Page 48 of The Changeling

I turned my face away. ‘It’s too cold! We’d get frostbite.’

‘I’d keep you warm.’

‘If you weren’t too shrunken with the cold.’

‘Trust me, Caiti, I am never shrunken around you.’ He grasped my waist and pulled me up against him, so I could feel for myself just how unshrunken he was. ‘Can we sneak to your room, do you think?’

‘Mistress Gowland watches us all too closely.’

‘I cannot take you to my quarters. There are a dozen men there with naught to do but play dice and gamble, waiting for the king to snap his fingers at any time of day or night.’

‘To order you to accompany him to another bawdy house?’ I asked coldly.

Robbie grimaced. ‘Ah. You’ve heard the rumours.’

‘Everyone has.’

‘The king is a fool and a libertine. A man without honour. I hate having to serve him; I wish I could be released from his service. But I swore an oath to him and his father, and I will not break my word.’

These words comforted me, even though he spoke of a vow he had made to the king, and not the promise he had made to me. The stiffness in my stance eased, and he felt me soften against him. He kissed me again.

‘I hate the ceaseless fighting and hunting. He takes pleasure in the kill, and leaves the meat to rot where it falls. It’s ignoble. And I hate the constant drinking and boasting and …’ He paused, then said, holding my face in both his hands, ‘Och aye, I hate the whoring too. I swear to you I have no part in it.’

I cupped his face in my hands as he cupped mine, looking up into his eyes.

‘So you have been true to me?’ I asked.

Robbie nodded. ‘I have, I promise. I think only of you, I want only you.’

I rose on tiptoe and kissed him. He kissed me passionately, sitting on the hawthorn roots and drawing me to sit on his lap. Carlin sighed heavily and lay down with her back to us, her head on her paws. He could find no skin but my cold cheek and lips, my throat, the hollow between my collarbones, the sensitive skin of my earlobe.

‘Why do women wear so many clothes? With so many pins and laces? It’s so hard to get you out of them.’

‘I think that’s why,’ I murmured.

‘And why must we always be making love in such damned uncomfortable places?’

‘On the ground behind a bush.’

‘Or up against a wall, with the queen holding court right next door.’ He shifted uncomfortably. ‘Oh, God, just thinking about that night makes me stiff as a board. Those mayblossom cakes you cooked! The look on your face as you brought them in, your mouth so red and swollen from my kisses, a little bruise on your throat from where I had sucked too hard, dark curls springing out from under your cap and me remembering you lying half-naked, your hair loose and spread all about you …’

I did not want to remember the mayblossom cakes, or that I had driven the queen mad with lust. I laid my forehead on his chest, so he could not see my face, and he took my heavy plait and began to unwind the braid so he could coil my ringlets about his fingers.

‘I was afraid everyone would see how much I wanted you … and I was afraid … I thought no-one else could see you and not want you. I knew what Lord Darnley was like; I knew he was a lecher. I wanted to seize you in my arms and throw you up onto Apollo’s back and gallop away with you, gallop all the way home, somewhere I could keep you safe. Do you know what I wish for, Caiti?’

I shook my head, still hiding my face.

‘I dream of building a house for you. You should see the great houses they are constructing in England now, built for beauty rather than for strength. They have big windows, full of glass that let the light in, and long galleries with windows on both sides where you can walk and look out at the gardens and the woods, and feel you are outside, even when the rain does not stop for days, and tall round turrets with pointed roofs where you can sit and look out at the garden in all directions, like a bird in a nest …’

I lifted my head and gazed up into his animated face. He sketched with his hands as he spoke, his blue eyes clear and shining and full of eagerness. ‘Caiti, I’d make you the most beautiful garden you’d ever seen, full of trees and flowers and fountains and waterfalls, and a kitchen with all the newest tools, a bread oven with its own flue and a mechanical roasting spit …’

‘A what?’ I asked curiously.

‘A roasting spit that turns with the smoke from the fire. I’ve never seen one, but I’ve heard about it and I’m sure I could make one. You could cook to your heart’s content and I could work in the garden, and breed horses, and try my hand at making a watermill, and there’s this new thing I’ve read about called a seed drill …’

Robbie saw my expression, flushed and laughed. ‘I’m sorry. It’s just I’ve been thinking about it so long.’ He ran his finger along my jaw to my chin, then down my throat till it touched the cleft between the soft swell of my breasts. ‘You know what else I would like? I’d like to sleep all night with you naked in my arms and spend all day making love to you slowly, in the light of day so I can see every part of you.’

He ran his hands over my body, then bent his head and sucked hard at my nipple, which hardened under the thick cloth. ‘Oh, God. Caiti, you’re killing me. I need you so badly. There must be somewhere we can go.’