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“Yes, but I don’t want to be your unlucky charm, Konrad!” she insisted, then squeaked as he lightly pinched her nipples.

“You could never be that, wife,” he said. “Now give me your lips. I’m hungry for a taste.”

She complied so satisfactorily that silence ruled over the tent for a good few minutes. Finally, he dragged his lips from hers. “Wait!” he growled, remembering belatedly his vow to make her tourney queen this day.

“Konrad? Now what is wrong?” Aimee panted, her dark eyes glazed and fixed on his mouth.

He frowned down at her. Damn it. “You gave me a ten-token kiss when I only wanted a two.”

Aimee blinked at him. “Nonsense! You did not specify! And anyway, all my kisses are ten-token kisses!” The exchange of tokens had become a great game between them these days. Aimee’s one hundred tokens flowed endlessly back and forth between them as a sign of high favor.

He had nearly suffered a breakdown three mornings ago when he could only find ninety-eight of their number remaining to him. Poor Jakeman had had to turn the room upside down to find the missing two.

“Not true,” he growled. “Some of your kisses are worth far more.”

“Oh?” She looked so smugly pleased by his confession that he felt his heart flip in his chest. He was getting distracted, as always, around her.

“However, that is not the issue at hand,” he said clearing his throat. “The fact is, wife, that I just recalled I am determined to win the joust here at Kellingford.”

“Oh?” she repeated.

He could tell she was not remotely interested in the outcome of the competition and frowned. “And make you tourney queen,” he finished with import.

Aimee wriggled beneath him, making him catch his breath. “I would rather you made me your queen here and now Konrad,” she breathed, saucily hooking a leg over his hip. “Queen of your heart.”

“I have already made you that,” he wheezed, even as his hips slid between her thighs. “Have you forgotten what anniversary this is?” he asked, giving his head a quick shake and struggling against his baser instincts which wanted very much to take over at this juncture. He felt his resolve waver. “I need some strength left me for the joust,” he said a little wildly.

“Anniversary?” Aimee mumbled, bumping her body up against his in unspoken appeal.

“Kellingford, wife,” he said through gritted teeth. “When you saw me lose to Renlow. When you fell in love with me. It was a year ago today.”

Aimee’s gaze focused on him. “Why, so it was,” she said and smiled so sweetly up at him that he was lost.

It was a bloody miracle that he actually did lift the victor’s cup that afternoon.

“I have just had a very good notion,” his wife murmured to him as she sat beside him at the feast that night. She wore a new gown of yellow and blue, and her neck and fingers glittered with the Bartree jewels. She had left off the diadem tonight to wear the flowered garland perched atop her head instead.

He surveyed her with satisfaction, covering her hand with his. “What is that, wife?”

“I think you should ask Sir Douglas to be godfather to our child. ’Twill console him for the fact Lady Constance has recently become betrothed to James Wycliffe.”

Konrad considered this. “I want to ask Vawdrey and Orde,” he answered, for he had already given the matter much deliberation. “They will have more idea of what the role entails being fathers themselves or as good as.” Orde’s wife, Lenora, was due any day now, which was the reason the Twyfords were not at Kellingford this year. “Farleigh, Symes, and Lowell can be godfathers to the next one.”

Aimee nodded. “Very well, but I do hope that poor Sir Douglas will cheer up soon,” she sighed. “You would have thought that news of Sir Leonard’s betrothal would have cheered him up, but he had a face as long as a horse last time I saw him.”

Another of Aimee’s notions had been the tactful suggestion that Symes approach the bishop in Caer Lyoness about a dispensation to wed his stepsister, Sybil. It had taken her a full week to convince Konrad to raise such a subject with Symes. Even then, he had only managed it after they had drunk a food few flagons of ale together in The Jennet Tree.

Three days later, Symes had appeared at their door covered in mud after a hard ride up from the country. He looked exhausted but was flourishing a piece of paper in his hand bearing a red wax seal. “She said she’ll have me,” he had announced unsteadily. “It was not just me. She feels the same way.”

His pale face had crumpled at this point, and he had been overcome with emotion, having to cover his welling eyes. Konrad had, had to practically carry him into the house before the lad had all but collapsed into incoherence. “I’ve paid off the bishop,” he babbled. “And it’s all legal. Sybil is to be mine.” Konrad had hurried to fetch Aimee who would know the right things to say on such an occasion, for he was damned if he knew what they were.

Naturally, Aimee had known just what to do, namely shriek, fling her arms about Sir Leo’s neck, and give him her heartfelt congratulations. Symes’s expression had changed from profoundly shaken to elated in a moment, and Konrad had been vastly relieved.

Symes’s happiness had been complete when a week later Lowell, infected no doubt by all the talk of weddings, had asked for his sister Helen’s hand. “That leaves only one sister left at home,” Aimee had whispered when they had entertained them all for dinner to celebrate. “Sir Leo’s sister Miranda.” Konrad had not particularly cared for the gleam in her eye as she had turned back to contemplate Farleigh. If Aimee had her way, the poor bastard would no doubt find himself leg-shackled to Miranda Symes before the month was out.

And it was not only Konrad’s friends who were flocking to get handfasted, for not long after their return from Beres Caple, Gerold Ankatel had formally approached him as head of the family to request his cousin Freda’s hand in marriage. Ankatel had assured him gravely that Freda was consenting, and he had taken care to secure her affections before taking this step.

To Konrad’s considerable relief, Aimee had been delighted by this development, though rather astonished by the match. In truth, she and Freda had grown so close that Konrad had almost worried she would not want to part with her, even for her father’s sake.