My Loving Rose_(1)

France, 1626

His brown eyes watched her as she walked, her steps heavy yet graceful. He let his eyes rove up and down her frame as she confidently marched ahead of him along the busy cobblestone Paris street, the swinging of her hips causing his fingers to itch with the urge to hold them. She stopped and looked back at him curiously when she felt him dropping behind her, her water blue eyes sparkling. She offered him a small smile and waited as he caught up to her and they stood there with people parting around them like a stream around a rock.

“Is something wrong La Buissoniere?” She asked, tipping her head to the side in a puppy like fashion. He clenched his hands to stop from reaching up to brush off a lock of curled light brown hair that had fallen across her fair skinned face and smiled back.

“No Miss Renee. Everything is fine.” She nodded and started to march again, heading towards an exit in the city walls that led out to a forested clearing which they had discovered on another of their walks.

They had not met that long ago. She had disguised herself as man, or rather a boy just come of age, and in order to support a living for her and her dearest companion, the duchesse d’Aquitaine, she had to take on work. The work she had chosen was as a stable boy for the King’s stables. She had been placed within the stable where the guards of the Cardinal obtained their horses and he had chosen to strike up conversation with her one day, then thinking her to actually be a male.

“Good morning Monsieur!”
“Good morning… I do not believe I know you.”
“I am new here sir. I was hired today.”
“Is that so? Well I have need of a horse.”
“Then you shall have one Monsieur if you will wait but a moment for me to prepare one.”
“It is a fine horse. I thank you Monsieur… I am afraid I do not know your name.”
“It is Rene Monsieur. Rene RoseBriar.”

Suspicion about him had flourished within him of course when he would distinctly avoid looking him in the eyes or even lifting his head to reveal his face. He had grown puzzled as to his living quarters and followed him one day to find that he lived with a girl, a bit younger than himself. Although he had known it to be wrong, he had peered within a window in a smelly, filthy alley between a couple of apartments and had come to his discovery of his ‘secret’. The room he had looked in was a boudoir and when the young girl had left the room, having followed him in there to talk about his day, the ‘stable boy’ had removed his shirt to reveal a chest heavily bound with greying, dirty bandages.

He had gaped open mouthed as she, for now he knew that it was indeed a female, removed them from around her lower torso and up, slowly untying them and peeling them from soft pliant flesh. The moral implications of this struck him dumb but he did not move, gripping the edge of the window and digging his nails into the stone. His eyes went wide and his face flushed as red as the uniform he wore as she unwrapped her chest from the restricting bandages, the skin bountiful and pale and ending in tips of rosy pink. He ducked lower below the window, removing his hat, with only his eyes staring through the glass with all modesty forgotten. He licked at his lips, as if tasting the sweet spring air, when in actuality his mind was imagining the taste of something possibly much sweeter.

She turned suddenly towards the window, shirt half buttoned with the creamy valley of her chest exposed, her eyes narrowed into vicious fiery blue slits. He panicked, realising that he may have been spotted, and removed himself with all haste and tripping over his own feet multiple times as he did. He was covered with patches of unknown human substances on his uniform and boots but he did not notice the horrid stench with his thoughts still on the girl he had left behind.

However, now that he had revealed that he knew of her secret and after many oaths upon his honour that he would not breathe a word, he was able to freely spend time with her and admiring her. Their feet had silently taken them past the walls of Paris and out into an open field off the road where a wooded patch surrounded it. It was secluded and quiet, a place where no sounds from within or without could be clearly heard. He smiled when she stopped in the center of the clearing, in a brilliant patch of sunlight that pierced through the trees and stretched catlike within it. Her fingers were folded together and reached over her head, a contented smile across her features, her hair gleaming as the light caught the strands of blond and red interspersed in the brown. His breath caught in his throat when she bent over to stretch out the muscles within her back, her body all rounded curves. She peeked at him between the sheen of hair that had fallen across her eyes, a playful shine to them.

“La Buissonniere you seem awfully pale.” She said worryingly as she straightened. She walked up to him and stood close, raising a hand to feel his cheek to which he pulled away before she could. She frowned and pulled her hand back, crossing her arms across her chest. “Are you feeling alright? Perhaps we should head back.”

He shook his head and closing his eyes, he gave a nervous smile. “I am fine.” He drew his sword and took a couple of loose swings. She giggled, a tinkling little sound which caused a shiver to rush down his spine, and heard her also remove her sword.