any moment.
    The boy held her by the hand, and, as he lowered his face, he gave her flesh a squeeze, painfully enough that the girl gave a low gasp, her eyes filling with tears.
    “Do you feel it, Jane?” said the boy. “Do you know what has happened?”
    She made no reply save for two great fat tears that rolled down her cheeks.
    The boy squatted so he could look directly into her eyes. “You do feel it, don’t you? Brutus is back, your