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Wulfric had no idea where he was when he woke up. He looked around the part of the room that he could see. There were more windows than in his own room and the curtains had a different color. The canopy of the bed also had a different color and it smelled differently than his. He buried his head in the pillow. It smelled of lavender. And a bit of nuts.
His stomach clenched as if he was going to be sick again when everything came rushing back to him. Getting drunk alone in the forest. Walking back to the castle in the dark. Confronting Anna...
He slowly turned around in bed but found that he was alone there. His head hurt like it had been stumbled on by a horse. He moaned and turned on his back. What would Anna think of him? How could it have been a good idea to break into her room at night and demand an apology?
His nose caught the distinct scent of puke. He had thrown up on her, Wulfric remembered, and could not help but moan even louder. He would never drink again, he promised himself. Now that he had noticed the stench of puke, he could not just ignore it. It made him nauseous. He tried to cover his nose with the bed linen, but it was not able to hide the smell of half-digested food mixed with huge amounts of alcohol.
Wulfric threw himself out of the bed and threw up in the nearest container that he could find. Which turned out to be a woman’s leather boot.
“Those are my favorite boots,” he heard someone say behind him. Still kneeling on the floor, clutching the boot full of puke, he turned and saw Anna standing behind him.
“I’m so sorry,” he whispered, before he threw up again.
Anna hurried to the windows and opened them. Then she came over to him.
“Are you going to be sick again?” she said.
Wulfric shrugged. She found something under the bed. A chamber pot. Thankfully, unused, and handed it to him, while taking the boot away from him. “Get into bed again,” she said in a milder tone of voice and helped him up from the floor. Wulfric did as she said and lay back down, still holding the chamber pot.
“I’m never getting drunk again,” he said.
“No, I think that’s a good idea,” Anna said with a smile. Wulfric watched how she took the boot and threw it out the open window. He could hear it land in the moat with a splash.
“It was your favorite,” he said.
Anna came over to him and sat on the side of the bed.
“I’ll have another one made. It will never be clean enough for me to wear it.”
She seemed amused about the situation.
“We have a thing with puke, haven’t we?” she said, and Wulfric remembered how she had gotten seasick when they were on the ferry. He smiled briefly.
“Would you be kind enough to get me something to drink?” he said.
Anna got up and went to the adjoining room. She came back with a cup of something, that Wulfric found was sweetened, cold ale, meant for everyday drinking. He emptied the cup and handed it back to her.
“Can I have some more please?”
“I’d better get the can in here,” she said with a slight smile. “Do you want something to eat as well?”
“I don’t know if I’m able to eat,” Wulfric said.
“Someone told me, that it’ll take longer to get over being seasick if you don’t eat. I suppose that the same goes for hangovers?”
Anna brought food from the other room and had him eat that as well.
“You can sleep when you’ve finished,” she said.
“I should go to my own room,” he said.
“I don’t think you’ll be able to in your condition. And it will look odd if you stumble out of my room puking.”
“But your servants...?”
“I’ve told them not to come today,” Anna said. “Now, go to sleep.”
Wulfric did as she said and felt much better when he woke up the next time. It seemed to be afternoon by what he could judge from the light. He looked around the room, but Anna was not there. It was for the best, now that he was starting to sober up, he had no idea how he could ever face her again. How could he have stumbled into the room in the middle of the night? He pulled the lavender scented covers over his face, trying to hide from the shame.
He heard someone enter the room and held his breath while he listened to the person that made their way around the bed to the side that he was sleeping in.
“It’s me,” Anna said.
Wulfric pulled the cover down, even though he would have preferred to have stayed under them.
“Are you feeling any better?” Anna asked.
Wulfric nodded and sat up.
“I should go to my own room,” he said and started to get out of bed.
“I think that we should talk about what happened,” Anna said.
Wulfric did not look at her as he swung his legs over the edge of the bed.
“I don’t know if there is anything to talk about. I don’t know how I can ever apologize for what I did. I’ve never been that drunk before.”
“Not even with Walter Hansen?” Anna said with a straight face, but Wulfric could see the glint of humor in her eyes as he looked at her.
“No, not even with him,” he said and could not help but smile slightly himself. He looked around the room but could not see his boots. He had been wearing boots, when he entered her room, hadn’t he?
“Even though you feel that you could never apologize enough, I’ve accepted your apology,” Anna said. “And I don’t think that you need to apologize for anything else than barging into my room in the middle of the night when I was sleeping.”
“Thank you,” Wulfric said without looking at her. She smelled like lavender like her bed linen. He could not help but take a deep breath to inhale her scent deeper. She had not smelled like that before, he realized. “You did not smell of lavender on the trip,” he said without thinking.
“No, I’ve had lavender water made when I came here,” Anna said. “The nuns find scent like that frivolous, but I like it. I guess that it suggests that I would have been a terrible nun.”
“Where you considering that?” Wulfric said with surprise in his voice.
“For a while, I thought that the best thing for me was to hide from the world. But I realized that I would miss my friends too much. Joining the convent would mean, that I would not get to see the king and queen as much, if at all.”
“I’m glad, I think that you’re meant for something else than to spend your life in a convent.”
“You made me realize that there is another reason that I would be a terrible nun,” Anna said and took his hand.
Wulfric felt like his heart stopped beating.
“I did,” he said and felt like his voice sounded more like a frog’s quaking than a human voice.
“Yes,” Anna leaned forward and kissed him gently on the mouth. Something inside Wulfric’s body seemed to explode and send waves of joy through his entire body.
“But you said...” he said as he broke of the kiss.
Anna sent him a stern look.
“Are you really going to argue with me on this?” she said.
He shook his head quickly but stopped just as suddenly when his head hurt a bit. He leaned down and kissed her again and it felt like heaven when she did not reject him but placed her arms around him and drew him closer.