She can barely breathe. She has not one but two wolves in her home, and she does not know how to get them out.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Cleves
Everything has its place at Cnothan. It may not seem that way, on account of all the animals, but even the animals know where they are allowed and where they are forbidden. It is the same with things: each letter in Cleves’s study is carefully stowed in a particular order.
It is the same with people. Johana belongs in Ezzonid. Cleves in Cnothan. Seymour in thesunscína: visible but untouchable.
It’s always the people who cause problems with the order, never the animals. Johana has come here and is making no move to return to his proper country. And Seymour: Seymour has seemingly vanished. It bothers Cleves, in as much as she ought to know where Seymour is for her own safety. Not because she takes any particular interest in that woman’s wellbeing.
“Something is troubling you,” her lover says from her position between Cleves’s legs.
“Forgive me,” Cleves says, sitting up. Her lover, Lady Arundell, kisses her way up Cleves’s body. Cleves tries to lose herself in the sweetness of it, burying her hand in the woman’s hair.
“Your hair is the colour of the sun, did you know that?” Cleves says, letting her head fall back to provide easier access to her neck. Arundell bites her gently as thanks for the compliment. It is unexpectedly fierce for the usually pliant Arundell, and it makes her think of Seymour tearing and sawing at her own gown with a crone’s tooth.
“I have lost you again,” Arundell says, pulling away from her. She is not one for petulance, but her lips are pursed. Cleves grasps the back of her head and pulls her in for a kiss, enjoying the taste of her own desire on Arundell’s tongue. But Arundell places a hand on her chest.
“Talk to me,” she says. “Let me be your secret-keeper, Cleves.”
“What could be more secret than our assignations?” Cleves says, turning her attention to Arundell’s bare shoulder. She strokes the branch of bone that runs just beneath the skin. “Does it make me very strange that I can be so attracted to such parts of a body?” she says. “This bone here, and then here, and here …” She kisses the shoulder bone, then the rivets beneath Arundell’s neck, and then down to the jut of her hips.
“Cleves,” Arundell says. It is a command. Cleves sits up, ignoring the way Arundell reaches for her. They have always had an easy tactility, but Cleves has known this moment was coming. It always does.
“I have never misled you,” she says.
“I know.”
“We are both married.”
Arundell fumbles her way through the coverlets to bridge the distance between them. “I am not asking for a proposal, my queen. You know that is not what I am asking.”
Cleves hears laughter, then. Laughter and the stamp of armour, coming ever closer.
“You can tell me anything,” Arundell says. She places a hand on Cleves’s cheek, and for a moment Cleves is almost tempted. But friendship is harder, far harder, to extricate oneself from than lust.
“I have much business to attend to,” she says, climbing out of bed and pulling on her stays. Arundell pulls the coverlets across her naked body. She tries to laugh, but it’s a hollow sound.
“Cernunnos forbid you ask your court to do anything.”
“You know how particular I am. Trust me, it is easier for everyone if I do it myself,” Cleves says. She steps into her skirt and then pulls the bodice over her head. The strings are tangled, though, and even with her dexterous fingers she cannot find a way to pull it tight at the back.
“Let me,” Arundell says. She climbs off the bed and stands behind Cleves, naked. Her breath is warm upon Cleves’s arms as she works her way through the knots.
“It is safer this way,” Cleves says into the silence.
“And that is all you want? Safety?”
Cleves almost laughs, except she knows that Arundell might take that as derision. The question is stupid. “Of course. Is it not what we all wish for?”
Arundell finishes undoing the knots and begins to pull at the strings. The boning tightens around Cleves’s ribs and waist – plank after plank of scaffolding to prop her up, to protect her.
“There,” Arundell says at last. “You are all armoured.” The nightingale’s song is inside her words.
“My thanks, my lady,” Cleves says. She cannot turn around, though she knows she should. She must give her lover the respect of a proper farewell.
“My husband returns from the north tomorrow,” Arundell says. Cleves smiles at the floor, closes her eyes. The sweet woman knows what she needs from her, and has given it to her as a final gift. She turns and takes both of Arundell’s hands in her own.
