Twelfth Night by Flora Speer Page B

watched, Blaise took his wife’s face between
his hands and kissed her. And, wonder of wonders, Connnie’s arms
crept around his waist.
    “Do you think it’s aught we’ve done?” asked
Adam. “Or is it the spirit of the holiday? Or, perhaps, an excess
of wine?”
    “Does the cause matter?” She met his eyes.
“So long as they are in agreement, let us not question why.”
    “And we?” he murmured. “Are we in
agreement?”
    “On what, my lord?”
    “Aline, do not play the coy maiden with me. I
am not a young knight, willing to sigh and smile and whisper sweet
words and await a lady’s beckoning. I am a grown man and I know
what I want. I believe you also know what you want.”
    Unable to maintain such intense eye contact
with him any longer, she looked away toward the arch.
    “Where did Blaise and Connie go?” she asked.
“I don’t see them anywhere.”
    “No doubt they have gone where you and I
should go,” he said. “To bed. Together.”
    “That’s certainly blunt.”
    “I am no poet, to sing you pretty songs.”
    She had no answer for that. She saw the
burning desire in his eyes and she wanted to respond to it. Before
she could say anything, the castle folk surrounded them.
    “Lord Adam, you’ve not yet kissed your
guest,” a woman cried. “Under the mistletoe with you!”
    There was no way to escape the well-meaning
women who now pushed Aline toward the archway, nor the men who
urged Adam to join her there. With servants and stableboys and
men-at-arms looking on, Adam took Aline into his arms beneath the
mistletoe…and slowly bent his head to her…and kissed her quickly
and sweetly.
    An instant later, a young man trying to
juggle five dirty wooden plates he had seized from the nearest
table captured the fickle attention of the merry throng and all
returned to the great hall, save for Adam and Aline, who remained
beneath the arch.
    “Lady?” His hands were still on her
shoulders. The question in his eyes was unchanged. He must have
seen the answer in Aline’s gaze, for he swept her off her feet and
into his arms and carried her up the curving stone staircase.
    “Adam,” she protested weakly, “everyone will
know what we’re doing.”
    “What do I care?” he demanded with all the
fine distain of the lord of the castle for lesser beings. “What do
you care?
    ”Besides,” he went on, kicking open a wooden
door and then kicking it shut again behind them, “they will never
notice we’ve gone. They have their food and drink and their games
to entertain them. Here in my chamber, no one will disturb us.”
    “If I were one of them,” she said as he laid
her upon a huge, curtained bed, “I would notice if you were
gone.”
    “Notice instead that we are here, alone
together, and the door is now bolted.” He suited action to his
words before returning to the bed, pulling off his belt and his
tunic on the way. Then his hands were in her hair, the golden net
was cast aside, and a flood of dusky curls cascaded over his
fingers.
    “Yes,” he murmured, “just as I imagined it.”
He pressed her backward until she was lying beneath him. His kiss
was deep and demanding. Aline answered it with rapidly rising
desire. When he finished, he pulled away from her only long enough
to remove her gown and underdress. Quickly his large lands traced
the outline of her breasts against her shift. Through the sheer
linen he kissed the tip of one breast. His hands moved lower,
caught the hem of her shift, and began to pull it upward. She cried
out at the roughness of his palms against the sensitive skin of her
upper thigh.
    “Aline,” he said with a groan, “tell me true;
are you yet a virgin?”
    “No,” she whispered. “I am so sorry, but
no.”
    “Do not regret it. I only asked because I
don’t want to hurt you through ignorance. I have no taste for
frightened girls. I need a full-grown, hot-blooded woman to satisfy
me.”
    “At the moment, Adam, I do feel
hot-blooded.”
    He moved away to