Free The Reluctant Queen by Freda Lightfoot Page A

husband to protect me.’
    Henry was all too familiar with this concern. It was Tignonville all over again. He smiled, caressing her softly rounded buttocks as he led her gently towards the bed. ‘Is that all that troubles you? But such a situation can easily be remedied. You need have no worries on that score. I would always protect you, my sweet one.’
    ‘But you could never acknowledge such a child. He, were it a boy, would be a bastard,’ she said, artlessly reminding him of what she could offer.
    He was peeling off her gown, his eyes upon the firm ripeness of her breasts, so full and yet so pert, her waist no more than two hand spans, her hips curved but slender, legs long and shapely. She was so innocent, so pure, and tonight she was his for the taking. He was hot for her, impatient as he pulled her down on the bed. ‘I would most certainly acknowledge him,’ Henry groaned, feeling that familiar, delicious ache in his loins.
    ‘Oh, Your Majesty!’
    ‘You can trust me implicitly, my darling, I would not see you dishonoured.’
    He saw at once, by the stars in her lovely eyes as she gazed entrancingly up at him, by the breathless rapture of her response, that she had misunderstood him completely. Navarre was accustomed to finding convenient husbands for his mistresses, or acknowledging a bastard child as his own, which was all he had meant by the remark. But he might have phrased the words carelessly, for this innocent child believed that he had proposed. He paused a moment to consider. Would that be an answer, to divorce Margot and marry little Fosseuse, assuming she were able to give him children?
    But she was kissing him with a delicious fervour now, allowing him to ravage her little pink tongue with his own, and he was impatient to thrust into her in other ways. Beyond thought now, he was insensible of everything but the peachy quality of her skin, the soft firmness of her young breasts. Henry moaned with desire, hurting so badly he could barely hold himself in check to prepare this pretty virgin for the moment that he’d waited for so eagerly. No matter what the consequences, he would have her.
     
    From that day on Fosseuse began to change. In every way she was a loving and devoted mistress, but no longer quite so undemanding. She began to require constant evidence of the King’s devotion. ‘I have worn that gown three times this month already, and I have barely a piece of jewellery to my name.’
    ‘But I gave you those emeralds only at Christmas, my sweet.’
    ‘You cannot wear emeralds with a rose red gown, and it is the only one I feel fit to be seen in, even though I have owned it forever. The Queen has diamonds by the score, but I have nothing.’
    The King of Navarre bought his love some diamonds, and a new gown to go with them.
    Nor was she quite so obedient to the Queen. Fosseuse began to avoid Margot and her duties as lady-in-waiting, even though she was supposedly still a part of the Queen’s retinue. She became rather secretive, giggling with her friends and then falling silent and looking all prim and innocent whenever the Queen drew near.
    Furthermore, she began creating ill feeling between husband and wife by telling tales about Margot to Henry. These stories were wildly exaggerated, highly embroidered versions of what might pass for the truth, and sometimes downright lies. They nevertheless inflamed his ire, and Henry rarely castigated her or challenged their veracity. Relations between husband and wife cooled as a result.
    Margot began to complain to her ladies. ‘What is going on? What has happened to the girl?’
    ‘Ignore her, my lady. She is simply behaving like a spoiled miss.’
    ‘But she was once so biddable, and now is becoming a little minx.’
    ‘Pay her no attention. She represents no threat to Your Majesty.’
    Margot wasn’t so sure. She had many ladies she could rely on in her entourage: Princess Catherine de Bourbon, her husband’s sister, Madelaine de la Tour,