THE ONLY LIGHT was from the fireplace and it took her a moment to adjust to the darkness. Gwirion was trembling, actually shaking with fear, and his face was almost as pale as the whitewashed walls.
“Gwirion?” she said in disbelief.
“I was so frightened,” he whispered, ashamed, and collapsed hard into Noble’s chair.
“I would never have known it.” She sat on the chest beside him but didn’t touch him for fear of making him more self-conscious. “Why did you do that?”
“To buy time. And because what I said is true.” He was trying to calm his breathing.
She pushed away the immature impulse to argue with him. “So what? What do you gain from it?” He didn’t answer. “You told me you aren’t my ally, you only do what benefits you. How on earth do you benefit from being taken to Gwynedd as a hostage?”
The truth was, he did not know why he’d done it, and he scrambled mentally for any excuse that wouldn’t sound chivalrous. “I can escape. I could free myself from anything they would put me in within minutes. You can’t.”
“But how do you benefit from that?”
“Then I’m free!” he said nervously, still jangled. “It’s the perfect way to desert without having Noble’s hounds on me.”
“I didn’t think you wanted to desert anymore. You didn’t go with Owain.”
He’d forgotten he had confided that to her. No, he hadn’t gone with Owain. And Noble had done nothing objectionable since the end of the war council…except for that twisted apology the morning he left, a moment of unmasking that left Gwirion with a terrible opinion of what his friend was made of—something he could never tell her about. “That was before there was war,” he said instead. “I don’t want to be confined to a castle with this sort of nonsense happening all the time.”
She shook her head. “You’re safer here than anywhere else. People come to Cymaron for safety. You’re not making any sense.”
He threw her a challenging look, trying to stare her down with his onyx-hard eyes. “Why do you think I did it, then?”
“Because you’re my ally,” she said, risking a shy, pleased smile.
“Why do women sentimentalize everything?” he groaned. He leapt up and knocked hard on the door. One of Cynan’s teulu opened it a crack and stuck a knife through it to discourage Gwirion’s coming too near. “Excuse me,” he petitioned the soldier, “would you be willing perhaps to construct a rack and keep me on it in another room for the duration?”
“You are such an ass!” Isabel said crossly, standing up. Unexpectedly, Gwirion laughed and the guard slammed the door closed again.
“Thank you,” he said, his humor restored. “I don’t think you’ve ever let yourself go with me before. This might actually be entertaining! Quick, what’s the worst insult you can think of? I’ll win that duel, but I’d be happy to mentor you.”
She made a gesture of annoyance and crossed away from him to the dark side of the room. “This is even worse than being cooped up with the sewing bevy,” she muttered to herself. Gwirion, hearing her, gave her a gaping look of delight.
“The sewing bevy? Is that what you call your attendants?”
“Not to their faces,” she said shortly, turning away from him.
“And you don’t like the sewing bevy?” This, in a hopefully tentative voice as if he feared her answer might disappoint him.
She spoke clearly but without malice, still facing into the darkness. “They are a bunch of ninnies.”
He clapped his hands together, nearly prancing. “Your Majesty, I wish I’d known you felt that way, I’d’ve persecuted them!” She looked over her veiled shoulder to stare at him. “If I knew someone might derive satisfaction from it, I would have paid them some attention, but I assumed you were all birds of a feather so I never bothered about them.”
“You bothered about me.”
“Of course I did, you’re the top hen.”
“And I threatened you,” she said firmly, returning to the fireplace.
He stopped prancing, but grinned at her boyishly. “For about a day. I threatened you much longer than that, and much worse. I still threaten you. That’s why we’re in here right now, isn’t it?”
She looked at him with wounded dignity. “If he answers that I’m the more important, won’t that threaten you?”
“He won’t say that,” Gwirion assured her, impatiently, then grinned again. “Tell me what you dislike about the sewing bevy.”
“Just because I think they’re dullwits doesn’t mean they deserve your persecution.”
“I’ll only do it behind their backs,” he promised. “They’ll never even know.”
“And what purpose would that serve?”
“I’d be doing it for you, of course,” he explained. “As a favor. You’ve never said a cross thing about them that I know of. You’ve been an angel, and you need a devil to let the bile out on your behalf.”
“Oh, is that what you’re for?” she asked ironically. He nodded, pleased that she finally understood. “Then I must assume you insult me because Noble hates me but can’t let himself say so. You’re being the devil he can’t let himself be?”
He looked startled at this thought, and then shook his head. “No, that’s different,” he said in a rare moment of utter guilelessness. “You’re an outsider who’s invaded my kingdom. When I insult you, I’m doing it for myself.”
She crossed her arms and took a step toward him. “Why?” She wanted to finally have it out with him.
Gwirion looked blank. He stared wide-eyed at her, at the wall, at the floor, at his own shoulder, but nothing inspired an answer. Finally, with an awkward laugh, he declared, “Because it’s fun, of course.”
She made a disgusted sound and leaned back against the mantel seeking warmth, wrapping her arms around herself. “That’s the most puerile thing I’ve ever heard.”
He moved in toward the other end of the hearth. “I insult the king too! He enjoys it! Why can’t you enjoy it? What’s wrong with you?” he asked, overplaying the mockery to hide his discomfort.
She gave him a killing look. “You insult him as a perverse way of showing him affection. You aren’t showing me affection when you ask somebody to stretch you on the rack in order to avoid my company!”
“Perhaps I am,” Gwirion shot back without thinking.
There was a pause. He considered what he had just said and fidgeted in the firelight.
“Is that true?” she demanded. Her impulse had been to berate him, but if there was any way at all, ever, for the two of them to reach a genuine détente…
There was another pause, this one more awkward. Gwirion wanted to rescind the statement, but didn’t have the energy to get into another round. And somehow, insulting her for its own sake had lost its vicious appeal; he was simply getting bored with it.
“It didn’t used to be true,” he said at last.
“Is it true now?” she pressed.
“Who else do you dislike in the castle?” he asked, regaining the boyish grin. In a hopeful, conspiratorial tone, he whispered loudly, “I bet you have a terrifically twisted secret side. We might come out of this the best of friends!”
“Stop avoiding the question.”
The grin faded and he turned away from her. She watched him absently brush away the hair of his cowlick as he mused, expressionless, and she decided with a certain smug condescension that he was really almost good looking when he wasn’t making those ridiculous faces. Finally he turned back to her to explain in a dismissive tone: “It’s just pity. I was so appalled by his treatment of you, that night with Owain, and you couldn’t have gotten away with the sort of thing I did. You’re still fundamentally insultable, but I had never really understood before how powerless you were.”
“We’re exactly the same, then, aren’t we?”
He looked at her, bemused. “You mean besides the fact that you sleep in the king’s bed?”
“Our only real value here is our relative worth to him. We have no independent function, either of us. That’s a distinction nobody else shares.” He blinked, unprepared for an insight he couldn’t mock or dismiss. Finally, he nodded slowly in concession, and she added with a soft laugh, “I’m glad I did not have that thought before now. A few months ago it might have made me ill.”
He leered at her theatrically. “You mean you’re starting to like me?”
She mirrored the leer back at him across the mantelpiece, a mildly malicious gesture he approved of although it was startingly alien to her blunt features. “No,” she said, and dropped the expression. “But I understand you a little more. I’m on shakier ground than you are, you know. What you said about my giving him a child is right. If I’m permanently damaged, he might be pressured to…free himself, so he may take a wife who can produce an heir.” She tried to say this in a tone that wouldn’t reveal how many nightmares the thought had caused her. Divorce under canon law was practically impossible, and she’d heard more than once of a man simply killing his wife to expedite getting a new one.
But Gwirion waved the idea off. “No, you’re thinking like those silly English,” he said. “In Wales, any son he has with anyone, any son he acknowledges, can inherit. As long as he sires at least one bastard, you don’t have to give him anything.”
This did not reassure her the way he’d intended it to. “So I’m not even needed as a brood mare, I can’t rely on the need for an heir as a way to make sure he keeps me. That means I’m completely dependent on his whim!”
Gwirion, for whom this had always been true, didn’t understand the crisis, but he felt vaguely responsible for her agitation and in any case wanted her to calm down. “He doesn’t kill people when he gets tired of them,” he reassured her. “He would just get an annulment.”
This didn’t help either. “And that would reduce me to nothing,” she fretted. “I would be a spinster, without power, prestige, money—”
“That’s what I am now,” Gwirion offered as a clumsy attempt to both empathize and distract. “Except the spinster part—but my carnal carousing is as frequent as a spinster’s. If it weren’t for the Spring Rites, I might still be a virgin.” He pursed his lips shut abruptly.
“The what?”
“Oh, nothing,” he said, too quickly and avoiding her gaze. “A…poem. A poem I recite that makes women weak in the knees. Shall I recite it to you now? It goes like this,” he said, getting down on his knees before the fire and assuming, in his oversize clothes and featherweight stature, a mock-heroic pose. “‘In the spring, it is only right to honor my right to spring on you—’”
“Oh, for God’s sake!” She strode across to the door and smacked it hard with the heel of her hand. Again, the door opened a sliver and the knife poked through.
“What?” the guard said, as if she had interrupted an important meeting.
“This is unacceptable!” she announced. “Let me speak to the baron. It’s indecent to shut up a married woman with a man not her husband.”
The baron had been standing behind the guard, and motioned him to open the door wide enough to confront her. A weak grey shaft of daylight lit the air behind him. “Milady,” he said politely, with a bow. “The only other place to put him is the little cell in the basement of the barbican. Do you demand that?”
“Yes!” she said at once. Seeing Gwirion’s face in the firelight as he uncomfortably rose to his feet made her regret it. “Actually, no,” she said, between nearly clenched teeth. That was no way to use someone who was risking his own safety for her. “But this arrangement is unacceptable. We need certain concessions or we’ll both go mad.”
“Such as?” Cynan asked with his maddeningly jovial smile. She saw that he was munching happily on some salted pork. It was a January morning. There wasn’t enough food in the castle to justify anybody eating anything between breakfast and dinner, but she pushed her furious indignation aside to speak in a steady voice.
“We require air. There will have to be a few moments when you let us out of here, even if it is simply to walk around the hall. You may bind us and send everyone away if you like, but you can’t expect us to stay in here without falling ill.”
He shrugged noncommittally. “What else?”
“More light, of course. And we need a bucket to relieve ourselves and a basin of water for washing. And a curtain to have some privacy from each other when we sleep.”
“And things,” Gwirion added from the hearthside behind her. “We need things.”
The man shifted his eyes to him. “What things?”
“The queen requires, I don’t know, embroidery or spinning, have one of her women bring her something down.”
“I don’t care to sew,” she said sternly, to Gwirion.
“Then bring her a cow to milk. I want my harp, it’s lying by the hearth.”
Promising nothing, Cynan shut the door. A quarter of an hour later, they were given the bucket, the basin, the harp, and a half-finished pattern in an embroidery frame. They were promised regular meals and firewood, but no exercise and no curtain; the baron didn’t see why two people asleep should need privacy from each other. He did, however, give them torches for the wall sconces, which brightened the room to its usual warm glow.
“Brute,” she said under her breath when the door was closed again. “Do you think there’s a way to escape?”
Gwirion had immediately curled up around his harp on the padded settle like a snake seeking warmth from a sunbaked stone. He picked up the tuning key that hung from his leather belt. “No. The air vent is far too small. Maybe the chimney, if we let the fire die down, but you could never manage it in that kirtle and I’m not sure even I could get up through it. I don’t even think it’s in our interest to try. If they think we’re docile, then they won’t be so vigilant over whichever of us they take. Would you like to hear something in the turn-string tuning?”
“Whichever of us? You said it would be you.”
“I know. But the more I think about it, the more I wonder if I misjudged. Noble might answer the question wrong just to be perverse—”
“Not possibly because that’s how he feels?” she demanded.
“Of course not” Gwirion said offhandedly, as if oblivious to the fact that this could hurt her. “And anyway, they might decide that regardless of his response, it’s still better to have a political pawn than a personal one. So I can’t promise they won’t take you, but at least we’ll have delayed their plans by several days.” He looked up from tuning. “You won’t faint or become hysterical, will you?”
She scowled. “I am a Mortimer.”
Gwirion gave her a droll look. “Which means…what? You commit regicide? Slaughter the innocent? Imprison your own family for political gain?”
“I have never been faced with a crisis I couldn’t handle,” she scoffed indignantly.
“You fainted when Corr scared you at the wedding.”
“That wasn’t a crisis, that was a prank,” she snapped.
“Fair enough,” Gwirion said, and tested the pitch of the string he’d been tuning by sounding it against its neighbor. He tightened it a fraction of a turn. “But please, if they do take you, don’t be a Mortimer, just be docile. Do what they want. I’ll say something to scare them out of trying to molest you, but I suspect they know better anyway. I’m not worried about the watch they’ve set up, I can slip out of here without being caught, so I’ll go straight to the front to warn him.” He smiled at her. “You’ll be safe. But I really don’t think they’ll be taking you.”
At once comforted and insulted by the assertion, she arranged her embroidery where there was the most light, as he began to play “Rhiannon’s Tears.” They passed the morning without another spoken word, but each relatively content in their respective distraction. It was a comfortable silence, not a cold one.
Gwirion could carry a tune well, and invent wild harmonies when he sang with the villagers, but he had never been trusted with romantic ballads or important poetry of any sort. He was, however, a profoundly gifted harpist, and it was pleasant to work to his music. Every now and then she would glance up at him bent close to the strings, his cheek almost resting against the curved shoulder of the instrument. The finial of a lion’s head, looking not forward but back along the string arm in imitation of the royal coat of arms, seemed to be watching over him. The dozens and dozens of nights she’d seen him play in hall, she’d always been galled by the focused contentment on his face as he basked in the attention and admiration of everyone present. Alone with him, she didn’t mind it so much. The pleasured expression was still there even without a crowd applauding him, and she was forced to consider the possibility that the smile was not for being publicly adored, but for the joy of the music itself. She realized, a little shamed for it, that she had considered herself the only one who could truly appreciate the beauty of it: Noble liked anything Gwirion did, and he had no ear anyhow; Gwirion, she had always assumed, was an attention-hungry cretin who had randomly been blessed with the gift to create something far more beautiful than he himself could understand. She was embarrassed to see that he appreciated it at least as much as she did. There was actually something winsome about the loving absorption he was giving to the strings as he sounded them; it reminded her of the way Noble looked at her—sometimes—when they lay together. Trying to imagine Gwirion looking at a woman that way, she blushed and hurriedly returned her attention to the embroidery pattern.
Eventually the door opened and a platter was shoved into the room. The portions of barley bread, cheese, porridge, dried fish, and weak ale were generous enough to feed them both, but it was all mangled; the guard had investigated every piece of food for hidden messages or weapons being slipped in from the kitchen. Gwirion lay the harp on its back and brought the platter to the carved chest that lay between the settle and Noble’s chair, where Isabel was sitting. The queen, although at first resenting the sewing, had become so mesmerized by her work that she continued as if she hadn’t noticed the interruption. Gwirion stood watching for a moment, then ventured up to her and gently took the frame and needle out of her hands. He laid them on the floor beside her. “Come and eat,” he coaxed. “Or I’ll eat it all myself. You’re scrawny enough as it is.”
“Dammit, Gwirion, why is everything an insult?” she demanded, leaping up with an abrupt hurt fury.
He backed away from her, eyes wide. Vicious responses spewed through his mind but he stopped his lips against them. “I apologize,” he said instead, quietly, and possibly for the first time in his life. It surprised him.
It surprised her too, even more than her own wrath had. “Oh,” she said after a moment, and then added awkwardly, “Thank you.”
She sat across from him at the chest and began eating. Gwirion had grown unused to sharing over a meal, and kept forgetting to return the cup to a place where she could reach it. Amused more than annoyed, she would tap his wrist gently and gesture, and he would immediately grab the cup and offer it to her. Sheepish about his manners, he insisted she eat all the porridge, but she refused.
Then there was a silence. They looked at each other, never at the same time but always with the same thought: How strange to be sitting here with this person. It occurred to each of them independently that although they had never been friends, they knew each other well. The months of his persecuting and her hostility had woven their attention tightly together, braided it with Noble’s life. This person sitting across the chest was someone they’d never had a friendly discussion with but still was not a stranger, and far more than a mere acquaintance. The realization amused both of them for different reasons, but for different reasons also it was not an amusement either wanted the other to see.
So when their eyes finally did meet, they each blushed, then were more embarrassed about blushing as they looked hurriedly away. And yet even the embarrassment had a comfortable intimacy to it, emphasized perhaps by invaders just beyond the door. There was almost something pleasurable about the self-consciousness of it, Isabel thought. Gwirion did not quite admit this to himself, but he was grudgingly aware there was something he wasn’t admitting.
After ten minutes of silence, she ventured awkwardly, “I’m grateful you thought to ask him for my sewing. I don’t know how I would make it through this otherwise.”
He nodded to acknowledge the comment, a little uncomfortably, and continued to eat. They stared at each other’s hands, hesitating to reach for something the other one might want. When they had finished, he placed the platter by the door, set the bucket as far away from the fire as possible for future use, returned to the couch, and picked up his harp. They resumed the morning’s routine for some three hours, Gwirion pausing occasionally to tend the fire or the torches, until finally she pushed her handiwork aside. “I can’t do any more of this now,” she said. “My eyes are watering and my hands are getting stiff. It’s soporific, doing nothing all day, and it’s stuffy in here.” She yawned. “Will it discomfit you if I stretch out and nap for a bit?”
He squelched the impulse to tell her this was the king’s favorite place for naps and said instead, “You won’t be able to sleep through the night.”
“I always sleep well. Will you help me to find a cushion?” She moved toward the deerskin rug by the hearth. “I’ll just rest here.”
Gwirion knew where there were cushions—and blankets, and even a quilt stuffed with goose down. This room was designated as a berth for visiting dignitaries, but the bedding got far more use when Noble indulged himself of an afternoon or evening without his wife.
He decided not to mention the bedding to the queen. Instead he took the lambskin throw from the king’s chair, rolled it up, and offered it to her. She accepted it with a smile.
“Will you think it indecent of me if I take off my wimple?” she asked, reaching up to pull the band from her chin.
“Not nearly indecent enough,” Gwirion quipped.
The headdress was a little involved, but she was adept and had occasionally done it herself since Adèle’s death. Noble was the only man who had seen her hair loose since her wedding, but since she saw her own uncovered head every night and morning, there was nothing exotic or unusual about it to her, and she forgot it was an unknown to the rest of the castle. Her tomboyish youth had accustomed her years ago to wear her hair in braids curled up on either side of her head. But she’d been rushed this morning, and had cheated, twisting the long, tawny locks into a simple quick chignon and covering the wimple with a longer veil in case it slipped. It took only a moment to undo. She was surprised when, after laying the headdress and hairpins on the chest, she turned and saw Gwirion’s expression. He was gaping at her. “What?” she asked.
“Is that what you really look like?” he demanded loudly before he could think, staring at the honey-toned cascade that fell smooth and heavy nearly to her knees. It was the glossiest mane he had ever seen. He didn’t know women could grow hair like that.
“Haven’t you ever seen hair on a woman before?”
Not like yours, Gwirion almost said, but didn’t, because that wasn’t what had floored him. What left him blinking stupidly at her was that she had become a different person. The queen he knew had hair made of fabric, with a bald face peering out chinless and neckless from it, stiff and formal. English. Standing before him now was a pretty young woman, with hair that seemed exotic compared to the coarse tresses of his countrywomen, hair that matched her pale eyes perfectly and—most astonishing to him—a woman with a neck. Most of the castle women wore simple white veils, so seeing a woman’s neck was not unusual…but seeing the queen’s neck shocked him because it forced him to admit that the queen actually was a woman, with a woman’s body. Somehow, even the time he had peeked in on Noble possessing her on their wedding night, that had never been real to him. Despite the firm, square face, she had a delicate chin and a graceful neck, which only made the revelation more disturbing. It had not really occurred to him until this moment that he was locked alone in a room with a woman, and he was distressed by it. To be shut up alone with any woman would have been difficult enough; an attractive woman made him feel even more awkward, and when that attractive woman had the gall to be her…
She had considered, and completely misjudged, his reaction. “Go ahead,” she said through tight lips, the afternoon’s peace lost.
“Milady?” he asked.
“Whatever insulting thing you’re going to say about my hair, just say it and be done with it so I may sleep in peace.”
He looked at her as if she were speaking Latin. Finally, mumbling, almost sullen, he managed to reply, “I have nothing insulting to say of your hair.” In response to her surprised look, he grudgingly added, “It’s actually…pretty.” He wanted to smack himself for the admission.
Her face softened. “Really? Noble doesn’t like it. It’s never been complimented by a man before.” She bestowed a smile on him—truly bestowed it, as a favor, beaming. “Thank you.”
That only made it worse. He had to turn away from her to hide his reaction. This was terrible. How ridiculous. How riotously ridiculous. Someday he and Noble would go riding in the hills and Gwirion would confess he’d had an erection from seeing the queen’s hair, and the two of them would laugh uproariously and then when they returned home to the queen and her wimple he would casually insult her. He tried to focus on that future afternoon until it was safe to turn back to her.
“Gwirion, what are you doing?” she asked, perplexed almost to laughter by his behavior. “What’s wrong with you?”
“Nothing,” he said. “Go to sleep.”
Shrugging off his strangeness, she stretched out on the rug and propped the sheepskin under her head.
“Wait,” he said. He couldn’t stop himself from performing a gratuitous act of kindness for her, which made him angry with himself. Mostly, he decided, he just wanted her covered up so he couldn’t see her anymore. Her veil usually matched the color of her kirtle, blurring the outline of her figure; her hair, such a contrast to the dark silk she was wearing, suddenly accentuated every subtle curve. He wanted to hide all of it. “We can improve on that a little.” He went to the chest and lifted the top.
“What is that doing there?” she asked of the luxurious bedding he pulled out, not really wanting to hear the answer because she was sure she already knew.
“King’s stash,” Gwirion replied unsentimentally. “Officially for visitors, but used more often—”
“I understand,” she cut in with annoyance. They spread the down-filled quilt on the floor, layered the blankets over it, and Isabel chose a cushion for her head. As she settled into the bed, Gwirion turned away hoping that once she was covered up, she would cease to be fascinating.
The opposite proved true, of course, since once she was snuggled in, she was almost nothing but hair. Hair and face—but the face, because of the hair, was a new face, not that of an adversary or a familiar nuisance. He curled up on the settle as far away from her as he could, again grasping the harp to himself for comfort.
“Sleep well, milady,” he called out, trying to pretend he was far enough away from her to need to call out. He just wanted her to be asleep so he could feel alone. He ran his fingers over the harp strings without realizing it, and at once tried to silence them.
“Oh, that’s lovely,” she said in exactly the dreamy voice that the beautiful women of his fantasies always used when they were in bed. “Play me to sleep.”
He uncurled himself and began a lullaby, determined to lose himself in the music until she was awake again. But when the rhythm of her breath suggested that she had finally lapsed into slumber, he felt his fingers still the strings, and found himself drawn to her side. He could not get over the transformation of her face surrounded by all that hair. It was like a magic trick; he had a childish impulse to wake her up and make her put the wimple back on just so she could take it off again. Instead, he bent down over her sleeping form to stare at the hair. And without even feeling himself doing it, he reached down gently to stroke it. It was as smooth as a rabbit pelt and smelled faintly of rosewater. Hair exposed to weather and seldom groomed was never like this. He wanted to grab handfuls of it and rub it against his face, but he satisfied himself with stroking it, gently, so gently it would never wake her. He stared at the smooth young face that was so familiar and yet so alien.
Somehow, after a few minutes, his hand, on its own, without his knowledge or permission, migrated to her cheek. He saw it there as if it were somebody else’s hand, and horrified, willed it to go away, but it wouldn’t. It kept stroking the warm flesh, sending him sensations of dizzying pleasure even as he was begging it to move. Finally, with all the theatrical deliberation he used when performing for children or a crowd in the courtyard, he reached his other hand out to snatch the offending paw from her face, and pulled it safely out of reach above his head. The exaggerated movement threw him off balance and he tumbled over toward her, his own face inches from her closed eyes.
She stirred at the sound and he froze, praying to a God he usually ignored to spare her from seeing him. Go away, he ordered himself. Go to the other side of the room and stay there.
He couldn’t. He meant to, and maybe he would have, but she rolled in her sleep and a thick lock of that hair uncoiled like a rope across his arm as he tried to stand, and he almost sank from the touch. He hovered over her again, staring at the sweetly sleeping face, the face that had the same features as the queen he didn’t like and yet looked nothing like her. The transformation alone was so bewitching that even if it had been unflattering, he would have been entranced. Even her skin tone seemed different, rich and rosier, when it was surrounded by the living curtain of her hair. His fingers hovered in the space just below her chin, wanting to touch her there. He could barely make out her pale, slender throat in the shadows beneath it. He could almost smell how soft that skin would be.
She was absolutely unlike the queen he enjoyed mocking. This was just a pretty girl, a child almost, and she trusted him enough to fall into a deep sleep in his company. It was a trust he felt unworthy of. Don’t be beautiful, you irritating creature, he thought, pulling his hand away. He tried to be as annoyed with the sleeper as he was with her animated, wimpled counterpart. It didn’t work. She was too innocent.
The key turned loudly in the latch, the door creaked open and the supper platter was pushed in. He glanced down at her but she didn’t stir, and he found himself smiling at her. He didn’t understand what he was feeling. He would have called it lust—in one inarguable way it was obviously lust—but lust usually made him feel like a nervous puppy, silly, forward, playful. This was calmer. He was pleased to see her sleeping safely and deeply, as if she were a child he was looking after. That’s what it was, he decided, ignoring the physical reaction he was still fighting. I feel paternal because I’m looking out for her. Feeling virtuous, and very relieved, he gently rocked her shoulder until she was awake. She blinked sleepily and opened her catlike eyes, then looked up at him with exactly the dreamy smile that the beautiful women of his fantasies always used when they were in bed, and he backed away in distress, not feeling the least paternal anymore.