A Match for the el Maiens Ch. 25

He was not careless of her. His eyes drifted over her body in a way which would have been offensive in anyone-else but towards him she felt an excited trepidation, to see one of his eyebrows go up and the smile which could be thought arrogant and mocking lift the corner of his mouth.

"My ... Lady," he said in that husky warm voice, stepping forward to take her hand. He had recognised the anxiety, the shyness lurking behind the purple and gold make-up on her eyes and reached out to offer her the reassurance of his hand's grasp. "Forgive it me, I have not yet changed."

He looked sideways at her, considering. How would she react, to sit high above all the castle servants in a dress like this? How would they treat her the morrow, guards and gardeners, maids and men, to have seen her flaunting her gorgeous plump beauty in so obvious an attempt to win her own husband's favours. He knew the whisper had already gone round the castle like a flock of birds in the wind, Lady Arianna has been seen in Lord Clair's arms in the library. There was a suppressed excitement and sideways glances fluttered quickly at him when he walked through the castle. He knew she would dislike it that their marriage and whatever they felt within their marriage had become a public entertainment for the whole of the castle staff, however much she appreciated the importance of their intimate relations to the people who depended on them.

"Would you take it unkind?" he inquired, "if we were to eat our dinner in the sitting-room in a quiet way? It is my last night."

"Oh," she said uncertainly. She worried in case she did not look well, he did not want people to see her because she had dressed like a pink-fingered doxy. With the regional policy servants looking on her so intently she realised that she and Lisette had gone too far in the maidservant's excitement and her own desperation. But she thought, 'he wants to dine with me alone,' and felt hopeful. "I will go tell Petra," she said. As she moved towards the door her skirts swung against her legs, outlining the big rounded hips curving in to her knees, the cloth swished between her legs to make their shape along the entire length evident to the three men.

"I prithou," he said, courteously refusing to look at her legs. "I will do it." He took her hand and put it firmly in his arm, he turned and pressed Laran's and Tarra's hands again and smiled at them. He also looked hard into Tarra's eyes. Tarra blushed as he turned his head aside from the glowing vision of sexiness that the statuesque Lady wife of his former Commander and future sworn Lord had suddenly turned into.

They walked down the castle corridors together. Arianna let her hand lie in his arm, feeling the unusually narrow skirts sliding against her legs. When she asked Lisette about underskirts and petticoats for the dress, Lisette laughed so knowledgeably and said: the less cloth in his way the better, my Lady. She blushed in the flaming torchlight in the corridor.

Clair offloaded her gracefully into the sitting-room, going to excuse them to Hanya and ask the servants to serve them dinner alone. She walked hesitantly to the fireplace. She felt she could not just sit in her armchair and mend a shirt nor pick up a scroll and start tracing out some of the equations she had been discussing with Arkyll Inien earlier in the day. She picked up a china cat on the mantelpiece and looked at it without seeing it. She walked over to one of the bookcases and stared at the bad piece of embroidery hanging framed beside it.

Clair had seen it one day lying in her embroidery basket and she had haughtily explained that ordinarily she embroidered much better than that. To her great annoyance, the next time she saw it, it was hanging framed up here with the sketches of family to which every so often he added another pretty light pencil drawing or a painting. She had thought he meant it as a calculated insult, showing off her careless clumsy schoolgirl stitching when he had never worn the exquisitely embroidered shirt she sent as a betrothal gift. How could she not have recognised back then the kindness of his warm heart in that misplaced gesture? Why had she not been generous enough to explain that she resented the sewing which kept her from her mathematics.

But underneath it all she had recognised him. She had quarrelled with him constantly because she could not bear to reveal to him how much she loved his passionate kind spirit when it seemed evident he would never be able to give love to her.

Clair was coming back in the room and had sat down on a sofa. Hesitantly she crossed the room to sit beside him, a little distance from him, looking shyly off into the candlelit room. He looked along the sofa at her sitting too far away for him to press his leg to hers.

"I think B'dar will write to you of two-three more students you could have to work on your theorem," he said. "Will that suit your mind, my dear?"

"Um, yes," she said in a constrained voice, looking up at him through her black-painted lashes past the lacquered curl of hair hanging by her artificially pink cheek.

"Arkyll Inien is sufficiently clever to work with you?" he enquired. His slanted eye gleamed on her charmingly, his thin mouth pursed up in his persuasive patron's way, which unfortunately also made it look as if he were seeking a kiss.

"Um, yes," she said, her eyes swinging down.

There was silence between them. She was stumbling about in her own mind to try to find something to say to him.

"You want my favour?" he suddenly asked. The blush started rising in her cheeks, she would not look at him. He leaned over and hooked his finger in the gold chain of little rubies under her chin, tugged gently on it. She lifted her eyes at that and looked at him in a kind of agony, she resisted his pull on this silly golden chain. The pull of his fingers was too gentle to force her to come although this would have been easy since the chain was hooked into the tender lobes of her ears. He let it go.

Her head stooped down, she felt her mouth go soft with tears. She had tried hard to be like one of the pink-fingered set through which her own mother and her husband cut their paths easily but in this moment all she felt like was some ignorant stupid girl from Iarve. She glanced sidelong at him, her blue eyes veiled and tense with anxiety. He was looking along the sofa at her with that gentle patience in his slanted grey eyes.

She knew then that he cared nothing for the pink-fingered set although nor was he excited at the thought of toying with some ignorant silly girl who could allow him to feel his power over her stupidity. He had said that he liked her because she was a storming lovely with a mathematical mind and seditious politics. Finally he knew who she was and he liked her and he was willing to be intimate with her. She wished now that she had put on some simple gown such as she customarily wore: something pretty but not one which made her feel as if not only her breasts but her soul was exposed raw to his hot gaze like a piece of meat to be cooked to his taste not like a living match to his soul.

Clair looked at her blushing cheeks and veiled blue eyes. Probably she thought she wanted his favour. Of course if she said she were willing he would be able to raise the softness in her body, press here and there, slip a hand in her dress to rub a nipple and get her going sufficiently that she would open her legs for him to push his cock into her warm soft body. Of course he knew how to pleasure her and make her body sing to his tune.

He sighed, his head swinging wistfully away to look off into the room at the wall of pictures of family where the bad piece of embroidery she had once done hung. He liked it because it suggested she was not always a perfect Lady, once she had been a young girl who was bored at being made to do embroidery and did it badly in consequence. He had guessed it and now he knew that as a young girl she would sneak off from the stitching to ride wild and laughing with her little brother and her cousin or to hide in the library doing sums. It made his heart smile to know that under her cool elegance she was like that.

"I want your kiss."

He swung his head back to her. The blush had gone flaming up her cheeks as if she had asked for some exceptionally outrageous sexual treat, as if she had said: Take my favour on the table in the middle of a dinner you are giving for the officers of First Sietter, or, Let me watch while you give your favour to your own junior officer and lover on our wedding bed.

"I just want your kiss," she muttered. Her mouth was so soft and trembling with her tears, her blue eyes liquid with shame to ask it of her own husband, whom she had once had to try to wake gently in order to secure the succession for the region and her own future; the bride of a member of the high nobility who might give her some degree of freedom to do as she wished not force her to be what he wanted her to be.

His eyes glanced briefly at the deep cleft between her creamy big breasts where no jewel hung. His cock swelled softly in his breeches but he ignored this. He put his arm out across the sofa and she started to move along to him then the door swung open and the footmen began carrying in their dinner. She swung away to hide her blushing face by looking at the pictures of family hanging on the walls. He sat listening to the clinking of the plates being laid on the table until silence indicated that the dinner was all laid out and two footmen were standing by their chairs to serve them. He lifted his head and gave them a fierce glare. Their eyes fluttered nervously to each other and back at him, he jerked his head at the door. One coughed and shuffled hesitantly sideways, the other followed. They were unable to prevent themselves giving him sly and hopeful grins as they went. He tried to glare at them but his eyes were creased in his warm tender smile as they shut the door carefully behind them.

"Take it then," he said in that lazy husky el Maien voice. "If you want my kiss, take it."

She turned her head and found he was leaning back into the sofa cushions, looking slantwise at her along the sofa back. His grey eyes were creased in his smile. The smile was that rare very sweet one which he occasionally bent towards the children or Tashka if Tashka was not looking at him or the servants when they did something small and kind for him.

She felt a fool, asking for such a thing, dressing like some sweetmeat on a brothel table and then only asking for a kiss. But he was so beautiful and his smile was so warm and she might never have the chance of his kiss again. She leaned over the sofa towards him, the blush was still high in her cheeks like the sun rising over the Sietter hills in summer, he came up out of the sofa cushions and took her in his arms. Her arms went about him. His hand had come up to the back of her head and was holding it, his fingers spreading about the back of her head, his other arm about her back pulled her towards him – gently. She gripped her two arms around his lean hard chest and his thin mouth came in to her mouth and pressed softly on her kiss.

So gentle, so tender, the long soft pressing of his mouth to her mouth. The grip of his hand on the back of her head held her to him and his arm about her back pulled her against his lean muscular strong officer's body. She closed her eyes and let her mind, her thoughts, her objections to all that he stood for slip away. Her big sweet el Jien mouth opened, her lips parted to his kiss.

His tongue had come pressing into her mouth, she caught up her breath in excitement, her tongue caressed his tongue, his lips pressing about hers, his tongue playing in her mouth. Gently he withdrew his tongue, her lips pressed together, his too and they parted from the kiss. He held her warm and close, she held him firmly to her big soft breast. They sat closely wrapped in each other's arms on the sitting-room sofa with a magnificent dinner spread behind them in the candle-light, breathing softly, listening to the other one breathe, feeling the heaving sigh of the affectionate breath in each other's chest against their own chest.

Suddenly she lifted her head and turned it, he turned his towards the long windows leading out to the courtyard. He got hurriedly up and moved swiftly to open the long windows and listen intently. She watched him run out of the windows, calling softly as he went up the stairs to the veranda.

Hanya was standing at the door to his room, turned towards his call, his face wet with tears and his soft mouth still pouting with his sobs. Clair reached out and gathered the child to him, wiped the tears from his face. "It was just a dream," he murmured. Hanya pressed his round soft limbs into Clair's hard chest, sobbing his tears down his papa's neck. Clair knelt and then lifted the heavy little body up in his arms and walked down the veranda, he saw Arianna coming up the stairs towards him.

The boys' nursery door was open and now Arkyll's small figure was trotting out of it. He paused to look at his mother coming up the stairs in sleepy surprise. His mouth was already opening to make some comment on a kind of dress he had never seen her wear, Clair said hurriedly: "You want to sleep with your mama, is it, baby boy?" Arkyll grinned with a satisfied yawn. Arianna was already kneeling to him, he leant into her soft bosom, snuggling his dark-haired head to her shoulder, his eyes already drifting contentedly shut. She lifted her head to look at Clair. He said, "will you permit the two boys to sleep with you, my dear? We might eat our dinner at your table, Hanya will sleep easy if we are in the room with him."

"It is your last night," she said softly. "I have a very big bed, my dear. Perhaps you might like to sleep there with us?"

He lifted his head at this and his mouth quirked briefly in a surprised and grateful tender happiness. Her wide red mouth smiled back to him, sweet as a bowl of cherries.

Later he lay in the big bed, not accustomed to being so high up off the ground, uncertain about the softness of the pillows and covers in which he felt nestled as if in a cloud. He looked across the pillows in the light of his candle. There was Hanya's golden head turned sleeping towards him, the long lashes kissing the serene cheeks of that extraordinarily beautiful seraphic face. Arkyll's dark locks of hair were flung about on the white pillow, his cherubic features too were softened out in sleep. He looked so innocent with his mischievous slanted blue eyes closed. You would never believe he could try to climb up the shelves in the pantry and pull a whole bowl of raspberry jam all over himself and the floor, falling all the way down the shelves yet managing not to hurt himself.

Beyond the two children was the lovely pale face of his Lady wife, her blonde hair in a simple loose plait, her wide red mouth bunched softly and sleepily, her blue eyes looking back on him with a clear soft smile in them. A high collar of lace on the linen nightdress she was wearing lapped her neck in a pattern of flowers. He smiled on her and at his sons before reaching out behind him to pinch out his candle and settling himself to sleep. He lay nestled in the softness of her bed, listening to the breathing of his family in the soft darkness, his eyes drifting shut.