Read A VERY TUDOR CHRISTMAS for Free Online

crown...”

    “The ivy... The ivy...” she faltered, and whatever she
was going to say was lost when he leaned closer and brushed his lips softly over
hers. She felt their breath mingle, the damp heat of his skin, his lips. It was
more intoxicating than any wine could be.
    “Meg...” he whispered.
    She didn’t want him to let her go. For that moment, surrounded
by the snow and the fire, the past dropped away, and she was just that young
girl again, longing for this touch. She knew she should not be with him, that
she had to keep being the sensible, staid Meg she had become at court. But she
was so tired of being that girl.
    Before she could think, she wrapped her arms around him and
pressed her lips harder to his. She felt his hands close around her waist, and
he shifted their bodies so they lay next to each other on the soft carpet.
    “My sweet Meg,” he said hoarsely, and his tongue traced the
curve of her lower lip, light and teasing, before she parted her lips to him and
he slid inside to taste her.
    And she soared up and up, free, even if it was only for the
moment.
    Through the haze of her dream, she felt his touch slide around
her hips, pulling her closer against him, their bodies so close even a snowflake
couldn’t come between them. She arched against him and felt his erection, the
proof that he desired her, too, through the layers of their winter clothes.
    He groaned deeply, and their kiss slid down into a wild,
frantic need. Her fingers plucked at the lacings of his shirt until she could
touch the bare, smooth, warm skin of his chest. She felt his breath catch under
her touch.
    Sensations raced through her, like lightning over her skin, and
she remembered that only he had ever been able to make her feel alive like this.
She dug her fingers into his hard shoulders and held him with her as their kiss
deepened. She wanted more and more, wanted to forget....
    But he drew away from her. “Meg. My pretty Meg,” he said
roughly. He pressed his forehead against hers, holding her as their ragged
breath mingled. “It can’t be this way. Not now. Not yet.”
    Meg was deeply confused, cold where she had been warm, dizzy
and lost. He was leaving her again? “What do you mean?”
    He just shook his head, and gently set her away from him. “It
must be right. After all I have done...”
    Meg shivered, feeling abandoned all over again. She gathered
her disordered clothes around her with shaking hands, unable to look at him, to
say anything at all. She just wanted to escape.
    “It has stopped snowing,” he said. “We should go back and find
the others.”
    Only then did Meg notice that the gray sky was clear outside
the small window. Why, then, did she feel colder than ever?

Chapter Four
    The bride looked beautiful, Beatrice thought as she
stood beside Meg and watched Anne Cecil, now the Countess of Oxford, proceed
into her parents’ great hall on her new husband’s arm. Her gown, white satin
embroidered with gold-and-silver thread twined in a pattern of vines and
flowers, gleamed in the light of thousands of wax candles. Her hair fell down
her back in a tumble of artful brown curls, bound around her brow with a wreath
of pearl flowers. She looked as every bride should, Beatrice thought—like a
fairy princess.
    Yet she didn’t even glance up to acknowledge the cheers of the
crowd gathered for her wedding banquet, or the flower petals they showered over
her. She gazed at the floor as she walked behind her parents, holding on to her
new husband’s arm, almost as if she was marching to the gallows.
    The Earl of Oxford, however, just as splendid as his bride in a
doublet of white and gold with a pearl-edged cap on his pretty head, waved and
bowed. He didn’t look at his bride with her bent head.
    It would not be thus when she married, Beatrice vowed as she
tossed her last handful of petals. Her husband would look only at her. He would
not care if they married at Westminster Abbey before hundreds of courtiers