Henry
Henry’s lips were warm on mine. He tasted as he always had, of cloves, of almost forgotten spices, of danger and of longing, of all the things I wanted but could not have.
“Still sweet,” he said as he pulled away.
We were naked under the covers of the great bed of state. We had never slept together in his room at Windsor in all the months that I had been his mistress. I knew that this was a dream.
I lay beneath him, the canopy high above my head. The curtains blocked out all sound and light, save one candle that burned beside the bed.
Yet I could still see him, not as he was now, old and feeble, sick from a long winter of coughing. I saw Henry as he had been when I loved him, still vital, his strength and warmth cocooning me, making me long to forget the world that lay beyond hi
