Dunstan makes a sad attempt

Britamund entered as quietly as she could, hoping to find Alred awake and Dunstan asleep, but she found the contrary, as she had feared.

“Good…” Dunstan paused and frowned. “What is it? Is it morning already?”

“It’s almost morning, but I came to tell you goodnight,” Britamund said pointedly.

Dunstan sighed and sat up.

“My father will be up soon,” she said. “And he said you could wake him if you needed a rest.”

“I’m not tired,” Dunstan mumbled through an enormous yawn, too tired even to notice the irony.

Britamund flopped down next to him—as close to him as possible, though it meant aiming for the crack between the cushions—and threw an arm over his shoulders.

“You’re absurd,” she announced.

“I am not.”

His offended dignity made him only more absurd, and more adorable. Britamund squeezed him with both arms.

“How is he?” she asked gently.

He shrugged one shoulder beneath her hand. “The same. It’s not truly like sleep, is it?”

“Because he doesn’t wake?”

“No…” he said thoughtfully. “It’s like… It’s different.”

“I don’t know, Dunstan.” Britamund put on a playful frown, but he did not see it. “I think you should come upstairs with me and sleep, and show me the difference.”

“Didn’t you sleep?”

“Yes. But I missed you,” she whispered.

She breathed warmth all over his neck, but even this he seemed not to notice. Finally she leaned back and let him slip out of her arms.

“He will wake, Dunstan.”

“How can you be certain?” he whispered.

“Women’s intuition. That’s why you have me.”

Dunstan stared at his father’s still form. One had to watch a while to see the difference between the flickering firelight and the rise and fall of a breath. One could almost go mad at times trying to see—she knew from her own occasional hours of solitary watching.

She could scarcely imagine the anguish of Dunstan’s nights. She would have joined him but for the baby.

“Please come sleep a while, Dunstan. We can wake my father, or we can have one of the servants to watch him.”

Dunstan jerked as if he had been slapped. “Not a servant, Brit. Imagine if he woke and saw nothing but a servant in front of him. What would he think? We don’t love him?”

“Then go to bed by your lonely self and I shall sit with him a while! Who on earth loves him more than I do? Imagine if he woke and saw nothing but you here! What would he think? ‘Fie! What are you doing here, knave? Where is my beloved Brit?’”

Dunstan only lifted his brows and sighed. “He does love you ‘powerfully,’ as the Old Man would say.”

“‘A powerful lot,’” Britamund corrected. “If you quote the Old Man, you must do him the justice of getting it right.”

“He calls you ‘his beauty,’” Dunstan said, scarcely listening to her. “I know only two other women to whom he has given that honor, and one of them was my mother. Not even to my sisters. But perhaps you will be the only one now.”

Britamund slipped her hand over his arm and snuggled close to him again, hoping to distract him from bitter thoughts of Hetty.

“He has always loved me ‘a powerful lot,’” she said. “Even when I was a little girl and not ladylike at all. I always thought the gifts I received from him were a little nicer than what my brothers and sisters had. And didn’t he give me the nicest gift I ever had, after all?” she said shyly.

She waited for him to wonder what she meant—to realize she was speaking of him, to turn to her and smile. He seemed only thoughtful, as if his mind were slow to guess. Or was he even trying?

“The castle?” he asked at last, for the keys to Dunellen Castle had been Alred’s gift to her on her wedding morn.

“No!” she laughed and poked him. “The lord to put in it! You, you silly, absurd boy, are the nicest gift anyone ever gave me.”

“I?” he gasped.

“Well—on second thought…” She tried to smile impishly, but she knew she would be blushing. “No.”

“No?” he cried, still more surprised.

“But the second nicest,” she assured him.

She knew he was looking at her now; she could feel his breath on her face if not the weight of his stare. Now it was she who would not look.

“Brit,” he whispered.

She waited. It was a pleasure to wait now that she knew he was thinking of her and would soon do something for her. Very soon she felt the backs of his fingers stroking her cheek.

“Brit,” he repeated.

She smiled dreamily. Soon the backs of his fingers were stroking the backs of the fingers of the hand that she had laid on her belly, and then his fingers worked their way between hers, and then their hands were clasped together.

“Forgive me,” he said.

Britamund opened her eyes in her surprise. “For what?”

“I’ve just realized I have been doing precisely what I scolded my father for doing on the day he… of the party. I’ve been so wrapped in my grief that I’ve scarcely noticed you or yours.”

“But I’m all right…”

“That’s what Hetty always said. But I won’t make this mistake again, Brit. Only remind me of this night if I do.”

She nodded. It did not seem wise to protest, as Hetty always had.

“Here is what we shall do,” he said firmly. “You and I shall wait here until your father comes, and then we shall go to bed together.”

“But we can wake him now, he said…”

“No, but I shall nap here on the couch until he comes, and you may watch Father.”

“But if you nap now then you won’t want to go to bed!”

“If you’re coming, I think I shall.” He had his mother’s eyes, but with them he still attempted to perform his father’s flirtatious winks.

Britamund laughed. “I hope your father didn’t hear that!”

“Why not? Where do you think I learned it?”

“That is precisely why!” she giggled. “He would die of shame! That’s the saddest attempt to get a lady into a man’s bed I’ve ever heard! ‘If you’re coming, I think I shall!’” she intoned, wiggling her eyebrows and blinking furiously.

Dunstan laughed aloud and flopped face-​first onto the cushions as Britamund hopped away.

“God, how I love you!” he sighed as his laughter faded.

Britamund dragged a chair up beside the couch and settled herself into it with majesty. “That is already an improvement,” she sniffed.

From the sound of it, Dunstan very nearly chuckled himself to sleep. His brief silence was followed by a soft snore.

“Men!” she sighed fondly. Then, when she was certain he was quite asleep, she whispered, “Alred!”

She had talked long and loud to him on each occasion she had spent alone at his bedside, if only to calm herself. Now that she was forced to whisper, there seemed to be an added intimacy to it—and added fun.

“Did you hear your son? ‘If you’re coming, I think I shall?’ And if you had seen how he winked at me!”

In spite of what Dunstan thought—and she could not blame him after a night spent watching—his father appeared only asleep.

“I’m certain you don’t feel like waking up right now,” she whispered, “too humiliated by his nonsense to face the world and so on. But listen, Alred, he’s sleeping, and we’re alone, so if you would simply…”

Britamund snorted and giggled.

“Jupiter!” she whispered. “It sounds like I’m trying to flirt with my father-​in-​law. ‘My husband’s sleeping,’” she squeaked softly, mocking herself, “‘so if you would simply scoot over and let me in…’ I’m nearly as terrible at this as Dunstan is! You will have to—”

She stopped and sucked in her breath, stunned and giddy as ladies tended to be on such occasions.

“Alred?” she whispered.

She could never explain how he did it, nor even how she saw it, but such was Alred’s mastery of the flirtatious wink that he could perform it even with eyes nearly shut.