Royal Blood. Rona SharonЧитать онлайн книгу.
The king was delighted with the surprise. He rewarded his queen with doting that put roses in her cheeks and earned Renée a gold point for merit. She studied Mary and her debonair duke. They beamed together. Did she beam with Raphael? King Henry presented the hero of the hunt, extolling his Irish snout and methods. The Irish eyes locked with Renée’s. She looked away.
Queen Katherine’s ambush put the king in good cheer. Michael thought the mythical scene would have been more convincing without the dicing. But what did he know? The occupants of Olympus might have been avid gamblers, too. His mood was much improved. He had scored his first good point with the king without raising eyebrows.
The party sat down to dinner on the carpets. Chapleted nymphs with flowing sheer scarves surrounded the queen as luscious petals, tempting the eye. Renée, in cerulean, sat between Anne and another lady. He wanted to speak to her but did not know how to approach. She seemed so distant; she would not meet his gaze. He wanted to apologize, to whisper secrets, to steal a kiss of peace. As for Buckingham’s dagger, secreted in his casket, there was not much he could do with it. He could not walk up to the king and say, “Your Majesty, the Duke of Buckingham is working to supplant you. Here is the dagger I wrested from his hand last night when he mistook me for you and tried to stab me.” He had no powerful allies to corroborate the allegation, no mentor to consult. The dagger was unique and had a big S etched in the hilt but lacked the power of speech to admit it had played a part in a failed attempt on King Henry’s life. Buckingham would learn Michael’s identity and say his blade was stolen. His only recourse was to stay on the alert, in case Buckingham should try again, as Michael believed he would.
“Does the French court play games after al fresco feasts?” Wyatt asked Princess Renée.
The assembly, replete with venison and frumenty, leaned in to hear her response so that they could repeat it afterward to unlucky absentees and sound amazingly au fait, stylish, and French.
“Certes,” she answered. “Many games.”
Michael’s mind hardly registered the games she listed; he was preoccupied with ogling her. Her skin was creamy, her hair dark, thick, and glossy, her neck a fragile stem; her pink lips were a perfect rosette, her teeth pearly and even. Her breasts, swelling above the jeweled bodice, were small and intriguing. He marveled that he should become aroused imagining how the pert things looked when his taste tended toward plump dukkys. Everything about her was confection-like, petite and dainty. She glowed with youth and vitality. She exuded fierceness and wit. Above all, he admired her eyes. Vivid, purplish blue, framed with dark eyelashes, the windows to her soul were flames, like the flower-de-luce, the armorial motif of the Valois royal family and of France.
Renée was the brightest jewel in Queen Katherine’s entourage.
I could burn, he thought with foreboding, startled, besieged, heart pounding turbulently. I could burn for this wisp of a woman.
“What is your favorite game, Princess?”
“Cache-cache.” She smiled, her eyes twinkling naughtily.
“Pray, teach us!” King Henry demanded.
“Eh bien”—Renée took a sip of wine, dampening her lips—“the ladies run and hide, and the gentlemen, wearing blindfolds, look for them. When a gentleman catches a lady, he guesses her identity. If he is correct, she bestows him with a kiss; if he is wrong, he must atone for his error with a gift. His gift could be a poem, a flower, a trinket—if he is generous—anything.”
“I say!” Wyatt beamed. “Blind man’s buff with a naughty French twist!”
The king looked fascinated. “If a gentleman is blindfolded, how will he catch the ladies?”
“Oh, we make bird sounds to lure him.” Renée offered imitations of bird communication.
Michael’s eyes were riveted on her mouth. The only thing keeping him from pouncing on it was his vow to be the one to kiss the rosebud lips at the end of the game. His body stiffened as he imagined her nipples in the shape of those lips, but he dared not stretch his imagination toward the petals between her thighs for fear he might embarrass himself.
“Do you get caught often, Lady Renée?” asked Wyatt.
Michael did not like the interest he perceived in the man’s eyes.
“I always get caught!” Renée laughed. “And have plenty of gifts to show for it.”
King Henry laughed. “Ladies, dare you venture into the greenwood with rascally fellows?” At the excited assents, he stood up. “What shall we use for blindfolds?” Before he completed the sentence, the nymphs were plucking off mufflers, scarves, tuckers, and stoles and dropping them in a colorful heap at his feet, loot to the conqueror. “Ladies, disperse!”
“All hid, all hid!” Wyatt clucked, as if herding chickens.
Giggling, chirping, and tweeting, the queen’s maids of honor and youthful ladies-in-waiting scattered in all directions, dissolving into the shrubbery, taking cover behind bushes and trees.
Michael was not about to miss this for the world. He snatched a diaphanous cerulean scarf, redolent of ambergris and lavender, and took to the trees.
Renée clasped Mary’s hand and ran into the wood, then went back and whisked Anne with them. She was not letting this woman out of her sight. A medley of silly twittering and hysterical giggles arose from the surrounding greenery. All the flower bushes were animated with birdsong.
“God’s teeth, you have conjured a menagerie, Wyatt.”
“That’s my Charles,” Mary whispered excitedly, and chirped in response.
“A dovecot,” said the bearded fellow, Lord Stanley.
“Hen coop.”
“Mews.”
“A female privy council!”
“God protect us!” cried Sir Francis Bryan, eliciting masculine chuckles from the thicket.
“An apiary,” said Michael Devereaux. “With three bees in the nearest skep, methinks.”
“Glad will this honey-stalk be should you let me to your honeycomb, bee,” berhymed Wyatt.
“And pump you full of honey-seeds,” finished Compton.
“Pray, do not leave us, Your Grace,” Wyatt pleaded with Suffolk when the duke drifted away from their group, “for I might grope Stanley by accident, and then what will become of me?”
“A holed honey-bag, for I will run you through, Wyatt. I swear I will,” Stanley replied.
“Heartless rascal,” Wyatt protested in a mock prissy tone.
Male laughter boomed. Anne squeaked at Michael. Mary darted to another tree, closer to her lord, and chirped sweetly. Suffolk stumbled toward her, his arms outstretched. Mary took a step back, softening her song. Observing them, Renée recognized their play for the courting ritual it was: she flirted, he responded, she retreated, he pursued, listening for hints. He caught her. She melted in his arms. “My canary,” Charles murmured before he kissed his wife, still blindfolded.
Suddenly embarrassed for spying on them, Renée turned away, leaning back against a tree. She had had to scheme and apply herself so hard to get Raphael to notice her, really notice her, as a woman, and he had been so timid. She assumed it was her elevated station that daunted him, turning him into a skittish responder, never the aggressor. And yet here was Charles Brandon, grabbing and pawing his wife—Renée’s English counterpart—with all the passion and mastery of a man in love. But then Suffolk was a soldier, whereas Raphael was an artist. His was not the type to conquer and plunder. He was reflective, gentle, and absentminded. He needed her to take care of him. Oh, how she wished she had not seen Mary with her ardent husband.
She opened her eyes to find Michael Devereaux lurking nearby. Jesu! He had her cerulean scarf tied around his head,