Britamund gets a taste

“Your Highness.”

Dunstan was in the one place she hadn’t looked: directly behind her.

She forced a laugh. “You shouldn’t call me that! I’m only Brit.”

He bowed before he would take her hand to kiss it. “I remember that dress. Seeing it, I am tempted to call you Your Majesty. Seeing you in it, I am only too tempted to call you my lady.”

She opened her mouth and took a breath.

“You are very beautiful.” He bowed slightly again, but he still had not released her hand. “How is the Queen? If you could come, I trust it means she is out of danger.”

“She’s doing well, I suppose. Her mother is here, and that helps. She was rather frightened, but the… the… But the women say she must remain in her bed until she…” She tried to think of a way to explain matters that would not be embarrassing before a young man.

“Until the arrival of the young Prince or Princess.”

“Yes.”

“I thank you for coming, regardless.”

“Happy birthday!” she gasped. “I almost forgot.”

At last he smiled.

“And I’m supposed to carry the birthday wishes of my father and Eadie and everyone. My father almost came…”

“He was very right to stay with his wife.” He still held her hand, and he used it to pull her a little closer, a little deeper into the shadows between the pillars, a little more precisely under one of the countless bunches of mistletoe that had infested his father’s castle. “But I am happy you came.”

“It’s your birthday,” she shrugged.

“Then I consider it a gift.”

He released her hand, but only to pass it into his other. The first he lifted to her chin and, with nothing more than the light touch of one finger, tilted her face up. She, who was so acutely aware of the mistletoe overhead, could not help but glance up at it. Indeed, she thought that might have been the point.

“I’ve not kept up with all the rules,” she laughed nervously.

“Your father’s decrees are still the supreme law of the land,” he murmured. “Your eyes and mine are brown.”

With the hand that held her own, he pulled her still closer, and those mincing steps she took towards him seemed to be long strides carrying her away from the laughter and chatter of the other guests. Then he put his hand on her waist and, with some subtle gesture she had not anticipated, shrugged her own hand up onto his shoulder.

She could no longer permit herself to struggle nor to fumble after excuses. She could not even fall back on her own innocence: her father had not only told her that Dunstan was permitted to kiss her and put his arms about her – he had all but told her it was her duty to allow it.

She glanced up at the mistletoe again and found it directly overhead. When she looked back at his face, she saw his dark lashes half-​​lowered and quivering: his eyes were engaged in a rapid survey of everything but her own face.

She was wearing her mother’s dress. She had even indulged her father’s whim and had her hair twisted up as her mother had worn it and braided through with the ropes of golden rosettes and green stones that had lain untouched in her mother’s untouched bedchamber for over eight years. He had told her she was as beautiful as her mother.

As Dunstan pressed his lips against hers, she lost any bitterness she might have harbored against her mother for not having loved her father enough.

The first kiss was little more than a peck. When she did not pull her head away, he lifted his own and, she supposed, looked at her, though she did not open her eyes.

Dunstan seemed to find this encouraging enough that he leaned his head forward again to run his cheek lightly along hers, and then pulled it back to kiss her deeply, as only Brinstan had ever kissed her.

She could kiss Brinstan until her lips were tingling and her neck ached, and she could kiss him even then. Kissing Brinstan was so much more than two mouths coming together.

Kissing Dunstan was nothing more. Laid bare of any affection, she saw what a silly, sordid gesture a kiss truly was. Mouths were wet and hot and smelled vaguely of whatever one had eaten during the day. Noses were either too much in the way or too squished to breathe. Chins clean-​​shaven a few hours before rasped like the tongues of a dozen demonic cats. Hands were inevitably warmer and sweatier than the sensitive skin that they touched.

And this, she knew, was only the beginning. For now her father would permit him to go no farther. In less than two years, far worse awaited her, and it would be her burden all the days of her life.

She thought it might be enough to drive a woman mad.