Princess Isabella

Part 4

"Mary, may we talk?" Francis asked, coming into his wife's chambers. The heat of summer made the air sweet and musky, damp and heavy. Yet, he knew the ice that this next conversation he was due with his wife could make that fact obsolete. The new King consort of England wiped a bead of sweat from his brow, closing the door behind him. He was well aware he shouldn't be there at this time, yet he could resist no longer. The distance between them reminded the King of those brief few days post attack when his wife had closed herself off from the world, revelling in her own pain and suffering. It hadn't lasted long, she had been quick to let him in after a brief physical separation. But this time was different. It had lasted for months. And he could stand it no longer.

The Queen of England looked up from the potential marriage of their Aylee to a highborn noble's nine year old son, the seventh attempt at cessation of settlement of the English people with a Frenchman and a Scotswoman upon the throne. She turned slowly to her husband, looking at him for a moment, as if acknowledging his presence, before looking back down at her new baby, staring at her newborn baby girl with the sweet, gentle awe she felt whenever she saw one of her offspring. The sweet little thing slept upon the soft satin of her mothers grey-blue satin skirts, completley oblivious of the turmoil of her parents' marriage. The Princess Genevieve Elizabeth Antoinette Meredith of Valois-Anguleme-Stuart slept with her little fingers in her mouth, letting out kittenish mewls as she dreamed away in her little world of slumber and warmth. Her pretty blue eyes were closed, dark blonde tendrils already starting to curl at just three months old.

"What is it?" she asked, her voice both soft with exhaustion of ruling and and something her husband could not put his finger upon. She wouldn't meet his eyes, instead continued supporting her sleeping baby upon her lap with her left arm and writing on the piece of parchment with the right.

These months had been hard. Their relationship had fallen to depths lower than ever before, the two barely sharing a conversation in the time it had taken for the baby to grow to full term and age a trifecta of months. And it had happened when Mary was four months gone. The physical damage was long gone, the marks her husband inflicted being gone within a fortnight. But that wasn't the point. Mary saw Francis in a completley different light after she saw how angry he could truly get. She never thought in a million years he would ever raise a hand to her. Yet, he had.

The diamonds and the gowns, the stallions and the surges of grain, soldiers and political support had been in a more consistent stream than rain upon a harsh, stormy night. She had accepted the physical gifts -as was customary for a Queen- and was grateful to the benefit of her countries, yet her heart and her forgiveness, she did not give him.

Francis' look of longing at the sight of her. Both ruler and mother had been a hard balance to get right at the best of times, yet she managed it gracefully. She had became more mother when she went to her bed to await the child, albeit reluctantly. Elizabeth had died when Mary was eight months gone, and she loathed to be on the back burner whilst major political events occurred. She was always eager for reports whilst resting after the brutal, bloody birth of the little girl who refused to leave her mother's womb. It had always been Francis to report back to his wife upon the progress of the stability of England and her people.

Those few weeks had been blissful for him. She had talked to him eagerly, prodded him for information upon a daily basis, not shying away or curling away like she had done for so many months. However, he always knew it was all an act, her joy at seeing him when he came into her -he had long since moved out to give her her space- chambers. Sure, she was eager to receive information upon her relm, but most of it was theatrical, for their children had always been present during these visits. They still didn't know what happened, and Mary prayed they never would. They played the doting parents in front of their growing litter, the adoring Emperor and Empress in front of their courts and countries, yet behind closed doors, Mary shone away from him at every given opportunity.