No Fury

Now: Sixty Nine

I nearly can't believe what we've just decided.

We will be married.

Standing, I move to the corner where there is a small bassinet and place the sleeping baby down inside, before returning to Harry on the bed.

I fall back, laughing, and he comes over me like a bright cloud in the sky, his smile radiant. "You know what this means."

Tracing his mouth with my fingertip, I ask him, "What does it mean, my Lord?"

His smile is a sly thing, curling slowly at his lips. "It means you will be my queen."

An instinctive smile bursts out of me, and then I feel it wobble a bit as my nerves set in and the thought occurs to me that it is more than simply being his wife. It is being something altogether more for the people of this kingdom, the people I've grown up beside, and who have always only seen me as common.

I am less worried about them accepting me as their queen, and more worried that I can live up to it all. After all, Maria failed us so horribly.

Harry does not seem to notice my sudden apprehension, ducking to kiss my neck. "What would you have us change in this castle?"

I blink at his question, and stare up at the vaulted ceiling, letting my eyes really take in every detail for the first time. I've been here before, so many times, but have never had the luxury of examining the tiny flourishes, the carved beams, the gold inlaid in the tiny oak accents all throughout the room.

"I do not think I would change a thing," I admit. "I do not think I would know how to improve it."

"I don't just mean here," he says, kissing my jaw. "I mean everything. How would you have it become your home?"

I shake my head, overwhelmed in an instant by all of it.

"Cath," Harry murmurs, kissing my chin. "I want to feel as though I am living in your rooms. I want to be surrounded by all of your soft, lovely things."

He makes his way down my body, pushing my dress up and out of his way, his lips like silk on my skin.

And I know where he's headed.

But he doesn't go where I want him most—between the soft skin of my thighs, where I want his mouth and his breath and his kiss. Instead, he pauses at my hipbone, whispering, "Tell me what we need to change here so you feel at home while I am gone, or I'll not give you what I know you want."

I close my eyes, reaching down to playfully pinch his shoulder.

But he remains still, lips resting innocently on my navel.

I take a deep breath, blinking up to the blank wall beside the bed. "Color," I tell him. "Greens and blues and oranges." Not reds, I think. "Paintings, and vases, and flowers."

"Done." I can feel his smile when he kisses lower.

"I want Anne to be nearby," I tell him, and hold my breath as I add boldly, "I want the kings rooms to become the nursery."

He rewards me with a kiss to the softest, innermost part of my thigh. "One more."

"I want to open the front halls to the village more than once every few years. I want to welcome the people in the courtyards to celebrate the everyday things."

"Such as?"

"Such as your return, our daughter's birth." I shrug, running a hand into his hair. "The smallest and the largest holidays."

Harry beams up at me, and goes to duck lower but his smile slips as we are interrupted by a knock at the doors across the room. We both stand, and I straighten my skirts down my legs.