Chateau of Desire (Chateau of Love Book 1) Read online

And he was gone.

  *****

  Louis quickly trotted back to the practice yard. She certainly was an odd girl, he thought, and chastised himself for staying so long. A short break between archery and the afternoon rapier practice was typical of the day. Time to rest the shoulder muscles up for a very different exercise. Most of the Guard spent it meandering, doing the odd errand, stuffing their mouths with meat pies laid out in the Hall for them (the Master insisted that the Guard be well fed). Some used the break to get a quick blowjob.

  Louis was different. It was understood between he and his keeper that he would use his break to improve his archery, mostly because he spent so much of the scheduled practice sharpening everyone’s rapier. Thus, the half glass that was allowed the Guard was, for him, cut in half once again. As it is, he had stuffed a meat pie in his mouth as he trotted over to the kitchen to see what he could do, just swallowing it all as fast as he could before he spotted Phoebe with her banged up nose. He really shouldn’t have stayed as long as he did. Now, he was trotting along, each step wondering whether he was about to get smacked for being late.

  He might not have worried. The Master was standing around, staring at everyone with that hard look he got in his eyes that said he had it in for everyone today, not just one person in particular.

  “Right! Three hundred lunges a piece. In trios. The third man judges. Any who cheats runs the walls.”

  A smattering of groans rose from among them. Running the outer walls was the most hated punishment of all. It took the average Guardsman a full glass to run it. Louis couldn’t finish it all the first few times. He had noticed, though, the last time he had to do it – for missing a nick when sharpening the edge of Thibault’s rapier – he had found it not all that difficult. From doing his Mons Fontaine heather runs, he supposed.

  For now, though, he paired up Etienne and Thibault and got them started before the Master could reach out and smack him one for being slow to follow an order.

  To his surprise, the Master did grab him on the shoulder. “Sheathe your rapier, lad, and come with me.”

  Not knowing what to answer, he nodded and followed as the Master led him across the yard to the steps. He wondered if he had forgotten to stow a target on the top walls where they practiced their archery. (Every Guardsman who missed the target had to immediately run all the way down to fetch the lost arrow. It was very motivating to hit that target.) He frantically searched his mind as they ascended the first landing of stairs, but honestly recollected putting them all away in the weapons locker. Did he not lock the locker? Nor check to ensure the bows were unstrung and quivers neatly hung, the arrows neatly stacked? (Some of the Guard were haphazard about these. Swordwork was one thing, archery...) As they ascended another landing, his nervousness grew. Maybe Etienne had forgotten to unstring his bow. Curse the idiot! It must be something like that, he thought, and he had missed it somehow.

  His mind was so busy wondering what punishment the Master would devise – not hang him upside down from the walls again – that was for missing a bloodstain on the Master’s jerkin when he had had an audience with m’Lord – that Louis barely noticed that they were turning into the castle and not ascending any more outer stairs.

  Finally, they stopped just before reaching a large arch manned by two of the Guard. It was m’Lord’s day chamber. Louis knew it by sight but had never been within. Only the most senior Guard were trusted to protect m’Lord’s person and m’Lady’s (when she was pregnant). The Master nodded to them then turned to Louis and gave him a critical once over. Louis re-slung his hair and brushed off his blouse and pants. One of the Guard handed him a rag so he could spit shine the Master’s then his own boot tips. Finally, they surrendered their rapiers to the Guard, the Master nodded his approval and jerked his chin at a waiting attendant clad in the dolphin blue of the chateau’s livery.

  “The Master of the Guard, your Grace,” the attendant said with a simper.

  Without waiting – a singular honor, Louis knew – the Master walked in. Louis was careful to remain a foot behind and to the right of him. As the Master bowed, the right leg and arm extended outward in the new Parisian style, Louis imitated him, a fraction of a second behind him, as was proper.

  “There you are! About time, too!” a loud growl greeted them.

  m’Lord, all twenty-one stone of him, sprawled in a large wooden throne-like chair, his ponderous belly sagging between his pouchy knees clad in an emerald green gown with matching stockings and slippers. Surrounding him were attendants all in the Brionde blue, one seated at a small table filled with scrolls, a few of them open, a smear of ink on his face where his feather quill had gotten away from him.

  m’Lord’s face was red with anger. His bulbous nose and heavy cheeks almost seemed to glow with fire.

  “Do you know what that fucker, Jean le Bon, has done?! That son of a whelp?! That demon-spawn of Lucifer himself?! Do you?!!”

  The Master looked at the ground a long moment. Louis mirrored him, then decided to keep his eyes on the ground for however long this took. It seemed safer.

  “Then, I’ll tell you!” m’Lord’s shriek bounced off the ceiling. Never had Louis seen him so angry.

  “The gutter snipe, that licker of the outhouse seats of Paris, that thieving scoundrel not fit to wear the Crown, whose name shall only go to festoon the Hall of Infamy has stolen my Cistercian abbey in Provence!”

  Out of the corner of his eye, Louis saw that the Master had raised his eyes. He dared not do the same. What was a Cistercian, he wondered? Some order of monks? There were so many, he could never keep track. In any case, this wasn’t the moment to try. He kept still, very still.

  “No doubt Jean le Bon has decided that Bertrand dooooo Geck-ck-ck-ck-lin,” m’Lord dragged the name out, playing with it, “scares me enough that I won’t complain. That I’ll stand here and swallow his royal shit! Yes?”

  There was a long moment of silence.

  The Master heaved a deep sigh. “m’Lord, du Guesclin’s band is raiding in Aquitaine and has been since last harvest.”

  “Are you certain?” m’Lord asked, his voice quieting for the first time.

  “Yes, m’Lord,” the Master replied. “The last I heard, he was closing in on the Pyrenees. There was talk of him going as far as Spain, though I doubt it.”

  “Why?”

  “m’Lord the troubadours love to sing the song of Charles Martel and his victory over the Umayyads at Tours. But, m’Lord, I’ve seen the Muslim fight. He’s fierce, willing to die.”

  “Yes, you and your wild adventures in the Crusades,” m’Lord sneered. “Which came to nothing as I recall.”

  “It came to little,” the Master agreed, quietly.

  Louis could hear m’Lord’s fat, sausage-like fingers drumming on the arms of his throne. Out the window, they could hear the Guard at practice down below, a “Ha!” punctuating each practiced lunge. They remained where they were, standing.

  Finally, m’Lord sighed. “And if he turns north. If he comes back, like a rash,” m’Lord asked, bending down to scratch a silk-clad ankle.

  “I will hear of it, m’Lord.”

  “And you will kill him?”

  “Depend upon it, m’Lord.”

  m’Lord nodded. His small eyes, pig-like in such a moon pie of a face, narrowed in the snarl that grabbed his lips.

  “And the abbey, m’Lord?” asked the Master.

  “Burn it to the ground. The monks with it. Nobody takes a prize from me.”

  The Master paused, just fractionally. “Aye, m’Lord.”

  Louis shivered.

  * 3 *

  She was dreaming. She knew she was, for no sky looked as soft pink as that. Nevertheless, as she saw Louis cross the meadow toward her, she let the dream continue. His blouse was open to the waist, the white of the linen impossibly bright against his tanned chest. She could see the golden curls, so light, so thin, catching the sunbeams even at this distance. It made her want to run her fingers through th
ose curls again and again.

  She looked down. She had boobs! Kind of. Not huge. Just the right size, what she had always hoped for. A...what had the Guardsman said the other day about one of the castle maids? A mouthful. That’s all you need. All he needed, anyway.

  And from the way that Louis was, finally, staring at her breasts, his eyes growing large, he felt precisely the same way. A mouthful is all you need.

  His thighs, so muscular, strutted across the meadow above the blooming flowers of a thousand colors. The dark brown of his breeches rippled with each step making her catch her breath, making her start to breathe more heavily. She reminded herself not to let herself pant like Nicole did when the slut was getting it from behind in the meat smoker.

  Phoebe let her eyes linger on the growing bulge just below his waist. She felt her stomach start to grow warm. Not her stomach, just below. Her loins started to melt inside. As his bulge grew larger. Did it? Was that a good thing, she suddenly had a panicked thought. She knew Guardsmen loved to brag about how big their cocks grew, but she had heard Nicole complaining to Adalene about how Rafe, that new Guardsman from Poitiers, was so long that it actually hurt each time he thrust so deep. That she was avoiding his entreaties now, which Adalene thought a good thing. Or, at least stick with blow jobs, she said, with such a cock. Being so large, it’s not like Rafe was going to get many takers once word got around. Beggars can’t be choosers.

  So Phoebe started hoping that Louis wouldn’t be too large. Then she remembered that she was dreaming and that his cock would be just the perfect size for her mouth, for her pussy. And her pussy lips quivered in answer to such a thought, in anticipation.

  He wasn’t far away now, pushing aside a tall sunflower chasing the sun across the sky. She saw him flick his golden hair out of his eyes with that characteristic jerk of his head. He truly was a golden boy, she thought. She knew Maryl thought so, the way that she had beaten a tavern girl bloody with a broom for trying to lure Louis into the tap room once. Phoebe had even heard that the Master thought so, that some of the Guard were jealous of Louis, though they would only admit that when they were really drunk, she suspected.

  Maryl claimed that was why the Master ran his ward so hard she knew. She had heard Maryl complaining about it at the tavern once when Louis had trudged in, carrying a heather sprig with a weary grin, leaving bloody footprints in his wake as he had trudged exhaustedly back to the practice yard. Phoebe had hidden under the kitchen counter when he had shown up. Maryl went on a rant that the Master expected too much of the boy. To make him the best. That Louis was being groomed to be the new Master someday. If the lout didn’t kill the boy first. All of this while admiring herself in a bowl of water, an irrepressible smile breaking out all over her features. Which made Phoebe smile, too.

  Her breath grew short as he called out her name. “Phoebe!” Not “Twig!” But her name, which she genuinely liked because her mother had told her, shortly before she died that it meant pure. “Phoebe.” He was saying it softer now, as he stepped up to her. She could smell him, all of his musky sweat, as if he were drying from a long session at the practice yard where he had conquered all with his drawn rapier. Come, now, to conquer her, too, but with his drawn...

  He was there. In front of her. She could barely breathe. She couldn’t say his name, just a moan of “Looooweee” escaping her lips.

  His strong hand reached gently up to her hair and tucked it behind one ear, just as she always did. She knew he would be gentle. She knew his hands, his arms, his shoulders, so muscular, so strong from hours spent pulling back a bow and swinging, thrusting, cutting with a rapier would, when it came to her, be so gentle.

  That he would hold her like Remi did when she was young before the Master made him leave, after beating him nearly to death. She stopped dreaming with a start. She hadn’t thought of Remi in years, she suddenly realized, not since... She felt so guilty and the meadow started to fade. Louis started to fade.

  No!

  Remi had held her in the early days when they slept next to the fireplace. Had made her feel safe when Adalene had terrified her. Had showed her how to be useful in the kitchen until she was allowed to stay.

  Remi. What had happened to him, she wondered?

  No!

  This was her dream, and she wanted Louis. She needed to do something, quick, or it would end and she would wake. She thought of...the most beautiful...room she had ever seen. m’Lady’s night chamber. It had a grand bed with a collection of fabrics in rich shades of ruby and gold to offset her luscious brown hair, so long m’Lady could sit on it, so thick that her maidservants, supervised by Coletta, would spend half a glass brushing it out each morning, each evening as m’Lady sat at her grand mirror decorated with miniature mahogany swans. No Brionde dolphins for m’Lady, only swans. In fact, Phoebe doubted m’Lord knew because the whispers said he had never entered her room. They said she despised him and would only let him touch her at night once a moon. And, why not? He was so fat as to look like that picture of a sea lion that Phoebe had seen once.

  God! First, she started thinking of Remi during her Louis dream, and now she was thinking of a bloated warthog?!

  She called Louis to m’Lady’s night chamber.

  He arrived, knocking gently on the arch of the door frame.

  Frantic to do something before he disappeared again, she grabbed his hand as he called out “Phoebe!” and dragged him to m’Lady’s bed. He smiled gently, if a little confusedly, and followed along. She boldly grabbed the front of his breeches and began undoing the buttons, hearing her panting in her ears, seeing her fingers go all clumsy at this important moment. His cock was growing larger, she could see, starting to form a rigid pole in his breeches that stretched out to the left, resting on his thigh. How big was it, she wondered? How thick would it grow? She swallowed hard, her mouth dry. All traces of her loins melting suddenly vanished as magically as he had appeared.

  She wondered if Nicole ever felt this way.

  And then, her eye caught a breathtakingly beautiful swan with its wings spread, one of a collection marching up the column on the corner of m’Lady’s bed, holding up the canopy. She looked up and saw more swatches of ruby and gold fabric all warming her somehow, reminding her how vital this moment was. And she was fucking it up with her greediness, her clumsy fingers, and her need to feel that growing cock in her mouth to see if it would fit.

  She looked up at him. Saw the same look of confusion in his eyes that he had given her the other day when he had finished opening the pig for her. And she felt so stupid. She just sat there. His breeches in her hands, his buttons, some undone, in her fingers and she suddenly knew that she did not want it this way. Let Nicole find her love that way. She was better than that.

  She pulled back and asked him to kneel.

  Without a word, he did. Gracefully. Neatly. His movements as smooth as a cat’s, the only interruption being his flick of the head to clear his eyes of his bangs. She reached up, finally, to touch them. To brush them out of the way.

  He smiled. His eyes grew so large as if to envelop her. She began to swim in them, in their golden brown warm milkiness of joy. Star bursts of gold exploding gently all around her, filling the nighttime sky.

  He took her hand. He said, “I love you, Phoebe. I have from the moment I first saw you.”

  He reached out to caress her lips with his thumb. She could feel the rough callus on its tip from all those hours balancing the hilt of a rapier just so. She loved the feeling. It was a gentle strength, a loving toughness, what she wanted her man, every King’s inch of him, to be.

  He reached forward to her, his held tilting to the right, his lips slowly opening, his breath smelling, then tasting of mint leaves. She felt her first kiss. His lips were so warm, so soft, so tantalizing. His tongue gently explored her lips and she answered in kind with a moan. Her loins began melting again. She opened her thighs to him and, smoothly, without one jerk at all, he slid closer to her, between them, gently taking her h
ands and placing them back on his breech buttons.

  As she began to unfasten them, more slowly this time, he smoothly reached behind her to untie the neck of her dress, a real dress, she suddenly realized, one of m’Lady’s, in a rich light green velvet to match her eyes. He slid one shoulder down to reveal her breast. She looked down to see what he thought of the nipple, gone all brown perky in its light hardness. He moaned himself and, bending forward, took it in his lips and began to tongue it gently, triggering her own sighs. Oh my God! she thought. It’s even better than I had hoped. She cast her head back, looking up to the swans and the ruby and gold of this room, this bed and felt like a queen herself. He sucked, he nibbled, he tongued. Then he moved to the other while stripping off his blouse. Soon, she thought. Soon, she would finally know what it feels like to have those strong hands on her hips, her thighs.

  He was speaking, softly. He was raising her dress above the knees, kissing each one softly, and then sliding the fabric up her thighs with a look of rising expectation dawning in his eyes. She hoped, she hoped, that he would find her womanhood beautiful.

  Moments now, she thought. Just a few breaths away from finally becoming a woman. From finally feeling the man she had always wanted inside her, deep inside her. Pulsating, thrusting, feeling at one with him.

  He was speaking again, softly. His hands on her thighs, lifting her off the bed while the velvet of her dress slid up to caress her butt, her legs opening wide to him. His cock finally releasing itself from his breeches, rising so thick, so strong to take her, to fill her. To meet her every need.

  He was speaking. She tried to focus on what he was saying. She heard him say, so gently, so sweetly, so softly. “Phoebe, my love, I want you to have my child.”

  What?!

  * 4 *

  The Commander was giving the final orders. A week’s break for all. Meet up at the Silver Harp in Saint-Mont on the Blavet River. There was a muted cheer from those of the band who knew the inn and the quality of their beer.