No Will But His (9 page)

"I've done nothing to bring this about," she said, clasping her hands together, to avoid his seizing hold of them again.

"I did not say you did," he said. "Save existing and having a face and a smile and a voice that the angels themselves would envy." He fell to his knees again, next to her, and she clasped her hands together tight, but that didn't prevent him from clasping his hands, in turn, on top of hers and holding them there, very tight. "But you see how I suffer, and you're too kind, too just, not to wish to alleviate my suffering."

"How . . . how can I?"

"Only give me some token of your love for me."

"But I love you not," she pointed out, reasonably. It sounded cold said like that so she tried to explain, "I like you, of course, and you have taught me so much about the virginal, and I'm ever so thankful."

"Oh, thankful be damned," he said. "Only let me hold you against me, let me feel your body against mine, let me kiss your lips, for otherwise I shall perish, like a man in the desert, denied the water of life."

She looked back at him, worried, hoping he was lying or perhaps having her on—but she could not see any signs that he was pretending what he didn't feel in order to get her to do what he wished, and he did indeed seem to be in great distress. "I would . . ." she said. "Relieve your distress if I knew how . . ."

"Just kiss me. Hold me," he said.

"Not here!" she said, in a hurry, looking toward the door, afraid one of her fellow maids or the duchess herself would come by.

He prized her hands apart from each other and held them in his, looking into her eyes, "But you will do this for me," he said. "You'll let me hold you."

She inclined her head. "If there was a way."

"There is always a way," he said. "If you . . . if you'd be so kind as to come . . . to meet me . . ."

"To meet you where?" she asked.

It seemed to her he thought but for a minute, and then he rose, swift, in one motion. "Put your hands back on the keyboard," he said, and as she obeyed, he came up behind her, and held her, his hands over hers, as though he were correcting her position. "Go you to church," he said, "after our lesson."

"To church!" she said, shocked. The church on the duchess's estate was a small chapel where mass was said each morning and evening. But it was still a consecrated place.

"In the middle of the afternoon," he said. "There shall be no one there. There is no chance of anyone interrupting us."

Kathryn squirmed uncomfortably, aware that her every movement brought her in closer contact with him. "But . . . It is the chapel. It is consecrated, and there is the sacrament there. No, I couldn't."

"What a goose you are," he said lightly, and kissed just the edge of her ear. She could see that she would have to go with him, indeed, to a private place, else he would be doing this all through the lessons, and it was only a matter of time till they were caught. "Do you think the sacrament can see us, then?"

"Yes."

He sighed. "Very well, then, at the entrance to the chapel, there are the stairs that lead to the upper level, where the vestments are kept. Between the chapel and the stairs, there is a dark space. If we step in there, faith, no one can see us—as dark as it is."

Kathryn thought of it and nodded. "Very well."

"You will meet me, then? Oh, angel." He pressed closer against her from behind, his body warm and strong and seemingly capable of overpowering her.

"Not here," she said urgently.

"No," he said, and stepped back enough that though he still leaned over her, holding her hands in his, she could no longer feel his body pressing up against her. "After our lesson," he whispered. "Meet me there."

She nodded once, as steps approached from the hallway toward the door.

"This is how you move your fingers, then," Manox said. "Now, let's try the last movement through again."

Katherine did, her hands trembling, feeling Manox's hot hands upon hers. Despite her tremors, it was perfect.

Manox removed his hands from atop hers as the movement concluded, and she could feel him stepping back and straightening up, and she let her body go limp, allowing the tension to leave her.

From behind came the tap of a walking stick and then the Duchess's voice, "Very well done, Kathryn. You are to be congratulated, Manox!"

Chapter Ten

She did not dare avoid the rendezvous. Oh, the temptation was there, as Manox, having bowed to the duchess and thanked her for her kind words, collected his music and left, looking very proper, as though nothing more had happened between them than the most ordinary of music lessons.

"You're improving greatly," the duchess told Kathryn. "And I can tell you love playing."

Kathryn, turning around and standing, awkwardly, asked Her Grace how she could tell.

"It's the way you're flushed and happy," the duchess said. "As though you'd come from a lover's embrace. Your cousin Anne always looked like that when she'd been playing or composing as well."

"Was she one of your maids, madam?" Kathryn asked, because she would rather think of anything else than how close the duchess had hit near the mark. Because though she was not Manox's lover, that was undoubtedly what Manox wanted.

"Anne? Oh, no. Not she. Too fine for my commanding. Her father wished that she and her sister Mary would be great ladies, you know, and his having merchant's blood, he knew that would require as good an education as any ever seen in this kingdom to carry off. So as soon as they were old enough, he sent them to France to be educated at the French court. They went as part of the retinue of our king's sister, Lady Brandon that is, when she married her first husband, the French king. I think Anne was all of eight when they went." The duchess shook her head as she reminisced. "But Anne still visited often enough when she was in country, and of course, I visited once or twice myself. And she was like you about the music."

"Oh. How . . . how learned and . . . and wonderful she must be," Kathryn said. In her mind's eye she could see Manox would already have reached the space behind the chapel's stairs, and she wondered what he'd do if she didn't hasten to join him. In the disturbance of mind which seemed to possess him, it was all too possible that he would stalk back here and demand she embrace him in front of the duchess.

"Indeed," the duchess said. "She was always, in a way, too grand to be just a gentleman's daughter. We should have known she would end with the crown." She sat down on the chair by the virginal and, looking up at Kathryn, seemed to realize for the first time the girl's discomfort. "What is wrong with you, girl, need you visit the room of easement?"

"Yes, madam," Kathryn said, seizing upon the excuse with relief. "And it please, Your Grace."

"Well, go then," the duchess said. "I would think you'd have seen to it before coming to your lesson, but hasten you hence."

Kathryn hastened. Only instead of rushing toward the bottom of the garden where the privy to which the duchess had alluded so delicately was located, she took a sharp turn at the back door, and keeping close to the house and hoping none of her fellows would cross her path, she rushed in the semi-shadow of the building toward the chapel.

Should anyone ask, she thought she could tell them that she was going to pray. The truth was that she was praying hard enough. Praying that Manox had changed his mind about wanting to hold her and kiss her. Praying that he wouldn't have lost all patience and decided to proclaim their rendezvous in front of the entire household, praying that if he were there and he truly wanted to hold her and kiss her, it wouldn't be unpleasant.

She didn't think it would be that bad. She remembered the heat in her body in response to the heat from his and half feared she would like it much too much, even though she was sure she didn't like Manox himself, not that way. Oh, he was well enough as a music master, but she was sure she didn't wish to marry him or be attached to him and compelled to obey him the rest of her life.

But when she reached the space beside the entrance of the chapel, there was no one else about. The deep recess between the stone wall and the climbing stone steps was so dark that she was not sure whether Manox was there or not, till she heard as if a sigh from the space and then his voice, more breath than whisper, "Kathryn!"

Steeling herself against the horror of entering such impenetrable darkness, she stepped into the space. There was a moment of disorientation for, though her eyes were open, she could see nothing, and then she felt his hands on her, tentative, on either side of her waist, pulling her to him.

Like this, in the dark, unseen, he seemed bigger, overpowering, his arms surrounding her, his body pressing against her, his hair tickling her face, his lips kissing her, first her forehead, then moving down slowly, down one side of her face and then the other, kissing down her graceful, long neck to the hollow of her throat. "Ah, Kathryn, you came," he said, and resumed kissing her yet again. She could feel him press against her, and against her stomach she felt a hardness that she judged to be his male part.

It felt full large, full hard, and very hot, hotter than even his heated hands or his hot breath touching her. Her heart swelled with pride because, though it might be wrong, it meant she had a sort of power over him—the power to make his body react, whether he wanted it or not.

In her pride, she allowed him to hold her close, her face pressed against his velvet doublet, his lips now kissing at the top of her head. "You are the kindest girl that ever lived," he told her. "As well as the most beautiful, possessing the voice of an angel."

He lifted her off her feet and held her up, his powerful arms around her waist, his lips meeting hers. For a moment of confusion she wasn't sure what he wished, and then his tongue was in her mouth, caressing her tongue.

Her eyes used to the darkness, she could now see him, though dimly. As their faces parted, she could see his filled with something much like an ecstatic joy, his green eyes shining in delight. "Ah Kathryn, if only I were a lord and had a title and could make you mine only. I'd own the prettiest songbird that ever was."

She didn't want to be owned, but neither did she think they should be talking, for someone walking by the dark space next to the chapel and hearing voices come from it would immediately know someone was there. If the person who heard them happened to be a moralist or otherwise inclined to interfere in the lives of others, they would be dragged out in disgrace, and then all would be lost.

Instead, Kathryn submitted to more kisses and more embraces and, when he seemed calmer, escaped into the daylight, tugging at her disarrayed garments and combing her disheveled hair back under her bonnet.

At least, she thought to herself, that was done and it hadn't been unpleasant and no one had caught them. Now she need not worry about Manox again.

Chapter Eleven

"Please meet me at the customary place," Manox whispered as he leaned over her to pick up the books from atop the virginal.

Kathryn looked up, confused. "Why? Why?"

He looked at her, then leaned again, to pick up a book he let fall onto the keyboard, "I must touch you again. I must. It's a craving that has me in great suffering . . . The madness of it . . ."

"But I let you!" she said. "I let you once."

As she hissed her response, she sharpened her ears for the duchess's footstep. Lately, the old lady had taken to dropping in on them, and she might do so at any minute.

"Ah," he said, and his hand, seeming fumble for a book managed to drag up the front of her dress, slowly, caressingly. "Ah, but once is not enough, Kathryn. You must come meet me. You must let me . . . touch you again. I shall go mad otherwise," he said.

She sighed. "Very well."

After the lesson she hurried to the space, but this time he did not call her. Instead, he reached out for her, and before she could recover her breath, he'd dragged her back into the narrow space and was on her. This time his hands were on her everywhere, over the dress, feeling every turn and nook of her body, from her swelling breasts to her nascent hips, to the legs beneath.

Quite before she could tell what he was doing, he had her skirts in his hand, and he was lifting them.

"Master Manox!" she said, though she normally avoided saying anything.

"Please," he said. "Please, only let me touch you . . . beneath your clothes. Let me feel your secret, madam."

She opened her mouth to protest but at that moment, half in horror, half in incredulity, she heard the tap-tap-tap of the Duchess's walking stick on the path next to the space, accompanied by the sound of her footsteps and the sound of another, heavier set of steps.

"We will have three masses tomorrow then," the duchess said. "Since it's the anniversary of my late husband's death."

The other voice, recognizably the priest's, answered something that seemed like a long oration on some subject—perhaps even in Latin, Kathryn thought, since the man was quite capable of answering in Latin a question as to whether it was raining.

Manox had her skirts in one hand and his other hand was questing beneath, feeling her things and then dipping beneath her underwear, to feel at the cleft between her legs.

To Kathryn the feel of a hand there—other than her own, and that only when hygiene necessitated it—was so strange, that she squirmed and would have called out, only she was mindful of the voices in the path. The duchess was saying, "No, I would not use the white roses. You remember how my lord felt about—"

Manox was now using both hands to untie Kathryn's undergarments and to pull them down, till they were around her ankles, effectively entrapping her, making it impossible for her to take more than a very-hobbled step. She wondered what he meant to do, as he let her skirt fall, and it seemed to her that he had fallen to his knees, though it was hard to see in the deep darkness.

And then she felt his head beneath her skirts, his beard tickling her knees, her thighs, up and up. She felt his lips reverently kissing her where she scarce dared touch. This time, a sigh escaped her, but the duchess didn't seem to notice, as she was saying, "We shall have some greenery in vases," and the priest was mumbling something in return.