Darker Jewels (45 page)

“But you?” She watched for him to betray eagerness or insistence.

“Ah, Xenya, what must I do to convince you?” he asked with a single, desolate laugh.

She stepped away from him, and after the greater part of a minute while neither of them moved, said, “I want you to hold me. In a short while I want you to hold me.” Her courage faltered. “Start behind me.”

“All right,” he said, remaining where he was while she paced restlessly at the edge of the lamplight, looking at the barren, unfinished side of the new room. “In another month there will be shelves and tables for all the plants.”

“Doubtless,” said Xenya blundy, coming to a halt at last. She steeled herself. “All right. Come.”

Rakoczy could move soundlessly as a cat, but he made sure his thick-soled boots rapped sharply on the flagging, the steps not too quick, for he did not want her to feel pursued. As he reached her, he held out one hand, and slipping it around her waist, drew her slowly back against him, taking care to stop when he encountered resistance. He enjoyed the gradual change that came over her as she leaned back on his chest. “There are a dozen sheepskins in the last stall. The saddler wants them for pads. They are soft and warm.”

She hesitated. “If you wish,” she said uncertainly, her dawning pleasure fading. She wanted to encourage him because she thought he expected it, and because she was afraid to refuse, but all she felt was the need to break away from him, to run out of the room.

“No,” he reminded her, his hold lightening. “As
you
wish.” He bent to kiss her neck at the place where her jaw and ear met. His swift kisses barely brushed her skin, yet she shivered from something other than cold.

Why did it have to be so confusing? she asked herself. Why could she not will herself to take the satisfaction he offered her? Why could she not trust him? He was her husband. They were properly married. The priests and Metropolitan had blessed them. He had treated her far better than many women were treated by their husbands, and for less reason. He had never done the intolerable thing to her. He had been kind and patient and considerate. Then why did she not desire him? Or why did she desire him and cringe from her feeling at the same moment? Why did she dread the rapturous things he had done to her, offered her now? Why could she only find pleasure when he was behind her and she had a clear path to the door? She shook herself mentally and attempted to pay attention to those light, playful kisses he gave her, now at the edge of her brow, now along the nape of her neck as he moved her long plaits aside. She felt his deep chest through the back of her sarafan and rubash- kaya, his steady breathing and the heat of his body. Mercy of God, what was she to do? “I . . . don’t know,” she whispered.

His kisses slowed, became more sensual and lingering. Then he stepped away from her, saying, “I am going to hold my hands out to the side. If you turn and face me, you can put your hands on mine. You will move them where you wish them to be.”

Her voice was a few notes higher than usual, but otherwise she sounded undisturbed by this suggestion.
“What...
what an interesting idea,” she said, and feeling as if she were falling from the top of a mountain, she made herself swing around to confront him.

His hands were at his side, just as he had promised her they would be. He gestured his approval, waiting for her to put her hands on his. “The door is behind you, Xenya,” he reminded her. “I will not move between you and it.”

What embarrassed her the most was how accurately he had spoken her thoughts, for she had feared he would maneuver to block her escape. Not that she intended to run from him, she insisted silently, but without the chance to be
free...
She wanted to tell him he was wrong, but the lie would not come. Instead she reluctantly put her hands on his, laying them palm to palm, fingers to fingers. She noticed that his were somewhat wider but no longer than her own; his thumbs were unusually long and well-formed. Strange, she thought, that she assumed his hands were huge when they were small and beautiful.

As she moved their hands together, experimenting, he watched her face closely. She had so much anguish hidden within her, and it had been there for so long. What more could he do to free her from it, he wondered, than what he had done already? He had been able to share her fulfillment three times, but each time he realized afresh the monumental inward battle she had waged to achieve those few moments of exultation. “If I could erase the past, I would,” he said suddenly.

She was starded. “Your father’s death? And the scars?”

“Not my past; yours.” He leaned forward and very gently kissed her mouth.

Puzzled, she neither responded nor resisted. Their hands were extended to the side, about waist height, their bodies less than a handsbreath apart. Only when he started to move back did she realize their nearness. She pushed hard against his hands, and for an instant felt the immensity of his strength; then he acquiesced, and she realized her authority as she had never known it before, sensed it in the fiber of her being. Amazed, she looked direcdy at him for the first time, her honey-colored eyes meeting his dark ones without hesitation. “It’s true,” she murmured. “You mean what you say.”

“Yes.”

Her eyes remained fixed on his, but carefully she brought her hands down and behind her so that his arms encircled her waist. In spite of her determination she was trembling. “Leave them,” she said as she let go of his hands.

“Are you certain it is what you want?” he asked, with new hope beginning within him.

She nodded, willing herself to try to hold him. “We should be closer?” The doubt had come back into her manner.

“If you wish it,” he said quietly, “come nearer.”

Once more she hesitated; if he had pulled her close or tightened his arms, she would have been frightened, but not as wary as she was now of his abiding tenderness. As much as she wanted to deny it, she yearned for his nearness, for the succor of his hands and his body, for the deliverance he offered her. Gracelessly she leaned against him. “There.”

“No,” he said very gently. “I won’t be your ravisher or your seducer. I am your lover, and I will do nothing if you are not willing—”

She stepped back, testing him, feeling his hands release her with a relief that quickly turned to regret. She glanced toward the door, then made herself give him all her attention, saying with difficulty, “Do you want to take off my clothes?”

“No,” he answered; his face was well-lit and without guile. “But it would make me very happy if you wanted to remove them.”

She nodded, feeling numb. “What do you mean?” she asked, although she knew the answer, stiffening in anticipation of his demand.

His answer was not what she anticipated. “If you want them off, you will have to take them off yourself.” He gave her a moment to protest; when she said nothing, he went on, his voice deep and musical, unhurried. “It would delight me to touch you, Xenya, if you want my touch. I want the scent and the weight and the taste of you. I love your flesh, Xenya, the texture of it, the warmth. I love it because it is yours, because it houses your soul. If you would like—”

She put her hand to his lips. “All right. All right. Don’t bully me.” She reached to unfasten her sarafan, letting the lovely damask red-and-gold silk drop into a puddle at her feet as she shrugged out of it. Now she was in her rubashkaya, and she shivered and told herself she was cold.

He indicated the alcove that had been a stall, and the pile of sheepskins there. “You would be warmer, and more comfortable,” he suggested, but made no move toward it.

“If I wish it?” she ventured, an edge in her tone. “Or do you intend we should lie there?”

He would not be provoked. “If it is what you wish, Xenya Evgeneivna.”

She was trembling at the enormity of her fright and her longing; her need of him was more shocking than the impact of her hideous memories, which she tried futilely to banish. Laggardly she stepped free of her discarded sarafan and dawdled her way to the alcove. “I suppose you’re right,” she allowed, remaining standing. “They look more comfortable than the stones.”

Rakoczy followed her, coming to her side, away from the door. “And now? What now, Xenya?”

Her answer was so soft that he almost did not hear it. “Love me.”

“If you wish it,” he said, all but closing the distance between them though he did not reach out to her.

“I wish you to love me,” she said less doubtfully.

“Tell me how,” he persisted.

“I don’t know,” she said, her tone a litde wild. “I don’t know. Show me how.” She turned; her eyes met his. “It is what I want.”

He studied her face, and was convinced at last. “All right. Yet if anything I do displeases you, stop me at once, for both our sakes.”

Her breath caught in her throat. “I will,” she promised him, preparing for what he would do next, for an onslaught of demands.

They never came. He reached out and unfastened the top of her rubashkaya, letting the fabric fall open of its own gossamer weight; he leaned forward and kissed the arch of her collarbone, his hand moving lightly to her breast, cupping it lightly. The distance between them narrowed still more. His left hand joined the right, the touch as gentle, the sensations awakened tantalizing without urgency. In a single gesture her rubashkaya was slipped off her shoulders, leaving her naked but for short leggings and felt indoor shoes. “How lovely you are, Xenya,” he whispered.

She wanted to shove him away, to run for the door, but had no desire to end the warm lethargy that had come over her. His hands were too persuasive and too evocative for her to leave with their promise unrealized. As long as I am standing, she told herself as she quivered at the discoveries his hands were making, as long as I am standing, I can break free and run.

Slowly, gently he drew her toward him until his arms enfolded her and she was pressed close to him. He opened her lips with his own in a kiss that left them both breathless. The second kiss lasted longer.

His hands were reverent, and the gifts they offered were revelations to Xenya, who had thought she had discovered all that her senses could encompass already. Gilded by lamplight in the green and loamy chamber, she learned with growing amazement that she had been mistaken, that what she had assumed was the end of her journey was the merest beginning. Her body responded to Rakoczy’s touch as the fiddle responds to the expert bow; the harmony was sweeter and more resonant, striking chords within her she had never known were there to be sounded—or if she had suspected they existed, she supposed they had been silenced thirteen years ago.

He traced his way over her breasts and belly with myriad kisses; kneeling before her, he explored the sea-scented petals between her thighs, luxuriating in her emerging rapture as she caught her hands in his hair. He held her up as her first delirious spasms radiated through her.

As she sank to the pile of sheepskins, she stared at him, dazed. “How did you know?” she said when she was able to speak. Tears glazed her face.

“Because I know you.” He stretched beside her, cradling her.

“But.
. .” She touched the comer of his mouth. “There was no . . . you didn’t. . .”

“Not yet,” he said, his smile coming from deep inside him.

Her eyes were startled but without fear. “Is it possible?”

“If it is what you wish,” he whispered as his slow, glorious caresses began again, drawing her inexorably to such consummate passion that she cried aloud in triumph as his lips grazed her neck. Only then, when she was wholly subsumed in fulfillment, did Rakoczy relent and soothe her into untroubled, opulent sleep in the haven of his arms.

Text of a letter from Benedict Lovell to Ferenc Rakoczy, written in English.

To the most excellent Ferenc Rakoczy, Count Saint-Germain, of the Polish embassy in Moscovy, greetings;

At the request of the English ambassador, Sir Jerome Horsey, I unite to you to inform you that your presence is always welcome aboard English ships, as your cargoes have been in times past. The trading we have carried on in your behalf has been profitable to our mariners, to our embassy in Moscovy, and to the Queen’s Grace. Because of this we wish to inform you that we recognize the value of continuing what has been such a worthwhile association, and if access to English ships will ensure that association, then we ask that you accept our hospitality at any time convenient to your purposes.

Sir Jerome has also requested that I warn you of certain events that have transpired in the last week. We at the English embassy have discovered that Nikita Romanov and Vasilli Shuisky have both placed spies in this household; from them we have learned that there are spies in the Polish embassy and the German embassy as well. These spies are not there to benefit Caesar Theodore but to add to the power being amassed by these ruthless princes who vie for the right to control their ruler.

We know that you have enjoyed a long friendship with Boris Godunov, and it would appear that he is in great danger from the machinations of the nobles we have mentioned. Between that friendship and the increasing condemnation of you by your own ambassador, it would appear that you are likely to be at risk, and the possible target of malign comment. It may be that you will be set upon by the enemies of Godunov. Such things have happened before.

Circumspection is always wise, and never more so than when servants and guests are not always trustworthy. In this regard, lam loath to entrust certain questions to the page and will wait until a more favorable time to put them to you.

We of the English embassy do not wish to see you so endangered, not only out of consideration for your position, but in respect to our situation as well. Once the nobles decide to involve foreigners in their intrigues, then our days of safety here are limited, let us assist you in any way we can in order to prevent being compelled to participate in the titanic clashes of these powerful lords.

I will call upon you myself for the purpose of hearing your response to the offer Sir Jerome has extended, and to discuss in what manner you wish to availyourselfofthe hospitality we are pleased to present to you. Expect me in two days, at mid-afternoon. If this is not convenient, send your manservant to inform me of an alternate time and site.