Somehow, even after all they’d shared, her heart still yearned for that moment. She lifted her head and softly kissed his lips before settling down again.
‘Well, now you know,’ she said lightly.
‘I’d like to know more,’ he said, his voice indicating that even the slight touch of her lips had affected him. She heard it in his heartbeat, and in hers as well. Their desire was only slightly banked and was beginning to bloom again, and she was more than ready for it.
‘Aren’t you going to tell me?’ he said.
‘Tell you what?’
‘I’d like to know more about what happened that day.’
Where was her thoughts? Certainly not with Allen.
‘It wasn’t only Allen who lowered me into the well. It was Peter and Garman as well. It took more than one boy to tie me up and lower me down.’
He chuckled, and she loved how it felt against her.
‘And he did all that simply because I told him that he would never get a wife if he didn’t learn to comb his hair.’
His hand squeezed her thigh. ‘You were trying to fix him? A boy almost twice your age, with his friends watching, and you were...scoldinghim?’
She giggled, and rested her chin on his chest in order to catch his gaze. ‘I suppose I was.’
Laughing, he bent his head and kissed her thoroughly, until their laughter blended and her breath caught with his. And then she couldn’t breathe at all as his hands cupped the backs of her knees to hold them wider and make space for him.
‘Again?’ she breathed.
‘Always,’ he promised.
* * *
A knock on the door. The light from the shuttered window indicating it was still night; the noises down below revealing the festivities continued.
Hugh sprang out of the bed to grab his tunic and the blade from his boot. Another knock—not any louder, but more insistent as it beat again and again on the door.
‘Who would it be?’ Hugh whispered.
‘I don’t know, but it can’t be good.’ Alice whispered back, pulling on her chemise. ‘What are youdoing?’
‘I’m protecting you.’
‘You can’t answer the door!’
He cursed.
‘I’ll get it. It could be my sister or Esther, enquiring after my well-being. I didn’t tell anyone that I was retiring. They may be wondering where I am.’
He scoffed. ‘It could be a reveller, trying to get to you.’
‘They wouldn’t knock, would they?’ she retorted as she headed to the door.
‘I know you’re in there.’
Hugh’s stomach dropped and he moved away from the drapery around the bed as Alice opened the door. ‘Eldric? What are you doing here?’
‘Coming to warn you.’ Eldric stepped around Alice. ‘Easy with that dagger, Hugh. I come here as a friend.’
‘The fact that you’d notice a blade hidden behind my back tells me otherwise—as does your presence here.’
