The Laughing Cavalier and His Lady
The "one-shot" below takes place at the close of two pre-quels in Baroness Orczy's Scarlet Pimpernel series: The Laughing Cavalier (1913) and The First Sir Percy (1921).
These novels trace the fortunes of the very first Sir Percy Blakeney, known to his good friends by the alias of "Diogenes," who is said to have been a dashing seventeenth-century mercenary. Diogenes survives fighting in the Thirty Years War, and then makes his way to the Dutch Republic during the reign of Maurice of Nassau (1567-1625), where he is drawn into foiling a series of intrigues against Nassau's life with the help of the courageous Gilda van Beresteyn, a blond beauty he woos in the first novel and marries in the second.
This piece takes place in the hours after The First Sir Percy draws to a close in spring, 1624, as Maurice of Nassau triumphs with the help of Sir Percy's namesake ancestor, and our English hero is reunited with his spirited Dutch bride. I have rated it "T" for some references to wedded passion and a chamber pot, but I assure all readers that I mean no offense, and hope none is taken.
It is dedicated to BaronessOrc, with many thanks for her friendship, and for bringing these novels to my attention; and offered to all in this little corner of the fan fiction world, with hopes that every Gilda finds her Diogenes, and that all who linger here find joy on Valentine's Day, and every day, of the coming year!
There was a mouse skittering across the floor.
It woke Gilda von Beresteyn, who had been shifting between sleep and floating awareness in the frigid silence of the mill loft on the Veluwe.
The noise did not seem to have disturbed her beloved husband, the soldier of fortune, Sir Percy Blakeney, known to his friends as Diogenes, who continued to snore softly beside her.
Gilda's eyes gradually adjusted to the darkness, as she lifted them to the boards of the loft's high ceiling. Ribbons of moonlight visible through warped and aging rafters faintly illuminated the network of poles that connected to the blades of the windmill outside. She could hear the flutter of wings as birds that had nested on the silent building stirred softly. Beyond them, the wind whistled a high-pitched melody along the melting ice of a fading winter.
A renewed squeak made her positively apprehensive about laying her bare feet on the floor to stumble to the chamber-pot, should such be required.
Gilda moved her limbs experimentally as she continued to listen for the furtive dash of little feet in the darkest hours of the night. The makeshift marriage bed they'd contrived by arranging her husband's broad cloak and Gilda's own, luxurious, fur one atop grain sacks hardly offered the bounteous comfort of her home in Haarlem, she thought, as a light grimace furrowed her perfect features. Even with the insulation of her husband's cloak, the rough texture of burlap itched and chafed against her delicate skin. The early spring air of the loft was cold enough to nip at her bones, burrowed as she was beneath the plush fur of the cloak spread over her husband's form and her own.
And yet, for all that, Gilda's heart had never been so full, her mind more thoroughly at peace.
The loft was a palace; the windmill a tower of gold. She would not have traded her surroundings for any other.
She thought then, of the events of the last few hours, the changes they had brought to her life, and to her body. Safe at last from the machinations of my Lord of Stoutenburg, secure in the knowledge that she, her father, her husband and his friends had saved Holland from the fiends who might have delivered it again into Spanish slavery, she had wept with relief in the arms of her faithful maid Maria, and then, slept, exhausted, in the arms of her beloved husband.
But when she had, at last, awoken alone at his side in the privacy of the loft, Gilda and her husband had found that they, a couple so cruelly separated mere hours after their wedding-feast, could deny themselves no longer. Sacks of grain had shifted beneath them as the joy of their reunion had turned to passion. Gilda could remember how her husband's glorious eyes, now graced again with the gift of sight, glowing with the laughter that had alternately enticed and intimidated her since first they'd met, had turned tender and intense. His large hands had touched her gently, coaxing and then compelling her into wanton pleasure.
And as they had spiraled up together, Gilda had clung to her husband's shoulders, dizzy with astonishment and delight.
The delight heated her still, even in the cold, damp air of the room, even as the tentacles of her breath curled before her, briefly illuminated by moonlight.
Gilda was startled from her musings by a muscular arm, which reached out to pull her closer to her husband's warmth.
Now Diogenes was awake, his merry eyes searching the blue mysteries of her own in the darkness.
"How are you, my love?" he asked.
There was genuine concern in his voice, and for the first time, Gilda saw that her husband's merriment masked a deep seriousness.
Shyness overtook her for a moment, but then she smiled, bravely, into his features.
"I am perfect, my lord. I could feel no better, if I had just attended a banquet."
"No pain?" Diogenes persisted. His voice was quiet, and kind.
There was, a little. But Gilda, who had endured so much over the past few weeks, was determined to ignore it.
What, after all, was a little discomfort beside the bounty of lying in his arms?
"None, whatsoever!" she maintained firmly.
She turned, then, from the intensity of his gaze to settle in the crook of his arm as she gazed up at the rafters of the loft.
"I was considering," she began, "the various places I've been obliged to travel since making my lord's acquaintance."
"Really?" Diogenes began to smile, hearing an unaccustomed lightness in his wife's tone.
It was not often that he had been given the pleasure of bantering with his beloved over the past few weeks.
"Let me see.." Gilda began. "First I visited and lodged at the inn of The White Goat..."
"Where your vixen's tongue ripped me to shreds," Diogenes contributed.
"Where I gave you my heart, and my hand," Gilda corrected, with mild severity. "Where you disdained my father's money for love of me."
"...And the miller's at Houdekerk..." Gilda continued to list. "...And the home of Ben Isaje in Rotterdam...."
"And Delft," Diogenes added grimly...
"Well," Gilda cast her eyes downward and hid a smile, "I did not go to Delft--though you may remember I begged you to allow it."
"As well I should have, my love," Diogenes put in, his merry eyes dancing. "...'Twould have saved me a sore shoulder and a sleepless night..."
"That dreadful mill near Ryswyck..." Gilda began,
"Where I lay, trussed like a fowl," Diogenes put in. He frowned at the memory of pain in his limbs, and far beyond that, the misery he'd known that night at the thought that he might never see her again.
"Where I slept not a wink," Gilda continued, "weeping and fearing for your life...as I did at Amersfoort...tormented by that devil...until he led me hence so that you and your friends could rescue me and put that madman to flight...."
They were both somber a moment, as they contemplated the horror of the past week: the wicked treachery of Gilda's brother, Nicolaus; the evil machinations of Stoutenburg; the last frantic duel fought before his escape.
And then Diogenes broke the silence, taking up his wife's earlier, bantering, tone.
"By Saint Bavon!" Diogenes swore. "All this journeying! What was my lady seeking to gain from all these adventures?"
And now Gilda shifted to meet her husband's merry gaze directly, emboldened by love and happiness at last.
"Well," she began demurely, her eyes twinkling into his, "I was seeking an honest man...."
The mirth of the laughing Cavalier and his lady rang to the rafters, unsettling the birds who were nested above.
"By Saint Bavon!" Diogenes exclaimed again. "My angel has finally learned to joke!"