“This is my seduction,” Seymour replies. She pulls Cleves’s breeches off and parts her legs, kissing her way up each one. The fire hisses. The warmth Cleves feels as Seymour’s tongue finds the centre of her pleasure is nothing to do with the flames from the hearth.
All reason flies from her mind. All regret at waiting so long to do this, all fear of doing it too soon, or at all, is banished by the rightness of Seymour’s mouth hot against her most intimate part.
They worship each other through the night, sometimes playful, sometimes serious, only ever stopping to stoke the fire. Fingers on and inside each other, tasting each other and themselves. They both understand how to pleasure women, and their experience makes their time all the sweeter. Cleves has never understood men’s obsession for virgins. The notion of being the only one to possess a body is alien to her – why should it matter? Seymour’s experience is one of the greatest joys of their coupling. She knows how to speak to Cleves. She knows where to touch, how to explore, and she knows what pleases her and how to communicate it. It is liberating, joyful, sensuous, and Cleves has never been more satisfied.
As Cleves lies back in the chair by the dying fire, a slumbering Seymour draped around her and the sun promising dawn through the windows, Cleves knows that the tidal wave is upon her. She is drowning, and it is exquisite.
“This was nice,” she murmurs against Seymour’s hair.
“It was more than nice, you fool.”
Cleves strains to surface, reaches for the shore, “We simply needed to do this, didn’t we? Now we can be allies once more.”
Seymour is nearly asleep, but Cleves thinks she hears her reply through the drowsiness. “If you say so, Queen of Cnothan.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Cecilia
They think her an idiot. They think she does not know that they are lying to her. They think she does not see that they have been fucking each other with their eyes throughout the meal. As if Cecilia of all people cannot see desire when it is before her.
She makes sure Johana sees her enter her chamber, and waits until his footsteps recede. Then, kicking off her shoes, she slips out once more and tiptoes on stockinged feet to Seymour’s room. Usually Seymour keeps it locked, but with Cleves here she has been distracted. Cecilia turns the door handle, holding her breath. Miraculously, the door opens.
Cecilia goes immediately to the trunk, throwing it open and tossing piles of gowns onto the floor in her haste to find that simple one with the hard hem. It is still at the bottom of the trunk – how predictable. Cecilia tears the stitches, pulling the shard out and moving it in the light this way and that. It is hardly a knife, but with enough force it could be used as a weapon.
Now for the second part of her plan.
Johana’s chamber is at the end of the hallway, in the wing furthest from the banqueting hall. That will work in her favour. His door is locked from the inside. He does not, after all, have the temptation of a haughty queen to distract him. She knocks softly.
“Who is it?” Johana says.
“Your cousin is making all manner of irritating moans in the hall beneath my chamber,” she says.
“And? I did not think you a prude,” he replies.
“I wish to sleep.”
“So put a pillow over your head. I am not going to interrupt my cousin when she is having a good time.”
Cecilia sighs, frustrated. “Let me be clear, sir,” she says. “If you do not tell her to be quieter, I shall set up such a racket that it will be impossible for her to have any pleasure at all.”
Johana curses. There is the sound of a key in the lock, and then the door is opened. Johana is in his nightshirt, and if Cecilia did not suspect that her gender was not his preference, she might have been tempted to try a little pleasure of her own. But now is not the time. Before he can say anything more, she steps towards him and punches the shard into his stomach.
She has never stabbed anyone before – not like this, anyway. The wet slip of blood and organs, the breathy gasp, is not to her taste. He staggers back, crumpling to the floor as she pulls the shard free. Cecilia looks around. There are only a few places where the keys to her freedom could be. She searches the trunks first, ignoring Johana’s laboured breaths.
“Where are they?” she mutters, as one after another of the trunks yield nothing but clothes. She peers beneath the bed, pulls apart the pillows and cushions. Nothing. She is running out of time: who knows how long the queens’ coupling will last.
She kneels before Johana. His face is unusually pale. A pool of blood gathers around him.
“Tell me where the keys are or I will drive this shard into your cock next,” she says.
He struggles to focus on her, but when they come the words are clear: “Fuck you.”
Despicable heroism. He knows he is dying; she cannot touch him now. She leans in once again. “You have not the strength to scream. I think I could use this on your treacherous cousin before she realises I’m even in that hall, don’t you?”
The gathering night makes him slow to comprehend her. She presses home the point: “The choice is very simple, sir. My freedom, or your cousin’s life.”
Cleves will die soon either way, of course, but he’s not in any state to realise that. He moans, wracked with guilt in his final moments,but eventually he makes the right choice. He reaches for one of the floorboards. Cecilia finds a crack in it and prises it up, tearing her fingernails in the process. Beneath the floorboard: the keys to the lodge.
