The old man began spooning soup into two wooden bowls. A loaf and knife and some freshly washed butter lay upon the table. The faerie-food in the castle of Never-Was had been airy and insubstantial. Here, they both made a hearty supper. The old man didn’t ask a single question. Not their names or homes or where they were bound. He only waited until they were licking their fingers and said, “If you wish to sleep, travelers, just there behind that door is a narrow stair and a room above. But I must leave you and keep watch for my lady. My lady is coming and I must see her when she does.”
With that, the old man bustled out, taking his lantern.
They were alone. But were they safe? Did it matter? Anne could go no farther.
Louis said, “I have my cloak. I’ll sleep here on the hearth to be sure that none shall come at you in the night.” He turned to add a log to the fire.
Anne watched him. “Will you? Our host did not act like a man who fears attack, and he has been nothing but hospitable himself.”
Louis said nothing.
“You’d be more comfortable upstairs,” she added.
He was staring into the fire.
She was thinking of the wedding-night that had always been waiting for her. Public, impersonal, inescapable. But she had left that future behind when she left the castle of Never-Was. She and Louis might die or be lost forever in this trackless wilderness, but if she did return, it would not be to trade her inheritance and her maidenhead to a king far away.
“Orléans?” said Anne. “Louis?”
Finally, he raised his head and looked directly at her.
“Even if we fail,” she whispered, “everything has changed.”
They climbed the stair and passed beneath the low lintel to the bedchamber. It was austere, clean. The moon shone through the casement, while the rain whispered impossibly overhead. Anne sank onto the bed. It smelled of fresh linen and clean wool and herbs.
In the darkness, Louis was reduced to a faint shine of eyes and the glitter of embroidery from his torn doublet. He hesitated at the door. Then he crossed the room, slowly, and knelt before her. Their eyes met. There was a question in his. Then he looked down at the hem of her skirt, which was also torn, and her slippers, which were mere rags now, with her feet bruised beneath. He traced her instep with a single finger. “Has anyone ever gone questing in such shoes, I wonder?”
“Only fools,” said Anne.
Very gently, he levered one slipper off, then the other, and paused. “May I?”
She nodded, breath coming short. He pushed away her skirt enough to untie her stockings and roll them down. When she was barefoot, his warm hands closed lightly around her feet and he stayed there a moment, head bowed.
“Yes?” he asked her, still looking down. He sounded breathless. “You are not tired?”
She found herself laughing. “I will not be climbing any more cliffs this evening, Orléans, but no, not in the way you mean. Are you?”
He did not answer in words but pulled her to her feet and kissed her. Against her mouth, he murmured, “Almost I could believe that we are back in Never-Was.”
She pulled away, laughing. “Oh?” she asked innocently. “Was this one of your rooms after all? And I thought you wished only to admire me doing embroidery by firelight…”
“Shrew,” he said, and kissed her again. One hand went to the ties of her sleeves and undid them, and the band of her skirt, letting herclothes fall away in pieces. When she was in her chemise, he pulled back again. They were both breathing fast. “Itwasone of my rooms in Never-Was. And you?” he said.
She smiled slowly, wondering if he could see it in the dark. “I? In the castle of Never-Was? Certainly. There was a bed, and a korrigan wearing your face, ready to make all my dreams of love come true.”
Louis muttered something rude. He’d pulled off her fillet, and her hair was mostly loose. He pushed the mass of it aside and breathed against her sensitive throat, ran his teeth down to the juncture of her shoulder, drew hard on the skin there until she arched against him, then he said, “What were your dreams of love?”
“I dreamed—” She hesitated, but there was no room for untruths in the shadows between them. “I dreamed that one would touch me who did not revel in my conquest.”
Louis was silent. Then he said, “It is a fair dream.” But he sounded sad. His hands had loosened. She said, suddenly self-conscious, “My dress must be laid aside properly. So it doesn’t crumple.”
“There’s a coffer at the foot of the bed— No, I’ll do it. Your feet are quite bruised enough.”
She sat down on the bed. Clothes rustled somewhere in the dark, and when he came back his body was warm. He’d stripped to shirt and hose.
Louis sat down on the bed beside her and she leaned against his shoulder. His hand closed around the back of her neck, beneath her hair. It was only this close that she could feel the tension in him, running through his shoulder, up into his hand.
“Are you cold? Lie back,” he said, and followed her beneath the heaped-up blankets. She could barely see him, but she could feel that he was propped on his elbow and his free hand, hesitating, hovered, just near enough for her to feel its warmth. “Anne?”
