For just an instant, and for the first time since she’d met him, Sharon had an image of Ruy in her bed. Naked, as she herself; coupling. The image vanished almost as soon as it came. But, as she considered the residue, she realized that it was not . . . unpleasing. Certainly not repellent. In some ways, quite the opposite. She’d more than once, laughing, accused Hans Richter of being a goat, after all. To which he’d replied with a grin and an eager nod. The simple fact was—Sharon had to be honest with herself—she reacted with animal heat to that kind of rambunctious male, provided it was a man she cared for. Hans had kept her well exercised in bed, and she didn’t doubt for a moment that Ruy would do the same. Nor—don’t lie to yourself, girl—that she’d enjoy it immensely.
And, again, Sharon was startled. She’d just crossed a boundary here, she knew. Or made a transition, it might be better to say. Since the morning of October 7, 1633, when she’d seen the column of smoke rising from the Baltic and known that Hans was dead, this was the first time she’d even thought of sex, as anything other than an abstraction.
Only six months? She probed, to find the guilt, and was surprised to find . . . well, some. But not really very much.
You slut. Then she shook her head. It had just been a thought, after all. It wasn’t as if she had any plans to act on it. Not soon, certainly.
“No, Ruy, that’s not the most of it. Let’s start with the fact—awkward little detail, here—that you are the agent of a foreign power with which my country is at war. Eh?”
Sanchez smiled. “That is indeed . . . ah, awkward, as you say. Still—” He waved his hand theatrically. “Here my age comes to advantage! Wars come and go, alliances change—overnight, often enough. We are a wicked, wicked race, much given to depravity and duplicity.” He pressed his right hand on his chest and gave her a look of utmost sincerity and ardor. “All except in matters of the heart.”
Sharon burst into laughter. John Barrymore couldn’t have done that better! Sir Laurence Olivier would have knelt at the feet of his master. Lesser actors would have fled in despair. Many, committed suicide.
She shook her head weakly. “You do make me laugh, God knows you do. All right, Ruy, we’ll let that sit on the side for the time being. Do keep in mind, though, that my own loyalties are rock solid. Don’t doubt that for a moment.”
He examined her with none of his earlier drollery. “Yes, I know that, Sharon,” he said quietly. “I have understood that from the beginning. Well, very soon, at least. But—I am serious now, for the moment—my age does have certain advantages. That your loyalties are rock solid, I do not doubt. The fact remains—how to say it?—that ‘rock solid’ simply describes the substance of the thing. It says nothing about the form.”
Her puzzlement must have shown. Ruy stroked his mustache, as if to concentrate his thoughts. “Let me put it this way. The same end can often be achieved by an alternate means. So it may be—I have my loyalties also, you understand—that both loyalties can find a different place to meet than on a field of battle.”
He placed his hand over his heart again. The gesture, this time, was solemn rather than theatrical. “More I cannot say, at the moment, because of those same loyalties.”
“Oh.” Sharon looked away. She thought . . .
Maybe. Could this be another glimpse of that possibility that both Francisco Nasi in his briefings and Father Mazzare in his—usually frustrated—musings had talked about? A distance between Spain itself and its supposed province in the Netherlands? The king here—but the prince there? If so . . .
She lapsed into a bit of theatricality herself. “Well. In that case, it might almost be considered my duty to receive your courtship, wouldn’t it? Very depraved and duplicitous of me, of course.”
Ruy smiled. “To be sure. A new Mata Hari.”
Sharon wondered where he’d heard about Mata Hari. Not for long, though. If there was any principality in Europe that hadn’t stolen or finagled or just bought in the open market copies of Grantville’s prized history books, she didn’t know where it was. Maybe a clan chief somewhere in the west of Ireland.