She was the first-after perhaps five minutes-to start laughing.
He joined her.
They lay side by side, clinging to the world as if they expected the force of gravity to expend itself at any moment, and shook and snorted with laughter.
'I believe I won,' she said-a pronouncement of enormous wit that sent them off into renewed convulsions.
'I suppose,' he said, 'you are afraid of heights?'
'Always have been,' she admitted.
They laughed so hard they wheezed for breath.
He turned onto his side to look at her, and she turned onto hers to look at him.
'You are not finding the night cold, are you?' he asked.
'Cold?' She raised her eyebrows. 'Cold?'
They met in the middle of the space between them and were soon having tolerable success at trying to occupy the exact same space. Their arms were about each other, their mouths wide on each other's, kissing with the urgency of two madcaps who knew very well that they had just challenged death itself and won.
They came together soon afterward in a tangle of clothes and arms and legs, heat and wetness and enticing urgency at their shared core. They made love with vigor and passion and joy.
'My sweetest heart,' he murmured, and other inanities of a like kind, whenever his mouth was free for speech.
'My love. Oh, my dearest love,' she murmured back to him.
They exploded into completion together-perhaps all of three minutes after they had begun. As if now, their climb over, they were running a race. Which, appropriately enough, they finished in a dead heat.
They were panting again then, and she was laughing again into his shoulder as he wrapped one arm about her from beneath and both their cloaks about them from above.
'What was this?' he asked, his mouth against her ear. 'Has my hearing turned suddenly defective? My love? My dearest love? Passion and lust run wild, sweetheart?'
Her laughter subsided, but she said nothing.
'Speechless?' he suggested.
'Don't spoil it, Josh,' she said.
'What will spoil things for me,' he said, 'is to see you leave here in a few days' time, Free, and to smile cheerfully as if I were happy to see you go off to plan our wedding. And then to wait for your letter officially ending our betrothal. And then to waltz with you next spring, having lived all winter for just that one half hour. And then to spend the rest of my life without you.'
He heard her drawing a slow, deep breath.
'There is no need-' she began.
'Dammit!' He cut her off before she could launch into the expected speech. 'Let there be some truth between us at least, Freyja. I have had enough of lies and evasions and secrets to last me a lifetime. If all this has been nothing but a lark to you, then so be it. Say so honestly and I will let you go without another word-unless, that is, you have been got with child. But if you are letting me go because you think you ought to honor the temporary clause in our bargain and because you think I am being annoyingly noble in my offer to make our betrothal real, then stuff it, sweetheart. Just stuff it! Give me honesty now. Do you love me?'
Her voice sounded reassuringly normal-it was cold and haughty.
'Well, of course I love you,' she said.
'Of course.' He was back to laughter then. He held her tightly and could not seem to stop laughing for a while. 'Are we going to allow a little bargain to ruin the rest of our lives, then?'
'Whenever we would quarrel,' she said, 'and we would quarrel, Josh, each of us would wonder if the other had felt coerced into marrying.'
'What poppycock!' he said. 'Do you not trust me to say the truth to you, Freyja? I say that I love you, that I adore you, that I can imagine no greater happiness than to spend the rest of my life loving you and laughing and quarreling and even fighting with you. I trust you to say what is true to me. You have said that you love me-that of course you love me. Does that include the wish to marry me, to live here with me all your life, to have babies with me and fun with me? To share the sorrows of life with me? And all its joys?'
'Of course it includes that wish,' she said. 'But, Josh, I am terrified.'
'Why?' he asked. Her face was pressed hard against his shoulder.
'I have never done too well with love and betrothals and marriage prospects,' she said. 'If I give in to happiness now, it may all evaporate before my very eyes.'
'Sweetheart, sweetheart,' he said. 'What happened the other day when you were afraid of the sea?'
'I was not-'
'What happened?'
There was a short silence.
'I persuaded you to take me over to the island,' she said.
