She Doesn't Know

The Lord's Bedroom is the oldest room in Grimm Hall, and every night you lie in it you remember what it holds. In this bed your father, Lothar Grimm, got his lady wife with child. She was nobleborn and legally wedded to him before God and the realm, and from that came you. In this same bed, on other nights, he sated his carnal lust on a giggling servant girl, lowborn and lusty, and planted his noble seed in her lowborn womb. He put his bastard in her belly, and from that came the girl who now lies in your arms. Who knows how many other women the old lord pulled into this room? The bed kept no count.

Lothar was too cold and careful to let a bastard shame his name. He married the servant girl off to a male servant of the castle, a quiet man who asked no questions, and Jeyne was raised believing that man was her father. She still believes it. She believes herself a servant's daughter, and you the lord, and nothing more.

You never told her the truth. You told yourself it would only hurt her, and that was true. It was also not the whole truth. You liked having her too much to let the word sister into the room. So you try not to think of it, as though hiding it from her and from everyone would make it less real, as though a thing unspoken could not be.

It does not work. The guilt follows you into the bed.

Jeyne is eager, as she always is. She pulls you down by the collar, laughing, and kisses you hungrily. You French kiss her, knowing she is really your sister, and the knowledge burns through you even as her tongue slides against yours. You lie naked together, her soft breasts and dark nipples pressed against your chest. Your mouth finds them and you suck at her until she gasps. Her hand slips down and closes around your manhood, stroking it with innocent enthusiasm, not knowing whose it is. When she sinks onto you, warm and willing, she whispers your name, only your name, and you hate yourself and cannot stop. She rocks over you until you are gasping, until she shudders and clutches at you, until you spill inside her with her mouth against your ear.

Later she slides down your body and takes you in her mouth, glancing up with a bright, shameless smile, and when you break she swallows your seed without a flicker of doubt. You watch her, and a cold thought stops your breath. How horrified she would be. How grossed out, how disgusted, how sick it would make her to learn that the man whose manhood she has taken in her mouth, whose seed she has swallowed, was her own half brother. You imagine her recoiling, retching, never looking at you the same way again.

You feel guilty for hiding the truth, and still she must never know. No one must ever know. You do not want to hurt her. You do not want her sick and disgusted over all the things you have done together. You do not want her to stop loving you as a man, or to stop sharing your bed. It shames you to admit it, but you cannot give her up.

The worse shame is that you want her more now. Since the truth came to you, the hunger has doubled, not died. The forbidden thing has teeth, and the secret has made every night sharper. You part her thighs and taste her, and she cries out into the dark with no idea what she is calling down upon you both. Again and again you take her and finish inside her, and the risk of it, the sin of it, burns through you in ways you never imagined.

Then, in the gray hour before dawn, she goes quiet beside you and shifts away to sit upright, drawing the furs up as if remembering her station.

"Milord," she says, her voice small and careful. "I am with child. Your seed has taken root."

She watches your face, shy and afraid and hopeful all at once, a servant's daughter awaiting the verdict of her lord.

And God help you, a dark pride rises in your chest before you can stop it. A son, or a daughter, of your blood and hers. The pride is wrong, and you know it is wrong, and you feel it anyway, and the knowing makes you ashamed.

You draw her close and kiss her brow, and you stare at the canopy while the storm fades. A scandal that would shake the realm and draw the church down on Grimm Hall lies sleeping in her body, and she does not know it. You make your decision there in the gray light. No one must ever know, not the servants, not the lords, not the church, and not Jeyne. Whatever it costs, you will carry this secret alone.