He stretched out his fingers...
‘Don’t!’ She shoved her feet out of sight beneath the rumpled linen and pulled the covers up. ‘Are you satisfied?’
Yet he reached for her foot anyway, cupped his hand over the blanket that shielded it.
She held a palm on his cheek and turned his face to hers, forcing his gaze away from her foot. And her eyes clung to his, waiting for his verdict.
What could he say? To belittle it, to say it was only a twisted foot and not a monstrous growth would demean the suffering she had carried all her life.
‘It has been with you,’ he began, his hand resting lightly on her skirt, ‘like this, all your life?’
She let out a breath and lifted her chin. ‘Yes.’
‘And yet, you work, you serve your lady, just as any woman might.’
She hesitated. ‘Yes.’ The word had a question in it, as if she did not know why he said so.
‘Then,’ he raised his eyes again, ‘since it is part of who you are, I must also hold it dear.’
She gasped.
He cupped her head in his hands, lifted her face to his and kissed her.
Her lips moved over his, soft and gentle, and, surprisingly, so was the kiss. A kiss not of passion, but of dreams. Of tumbling slowly into something inevitable and irresistible, for good or ill, impossible to resist.
He did not stop to ask himself why he did this. Or why she did. If he let himself think, he, she, both of them might wake from the dream. And for once, that was not what he wanted.
They parted only for a breath before her lips took his again.
He had no thoughts after that. At least, none that found words.
Anne’s first thought was to fight, not surrender. She had struggled all her life against her feeble flesh, refusing to yield to its weakness, refusing to be the slave of pain. She could not ignore her damaged leg, but she could suffer it as a knight might suffer a scar of battle, knowing he had earned it bravely.
Pleasure was still an unfamiliar foe, yet even against pleasure, she might have triumphed. It was the heart’s want that she could not fight. The want that he must not see. The want she had buried so deeply she no longer knew it was there, so when it rose, fierce and fiery as a dragon, she had no defence. She simply let herself be kissed.
And then, she kissed back.
She couldn’t stop the gasp of desire that gripped her throat, the tears that burned her eyes at the realisation that someone would want to get so close. Without judgement. With desire.
At least one time.
One of them—he? She?—took a breath. A pause that broke the kiss only to let him take her lips again
But with that breath, she was Anne again. Anne with ugly hair and a lame foot and nothing but lies to tell this man.
She pursed her lips, pushed him away and squeezed her eyes shut so he would not see the wistful look that must have crept into her gaze. She should not have kissed him. Not the first time and not the second and least of all now.
Safer to remain ignored and unseen.
He stood and stepped away, out of reach, seeking distance as much as she, and parted his lips to speak.
‘Don’t!’ she said. Her strength was gone. His regrets would only sharpen her own. ‘Do not say you are sorry.’
‘Sorry?’
She held her breath, waiting for him to break the silence.
‘I am not sorry,’ he said at last. ‘I am not sorry at all.’
If he had crossed the room to touch her again, she would have turned to fire, a flame of yes and yes and yes once more.
But he did not. He left the room, pulling the wooden door behind him, and not until she could no longer hear his steps did she breathe.
He had not kissed her out of pity and he was not sorry that he had and that was the most frightening thing of all.
* * *
Nicholas slept little that night, so when the Archbishop summoned him to the Priory the next morning, he wasted little time.
As soon as he arrived, and without ceremony, the man thrust a parchment into his hands. ‘Here.’
He glanced at the carefully written lines. He had a little Latin, more than most of his station, so he stumbled through, trying to decipher the words.
Silence stretched.
‘It says,’ the Archbishop said, finally, ‘that given that Thomas Holland and Joan plighted their troth before a witness months prior to her marriage to Salisbury, the church says that marriage is valid, the marriage to Salisbury should be put aside and the Pope should so judge the same.’
All as he had expected. ‘So it is confirmed,’ he said, with a surprising sense of relief. ‘You will rule accordingly.’
He had not realised until that moment that he had feared they might not find it at all.
‘I will gather the bishops together. We will review the document—’
‘Review? Is there something irregular?’
Islip frowned, the lines in his brow as deep as furrows cut by a plough. ‘Let us hope, for all our sakes, that there was not.’
An odd comment. Nicholas shrugged off the worry. Nothing could be wrong. Lady Joan had been raised under the protection of the King and Queen. The stakes had been too high then.
They were even higher now.
‘So if there is nothing irregular,’ he began, ‘how long will all this take?’
‘How long before they can wed in truth, you mean?’
How long before I can leave this island? was what he actually meant, but Nicholas nodded. ‘The official word from Avignon is expected soon after Michaelmas.’ In less than two months.
‘We will be done by then. I will send word directly to the King.’ His face relaxed then. ‘I look forward to celebrating the Prince’s wedding ceremony.’ As Primate of All England, the duty would fall to him. ‘Will they marry at Windsor?’
‘I believe so.’ He shrugged, not caring. His work was done. He could return Anne to court and be free of all the responsibilities and complications of these last few weeks. The unwelcome feelings he had for her would fade, he was certain, as soon as he set foot on a ship.
He bowed respectful thanks and turned to go, but as he did, the Archbishop’s summation of the document echoed in his head. The words had slipped by then, but thinking back, they clanged loud as a church bell.
...Holland and Joan plighted their troth before a witness...
He turned back to the Archbishop. ‘It said vows were exchanged before a witness.’
‘Yes.’
‘Who? What is the name?’
Islip raised his brows. ‘Do you think to question them?’
He had thought nothing of this at all until it became so difficult. ‘That’s not necessary, is it?’
‘Let us hope not. It does not list a name.’
‘Wouldn’t