The Secret Eleanor by Cecelia Holland

you,” Henry said. “I would carry you off now, if you’d let me.” Still holding her hand against him, he massaged himself with her.
    “Come away with me,” he said. “Be my Eleanor, in spite of him.”
    She leaned on him, her head on his shoulder. “No—not like that. Don’t you see? There’s so much more than that. If I were free—if we could marry—”
    “I would marry you tomorrow if you were free. But—”
    “Then heed me.” On the enseamed linen between them she traced a circle with her finger. “The Land of the Franks—it seems like a great kingdom, and it was great in older times, but over the years they’ve lost great pieces of it, either outright, like Anjou, or giving them away as fiefs, like your Normandy. France is shrinking away; it’s hardly more than the lands around Paris now. If you and I married, I would have Aquitaine, and you would have Normandy and Anjou—”
    “And England,” he said, his voice crackling. “I will have England, if I must hack Stephen to pieces to get it.”
    “Ah,” she said, “it gives me heart to hear you say that. Because then, mark, we would have such a kingdom that would swallow up poor Louis and his little France.” Her eyes on his, she traced a circle around the mattress between them. “France is dying, and something new could now be born.”
    She saw his eyes widen as he took this in. “We would hold the greatest kingdom in Christendom,” he said. “Greater even than the Empire, and rich as the powers of the east.”
    Drawn to that lust in his voice, she reached out to him and they joined again, fierce as leopards, scratching and clawing and roaring at the peak, as if they crushed worlds between them. Afterward, his weight still pressing her down, his lance still deep inside her, he said, “Come with me now. We can get Aquitaine back from him, he’s a milksop. Come away with me, be with me always.”
    She laughed, loving this in him, how he knew no boundary. “No, no. We must play this one properly. There is a lot to win here. I must get rid of my husband, first, and then I will marry you. That way no one can challenge us.”
    “Women can’t break their marriage vows. He’d have to give you up, and he’d be mad to. Just come with me, my Eleanor. I’ll make you the greatest queen in Christendom, and be damned to marriage.”
    “Oh, don’t let a priest hear you say that.”
    “I hate priests.”
    She laughed, and kissed his mouth again, long and tenderly, and then drew away. His manhood slid slowly from her crevice. “You throw yourself over the river before you even reach it. I will do what I must, and then we can be together, and all right with God and man.” She sat up on the edge of the bed and used her shift to wipe his jism from her thighs. “I must go. They’ll know by now I am gone, even with my sister to lead them astray.” She hardly cared if they knew she was gone, if they couldn’t stop her or catch her. It was even better if they knew, as long as they could prove nothing; it would sour Louis against her, so he would more willingly let her go.
    “I’ll see you again? You promise?” He gripped her wrist, as if to hold her there. “I’ll die every day I don’t see you again.”
    “I promise,” she said, and made the sign of the cross on her breast. Her clothes lay scattered around the little room; she gathered them up, pulled the gown down over her head, cast the underclothes aside. He was sitting up; he caught her discarded shift in his hands and buried his face in the sheer silk, drawing in a deep breath as if he could inhale her. When he looked up, a wicked smile adorned his face.
    “I’ll keep this.”
    She gave a little laugh, warmed in his young ardor. “As you wish, my red darling. I will send for you, when I’m free.”
    “I’ll be waiting, every moment,” he said.
    She felt, suddenly, the age between them, as if he looked in through one side of the window of the years, and she through the other.