LITMIR.BIZ

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really the kind of woman that a king would desire? For a moment her late husband’s words on the wedding night slipped back into her conscience. You are as cold as marble, he had said to her. But had she been? Or had she just been afraid, and with good reason, considering what had followed. She shivered and again questioned herself as to why she was here.

      The door to the apartment opened, and Charles Stuart, king of England, entered. Fancy jumped up, and curtsied low. It was too late to retreat now, she thought. And besides, weren’t first thoughts always best? “Good evening, Your Majesty,” she said breathlessly.

      “My dear girl,” the king greeted her with a warm smile. “May I say how lovely I thought you looked this evening. These shades of blue and green more than suit you.” Reaching out he raised her up, and gazed into her eyes. “Amazing!” he said with another smile. “What beautiful eyes you have, Fancy Devers.”

      There was a knock upon the door, and it opened to allow a small line of servants into the apartment. They set up a table with linen, silver, crystal, and gold plates. The sideboard was filled with covered dishes, and then with the utmost gallantry the king seated Fancy at the table before the fireplace.

      “I did promise you supper,” he said with a twinkle in his black eyes.

      “I never doubted it, Your Majesty,” Fancy replied. “I have been told that Your Majesty is a man of his word.”

      The king laughed. “You have a quick wit,” he said sounding very pleased. “I suspected that I was right about you, my dear.”

      “Right about what, Your Majesty?” she asked him.

      “You are intelligent, sensitive, and amusing,” he replied, smiling again as a servant placed a dish of raw oysters before him.

      “Are you going to eat all of those?” Fancy heard herself asking aloud as a dish of prawns steamed in white wine was set before her.

      His dark eyes met her turquoise ones. “Every one,” he said with emphasis and began to swallow the mollusks.

      Fancy nibbled at her prawns, suddenly nervous again. “It seems a great number of oysters to me,” she noted.

      “I am a man of vast appetites, madame,” he told her. “Are your appetites large?”

      “I do not know, Your Majesty, for my experience is slight,” she responded. “But the ladies in my family do have a certain allure of sorts and seem to charm the gentlemen.”

      “If you have inherited from your grandmother not just her beautiful eyes, but the same allure that bewitched my uncle, then I suspect we may get on very well, Fancy. Do you understand me, my dear?”

      “Your Majesty wishes to make me the last course in his meal this evening,” Fancy replied with utmost seriousness.

      Charles Stuart burst out laughing, and he laughed until he was weak and there were tears rolling down his face. When he finally regained control of himself, he asked her, “Are you always so bloody forthright, Fancy Devers?”

      “I have always thought it best to be candid, Your Majesty,” Fancy answered him. “I hope I have not displeased you by it.”

      “No, “ he said, “you have not. More often than not I am spoken to with such delicacy of feeling and couching of phrases, that I often find it difficult to even understand some of the things that are being said.”

      A servant removed the dish of oyster shells from before the king, and another whisked away the remaining prawns. The gold plates that had been briefly removed from the table were now returned filled with a selection of foods. There was rare beef and sliced capon on Fancy’s plate along with a serving of asparagus, obviously grown in the king’s greenhouses, for it was December. The vegetable was covered with a delicate sauce. She lifted each stalk, holding it between her thumb and her forefinger, and ate it slowly with relish, her little tongue skillfully licking the sauce so that not a drop was wasted “These are so good,” she told him. “What a delicious treat!”

      He watched her, fascinated, particularly as he realized almost immediately that she had absolutely no idea how sensuous her dining on the asparagus was to him. He felt himself hardening briefly beneath the velvet of his breeches and considered if that pointed little pink tongue had any idea the uses to which it could be put. He knew in that moment that Fancy Devers was going to please him. He had never, since he returned to England, kept two mistresses publicly, but now that Barbara Castlemaine was almost gone, it was a distinct possibility. Even his cousin, the king of France hadn’t done that yet.

      “Aren’t you going to eat?” she asked him.

      “Yes!” he said, and turned his attention to his own plate, which had beef and ham and salmon, as well as asparagus, on it.

      There was also a silver basket of delicate little breads on the table. There was sweet butter and several cheeses as well. The servants kept their goblets constantly filled, but Fancy was careful not to drink a great deal. She didn’t know if she had a head for it, and besides she didn’t want to miss what was to come by being drunk. When the little light supper was over, the servants carried away the table and its contents.

      “Shall I call a maid to help you undress?” the king asked her when they were at last alone.

      “I am sure Your Majesty has the skills necessary to help me,” Fancy told him. Her heart was beginning to hammer a little nervously.

      He escorted her into the bedchamber. The heavy gold-velvet draperies were drawn across the windows. The bed’s satin coverlet was drawn back, the bedcurtains but half open. There was a bowl of red strawberries with a pot of clotted Devon cream, a carafe of wine, and two goblets on a table. The candles reflected within their crystal lamps upon the mantel, on the table, and by the bed. The king closed the door behind them.

      Fancy started at the finality of the door’s click.

      He saw it and asked her, “Are you afraid?”

      She shook her head. “Not of you,” Fancy told him. “I simply worry my inexperience will displease you.”

      “You were married, I have been told,” he replied.

      She nodded. “For a few hours, Your Majesty.”

      “Are you a virgin?” he inquired.

      “Nay, I had a wedding night,” she told him, her voice suddenly tight with her tension.

      “It was an unhappy experience?” he guessed.

      “Yes.”

      “And yet you accepted my invitation knowing full well what I would demand of you. Why?” The king was distressed by her admission, and yet he still desired her very much.

      “Cynara says you have a reputation of being the world’s best lover,” Fancy began.

      The king could not help but smile at this.

      “Women, even those lacking in experience, have an instinctive knowledge about lovemaking, Your Majesty. The man to whom I was married was the most handsome creature, with such charm that every woman who knew him loved him on some level,” Fancy explained. “He was a terrible, no he was a brutal lover whose only need was to satisfy himself. He died for it, I fear, and widowed me before he could destroy me.”

      He had to ask. “Did you kill him?”

      “No, and yet I was responsible for his death. I will leave you if that is what you desire, Your Majesty, but ask me no more now, I beg of you,” Fancy said quietly.

      “Let us return to the point when you knew he was an inferior lover, my dear,” the king said as quietly. “If making love made you unhappy, then why are you here with me this evening?”

      “Because of your reputation,” Fancy said honestly. “The women of my family have always known the delights of passion. I would too, but I don’t want to have to place myself in the keeping of another husband in order to discover what they know. And I can hardly question the amatory

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