They watched the sun come up that morning in that same bed through the cracks of the canopy’s heavy velvet drapes.
Katherine’s laugh by that point had reduced to a sleepy croaking. ‘Good morning, I guess,’ she said, toying with the length of fabric with her leg, hooking onto it with her foot and flashing the sunlight in his eyes just briefly.
He put his arm around her and nuzzled in her hair. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I’d rather not have a good morning yet, or any morning, for I haven’t slept.’
‘What do you mean?’ she asked. ‘You’re the lucky one. You’ll be on your way to Souchon again, likely you can sleep through the entire ride. I will be on my way with my court. If Constance finds this out, I won’t hear the last of it, and she’ll likely want a Sbaian lover for herself.’
Freyza huffed. ‘Is that my performance review, then? Likely to inspire lust in ladies-in-waiting?’
‘M-hm. Constance has been eyeing your associate, actually. If I told her about my time with you, she’d likely not board the ship.’
Absentmindedly, he traced the surface of her collarbone. ‘Then perhaps we should not tell Constance,’ he said. ‘Or anyone. It could get us both into trouble, given that I am to return to Souchon Palace… and you are to return to Norbury Castle, where perhaps this won’t look very attractive to suitors.’
She pulled her hair away from under him and sat up in the bed, looking over at him. ‘You don’t regret it, do you?’ she asked, something vulnerable lacing her tone.
‘No,’ he said immediately. ‘Of course I don’t. Do you?’
‘No,’ she repeated innocently. ‘In fact, had you had the opportunity to do so, I’d have invited you to Norbury Castle. I am becoming rather fond of you. You could have become an adviser. We’re looking for an administrator, you know that…’
He could have said yes. It would have ruffled many feathers, but he knew he could have said yes regardless. Was it worth the scrutiny? Everything in his body but his most self-conscious mind screamed at him to do it.
‘I have always been fond of you,’ Freyza confessed. ‘I hope you’re aware of that. I cannot go with you, however.’
‘I’m aware,’ Katherine lied. ‘The sultan will have you put down or something. He wouldn’t be impressed to see you surge the ladder of diplomacy into my inner circle, because to him, as you’ve told me, we are but little kings and queens. It’d be to him like becoming the king of a sandcastle. Oh, well… I suppose considering the political climate, we won’t be able to correspond either.’
‘A very sorry fact indeed,’ he said solemnly as she returned to her place by his side, filling the void that the cold had left in her brief absence on his bare chest. ‘If you receive any Sbaian gifts, no matter what for, know that they will be from me. I’ll do the best I can to teach Bayezid my craft, so I can be placed in Norbury Lake instead. I swear that I’ll do my best.’
He read Katherine’s emotionless face and felt the futility of it all. ‘There’s a difference between you and I, Freyza,’ she said. ‘You say you’ve coveted me from the beginning and yet I’ve heard naught of it. You could leave Souchon if you wish — yes, it will cost you, but within my court, you can soar. Henri doesn’t care about you, neither does Louise. Unless, of course, you do this will all of the prominent noblewomen you get to know. That this is just the way in which you grease the wheels of bureaucracy. Had I been in your shoes, I would’ve taken the chance. You are too afraid, I don’t know of what, to do it.’
‘I am repelled that you even consider the possibility,’ Freyza said. Briefly, he was quiet, tapping the featherbed with his free hand nervously. ‘Katherine, you are oblivious to how fond I am of you. It might strike you as mere fancy, and it could be that you feel for me but a mere fancy, but had our situation been different, I won’t pretend anymore that I wouldn’t have pursued you. What is there left to do now? Not only are you Ilworth-bound, perhaps for good, but even in Massouron, I cannot court you. We will never be anything but lovers.’
‘And now we won’t even be that,’ Katherine added wryly. ‘If you loved me, you’d have taken lovers over past acquaintances.’
‘Would I, though?’ he asked. ‘With all due respect, would I choose to take a meagre place among half a dozen royal favourites? Encourage you to drink and fuck yourself into the ground, until nothing remains but a caricature of your vices? I’ve refrained for as long as I’ve known you. I can refrain until I die. It will be easier for me to refrain than it would be to share.’
She clicked her tongue. ‘Men,’ she grumbled.
‘And say, you marry a vile creature, a Fairfax or someone like him,’ he continued. ‘Am I supposed to witness your suffering? No, thank you, Katherine.’
Slyly, she looked over at him and caressed his hair. ‘Then that’s settled,’ she said. ‘It’s clear you don’t actually care for me as much as you say you do.’
‘How much more clearly can I say it?’ he asked, feeling dread build up in every word. ‘Katherine: as little as I know you today, as little as I will ever know you, I know for certain that I revere and worship you, that there is nothing that could be done to kill the depth of my admiration. Would I have bedded you, pray tell, if not to express that? Have I appeared anything but genuine to you?’
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
Katherine chuckled. ‘I think many bed me expressly to kill the depth of their admiration for me,’ she said, then kissed him softly. ‘You are a very thoughtful man. Should’ve become a scholar, really, or a bard. This complexity of emotion doesn’t suit an ambassador.’
Subtly, her body was charged with the beginnings of frustration. She added, almost in exasperation, ‘I know for a fact that, had you become my favourite, I could’ve loved you. I’m mad at myself for thinking I’d be able to head out the door this morning and feel nothing.’
His own words rang in his ear. He could not court her, he would refrain the rest of his life. She could have loved him. Fuck.
In the midst of his dizzying storm of paradoxical anguish and honestly, he could not keep it to himself anymore. ‘If you’d let me, I could have loved you even today.’
He could feel her heartbeat against him, padded and shrouded by the opaque and soft flesh of her chest. Suddenly, she turned to her stomach and lay her arm across his shoulder, burying her face in the crevice between his shoulder and neck. With hot breath, she began to sob.
Freyza sighed with the pressure, held her head and turned his head to the side to hold his cheek against her forehead. ‘We’ll find a way,’ he said. ‘I’ll write you somehow. I’ll write the Sultan to get myself placed in Ilworth. I’ll do it for you, if that’s what I have to. You do not believe me now, but if these are the trials, Katherine, I will see them through for you.’
‘I should really get going,’ she said, her breath heaving from her tears. ‘Before they find me here.’
It was the time that they both knew was coming. ‘Alright,’ he said. ‘Well, I remain at your disposal for the time we still share a host.’
‘Sure,’ she said, unclasping herself from him, wiping her tears away, and beginning to seek her clothing strewn about the floor. The door on the woman Katherine had closed — only the famously detached monarch remained in her body. ‘We’ll breakfast with court, you’re free to come.’
‘What?’ Freyza sat up in bed and looked with great confusion at the sudden coldness before him. ‘Katherine, just a moment ago I told you that I love you.’
Katherine only offered him a wry smile. ‘That may be so. However, it is strikingly obvious to me that this is already the end of our affair. We wasted a year on pleasantries alone, and I’d rather not waste another year on missing you so miserably. You were right this morning — let us never talk about this to anyone, ever. Go into the grave with this.’
She pulled her shift over her head and straightened its hem, before bending down to pick up her robe. He protested, ‘What if I can bridge the gap?’
She chuckled. ‘I’ll believe it when you’re at my doorstep, Freyza, and don’t wait too long.’
‘And what if you’re with child?’ he asked forth.
Slipping into her shoes, Katherine turned her back on him. ‘Then I suppose my next betrothed will be said to have sired it. Or, if that’s not believable, my former. Who knows, Freyza, perhaps your greatest achievement after all will have been that your child will be the next King of Ilworth. See you at breakfast.’
‘And you,’ he said, exasperated by her cruelty.
----------------------------------------
He planned not to go, but as he was putting his ill-fated doublet back on, with still the scent of Katherine’s perfumed hands on its seams, he considered it too monstrous not to. What Katherine had said, he imagined, did not stem from any realistic hatred or frustration with him, but rather a type of hurt that he knew she could not face. She was weak in the presence of her own turbulence. She was far younger than he was, and he had only learned to weather the storms of his own making with time. Of course she had not yet conquered them.
Freyza was among the last to arrive in the banquet hall, as it was customary for those attending to appear in order of rank. He therefore stood among lower-ranking officials from Ilworth as well as a few noblemen that lived in Bourrac, or otherwise stayed there before he was called over to greet the main table that housed Katherine, the advisers, and her ladies.
His hands were clasped together at his back when he was called over, and he bowed gratefully some feet before the table. Only briefly did he look at Katherine, who was again dressed in her finery, with a goblet of wine at her mouth.
‘Your Majesty,’ he said. ‘My lords Overleigh and Dauncey. Lady Constance of Tillygate, Lady Grace of Hellister.’
Katherine put her goblet down at once. ‘Master Freyza,’ she said, and her lip trembled. ‘Please find a seat. We are pleased to welcome you.’
Constance eyed Katherine and waited until Freyza was out of earshot. She leaned in and asked, ‘Well?’
Katherine looked down at her plate. ‘Nothing,’ she said, and shook her head. ‘It was good to be in familiar company on the way here. For that, I am grateful to you, Constance. But we needn’t have had any ideas.’
Harcourt looked over his shoulder at the Sbaian ambassador, who was tall in isolation, but virtually towered over anyone he stood by as he sought a seat. ‘I was already wondering what he was doing here,’ he said. ‘I don’t imagine he has business in Bourrac.’
Katherine shook her head again. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Constance thought it’d be a fun jape to invite him, for we were fast becoming friends as my time drew to a close. There. Now you’re all caught up.’
‘You do look rather deflated,’ Richard noted, crossing his arms with his elbows on the table. ‘I guess it’s hard not to be in this draft. Sucks the life right out of you — but still.’
‘Aren’t you shaken by the last few weeks, then?’ she asked. ‘The rug was pulled out from under us. I nearly died.’
‘Twice,’ Richard added. ‘Once due to that same Sbaian ambassador, you may recall. Though from what I hear, Constance is to be blamed for his presence.’
Did Richard know? Katherine could not escape the thought. Richard had eyes everywhere, and his shadowmen even more so. Though his gaze was always sardonic, the way he knowingly looked at her with his pitch-black eyes, his nonchalant posture… she could not be sure that her secret was safe.
‘He hasn’t harmed me any further,’ she said. ‘So I wonder what the matter is. Perhaps a misplaced grudge, Lord Richard…?’
‘Oh, no,’ Richard said. ‘As you say — it’s been a shaken fortnight. We’re all a bit sensitive, we’re all a bit uneasy. I’ve nothing seriously against the man, of course. Given we will never meet again, there’s no reason to hold a grudge.’
‘I’ll be happy to forget everything that happened in this god-forsaken country, for none of it has brought me anything but great distrust and anguish of my fellow man, and in many cases, those appearing closest to me,’ Katherine said at last, and took another long sip.