Promises
Their nest of satin sheets and silken bed covers shifted precariously as Aramis stretched languidly. He ran a hand lingeringly through her hair, pulling the end of the long dark strands to his nose to sniff appreciatively before twirling it in elf locks around his fingers. "I am afraid I must leave you, my dear."
"Must you?" she murmured sleepily, savoring the unfamiliar sensations flooding her body. The torpor of satiation was still upon her. Her hands unerringly found their way into Aramis' hair, unconsciously echoing the movement of his as she turned elf locks upon her own fingers.
He sighed. "I must. And my love, we cannot do this. There are eyes everywhere and Athos has already told me he will not be complicit in this again. I cannot ask him to further risk his neck for us."
"He is a good man."
"He is, but even good men break under torture. And for all Richelieu was a monster, Rochefort is ten times the cardinal's match. If he so much as suspected, our lives would be forfeit like that." He snapped his fingers.
"Rochefort?" Anne sat up, gloriously uninhibited. "No," she said, words of denial forming without need for thought. "That can't be true. Rochefort is an old friend. He came to me in Spain, before I was to be married. To instruct me in the ways of the French court. If nothing else he is loyal to me!" she said ringingly.
The afterglow dissipated between one heart beat and the next. Aramis came to his knees as well, reaching for her hands as Anne drew back. "My lady, we can prove nothing, but we have suspicions aplenty." He sorted through them quickly, drawing out the one he thought would be mostly likely to impress upon her the seriousness of his allegations. "We believe Rochefort had the Spanish ambassador killed."
"That cannot be!" the queen cried vehemently, "Rochefort is a true son of France and a friend to Spain as well!" She reached for the sheet to cover herself even as he reached to take back the hands she had snatched away.
"If I am wrong," Aramis said quietly, "I will apologize profusely, but we cannot be too careful, my lady. This is treason, both our necks would stretch if anyone found out about us."
"Oh, we would not hang, my intrepid musketeer." Anne threw herself down among the tangled bedclothes. "I am neither naïve nor stupid, Aramis. I know what they will do to us if we are caught. The king may have his mistresses," she said bitterly, flinging an arm above her head, "but the queen must remain virtuous and celibate."
He followed her down, kissing her neck, her ear, her temple where the pulse fluttered with her agitation. "We will not be caught. But do not trust Rochefort, Your Majesty. The cardinal at least had France's best interests at heart." Adele crossed his mind at that inopportune moment and Aramis flinched at the memory. "Well, most of the time anyway."
Anne lifted a hand to touch the pads of her fingers to his lips. Fortunately, she thought he was remembering the very close call they'd had when the Cardinal had ordered her death before the conception of the heir. "God brought us together. He will protect us. Though I do not believe He will need to lift a finger as regards Rochefort."
Aramis, who was on a first name basis with God, had long ago lost the innocence of her faith. "God helps those who help themselves, and we will best help ourselves by agreeing that this is the last time we will meet."
"No," she said petulantly, fingers tracing the line of his brow, then reaching to tug at the curling ends of his hair, damp from their love making and sticking out. "I do not want to give you up just yet. God will have to be our strength and shield."
Aramis rolled over on another sigh, but took her fingers with him, kissing the tips lingeringly one by one. "We cannot, my love. For the sake of the babe, you at least, must be there for him. One of us must be strong and if you cannot, then it must be me, though I love you to distraction. You have ruined me for all other women."
It was what every woman wanted to hear, though in this case, it was possibly true.
Anne came up on an elbow. "I doubt that very much, you will never be a man faithful to only one woman, but I will have you until you tire of me."
"Tire of you?" Aramis caught her by the shoulders and rolled her over, coming over her with a mastery he had not learned in the abbey where he'd been schooled. "That will never happen! You are my heart and soul, the mother of my child, though I cannot shout that to the world as I wish."
"And yet," she countered, impishly, fingers shaping the broad shoulders just for the pleasure of it, "you will still find your pleasure with other women." Anne laid a finger over his lips when he would have denied the vile accusation. "It is not sharing you that I mind, not even sharing your affections, for you are a man who loves women from the least to the greatest. What I mind," she reversed their positions so she was on top, "is not being able to shout to the world that you are mine, at least for now, and the father of my child."
Aramis gathered her to his chest and held her close, running a hand up and down her back as they lay together as Adam and Eve must have done in the Garden. "I love you, Anne."
"And I love you, Aramis. But you are right, we cannot continue this affair." The queen touched his ear with her tongue, memorizing the flavor of him.
"Oh now you are being practical?" He laughed and tickled her lightly.
"I am always practical, though you may not believe it," she giggled, squirming. "You must promise me you will not seek me out again."
"Then you must promise me not to look at me with that come hither command in your eyes again."
"I cannot imagine what you think you saw, but it was not a come hither look, I assure you."
Aramis crossed his eyes and the queen giggled again, girlishly, happily. Lovingly, as she laid a hand along the side of his face and bent to seam his determinedly closed lips with her tongue.
He could not resist for long and sighed as he opened to her explorations, then unbent enough to teach her a few new things while they were at it. The king, clearly, was not a particularly inventive lover.
"I must go," he repeated, quite a lengthy time later as she lay dreamily in the circle of his arms, pressing quick, hot, open-mouthed kisses to his chest as her hands roamed further south. "Athos will be chomping at the bit as it is."
Her hand closed over him, and like that he was hard again, but with a willpower even Aramis had never imagined, he captured her hand, kissed the knuckles with naked longing and made himself rise from the bed. He could not, however, leave her lying sprawled wantonly among the bedclothes without kissing her again as he dragged on his clothes.
He sat to pull on his boots and she sat up lazily, pressing herself against his back, the smell of passion lingering like an aromatic on the air. "Open the windows when I'm gone and air this place out. Your ladies-in-waiting will be intimately familiar with the aroma of love. No need to give them something else to gossip about, especially with the king gone." Thank God and all the heavenly court he'd taken Rochefort with him!
"I've sent them away for the evening. Told them I wanted to be alone to pray." She flicked a hand at the prie-dieu in the corner, beneath a priceless painting of the Madonna and child. "And I have been praying." Her hands found their way inside his open shirt. "I've been praying that I would be able to find the strength to tell you we must end this. But you've done it for me. I will make sure to keep my eyes downcast whenever we find ourselves in company, Aramis. And you must promise me you will not make no further excuses to be near our son."
He had not seen that blow coming and it chopped like the headsman's axe. But she was right of course. As was Athos – the Dauphin was not his child.
She loved him all the more for the uncontrived sigh heaved from the depths of his soul.
He dredged up words in return, and meant them – in the moment. "I will make every effort not to scheme up excuses to be near our … son." He loved her all the more for her acknowledgement of his parentage. And for her sake, he would learn to suppress the fierce longing in his soul.
Aramis sat for a long moment on the side of the bed, undone by the savageness of the pain shredding his heart and the knowledge that the woman in whose embrace he still sat understood and cared about his pain, even though she was a queen.
"Your name will be on my lips as I go to God," the queen whispered, "commending you to Him if you yet live. Begging to be given the chance to be with you for eternity if your soul has already flown this mortal coil."
"God go with you, my love," Aramis said brokenly, twisting to kiss her lips one last time. "I will wait for you should I depart before you." Her lips had not cooled from his kiss before he was a no more than a shadow on the wall.
And she … she fell back among the sheets that smelled of intrepid musketeer and wept inconsolably for a love ordained by a power man could not compel, nor woman resist.
This has been a work of transformative fan fiction. All characters and settings belong to BBC America, its successors and assigns. The story itself is the intellectual property of the author. No copyright infringement has been perpetrate for financial gain.