Game of Courts. (#1 Nobles)

A Series of Seduction

A Series of Seductions-12

But, is it possible for the seducer to be seduced by greater seduction?

Richard was pleased when his valet relayed the message of a guest. It meant that his calculations were current and this one was not as unpredictable as Williams had suspected. It will please Michael too, were he to find out that his countless..eh, lessons were going to be put in use.

"Usher her in."

"Yes, your majesty."

Richard pushed the well covering robe off his shoulder, exposing his neck and half his chest. Then he tucked away the scrolls he was going through in favour of a brandy and headed out to the parlour just as the door to the halls were closing softly. He watched from a corner just before the parlour and saw her hesitate slightly at the door, then squaring her shoulders and walking in. Richard smiled.

"What brings you to my chambers this late, your highness?"

She didn't startle, he noticed. "We have our future in front of us, entwined. It is only wise we begin to understand each other as your–England made no provisions for such things."

"Might?"

"What?"

"Might. We might have a future. I haven't wedded you before the church and in my country, a union is void without that."

Her eyes flicked to his exposed shoulders, his chest and back to his face. "Ah. of course, how presumptuous of me."

"Indeed."

She moved and the soft night cloth whispered around her. Richard kept his eyes firmly above her neck. "Then you believe there is no use to bother the purpose of this meeting?"

"Your timing suggests clandestine arrangement your highness, forgive me if i did not believe that your purpose is chaste."

"You think I came here to throw myself into your bed?"

It was his turn to hesitate. "I have been in this castle for months! I have never, as your intended or daughter of France, been invited to a meeting with you without your overly excited friends milling around."
"Keep them out of this."

"Really? All you've done-"

"If you have come here to-"

"And you infer that I have come to tempt you. Perhaps I have. Will you fall so willingly into sin, Your Majesty? Yet you said that a union of a man and a woman that has not been done before God and the church is void. Yet you are so willing to fall into sexual sin. "Hasn't your faith got something to say on that?"

"It would be better if you did not slander my faith."

"But that is the problem with you English folk isn't it? Your selective faith, you choose what command to follow and what to ignore. You edit the Holy Word and bend its commands as you so wish. Your black sinning soul-"

"No! I will not have you come to my country to mock me or my God! I am a sinner, as you said; I am no more saintly than you. But that does not diminish the fact that I have a higher power, a standard: a God who rules us all and who rules me. I am no saint, but I will have your head on the chopping block faster than I hear you spew one more disrespectful word against my God."

Amanda stood angrily. "I did come here to be civil but in true English fashion-"

"You came here geared for a fight. A headless chicken itching for a fight where there isn't one. And they say all Frenchs are not the same."

She came closer and Richard could feel the heat of her emotions, none was favourable to him.

"I was separated from my family and sent to a strange land where i have experienced nothing but hostility, to-"