Beauty by Sarah Pinborough Page B

Their bubble of intimacy and affection might not last, but it would at least remain as long as their nudity did.
    ‘How long have you worked at the castle?’ the huntsman asked, his fingers trailing through her hair and running down the soft skin of her back. She had been no virgin, her forward behaviour had made that clear before anything she’d done, but she was young – no more than seventeen or eighteen – and a bright enthusiasm shone in her eyes.
    ‘Only two weeks.’ Her warm breath tickled the hairs on his chest. ‘I used to work at the dairy out on the edge of the city. Been there since I was twelve, when my parents were taken by the flu.’
    ‘I’m sorry,’ the huntsman said.
    ‘Don’t be. It was years ago and the women at the dairy were good to me. I can’t complain. Lots of girls there had no families for one reason or another. I wasn’t alone in that and it was a good place. The work wasn’t too hard once you knew what you were doing, and they weren’t too strict.’ She giggled a little and then glanced up at him, her eyes full of remembered mischief. ‘I used to sleep in a dorm with six other milkmaids. Some nights there were as many men in our room as maids. Some times more .’
    ‘I thought you’d learned a few tricks from somewhere.’ The huntsman pulled her closer, enjoying her uncomplicated warmth. Her past sexual encounters didn’t bother him – and wouldn’t have even if he had loved her. He had no time for bedroom double standards. It didn’t fit with his internal logic and just struck him as stupidity. They were all just animals, after all, and why should a woman deny herself pleasure simply because an insecure man might think less of her? If no women gave in to their lusts then his own life would have been much duller – women were by far the more sensuous sex but most men didn’t know how to keep those feelings alive in them. Most men made them feel ashamed of their desires rather than delighting in them and then wondered why everything died and dried up between them. It would not be like that for him, should he ever find the girl in his dreams.
    ‘From the dairy to the castle seems a big leap for an orphan girl,’ he said. He was probing her but he couldn’t help it. Ever since he’d got here his hackles had been up and soon he would have to go and hunt a traitor – a job he didn’t relish if he was working in a situation where he felt blinkered. He was no soldier who could simply obey orders. ‘How did you manage that?’
    ‘A few of the dairy girls have come to the castle over the years,’ she said. ‘The first minister visited and he chose me himself. So I packed up my things and here I am. I sometimes miss the dairy though. Even though life is easier, everything’s so much stricter here.’
    ‘You still seem to manage to find your fun, it seems,’ he said.
    ‘Well when a handsome stranger comes visiting I have to make the most of it.’
    ‘So life in the kingdom is good then?’ he asked, sipping wine thoughtfully.
    ‘Yes, why?’
    ‘There are so many soldiers everywhere. The castle is so heavily guarded. I thought you must have recently been attacked by another kingdom. They’re always fighting, after all.’ He paused. ‘When we arrived and you were all sleeping, I saw the dungeons. Some of the equipment in there is . . .’ It was hard to find an appropriate word for it. He hunted and killed as a way of life, but he made every death as swift and as painless as possible. The things he’d seen here were designed, as far as he could make out, to cause the maximum agony while keeping someone alive. It was the dungeon of a tyrant king, not of a beautiful, happy queen. ‘Barbaric,’ he said in the end.
    ‘I wouldn’t know about that.’ She tensed slightly in his arms. ‘And there’s been no fighting. I think there are so many soldiers because of the dark days. We haven’t had one for a month or so. There must be one due.’
    ‘Dark days?’ he