Page 62 of The Favourite

“Oh, yes.” He licked his lips and glanced down fleetingly at her body which was now covered in bedsheets. Jane felt her cheeks turn red. There were times, she reflected, when he was entirely lacking in subtlety. “I will happily repeat the experience, any time you should be agreeable, wife.”

Fortunately, he did not seem to expect a verbal answer, so Jane just lay there, feeling shaken.

“Tired?” he asked sympathetically, inching closer to her in the bed until the lengths of their bodies aligned and even touched at certain points. It seemed to Jane, an odd thing for someone to do who did not relish having a bedfellow, but after all, he was quite strange.

“Yes,” she answered briefly. He nodded and smothered a yawn. Just then, one of his feet slid across and nudged against her own. Jane shot a quick look at him, but his eyes had drifted shut. Perhaps, it had been by accident, rather than design. Her own eyelids were so heavy, that before long she obeyed their promptings and drifted off to sleep.

16

Alisander woke to the sound of a kitten mewling in the early hours. Then he realized it was not mewling, it was wailing. Then he realized it was not a kitten at all. He groaned, remembering that the second bedchamber had been appropriated for a nursery, and groped above his head until he found a spare pillow and slammed it over his head.

Mercifully, the horrible sound abated after a couple of minutes, so he cautiously lifted the pillow and turned his head to look at Jane, who was still lying peacefully on her back, oblivious. Faint light was breaking through the window, so he could make out her sleeping features.

He propped himself up on his elbow to better appreciate the view. She looked serene and unworn by cares. Most likely this was the face she would like to present to the world, he thought wryly. She was wholly unconvinced that her flustered state had a charm all of its own.

Gods, he loved it when she was undone. She was even more spectacular than he had always suspected she would be. Before he even realized what he was doing, he was moving closer to her, crowding himself around her. Curious, this inclination for closeness. Doubtless, it was the novelty, and he would soon tire of it.

Or would he? A slither of doubt crept into his mind as he slipped an arm about her waist. She did not stir in the slightest and he marveled that Jane should be a heavy sleeper. He slept like a cat and the smallest sound would wake him. Maybe she was just worn out from all that coming? He smiled to himself. Oh, she had been enchanting. The sounds erupting from staid Jane’s lips had been … extremely invigorating.

On the morrow, he would set out his plans for her court return. She would likely put up some resistance of course, but he was already looking forward to convincing her. Settling his head back on the pillow, he lay still with his eyes closed for another hour or so, savoring the warmth generated between them, his thoughts flitting hither and thither while his body lay still and snug, curled about his sleeping wife.

Of course, it was not all amusing diversion. He needed to set up several meetings now he was back in the capital, not least with that tiresome fellow Alphonse Hubair, the ambassador for Kloberg, who was stirring up quite a fuss about some betrothal of an Archduke. He would have to appease the fellow somehow and prevent him from stirring up a hornet’s nest by firing off dozens of hysterical letters to Lascony on the subject.

Alisander suppressed a groan. Usually, he enjoyed the twisted machinations of his official role. A whisper here, an allusion there, then it was just a case of sitting back and waiting for the fish to bite. More often than not, he ended up being told a rumor that had originated with himself, as though it were plain matter of fact. He usually derived a good deal of satisfaction from his contributions.

Now though, he could not help but feel he had better things to be about than such intrigue. He had a wife to seduce. His eyes roamed once more over Jane’s sleeping profile. Strange, that up until recently, he had thought her features without particular distinction. How had he neglected to notice the charming proportion of brow to nose, and nose to jaw?

It must have been a form of self-preservation, he supposed, for he had already been far too preoccupied with her, even then. He resisted a surprisingly strong impulse to reach out and trace the bridge of her nose. In vain, he told himself there was nothing noteworthy about Jane’s nose. It was neither large nor small. It was not straight or pointed, or pleasingly tip-tilted, or even impudently snubbed. In short, there was nothing about it to draw his eye. Why, then, did he feel so preoccupied with it?

Dimly, he remembered the description he had once given of her to Robert. Her figure is good, but nothing special, and he almost squirmed. At the time, in his defense, he had thought he was speaking plain matter of fact. Or, something approaching it, he amended conscientiously. He had not realized that Prim Jane had it in her to make him come like that.

He had been perilously close to it from the moment she had exposed that pretty bosom of hers to him. Even the memory had his cock stirring. He had known he had a strong inclination for her company, of course, but he had not anticipated just how perfect her hot flushed body would be bared to his touch. He shivered. Well, maybe he had, had some dim idea, but nothing that had stood up to the reality.

He had come perilously close to spilling, just from the feel of her soft breasts beneath his tongue, he remembered incredulously. And he had made a complete mess of himself once he had slid his tongue between her pretty drenched curls. Unbidden, the image rose in his mind’s eye of her slick pussy, and he groaned. He had come hard and fast, and who could blame him in the face of such provocation?

Jane had been a delight in the sheets. Thank gods, he had succumbed to temptation and married her. He might never have known, he marveled. He might have spent the next twenty years thinking how amusing it was to tease her, and never knowing what a sweet, slick pussy she hid between her thighs, and the desperate sounds she made when he touched her there.

He could not wait to actually fuck her. He would wait because he did not want her to shrink from him. That meant he had to continue taking his time with her. He smiled, remembering how she had lost all patience with him when he had vowed to leave their bed. She was certainly growing a good deal bolder with him, and he liked that. He liked a lot of things, he thought contentedly, when it came to Jane.

His eyes dwelt fondly on her profile. It was no good. He was going to have to do it, he realized. No matter how strange and foolish the impulse. He could deny it no longer. Reaching across he lightly touched the tip of his finger to the end of her nose. There, it was done. A strange impulse, but he had discharged it without incident. No one need ever know he had ever indulged it.

Alisander rose just before dawn and breezed through the palace in a suit of plain black, leaving a concealed note here, a coded message there. He slipped through the servants’ stairs and the concealed passages with long accustomed ease, collecting missives that had been left for him at various pick-up points, as he went. He would pick up his official letters later, with great ceremony, but they were a different matter altogether.

He had returned to his rooms and his bed long before the first stirrings of their household, which predictably was Wat, lighting the fires and quietly moving around before he descended to the palace kitchens. Alisander lay in bed, mentally composing a prosy note to the Kloberg ambassador who was a great stickler for decorum.

He heard the quiet scratch on his door, and after glancing once more at Jane, who slumbered on, he called softly, “Enter,” and Wat crept in with his pile of logs and saw to their fire. The servant kept his eyes discreetly averted, and Alisander made a great show of yawning and rolling over as though he fully intended to sleep on.

Once Wat had departed, however, he quietly slid from the bed and donned a flamboyant robe of emerald green. Catching hold of a chair, he carried it to the fire, where he plunked himself down to read his clandestine communications. Efficiently, he scanned through them, consigning most of them to the flames. The palace, as ever, was rife with speculation and gossip. Some of it had political undertones, but nothing that leaped out at him with particular interest.

His own marriage, unsurprisingly, had raised certain brows in Lascony. His unofficial contact in Aphrany wanted him to make a full account for it. It seemed there were a few ruffled feathers back home, but he already had his excuse ready. The Queen, Wilhelm’s own sister, had demanded it. He was not unduly concerned about reprisals, though it might look to an outsider as though he was currying favor with the Karadokian King.

He kept back a few of the more harmless missives to strew carelessly about his room. He stuffed one deep in the pocket of his dressing robe, another he dropped down between the legs of a small decorative table, and a third he threw just wide of the fire so that at least a portion of it would be preserved for Wat to fish back out again later, perhaps a little artistically charred.

After all, he had to leave something for Wat to report back to Lord Vawdrey. Couldn’t have the poor fellow being denied his second income. That would never do.

The whole time, he was very aware of the still figure lying in the bed. His eyes strayed to her constantly. It was fascinating how little she moved around in her sleep. Once he was done, he was tempted to clamber back under the covers with her, but perhaps that would be unwise. He had much to do today, and besides, he had resolved to take things slowly, had he not?

He disappeared into the dressing room for a half hour and dressed at a leisurely pace, choosing his outfit with great deliberation. On emerging, he found Jane’s eyes open, though she did not appear to have moved an inch. “Ah, awake at last,” he commented, sauntering in the direction of the bed. He sat down on her side, directly next to her. “And how are we?” he asked, lifting her hand from where it rested and casually kissing her wrist.