“You are welcome,” he said, grinning because he liked to hear her laugh. But that also reminded him that this should probably be a serious moment, given what they were about to face together. Perhaps this moment of levity would be a good segue for what needed to be discussed. “Now, it seems that we have a duty to attend to this evening.”
She eyed him, momentarily puzzled, but quickly realized what he was saying. “Aye,” she said, turning back to her reflection in the small mirror on the dressing table. “We do.”
“We do.”
She paused. “Does it not seem strange to you that we have only just met, yet we are expected to know each other as a husband and wife?” she said. “I have always found that a very strange thing about consummation on the night of a wedding. Perfect strangers are expected to know each other intimately.”
He agreed with her. “It does seem strange,” he said. “But men and women have been doing it for centuries. We are not the first and we will not be the last.”
Still combing her hair, she looked at him. “May I be honest with you?”
“I hope you are always honest with me.”
Mattie shook her head. “I did not mean it the way it sounded,” she said. “I simply meant that we have only just truly met one another today and I hope I may always be frank with you. You will not be angry if I speak what is on my mind, will you?”
“Never, as long as it is the truth.”
She sighed and turned back to her comb. “Then I will tell you that I know something of what we are about to do.”
His brow furrowed. “How?” he said, the least bit miffed. “You told me that you have been loyal to the contract.”
She shrugged, almost flippantly. “I had a lifebeforethe contract,” she said. “I was six years of age and a lad my same age kissed me right on the lips. He told me he loved me. Now, I shall not tell you his name, for you may not find him and challenge him, but I will be truthful and tell you that for an entire week, he had my heart.”
Gar fought off a grin. “Is that so?” he said, feigning anger. “Then I must rethink this entire marriage. You did not tell me that you were free with your kisses.”
“You did not ask.”
“And you think this pleases me?”
“I hope it tells you that I’m experienced when it comes to the relations between men and women. Iwaskissed.”
He burst into soft laughter. “Good,” he said. “Then you can teach me.”
“How to kiss?”
“How to everything.”
She snorted. “Do not be cruel,” she said. “Kissing is, mayhap, the only thing I know about it. I will have to defer to yourexperience in such matters, though I must say it gives me no joy to think youhavehad experience.”
“I’ve had no experience at all, at least not with that.”
She stopped combing and looked at him, suspecting what he was telling her but not entirely sure she was right. “I do not understand.”
He was sitting on the edge of the bed, looking at his hands. “I think you do.”
Her suspicions were right. The way he said it, there could be no mistake, and she couldn’t keep the astonishment out of her voice.
“You mean… everything?” she said.
He nodded. “Does that surprise you?”
Mattie set her comb down, the mood suddenly growing quite serious. “Do you mean to tell me that you have never done this before?”
Gar sighed faintly, looking as if he were about to confess something he wasn’t entirely sure he wanted to confess. “I just… never took the opportunity,” he said. “Believe me—this isn’t a simple thing to admit. I debated not telling you, but now that we are being honest… it does not seem right not to tell you. You are my wife, after all. You should know everything about me. Even… this.”
He seemed uncomfortable and she didn’t want to make it worse by pressing him, but she couldn’t help it. “But why?” she finally said. “You are young and strong and wildly handsome. Surely you… Whynot?”
He lifted his big shoulders, as if he didn’t even really know. “I’ve been fostering since I was six years of age,” he said. “All I did was work and train, and when I grew older, all I did was perfect my skills as a knight. I was knighted three years before most men because I’d worked so hard at it. I was, and am, the perfect knight. I’m not saying that there were not women whotried to seduce me, for there have been many, and I’m not saying that I’ve never been kissed by a woman, for I have, but that is as far as anything ever went.”
