Free On My Lady's Honor (All for one, and one for all) by Kate Silver Page B

husband very well.”
    “Then you are not being unfaithful to him with one of his friends, I suppose?   Not with the Marquis de Torbay, for instance, or the Comte de Guiche?”
    Henrietta felt the blood rush from her head.   She and the Comte had been so careful in their liaison.   They had thought they had kept it a secret from all around them.   Someone must have spied them together and gone running to the king with the tale.   “Did Monsieur request that you put such a question to me?”   Though trembling with fear for her lover inside, her guilt made her seem haughty.   “Would it not be more fitting for Monsieur to ask me himself, if he were worried about the fidelity of his wife?”
    The King gave an uncomfortable harrumph.   “I would not like to think that you give freely to the Comte what you refuse your King.”   His words held a wealth of warning.
    How many times would she have to tell him the same thing?   Would he never accept her refusal?   “I refuse you nothing that is lawfully mine to give you.”
    “You refuse me your love, which I, your King, have many a time begged you for, though it doth humiliate me to my very soul to beg for aught.”
    She could not ever give him her love, even were it hers to give.   The Comte de Guiche was embedded deep in her heart, and no blusterous words from the King could drive him out again.   “I owe my love to my husband.”
    “Pah.   You owe such a husband nothing.   You refuse me your kisses, you refuse me the sight of your naked body, you refuse me the pleasure of being abed with you.   Such things would cost you nothing but a little complaisance to bestow, and they would make me the happiest of men.”
    She shuddered at the thought of his body atop hers, his thick, slobbering lips kissing her face, neck and breasts.   She would rather die than submit to his embrace.   “I cannot give you such things.   I am your sister-in-law, and to be abed with you would be a mortal sin.   You have no right to ask it of me.”
    He drew himself up in anger at her words.   “I have the divine right of a King to ask of you anything I require.   When you refuse me, you refuse God’s messenger on earth.   To refuse me is to commit not only treason against your ruler, but blasphemy against God himself.”
    Were he not the King of France and the ruler of much of Christendom, she would call him a deluded old fool.   “I love God, and I cleave to my husband as the Church teaches me to do.”
    He gave an ugly laugh.   “You do not ever cleave to your husband.   He is far too busy cleaving to young boys to bother with you.”
    How true his words were, she thought to herself with an inward smile.   Had it been left up to her husband to deflower her, she would be a virgin yet.   Still, Monsieur had been good to her and had protected her from those at Court who bore her and her brother, King Charles II of England, little goodwill.   She loved her husband dearly as her friend, though he would never be her husband in more than name only.   “My husband is what he is.   I do not judge him for it.”
    He edged closer to her on the bed.   “I would give you wealth and honor that my brother Philippe could never match.   I would dress you in silks of royal purple and shower you with sapphires and rubies.”
    She did not wear half the silk dresses or jewels she possessed already.   Monsieur could be generous when he pleased – particularly when he had no young boy to lavish his affections and gifts on.   “The greatest honor a woman may possess is a good reputation.”
    “I would make you my chief mistress.   None would dare to say a word against you.”
    His breath was foul and his teeth stained a dull brown from too much wine.   She drew back as far as she was able.   “My conscience would not be satisfied.   It would not leave me to rest peacefully, knowing that I had done wrong.”
    He drew back again, his back straight with anger.   “You are