Free The Queen's Pawn by Christy English Page A

still there, as it had been the night before, but now, as we stood alone with no one else watching, he was too shy to speak. So I spoke for both of us.
    “I am looking for the simples garden,” I said. “I must make Marie Helene a tisane to help her throat heal.”
    He smiled at this, thinking that surely I knew nothing useful, nothing that could heal another. It also seemed to amuse him that I was out of my rooms, in service of my waiting woman. But Marie Helene was my friend, my only friend besides the queen at this court. I would not watch her suffer and do nothing.
    “I know of the simples garden,” he said. “I can take you there.”
    The sun on the roses made their petals look like velvet. I thought to take a flower with me, my fingertips brushing the petals of one red rose. In the end, the stem was too thick for me to break, and I left the rose in the sun. I promised myself that I would come back, and look at them again.
    Richard led me back into the castle keep, and as we walked together, he shortened his strides to mine. “You seem to have a care for your servants,” Richard said.
    “I have never had a waiting woman before, not one that was all my own. I had a nurse in France.”
    I thought of Katherine, of her sweet smile and warm hands. “But she was responsible for me.”
    “And you feel responsible for your woman here,” he said, as if to finish my thought.
    “Yes. Marie Helene is in my charge, for however long she serves me. I cannot leave her to suffer.”
    “You could call for a new lady to wait on you,” Richard said. “My mother would give you one.”
    “I would not turn Marie Helene away. She is my friend.”
    “It is good to have a friend in a new place,” he said.
    I saw his loneliness then, and it called to the loneliness within me. Just as I had been alone all my life, sent to marry among my father’s enemies to serve the throne of France, so had Richard been alone, except when his mother was with him. He, too, served as I did. He worked always for the good of Eleanor, placing her needs and the needs of the duchy of Aquitaine above his own.
    He met my eyes then, and I did not look away. Our gazes held, and he seemed to see behind my eyes into my thoughts. I felt, in that brief, blessed moment, that he understood me. Since I was a child, I had known that I must marry this man, and part of me had feared it. Now I saw that we might build something together, something that politics and all its harsh necessity could not touch. Together, we might build a home, and find some peace amid the constant furor of royal courts, with their backbiting and their shadows. Together, we might love each other as a man and woman, not as a prince and princess.
    Richard took my hand, and held it in his own. “My mother is also your friend, as I am”
    I did not know what to say for my breath had gone. Tears rose to my eyes unbidden, though Eleanor had taught me never to cry. But my heart wept at the thought of finding a haven in my new life, a haven with my husband; my eyes wept, too.
    Richard stood beside me, my hand in his. He did not speak of my tears, and I felt that to him they did me honor. He reached down and wiped them away gently with one large finger. The sweetness of the gesture moved me more than anything else he might have done. I wiped my eyes with my free hand, and I smiled.
    “Eleanor has been like a mother to me,” I said. “All I am, all I will ever be, I owe to her.”
    His smile lit his face, as if dawn had broken over a plain of darkness.
    “It is so with me as well,” he said. “In all the dark places of my childhood, my mother was the only light. My music, my poetry, even my prowess in war, all were gifts from her hands.”
    I knew this was an admission that he would never have given to anyone else. Anyone else would have questioned that: a woman giving a man the gift of war. But I knew what he meant, for even in my cloister, I had heard of Richard’s heroism in war. He meant