A day with more beauty is simply unimaginable, I realise.
Mary sits next to me. Or, should I say she leans upon me? I realise she's begun dozing off a few hours into our trip, her head has been somewhere between leaning on my shoulder and chest for quite a few minutes. I loathe to move her, disturb her rest that she has so brilliantly deserved, even though my shoulder quickly goes numb, and those ridiculously long chandeliers that drape though her lobes that somehow can be called earrings dig into the flesh of my neck. My beautiful Queen at my side, the brilliantly green and golden forests of the land in which we rule role on at the other, I can quite confidently say that I am at complete peace.
I take a deep inhale of the rich, sweet, mossy country air, thinking to myself that I have seen only but a fraction of my own kingdom. The air smells like my brother always did after a complete day of riding and hunting. It's firmiliar and it clears my lungs from all the months of illness and a sombre so pure that it choked us all. Not anymore, however.
Not anymore.
I inhale with surprise as my wife begins to talk, I realise she must have opened her eyes and observed me as I have observed her. My attention turns from the grandeur, lavish, ridiculous beauty at one side to one of equal measure at the other as she murmurs to me so unexpectedly "A trip to Paris," she says. It's often she does this, after my sickness, my wife has taken to simply beginning to talk before I realise I have been noticed. I have added it onto the infinatley long list of reasons why I have fallen in love with her over and over and over again. It blows my mind how much I can love a physical person, yet Mary proves more and more each day. "What a wonderful secret you've kept from me." she says, her eyes catching my own.
Keeping secrets from my wife has never, never been easy. The bad ones are no easier kept from her than the good ones. As it always had been since the moment we met as two confused children at the age of five years, my instinct that was comparable as breathing, has always been to share each and every thing with her.
More than almost anything, I have always wanted to be known.
Not just that, I wished to be understood.
I have wanted to be known, understood for all the things I am and all the things I am not, all the things I have done and all the things I have not done, and to be loved, accepted, anyway.
And I am, because of the marvellous Queen next to me.
"Well, I-" she speaks in the mocking Queen tone she uses when making fun of a dreary old noble in the privacy of our chambers. She always had that tone, many afternoons we spent as children, making fun of boring old cronies who made our luncheons or dinners long by political or religious conversations with my mother or father. "have a secret for you, too." she says, her tone leaving the mocking one for one that is both serious and smug. She raises her chin and adjusts herself so we are face to face. "Do you want to hear it?"
It comes down to this, when it comes to my Mary, the beautiful ravenette who had changed my world upside down with her strength, passion, power and virility, I have always wanted to hear her.
"Mm-hmm." I murmur, almost unable to do so by the smile that threatens to break my face.
"I've always known we would be wed." my wife says. "even when I first returned-" I am struck by a memory of being a small boy, devastated by her loss, being held by the shoulders by my father of all people, as her carriage rolled away, the weeks of tears and devastation, as if she had left her physical body than my physical side. "and you were nothing but worry and reservation." she pronounced those words with the air of superiority when they were in front of a noble that she didn't much like, or one that irritated her to no end. "I knew." she finished with a small, satisfied smirk that her little prophecy came true.
