'And so we are,' he said, 'thanks to my aunt and thanks to Bewcastle-and thanks to your decision to accompany me here. Your hair is loose beneath that hood, is it not?'
She had pulled out the pins when she went to her room to fetch her cloak.
'What has that got to do with anything?' she asked haughtily. Now that he had mentioned it, the surroundings were rather conducive to romance-or to dalliance at least. But she had dallied quite enough with Joshua during the past few weeks. They were fortunate indeed that they had not been trapped into having to marry each other. She really ought not to invite any further indiscretions.
But he had closed the distance between them and raised his hands to lift back her hood. Her hair cascaded out about her shoulders and down her back. There was enough wind even in this shaded spot to lift it and waft it about her face.
'It is just, you see,' he said, 'that a red-blooded male itches to tangle his fingers in such hair, Free. Nothing personal, of course, but I am red-blooded.' His fingers played with her hair and then twined themselves into it. 'But then of course once he does that, then he cannot resist doing this.' He drew her against him and tipped back her head so that she was gazing up into his moonlit face. His eyes, as she fully expected, were dancing with merriment.
'But the trouble is,' she said, setting her hands on either side of his waist, 'that the woman then feels an almost-irresistible urge to go at that red-blooded male with her fists.'
He chuckled. 'A good bout of fisticuffs might send us tumbling over the wall and rolling down the hill to get caught in the bushes down there,' he said, 'all arms and legs and other body parts tangled up together. It might be very interesting indeed. I think I'll take my chances.' He lowered his head and rubbed his nose back and forth across hers.
'I cannot think of any reason in the world,' she said, 'why we should be doing this.' Liar, liar.
'You see?' he said, licking at her lips and sending raw sensation sizzling into all the wrong parts of her body- wrong if she wished to walk away from this unscathed, that was. 'We are a perfect foil for each other, sweetheart. I cannot think of any reason in the world why we should not be doing this.'
'This is for courting couples,' she said. 'For betrothed couples. For married couples. We are none of those things.'
'But we are a man and a woman,' he said, dipping his head and speaking with his lips touching the pulse at the base of her throat. Her toes curled up convulsively inside her shoes and one of her hands clutched at his hair and then lost itself within the soft, silky mass of it. 'Alone together on a moonlit night. And panting with desire for each other.'
'I am not-'
His mouth stopped her protest. Not his lips, but his mouth, open, hot, moist, tempting, seeking, his tongue pressing against her lips and finding its way through into her mouth. She came against him with a low moan, a dull, aching pulse beating between her thighs and up inside her where he had once been.
She fenced with his tongue and got her hands beneath his cloak and under his coat and waistcoat-why did men wear so many layers of clothing?-while his own fondled her breasts beneath her cloak and then moved behind her to cup her buttocks and pull her hard against him, half lifting her as he did so, rubbing her against him so that the ache inside her almost exploded to add to the starlight.
'You are not-?' he prompted her much later, lifting his mouth perhaps an inch away from hers.
'Panting with desire,' she said, ignominiously breathless.
He laughed softly. 'Heaven help me if you were, then,' he said. 'Why do you not want to marry me, Free? You cannot have Ravensberg, but I suppose sooner or later you must have someone. Why not me?'
'Must you have someone sooner or later?' she asked sharply, drawing back her head another inch.
'It is different for a man,' he said.
'How so?'
'A man likes freedom and no commitment,' he said. 'He can enjoy dalliance and look for nothing beyond it. Women have nesting instincts. They want homes and fidelity and everlasting romance and babies.'
He laughed suddenly and caught her right wrist in his, moving back far enough to look down at her hand.
'What, sweetheart?' he asked. 'No fist? I thought that would provoke you if anything could. Ouch!'
Her left fist had caught him a solid blow on the jaw.
'Why do I not want to marry you?' she asked. 'Perhaps it is because I feel some pity for your pretty face. If it were within my daily reach for the rest of a lifetime, it would soon be in sorry shape, like the faces of those brutes who are employed to box each other into oblivion for the amusement of gentlemen who choose to wager on blood sports.'
He threw back his head and laughed, fingering his jaw and flexing it as he did so.
'We had better get back to the house,' he said. 'It is perfectly understood, then, is it, that I am footloose and restless and not nearly done with sowing my wild oats, if I ever will be, and that you would rather go through life as a spinster than marry someone who cannot engage your feelings as deeply as they were once engaged? We will never marry, Freyja. But we are attracted to each other, and we tend to erupt like a pair of volcanoes when opportunity presents itself. Shall we avoid such opportunities until we can put an end to them altogether? Or shall we not, but simply enjoy the moment for what it is worth? The moment being the next few days or weeks or whatever.'
'You speak as if the next few days can be taken up with nothing but opportunities for dalliance,' she said. 'There is supposed to be a plot afoot, is there not, to have you accused and convicted of murder. A witness can be a dangerous thing.'
'Lord, yes,' he agreed. 'Half a dozen witnesses could be even more deadly. I wonder if my aunt would be so wise-or so foolish.'
'I wonder what really happened that night,' she said. But she shook her head even as she was speaking and
