Page 6 of Six Wild Crowns

“Are you nervous about tonight?” Henry asks her.

“No,” she says. “But I do wish we could consummate our love a different way.”

“Not with an audience, you mean?”

Cernunnos’s protection isn’t complete until a marriage is consummated, so tradition has it that a group of courtiers and religious men must bear witness, to make sure that the bordweal will hold. It’s necessary, but not what she wants for her first time. She explains this to Henry.

“The bordweal only requires us to make love in Brynd on the first night. It doesn’t require it to be our first time.”

“You mean, we could…?” she says. The knot in her stomach tightens, as it always does when she thinks about Henry’s body pressing against hers. The fields are giving way now, melting into the Holtwode. Woods like the one they fell in love in. Henry’s eyes meet hers, and she knows – like always – that they are thinking the same thing.

Henry knocks on the carriage wall. The driver pulls the chargers to a halt.

“Your Highness?” a groom says, peering into the window.

Henry gestures for him to open the door, then lifts Boleyn down onto the path as though she were no heavier than one of the leaves coating the ground.

“Give the horses a rest,” Henry says.

“But Your Highness – nightfall…” the groom stutters. “And there’s been talk of a crone in…”

Henry strikes the groom with the back of one hand, a clap of a movement that drives the boy into a nearby tree trunk. He lies at the tree’s base. Simply unconscious, Boleyn thinks, looking away from the smear of blood on the bark, and the uncanny jut of the groom’s jaw. There is a certain thrill in Henry’s demonstration of strength. Her desire twists.

“Give them a rest,” Henry repeats.

The driver bows deeply. Henry leads Boleyn away from the scrind road – a slight tug behind her navel the only sign she is leaving its magic – and towards a bed of bluebells. Her heart is hammering, even though she’s dreamed of this moment for months. One hears stories of first times. Mary’s very free with her tales. But then they reach the bluebells, where they can no longer see or hear the carriage. In the distance, something barks. He kisses her everywhere,tenderly stripping her of clothes and guile. Her hands skate over the linen shirt beneath his doublet, feeling muscles toned from years of hunting, jousting and battle. They have both waited far too long for this moment, and Boleyn had feared that the anticipation would be more delicious than the reality.

She need not have worried. Henry is uxorious. He kisses his way down her neck, her breasts, her stomach. When he’s on his knees, he pulls her to the ground, and a moment later she understands why – her legs would not have held beneath the intensity of the pleasure.

“What can I do for you?” she says between gasps. She dimly has some notion of unfairness. Henry presses her hand, and she understands:this is for you.She takes his gift and lets it bloom inside her, tendrils of rapture threading up her spine.

“Let me see you,” she says.

Her husband, her king, removes his shirt. She runs her hands down his chest. The magic whirling across his skin seems to reach for her. Then he is naked, and she understands how the power of a god could flow through such a man without destroying him. She pulls him down on top of her, wrapping her legs around his waist. His desire presses against her most intimate part, but he holds himself back, his mouth on her neck and lips, his hands in her hair. Unbidden, the image of the groom, his jaw twisted, springs to Boleyn’s mind. There is so much power in Henry, so much rage and destruction, but for her he is gentle. She has tamed him. She almost laughs.

“I’m ready,” she says.

He pushes inside her, joining their bodies at last, as their minds and hearts joined so many months ago. A mere pinch, and then she relaxes.

“My queen, my love, my strength and my future,” he says. “I would do anything for you, Boleyn.”

“And I you.”

As she rocks her hips in time with his, Boleyn cradles his head to her shoulder and smiles up at the canopy above. The trees whisper to each other of secrets and wild magic.

CHAPTER FOUR

Seymour

Once Boleyn and the king are on their way, Seymour excuses herself from the group of well-wishers and hurries back into High Hall. In a few weeks, she will join the new queen at Brynd Castle as a lady-in-waiting, but first she must tie up her affairs at Daven, and she desperately needs to change her cloth before she leaves. Before she can slip into the hall, though, her brother accosts her.

“The king’s going to be visiting Brynd often, until he can plant a brat inside her. I want you under his nose so if Blount dies, you’re already in his mind.”

“Every other available woman will be trying to do the same,” she points out.

“So do it better than them. There might not be anything remarkable about you, but we’ve raised you to be the perfect wife. So make that clear. Submissive. Dutiful. Pliable. Understand?”

“Maybe he doesn’t like those qualities in a woman,” she says. “Look at the new queen.”

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