14 May 1959
Jean woke first, slowly, humming to herself in the darkness as she stretched catlike and contented. Her body ached, but it was a good ache, a wholesome ache, the ache of muscles seldom used suddenly having discovered new purpose. The sun had not yet risen, and the little clock she kept by her bedside told her it had not yet gone 5:00. The castle was all in darkness, and so was the world beyond; the cooks would go shuffling downstairs soon, to start the bread and the tea and the coffee, frying up eggs and bacon for the hungry guardsman and landscapers and butlers and maids who would come wandering, yawning, into the kitchen sometime around 7:00. Soon, but not yet; she had a few minutes left to enjoy the stillness, the tenderness in her heart, the warmth of the man who slept peacefully beside her.
The regret would come, of that she was certain, but it had not come for her yet. For now, for this moment, she was still happy, and she clung to that happiness as a child would a favorite toy.
Lucien slept on beside her, snoring ever so lightly, and she grinned at the sound of it, delighted by this new piece of intimate knowledge, one more little detail she had learned about her king, one more little secret she could carry in her heart. He was lying on his back in almost exactly the same position he'd been in when they'd fallen asleep the night before; his left arm was flung out across the empty expanse of mattress but his right had drifted at some point in the night, freed itself from her weight and shifted between their bodies. Jean herself lay on her tummy, pressed hard to his side, their legs still tangled beneath the duvet, her arm across his belly. Carefully she lifted her head, rested her head against his shoulder and looked at his face, soft and without care as he slept.
And what a dear face it was; those warm blue eyes were closed now, but she remembered the expression of hunger in them when he took her the night before, and she shivered. His beard needing seeing to, but it was still rather neat, outlining his square jaw and full lips just so. Those lips had touched every inch of her, shocked her out of her quiet life and propelled her out into the stars, and they had done it tenderly, joyfully. Oh, but he had been tender, and gentle, full of a sort of wonder as he touched her, and it was that reverence that reassured her, more than most anything else, that while their coming together had been a mistake it was a choice they had both made for the right reasons. He was there in her bed because he wanted to be there, with her, not because he was just searching for the nearest warm body. If all he'd needed was a safe place to slake his lust she was certain his touch would not have been half so tender, and she took some solace from that certainty.
In the stillness she reached out, brushed the swell of his full bottom lip with the pad of her thumb and watched as the smallest of smiles tugged at his mouth before he turned his head, still sleeping peacefully. She had not woken him but even in his dreams he had smiled to feel her touch, and she smiled, too, utterly delighted by him. Beneath her his body was strong and hard and powerful but it was soft, too, relaxed and content, there with her.
Though she wanted, very much, to keep him with her, to spend the morning lazing around in bed, perhaps to rouse him with a gentle touch of her own and let him roll her beneath him once more she knew that she was running out of time. He would need to leave her, and soon, for the sake of both their reputations, for the security of the realm and Jean's continued employment in the castle. There was not time for everything she wanted to do, everything she wanted to say, but there was time enough to wake him gently, and so she raised herself up, slid along the length of his body until her head was resting on the same pillow as his own.
Time and exertion had done their work and his normally neat hair had at last escaped its restraints, and it lay curly and soft and blonde like a halo around his dear face. Smiling to herself Jean reached out and smoothed her hand across that hair, running her fingers through the strands, stroking him lazily, as if he were hers to love and cherish, as if he belonged to her. Her fingers drifted down to rub against his scalp, her eyes on his face as she watched him slowly come awake beneath her. His lips twitched, just a little, and his eyelashes fluttered, and then he sighed and came back to her, her beautiful, impossible man.
"Good morning, my darling," he said in a deep rumbling voice, scratchy with sleep. He reached out and caught her hand, drew it to his lips and pressed a kiss into the soft skin of her palm.
Oh, how wonderful it was to wake beside him, to hear him call her darling, to feel safe and treasured in the warmth and quiet of her bed on a still morning. Relief and joy and contentment and love; Jean felt it all, in that moment, felt herself borne aloft on a radiant sea of delight. She let her head drop to rest against his shoulder, his beard brushing her skin as he turned and dropped another kiss against her forehead.
"Good morning, Lucien," she whispered.
Though his waking had been slow he gathered the strength to move then, wrapping her in his arms and drawing her hard against him, and she let him, her arms winding around him and her lips pressing against the column of his throat. He smelled of sweat and her in the most intoxicating way, and she breathed him in, luxuriating in the moment for as long as she could. Jean had an internal clock that ticked as precisely as the little one that sat at her bedside, and she knew the minutes were rushing by, that one or another of them would have to find the strength to separate them and push them out into the world, but she was finding it difficult to even imagine extricating herself from the safe haven of his arms.
"I'm afraid I've put you in a terrible position, Jean," he said slowly.
She lifted her chin at the same moment he lowered his own, and they only narrowly avoided cracking their heads together. Smiling softly they looked at one another, and she thought then how much she still had to learn about this man. Before this moment she had thought him reckless and a bit self-centered, too preoccupied with himself and his own worries to spare much thought for other people. After all, she had told him outright that anything more than friendship between them would be improper, and since that conversation he had kissed her on two separate occasions and come to her room in the still of the night and made love to her so passionately that just the thought of it made her belly clench with need. Until this moment she had thought he must have forgotten that conversation entirely, or at least decided to disregard her warnings, but now here he was, acknowledging without prompting that he remembered her concerns very well, and seeming somehow contrite at having overstepped the lines she had tried to draw between them.
"Yes," she answered him truthfully. "You have. But I played my part, too, Lucien."
In the darkness he grinned, and she loved him for it. "Quite well, as I recall."
"Silly boy," she chided him, kissing his chin to take some of the sting out of her words. He was right, however much she might wish to ignore it; he had put her in a terrible position. Having had a taste of him she could not imagine going on without him, and yet she knew that was exactly what she must do. But how? She could not deny, now, that she loved him, could not pretend as if he felt nothing at all for her, but their positions had not changed. Their love, no matter how sweet, could not be allowed to flourish.
"Nothing's changed," she slowly, though she knew that wasn't entirely true; they were lying naked in her bed, and that had changed everything. "I can't be your mistress, Lucien. I...I couldn't bear it. This was...you were…" she bit her lip, trying to find the right word, "wonderful, but despite evidence to the contrary I'm really not that sort of woman."
He had the good grace not to tease her; in fact, his expression was quite serious as he considered her words.
"Be my wife, then," he said.
That was exactly what she'd been hoping he wouldn't say.
"Oh, Lucien," she sighed, her palm ghosting over the heavy muscle of his bicep, his shoulder, and back again. "You can't marry your housekeeper. You've only been king for a few months. You've only known me for a few months. If you were to do that, you'd look like...people would think you were...oh, they'd lose all faith in you." They'd think you were a cad, they'd think I'd taken advantage of you, I'd never be able to look Mattie in the eye again, they'd say such horrible things about both of us, your cousins would go mad -
"My father married a commoner," he said stubbornly. "The people came to her accept her, in time. They came to love her."
"Your mother was a beautiful Parisian artist from a wealthy family. She wasn't your father's housekeeper. I know you know it isn't the same, Lucien, please-"
But then, to horror, her words were cut short by a sharp knock on the door. For a moment they only looked at one another, eyes wide and fearful; this was exactly the sort of thing Jean had been dreading. No one came looking for her in the early hours of the morning, not ever. She could not even recall when last anyone had visited her room - if someone needed her they usually found her out in the castle during the daylight hours. That someone should come knocking now, when she had her king naked in her bed, seemed to be too great a coincidence. The two events had to be connected, and she knew that could only spell disaster for her.
Lucien started to rise but she pushed him back down at once, shooting him a baleful look, and then rushed out of bed and into her pink robe. Her hair was a mess and there was a magnificent lovebite blooming across her throat the robe did not hide, but she supposed it would have to do. Whoever was on the other side of the door knocked again, almost urgently.
Holding her breath and cursing cruel fate Jean opened the door a crack, trying to shield the room from view with her own body, wondering what sort of nightmare waited for her on the other side of the door.
It was Matthew, leaning heavily on his cane and frowning.
"Sorry to wake you, Jean," he said quietly.
"It's all right," she answered, her voice just as soft as his own had been. "Is something the matter?"
"Yes." His frown deepened, if such a thing were possible. "The king has an early meeting with the PM and Peter went to wake him, but he wasn't in his room. I hate to ask you, this Jean, but-"
"He's here, Matthew." Such simple words they were, and yet they contained within them her own destruction. Matthew did not flinch, or betray any evidence of surprise; why should he, she thought, when after all he had stood guard outside the glasshouse that night at the country manor, that night when Jean had danced with her king beneath the stars, when he had kissed her amongst the blooms. The king and Matthew were quite close and likely talked about all manner of things; no doubt she had been a subject of conversation at least once. But Matthew was an old friend, and there was no judgment in his gaze as he looked at her.
Lucien must have heard their quiet conversation for he began to shuffle around behind her. For a moment Jean simply stood, frozen, listening to the sound of him stuffing himself into his trousers, staring down at her toes and wishing the ground would simply swallow her up. The morning had been going so well, but now reality had come crashing in on her, and her joy had fled.
Once he was dressed Lucien came to the doorway; he kissed her cheek and then stepped quickly out into the corridor. No one else had passed by her room from the moment of Matthew's arrival, and no one came walking by now, and if anyone did they would only see the king and his head guardsman in quiet conversation with the housekeeper. The scene had shifted from one of damning intimacy to one of dull routine, just like that.
"Jean, I-" Lucien started to say, but Jean shook her head.
"You have things to do, Your Majesty," she said, "and so do I. By your leave."
She did not wait for his answer, simply closed the door in his face and then collapsed against it, her forehead pressed to the door as tears began to course silently down her cheeks.