‘Oh,’ she murmured, one slender hand idly touching her brow.
‘Your Majesty . . .’ he said softly, glancing at the curves beneath the coverlet.
‘Who is it? Who? Is it you, Physician? Oh,’ she sighed coolly. ‘I am too, too ill.’ She gestured for him to come to her, her eyes still firmly shut.
‘No, it is Guillaume de Plaisians, your Majesty,’ he answered, playing the little charade for the benefit of the lady of the bedchamber who was hiding behind a curtain in the shadows.
‘Oh Monsieur de Plaisians! I am afraid I am no good to you at all! Feel my brow, it burns!’
‘No doubt,’ he mumbled, wondering lustily what other parts were as warm.
‘And my heart . . . it beats strangely.’ She opened her eyes and gazed into his . . . hazel, clear, hungry. ‘Feel it, perhaps I shall die?’ She caught his hand in hers and drew it to her breast. Guillaume felt those firm orbs only the slightest distance from his touch and experienced an animal passion, that straining toward intercourse, is not satisfied until it is satiated.
‘The fire is hot,’ he said, musing on which way to take her first, ‘and the coverlet far too heavy, your Majesty. These things have combined to cause you this distress . . . I suggest your maid use less fuel in the hearth, and arrange for another coverlet to cover you or the doctor shall have to resort to lancets.’
She sat up, letting the coverlet fall away, revealing that there remained only a sheer layer of fabric between Guillaume and his prize.
‘Permit me to allow a little air in,’ he said after a good observation.
He walked to the window and opened it. A rush of cool air entered the chamber.
‘I feel better already.’ She gave him a capricious smile. ‘I think you are most wise, it is far too stuffy in here. I don’t believe I shall need the doctor after all.’ She raised one brow and fluttered her lashes. ‘Marie? Marie!’
The dour old woman surfaced only a little from behind the curtains.
‘Fetch me my shawl! Come, Marie, it is only the royal lawyer come to arrange my affairs, be an angel and go tell the doctor I have no need of him. It seems I am recovered. It is a miracle!’ Her laugh was full-bodied and most comely.
When the article had been placed around her shoulders and the maid with suspicious eyes had been summarily dispatched, they were alone.
‘It is a shame the doctor resides so far away at the royal palace. The poor woman will take all day to get there,’ she said, pursing her lips and frowning. ‘But you must tell me, monsieur, before we . . . get down to business, how goes the trial?’
‘Slow and tedious, your Majesty.’ He inched closer, loosening his cloak. ‘Slow and tedious.’
‘Yes, a most monotonous affair . . . Do you know that Monsieur Jacques de Molay is Isabella’s godfather?’ She patted the space beside her on the bed. ‘Who would think of it? It seems like only yesterday I saw him at the funeral of our dear Catherine of Valois, walking beside the pall and holding one of its cords. How can one imagine that all the time . . . he was committing such unspeakable crimes . . .’ She made a little shudder and continued. ‘Whatever the case, I trust that what the King decides is most surely well decided, for what do I know of men . . . my husband, monsieur . . . is not a man.’ She said this in a voice that was lower and softer, her eyes shining like two olives.
‘It is a shame to waste such womanliness on him.’ He brought his face to hers, only inches from her lips, teasing her. ‘You are a rare pearl cast before a swine.’
She laughed. It sent ripples of desire over his spine.
‘How well you put things, monsieur! I would wager most men at court are lesser for being compared to you . . .’
She smelt of peaches.
‘You are most kind,’ he answered, venturing to touch the quivers that strained upwards and defied gravity.
‘Ahh . . .’ she sighed, ‘yes . . . why only a few days ago . . .’ Her eyes rolled in her head and returned to his. ‘I heard the King complimenting you. He said that you are going to burn them all.’ She said this as though the thought of a burning amplified the burning between her milky thighs.
The thought excited him also, and he was suddenly lost in his robust immediacy and heard nothing else. Quickly he removed the coverlet and placed his body atop her fine and curvaceous one and allowed the vertigo of lust to take him to that world of intense awareness, where in a frenzy he found himself engulfed in her warmth.
When he had reached the pinnacle of exhilaration, he had seen two things: the beautiful woman beneath him, crying out with surprise and pleasure, and, in his mind’s eye, Jacques de Molay, engulfed in flames.