Page 57 of Claiming the Tower
When Hereswith was well and truly hovering between relaxation and increasing desire, Bess kept her voice soft, but asked, “May I touch you further? Here.” Her fingers brushed the top of the curve of the breast. “Or here?” The fabric was in the way, but she could gesture at the spot between Hereswith’s legs. She herself was eager for that kind of touch, the desire to rub and arch.
“Both? In turn?” There was a catch in Hereswith’s voice. Then, unexpectedly, Bess felt a hand, fingers sliding against her breast, then catching on the cloth. “Can you take this off? I mean, will you? Right now? If that’s...”
“Oh, I want to.” It involved moving, and that was a great pity. But Bess quickly wriggled to get the swath of cloth out from under her hip, then the whole thing over her head, tossed across onto the floor and well out of their way. Watching Hereswith’s face, she settled back, taking Hereswith’s hand and bringing it to touch. “Touch. Please.”
The first touch brought her to shivering, a kind of neediness she hadn’t permitted herself to feel before. This was not some quiet, hidden joy that had to be shoved into cramped times and spaces. This wasn’t someone who had her own life and obligations that were away and different and separate. Whatever else this was or became, Hereswith made it clear with every comment and gesture and suggestion that the care was real. Beginning with the drinking chocolate and the conversation, back when that much was an unhoped for joy.
Hereswith was deliberate in this, as in so many other things. Her fingers traced and explored. Bess half-hoped she might try with her mouth, too, on nipples that ached. That was not for tonight, apparently, but quite likely some other time. Instead, Hereswith’s hand eventually worked down her side, to her hip, and then after a quiet question, to rub just where Bess wanted it. Bess could barely keep herself from moving, instead managing to do the same to Hereswith, to give her a sense of it.
She’d meant to keep control of herself. Long enough, at least, to explain what the choices were. Steady or smoother or harder or fingers inside. In the end, there was nothing but Bess’s desperate delight, flinging herself into the pleasure as wholeheartedly as she’d ever done anything in her life.
It was only after the pulses of pleasure eased a little that Bess could try to breathe and blink at Hereswith. Her friend was looking at her with an expression like a contented cat that had cream, canary, and the best seat by the fire. “Mmm.” Just the one sound, a purring satisfaction, but it made Bess laugh.
“My turn.” She took her time with it. Now she could focus for a little, to see what touches brought Hereswith to make the less controlled sounds. That would be a delightful game for many nights to come, Bess was sure. It was a victory, each time, to see Hereswith drop that beautiful smooth precision. Eventually, though, she worked fingers and thumb into just the right angle, her index finger just barely inside Hereswith’s body. She didn’t want to go further than that, not without a little more talking, but she could feel the ripples through Hereswith.
Then, they were both collapsed on the bed, side by side, hands draped against bodies, a tumble of warmth and companionship. Bess had things she would like to ask to talk about, but now was not the time.
Chapter 38
November 8th at Dinas Emrys
By the following Wednesday, Hereswith needed to be doing something other than being at home. She did not precisely need to be at Dinas Emrys, but there was nowhere else she might reasonably be at the moment. Anywhere in Trellech, well, she was in deep mourning, and should not be socialising.
It was as well she didn’t need to appear in London. The news from the war was, if anything, even worse than it had been. There had been a calamitous cavalry charge on the twenty-fifth. The reports Marcus had passed along suggested two-thirds of them were killed or injured, and apparently due to some miscommunication. The utter waste of it had roused her to fury over the note this morning. Being at Dinas Emrys at least meant she had something to do where no one was likely to bother her.
Gervase had made it clear that it would be understood she was in mourning. She was not obligated to attend any particular meeting or conversation for weeks, at least. Six months deep mourning at a minimum, as the only daughter. Hereswith was not expected, in other words, but if she appeared, she was welcome to participate.
And yet, the Council came from a time before such customs. And it was not as if one could pause the needs of the larger world for grief, or the show of grief. Hereswith’s grief was real, but it would be no good for her to lock herself away in a room and weep. Papa had not approved of that, for one thing. He’d held to the idea that the best way to remember people was by doing what they’d shared with you. It was what he’d always told her about Mama, and about his parents.
Perhaps not doing it the way the person mourned would have. Papa certainly would have found himself at home in the library here at Dinas Emrys, but he would not have preferred the range of topics.
And so Hereswith found herself in the library, with a series of questions. The current set had to do with her predecessor. The Council kept notes of what was discussed in the meetings, a role that rotated periodically, apparently, but rarely. Hereswith had always hated those gatherings where the responsibility for notes changed each meeting, because people would handle them so differently.
At the moment, she was reading the notes of the meetings in the year before her Challenge. She’d been working her way backwards, piecing together discussions from the wrong direction, working from decision to cause. It was complex and fiddly; she had a dozen scraps of paper with different notes to move around into new places as she tried to make sense of it. But she was making headway and certainly getting a better sense for the range of personalities.
“Where is...” There was a voice behind her. “Oh, I beg pardon. Hereswith?”
Hereswith turned to find Erasmus Forley behind her. “Good afternoon. I was just looking at some notes.” He was an astronomer, a generation younger than Papa, so in his seventies now, and with several of his family working in the same field. They’d not talked much, one on one, but Hereswith knew nothing against him yet beyond what Blanch had mentioned about him being taken with his own interests.
Now, he paused, leaning slightly on the cane he had with him always. “I hope you didn’t feel obliged. Gervase made that clear?” He said it as if he were slightly dubious that the Council Head would have remembered that aspect.
“Oh, yes.” Hereswith almost tacked on a sir, she’d learned to do that as a nod to generational experience in the Ministry. And she had no problem deferring to experience when it was there. “But I—” She watched him carefully. She knew he was a widower and had been for a decade and a half, and made a decision. “I felt better doing something. And Papa always preferred it when I could bring home an interesting tale from the day.”
She had, apparently, taken the right tone. He gestured at the chair opposite her at the table, and she nodded. Once he was sitting, he said, quietly. “As a group, we prefer to be doing. But the assumptions about it.” Then he added, “You don’t need me to tell you some people will judge.”
“They will judge anyway,” Hereswith pointed out. “No matter what I do. So I must, I think, suit myself and what I think is proper.”
It got a bark of a laugh out of him, and a nod. “True, true. And some things must happen at the appropriate time. I was coming in to double check the dates for one of our particular negotiations and rituals. Has Gervase or Blanch explained that to you?”
“No, sir.” This time, the honorific felt proper. “Or rather, they both gestured at something toward the end of November, and then Papa— well.”
“Ah. In that case, as I am here and it is relevant, I shall explain. And then mention to them I have.” Erasmus leaned back. “What do you know about our role as negotiators?”
“That one role of the Council, one of the key ones, is to negotiate those matters related to the treaty underlying the Pact with the Fatae. But no one has been specific about how that happens, what the protocols are, or any of that. All I know from my previous work is that certain categories are entirely the Council’s to arrange, not for the rest of Albion. Some of the agreements around mining, for example, or river pearls, or specific sites and locations.”
“That,” Erasmus said, “Is a great deal more than most people start with. I have been saying for years that having someone familiar with diplomatic work would be a benefit. Now, how those agreements are discussed varies. Who is taking on the primary role from among the Council, who appears from the side of the Fatae. It’s always the Council Head, of course, along with three or four others. Sometimes there is a ritual aspect to it, and then we want a specific number. Or there are particular offerings to be made, and a Materia specialist is suitable.”
“That is all as it is done in other diplomacy,” Hereswith agreed with that easily, but then raised an eyebrow. “But of course, it’s not that simple.”
