Britamund is found

One trait Princess Britamund had inherited from her father was his impatience with hallways, corridors, roads, and any structure that existed only to serve as a conduit between the place where he was and the place where he wanted to be. She could dally when she reached her destination, but she always hurried everywhere she went.

If she had been taking her time, she might have heard the voices before she opened the door. She might have fled, and she might have escaped. But she certainly could not turn and run once she had been seen.

Two young men were standing in the aureole granted them by a dim room and the flaring light of a summer afternoon.

Her brother’s face was lit from the side, and his square jaw alone would have sufficed to reveal his identity.

The other had the window at his back, but she knew intimately the straight-​​backed, compact silhouette of his body – as she would soon intimately know all the rest of his body, she thought – as so many other girls surely had.

But she knew that she was standing full in the light, and she would have to hurry to compose her face.

“Brit! Excellent!” her brother cried. “That will save us a search.”

She could not get the light at her back, but she slipped around Dunstan to stand by the wall so that he would at least have the light on his own face.

“Were you looking for me?” she asked.

“There is looking for you,” Dunstan said, “which I always am, even when I know you are not near; and there is searching for you, which we were about to do, and which does generally imply the supposition that you may be found.”

Dunstan always inhaled as he brought her hand to his lips, held his breath for a moment, and then exhaled as he lifted it away, as if her hand were a part of the air he breathed.

No one knew where he had learned the trick, as it was not his father’s way. His sister Gwynn declared it the most romantic style of hand-​​kissing yet invented, but Britamund privately thought it only natural that a girl so given to sighing would be charmed by a man who sighed over a lady’s hand.

She also thought it a shame that Dunstan and Gwynn were siblings, as a young man so dedicated to excessive romance would have been perfect for a young lady so prone to excessive romanticism.

“What will you do with me now that you’ve found me?” she asked.

“Make off with you like a pair of brigands,” Dunstan said.

“Oh?” She tried to laugh.

“I was about to head home to Dunellen for a few days, and your brother wanted to accompany me. And propriety demands his sister come to stand guard over his modesty.”

“You got that a bit backwards!” Caedwulf laughed. “Don’t say that to her, or she’ll try to do it! And then where’s the fun?”

Britamund tried to laugh, too, though she was also trying to think of an excuse. “Oh, but I promised Wynflaed that I would… and Edris…”

Caedwulf stopped smiling. He was carrying his riding gloves in one hand, and now he lifted them up to where she could see them and deliberately twisted them, as if he were wringing the neck of a little bird.

“Oh, but – anyway! It’s June!” she smiled. “It’s perfect weather for a long ride.”

And long dinners with Bertie and Lady Anna. And long walks to the lakeshore. And long watching of sunsets. And long kisses before bed.