THE HOUSEHOLD AT ABBOTS LEIGH WAS LARGE, CONSISTING NOT only of Ellen and George and George’s mother, but of sundry siblings and cousins and friends, including the clergyman and physician Dr Gorge, who had been watching the bowls when they arrived, and seemingly dozens of servants.
Over supper the discussion turned inevitably to the battle at Worcester and speculation about the fate of the king. Jane was glad Charles had suggested being kept secluded, and as soon as she could excuse herself after supper, she slipped up to his room. She was alarmed to find him with a bloody handkerchief pressed to his nose.
“What’s amiss, sir?” she cried.
“It’s nothing.” Charles waved off her concern, pulling the handkerchief from his nose to see whether the flow had stopped. “I get nosebleeds from time to time, with no rhyme or reason to them, but I suffer no ill effects beyond the inconvenience.” He patted the bed. “Come, sit with me.”
She sat beside him, very conscious of their being alone. He turned to her and took her hand, and she felt suddenly shy.
“Did the doctor come?” she asked, a trifle too brightly.
“Indeed he did. And as soon as I caught sight of his face, I knew him.”
Jane caught her breath in alarm.
“He was chaplain to my father when I was a boy. I kept to my bed, and as much as I could, turned my face from the candle so that I should be in shadow, and I don’t think he knew me.” He gave a wry smile. “Perhaps it was foolish to say I was ill. It’s made me an object of many kind attentions. The butler himself brought my dinner, and a maid came, too, with a warm posset to speed my recovery. Maybe it’s only my fancy, but I felt that they looked on me strangely.”
Jane’s stomach tensed in panic. “Oh, dear, what shall we do?”
“Nothing for now. Wilmot should be here tomorrow, and with any luck he’ll have news of a ship for me.”
Jane remembered with a catch in her heart that this might be the last time she would have Charles’s company alone. He seemed to read her mind.
“Oh, Jane,” he said, brushing a curl from her cheek and letting his hand trail down her jaw. “Would that I might keep you with me a little longer. I have been so much alone.”
She looked up into his face, seeing both the warrior king and lost little boy, and felt overwhelmed by desire and tenderness.
“When the war started,” he said, “my family scattered. I was twelve. I went with my father, and I tried to be a man. I cried most pitifully when I was parted from him three years later. It was in Oxford. It was raining, and I hoped that the raindrops would conceal the tears on my face. No ocean could have hidden my tears if I had known that I would never see him again.”
Jane saw that tears glistened in his eyes. He took her hand, and kept it resting on his thigh.
“His death was a cruel shock to England,” she said. “I cannot think what an unbearable grief it must have been to you.”
“I was told that on the scaffold he said just one word,” Charles said. “‘Remember.’”
A shiver ran through Jane.
“Like Hamlet’s father.”
“Yes. And here I am, like Hamlet, charged to avenge my father’s murder and the loss of his crown.”
“But you are not like Hamlet. You do not hesitate.”
“No, I need no Mousetrap to know where the guilt lies. And when the way seems hard, as now, I think to myself, ‘Remember thee? Ay, thou poor ghost, while memory holds a seat in this distracted globe.’”
He bent his head to Jane and kissed her, taking her head in his hands and pulling her close to him, and she responded hungrily, sinking back onto the bed as he moved towards her. He showered her with kisses, her eyes, her ears, her throat, then back to her mouth, and she burned for him with an intensity of feeling she had not known was possible. This was what she had been longing for—passion and love, lifting her above the dreariness of daily life.
Charles pulled away from her, hand stroking her throat, his breathing rapid.
“Go from me, Jane. I should never have touched you so.”
His eyes were searing into her, his touch hot on her skin, and she had never felt so alive. This was what she had feared she would never know, this rush of rapture and fever of excitement throughout her body. She had torn herself away from him the night before, but to do so again, knowing that they would likely part on the morrow, called for more strength than she possessed.
“I will not go from you, Your Majesty,” she murmured, her hand trembling as she laid it on his chest. She felt his heart thudding and saw his throat move as he swallowed.
“Jane,” he whispered, nuzzling her ear. “If you stay, I cannot answer for the consequences. I’ve not been with a woman in a year and a half. My blood quite overcrows my scruples, and if I am much longer in your presence, I will lose mastery of myself entirely.”
Jane took his hand and kissed it.
“It is well lost in such a cause. I give myself to you.”
“Jane.”
His voice was husky. He pulled her to him, kissing her deeply as they sank together onto the bed. His hands were lifting her petticoats, and he was on top of her, parting her legs with his knees.
It was wrong, Jane knew, but she didn’t care. She would have let him take her though the mouth of hell gaped before her. His fingers were caressing, exploring, making his way easy. She gasped to feel the hard flesh pressing against her, entering her, driving deep within her. She pulled him into her, rising to meet his thrusts until a wave built and crashed within her, and he put a hand over her mouth to stifle her moans. A moment later he arched his head back and his whole body gave a convulsive shudder. Then he was still, and rolled to the side to hold her close, and they lay panting in each other’s arms.
“Oh, Jane, forgive me,” he whispered at last. “I should have stopped myself, no matter what you said.”
“I didn’t want you to stop,” she said into his ear, her hand stroking his sweat-soaked back. “I don’t want to lose you. After tomorrow I will see you no more, but I can always remember tonight.”
“Stay with me,” Charles said. “Don’t leave until morning, if this night is all we have.”
AS THE LIGHT OF DAYBREAK CREPT THROUGH THE WINDOW, CHARLES and Jane made love again, this time more slowly, unencumbered by clothes or hesitation. Jane looked up at Charles, memorising each detail of his face, the dark stubble of his beard on his flushed cheeks, the heavy lashes of his eyes, the fall of dark hair. She found her hands grasping him to her and marvelled at the hardness of his muscles, their tightening as he moved within her.
When they had both spent, she lay nestled in his arms, not wanting to move. But Henry or Pope the butler or someone else could come to the door at any moment.
“I must go,” she said, kissing his chest and inhaling his scent. “Before I am discovered.”
“And I will brave the kitchen,” he said, reaching for his breeches. “Perhaps I may hide better by going among the household than by staying mewed up here. But I beg you, come back in an hour or two, and tell me what news you hear.”
She pulled on her clothes hastily, and he bent to give her a last kiss before she tore herself from him and crept out the door.
JANE AND ELLEN WALKED OUT AFTER BREAKFAST, ELLEN HAPPILY showing Jane the gardens and the sweeping views downhill in all directions.
“Breathtaking,” Jane said, gazing at the shadowed fields and forests far in the distance.