As if reading her thoughts, Henry said, “She is to govern Normandy while I am abroad—there is much to talk over with her. And she knows England well—and King Stephen.”

“By all accounts she knew him very well!” Eleanor said tartly.

“Don’t believe those old tales,” Henry said lightly. “But he did have a chivalrous regard for her, despite their being enemies.”

“I wonder at your naivety!” Eleanor grimaced. He threw her a filthy look.

“Remember it’s my Lady Mother of whom you are speaking,” he reminded her. “Although I wouldn’t have put it past her! She’d have eaten him for breakfast, poor weakling that he is.”

“I should like to meet her,” Eleanor said, not meaning it.

“You will, one day,” Henry told her. His disinterested tone betrayed no awareness of any possible grounds for antipathy between his mother and his wife. Eleanor wondered if he knew about her own affair with his father. He had never mentioned it, and neither would she, ever.

Henry’s quick, restless mind had moved on.

“I’m leaving Anjou and Aquitaine in your hands,” he said. “I know you will rule them both well.” Eleanor was surprised and touched, and felt not a little guilty for having jumped to unfair conclusions about him; for not only was he trusting her to look after her duchy in his absence, but also his own county of Anjou, the domain of his forefathers. He was trying to make amends, she suspected.

She smiled at him at last, her eyes brilliant.

“I will not fail you, my lord,” she promised.

In the early hours of the morning, Eleanor awoke. It was still warm in the bedchamber, for two braziers had been left burning. In their flickering red glow she could see Henry lying naked on his stomach beside her, the sheet tangled around his legs. He was watching her drowsily, a rare gentleness in his eyes.

“You’re awake,” she whispered.

“How can a man sleep with you lying next to him?” He chuckled, feasting his eyes on her full breasts and her long limbs stretched luxuriously before him. “There is no one like you, Eleanor. There never has been, and I doubt there ever will be.”

“So there were others before me?” she teased, really wanting to know. Henry had never spoken of any previous encounters with women, although she had heard rumors.

“Legions!” he grinned. Eleanor made to thump him with her pillow, but he stayed her hand. “I am a man, with a man’s needs. Of course there were others. But believe me when I say that none compared to you. They meant nothing.”

She believed him, yet still felt a pang of jealousy.

Henry was regarding her closely. “Now you tell me,” he said, “what happened in Antioch?”

Eleanor was startled. “What have you heard about that?” she asked warily, feeling herself flush.

“That you cuckolded Louis with Raymond, the Prince of Antioch, your own uncle, for Christ’s sake, and were bundled out of the city in shame.” Henry’s gimlet gaze was fixed on her face. “Is it true?”

“Yes, it is true,” Eleanor admitted. “You know how barren of love my marriage to Louis was. Like you, I took my pleasure where I found it—but I paid for it dearly. Louis barely spoke to me for a whole year.”

“And did you take your pleasure with anyone else?” Henry demanded to know. He was no longer bantering with her.

“Yes, twice, and that only briefly,” Eleanor replied in a low voice.

“With my father?” he asked, his expression unreadable.

“You knew?” She was shocked.

“He told me before he died. He begged me not to marry you.”

“But you defied him—and, knowing that, you did marry me.” Eleanor was incredulous.

“Of course.” Henry pulled her toward him. “That’s how much I wanted you. For you, I have defied my own father, the King of France and the Church itself!”

“The Church?” Eleanor echoed.

“Yes, my ignorant lady. Don’t you realize that your coupling with my father places us within the forbidden degrees of consanguinity, closer than you ever were to Louis?”

“I was not married to Geoffrey,” Eleanor said.

“That’s immaterial. Our marriage is forbidden—or it would be if the Church had known what you’d been up to.”

Eleanor felt a shiver of fear; it was as if the carefully constructed edifice of her world had been rocked. She saw that by her rash actions she had put at risk everything she now held dear. A tremor coursed through her. Henry felt it and tightened his arms about her.

“Fear not,” he soothed. “I won’t betray our little secret, if you won’t.”

“But what of the legality of our marriage?” Eleanor asked, shocked, seeing the foundations of their glorious future, the empire they were building, rocking and then crumbling …

“I care not a fig for that.” He grinned. “We Angevins came from the Devil, remember? Why should I bother myself about a trifle like that? No one knows, so no one can question it. Should it really matter to us?”

“No,” she said after a pause. “It matters not one whit.”

“What does matter,” Henry said purposefully, “is this …” He pulled her on top of him and thrust himself up inside her, fully aroused. “I swear to you, Eleanor, that no Pope or bishop will part us. You are mine forever, mine … oh, God!”

Afterward, sated, he lay with her in his arms.

“Who was the other man?” he asked.

“The other man?” Eleanor, relaxed and contented, had no idea what he was talking about.

“You said you took your pleasure with two men besides Raymond of Antioch.”

“This sounds like an inquisition,” she said, only half joking.

“It is,” Henry said. “I need to know. You are my wife and, God willing, will be the mother of my sons.”

“And if I tell you, will you also tell me about the women with whom you have slept?” she challenged him.

He snorted. “I’ve forgotten most of them. They were just casual encounters. One was called Joanna, another Elgiva … Oh, and perhaps I should mention Hersinde, Maud, Lucy, Ghislaine, Marie …” He was laughing.

“Stop!” Eleanor cried. “You’re making those names up!”

“Well, I really can’t remember them all,” Henry said ruefully, playing with her hair. “And talking to them wasn’t really called for!”

“You’re impossible,” Eleanor told him.

He raised himself up on one elbow to look into her face. “There, I’ve told you what you wanted to know. Now you keep your part of the bargain.”

“Very well,” Eleanor said. “It was a brief affair with a troubadour called Marcabru.”

“A troubadour?” Henry echoed, surprised, and not a little jolted. “A lowborn varlet? You might have looked higher than that!”

“You forget, I had looked higher,” Eleanor shot back. “I was married to the King of France, no less, and much satisfaction I got from him!” She snapped her fingers. “Marcabru showed me how to make love, and for that I will always be grateful—and so should you, for you benefit from it.”

“Did Louis ever find out?”

“He knew that Marcabru had written verses to me. He considered them overfamiliar and banished him. He assumed I shared his outrage, and I did not disabuse him of that notion—in fact, I played along with it.”

“You lied to him?” Henry asked uneasily.

“I had no cause—he never asked if I had been unfaithful. It would never have occurred to him that I would actually permit a troubadour to make love to me. You princes of the North are all alike in dismissing troubadours as being of little account, but may I remind you, Henry, that in Aquitaine they are accorded a proper respect for their talents.”

“This one certainly seems to have had talents beyond the ordinary,” Henry threw at her, not quite reassured. “What was he like as a poet?”

“Terrible!” Eleanor replied, and suddenly they were both heaving with laughter, and the awkward moment had passed.

“I will recite you some really good troubadour poems,” she said later, when they had calmed down and were once more lying peacefully against each other. “It would be fitting to speak of love on this precious night.” And she began telling him about her celebrated grandfather, the talented Duke William the Ninth.