Chapter 6: The Morning Bargain
The cheering from the corridor had died away, leaving a hollow silence that was worse. James lay beside her, his arm still draped over his eyes, his breathing slowly returning to normal. The smell of sex and cold stone filled the space between them.
Kate didn’t move. She stared at the canopy above, feeling the slow trickle of him between her thighs, the deep, bruised ache inside her. A trophy, a vessel, a conquered kingdom. She closed her eyes.
Sometime later, she felt the mattress shift as he stood. She heard the splash of water from the basin, the rough sound of cloth on skin. He moved around the room, a shadow in the dying firelight, dressing with efficient, silent motions. He didn’t look at her. He didn’t speak.
Just before he reached the door, he paused. His voice was low, stripped of its earlier drunken roughness, leaving something harder in its place. “The marks on your ribs. They will be addressed.”
Then he was gone. The lock didn’t turn. It was a small, meaningless mercy.
She slept fitfully, the phantom echoes of the crowd’s approval threading through her dreams. When she woke, it was to the deep, indigo quiet before dawn. The fire was ash. The castle itself seemed to hold its breath.
James was asleep beside her, a solid, dark shape under the covers, turned away. She could just make out the line of his shoulder, the tousled copper of his hair against the pillow. His breathing was steady and deep.
Her body felt stiff, sore, used. A cold fury, clean and sharp, replaced the numb humiliation of the night. She remembered his shock when her own fingers had worked between her legs. It had been a victory, however small, however carnal. A reclaiming. She would not be a passive participant in her own subjugation.
Slowly, quietly, she shifted under the heavy blankets. She moved down the bed, the linen whispering against her skin. She slipped beneath the covers, into the warm, male-scented space where he lay.
Her hand found the hard plane of his stomach, tracing down through the coarse hair that led south. He stirred in his sleep, a low, unconscious murmur escaping his lips. Her fingers closed around him. He was soft, but he thickened almost instantly in her grasp, a swift, startling response even in slumber. She felt a ruthless satisfaction.
Pushing the covers back, she bent her head. Her dark hair spilled over his hips. She took the head of his cock into her mouth, her tongue flat against the sensitive underside. He tasted of salt and sleep and her.
James awoke with a sharp, arrested gasp. His body went taut. “Christ,” he breathed, the word thick with sleep and shock.
She didn’t stop. She took him deeper, her lips stretching, her throat relaxing as she worked down his length. She used her hand at the base, tightening her fist, matching the rhythm of her mouth. He was fully hard now, pulsing against her tongue. His hands came down, tangling in her hair, not forcing, but gripping as if to anchor himself.
“Kate,” he groaned, his hips lifting off the mattress of their own volition.
She hummed around him, the vibration wringing a ragged curse from him. She quickened her pace, sucking hard, her tongue swirling over the crown, tracing the slit. She drew back, letting him pop from her mouth with a wet sound, then plunged down again, taking him to the root. She was punishing him, rewarding him, claiming him. It was power in the only currency this marriage seemed to understand.
His breathing grew ragged, his grip in her hair tightening. “Fuck… I’m going to…”
She pulled off, stroking him fast and rough with her fist. “Come,” she said, her voice a hoarse whisper in the dark. Then she took him back into her mouth, deep, and he shattered.
His release shot hot and bitter down her throat. She swallowed, once, twice, feeling the involuntary jerking of his hips. She held him there until he was spent, until his hands fell away from her hair and he collapsed back onto the pillows, breathing like a man dragged from a wreck.
She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, then slid back up the bed to lie beside him. They both stared into the grey darkness, listening to the distant call of a waking guard.
“Why?” His voice was sand rubbed raw. “Why this sudden… kindness?”
Kate turned her head on the pillow. Dawn was beginning to bleed a pale light around the edges of the tapestries, etching his profile in silver. “It wasn’t kindness.”
He turned to look at her, his brown eyes searching hers in the gloom.
“I need you to make Lord Howard leave,” she said, the words clear and cold in the quiet room.
James blinked. He pushed himself up on one elbow, the sheets pooling around his waist. “Howard? Your English ambassador? He’s meant to stay for a fortnight, to ensure the… smooth transition.”
“I don’t trust him.”
“He is your father’s man.”
“Precisely.” She sat up, drawing the sheet to her chest. “My father’s interests and mine are no longer perfectly aligned. Howard whispers. He watches. He reports things that could be… misconstrued. Like a princess who bruises too easily, or a prince who returns to his wedding feast alone.”
James studied her, his expression unreadable. “You think he would use such things against you? Against this alliance?”
“I know he would. He is a politician. He trades in vulnerabilities. My vulnerability is now Scotland’s vulnerability. Send him away. Today.”
A harsh laugh escaped him. He ran a hand through his copper hair. “So this,” he gestured between them, “was a bribe? A payment for a political favor?”
“Consider it a wedding gift,” Kate said, her tone devoid of all warmth. “You enjoyed it. And it secures your border as well as mine. A happy wife is a quiet wife. A watched wife is a risk.”
He was silent for a long moment. The room grew lighter. She could see the faint tracery of scars across his chest, the sharp cut of his jaw where muscle tightened. Finally, he swung his legs out of bed and stood, naked and unselfconscious in the gathering dawn. He walked to the window, looking out over the mist-shrouded High Street of Edinburgh.
“You miscalculate,” he said, his back to her. “You assume I need to be bribed with your mouth on my cock to see a threat to my own house.”
Kate’s breath caught. Had she overplayed her hand?
He turned. His face was grim, but his eyes held a flicker of something that wasn’t anger. It might have been respect. “I was already going to send him away. Isobel’s… overzealousness… convinced me. I’ll not have my household—my wife—spied upon and mistreated by foreigners, English or otherwise.”
The shock was a cold wash. She had debased herself for nothing. Offered up a part of her own defiance as a transaction he hadn’t even required. Shame, hot and prickling, crawled up her neck.
He saw it. He crossed the room in three strides, stopping by the bed. He didn’t touch her. “But you didn’t know that. You saw a problem, and you used the weapons you had to try and solve it. You traded something you considered yours to give, for something you thought you needed.” He leaned down, bracing his hands on the mattress, bringing his face close to hers. His breath was warm, carrying the faint, intimate taste of her. “It was a clever, ruthless move. The move of a queen, not a princess.”
He straightened. “Get dressed. Break your fast. I’ll deal with Howard.”
He began to dress, pulling on breeches, a linen shirt, his leather jerkin. The casual power in his movements, the utter lack of ceremony, was more daunting than any royal pomp.
As he belted his dirk, he spoke again, not looking at her. “And Kate?” She looked up. “Next time you want something from me,” he said, his hand on the door latch, “ask. You might be surprised.” A ghost of a smile touched his lips, devoid of warmth but full of a strange, stark understanding. “Or don’t ask. I rather enjoyed that.”
He left, closing the door softly behind him. She sat in the vast, empty bed, the taste of him still on her tongue, the sheet clutched in her fists. She felt utterly transparent, and yet, for the first time since setting foot in Scotland, not entirely alone. It was a more dangerous feeling than any hatred.