And exploded.
She fell, fell, fell, shedding a thousand pieces of light like the fireworks he had told her of.
And he thrust into those flying embers, spinning them off into the void. But it was only to make room for another explosion, another burst of mystical incandescence with even more color than the last.
And he thrust and thrust and thrust, and his eyes were full of rain and her. He tightened underneath her and shouted his release, his hosanna to her, his Susannah.
What was left of her came down onto his chest. She was in pieces, torn apart by him. But her ear was pressed to him, and the throb of his heart was hers. His ribs rose and fell under her head as his lungs filled with air and then emptied again, and her lungs did the same.
His arms came around her, and the pieces of her slowly came back together again.
They were the same pieces in the same places as before but lined up better than before. Smooth and even and complete.
She was whole.
Eighteen
Like all great men, her king knew the heights of passion could only be reached if one had pleasure in giving pleasure.
—The Concubine and Her King.Unpublished MS.
Henry brushed his cheek back and forth across her wet hair as she lay on him.
“I want to take you somewhere warm and dry.”
She lifted her head. Her eyes were languid and soft as if she had been dreaming. “I’m warm. Aren’t you warm?”
“Dry, then,” he conceded. “Where shall we go? I think Carruthers was going to arrange rooms at The Swan.”
“I can’t go there.”
She got off of him, sat on the ground, and he felt bereft, only wanting to reach for her, to pull her back down to him despite what he had said only a moment ago about going elsewhere.
He had broken the spell with his talk of Carruthers and rooms and The Swan.
The Swan.
He sat up. There was no place for fear, for hiding, for shame in any of his feelings towards her. He wanted her to know that. And he wanted her to feel the same, to know herself as a woman cherished, not scorned.
“You can go anywhere, Susannah. You’ll be on the arm of an earl. No one would dare treat you badly.”
“I know. And I know an earl can go where he likes and do what he likes. But that’s only if he has no care for others.”
She smiled at him, and her enchantment took hold of him once more.
She went on, “And I know Ashthorpe cares, he just doesn’t understand that the attention he’d be paid would take attention from the bride-to-be.”
“And your brother.”
“And my brother.” A laugh. “But Dando would welcome that.”
She stood, and he saw her glorious, sturdy legs before she pulled down her skirts and covered them, the wet cloth clinging to them. She smiled at her torn shift and levered her breasts back into her stays. She pulled up the shoulders of her dress and began to tie the front.
He put off deciding how he was going to manage to rise with a modicum of dignity by doing up the buttons of his breeches instead.
“We could go to that other public house. The one you tried to foist on me the day we met? The Red Dragon.”
“The Red Lion.” She took a moment before shaking her head. “No. You’re coming to the cottage with me.”
