Brinstan and Britamund escape

He could see no one in the garden, but Brinstan knew that his Princess could not be far. Someone appeared to have raided the box of candle stubs, and now there were two dozen little flames or more scattered among the flowers on the overgrown path, some of them already drowning in their pools of wax.

Brinstan tried to pick his way between them, but it was an awkward task with his big feet and with his legs that grew so quickly they never had the chance to learn grace.

“Watch where you’re stepping!”

Brinstan had been so busy watching where he was stepping that he had not seen the Princess arrive.

“How do you expect me to see your little candles from all the way up here?” he protested. “What are you trying to do here? Catch some faeries?”

“Perhaps catch a troll!” she laughed.

“Oh! It worked, then. Wait a moment till I get through your defenses.”

She waited, watching his feet as intently as he, until he had reached a clear spot before the old bench. Then he could look at her.

She still wore her fine gown and the necklace she had from the late Duchess, but she had let down her hair. It appeared to him, who was admittedly not wise in such matters, that she had not even combed through it with her fingers, but only unpinned it and let it unwind itself and fall where it would in loose coils. It was quite possibly the most ravishing arrangement of hair he had ever seen.

With her fine dress and her rumpled hair she seemed not a wild creature but an escaped creature. Having just come from her father’s hall himself, he knew how true it was.

She had sat all evening next to her betrothed, and her head had been high and her smile splendid enough to convince everyone she was quite pleased with her party—even, unfortunately, her own father and future father-​in-​law.

Dunstan meanwhile had sat hunched over as if deep in thought, his lip pinched between his fingers, only his dark eyes moving, flashing out dark glances from beneath the perfect scowl of the perfect arches of the thin, perfect brows he had from his mother.

Brinstan, who had been seated with the Prince and Selwyn and thus had access to the giggling train of serving girls passing by, had been subjected to their ecstasies at the sight of so much perfection. It was becoming clear to Brinstan, who had not previously been wise in such matters, that there was nothing girls liked better than a bad man, especially a dark and handsome one. None of them seemed to know how bad Dunstan was, or why, but it seemed that looking perfect and wicked and darkly handsome was already enough to give them shivers.

As for Brinstan, his bright hair was as rumpled as it always was, and he had made his escape soon after the Princess. It had come down to a choice between breaking a certain sixteen-year-old’s perfect nose and going off to comfort what Princesses he could find. He had decided that a nose could be broken at any convenient time, but Princesses could only be comforted when they were feeling sad.

“What were you doing?” he asked. “I didn’t even see where you came from.”

“I was hiding. I thought you might have been my brother.”

“Your brother?”

She rolled her eyes. “He brings girls here sometimes.”

“Ohhhh…”

“I don’t see how he can! This is supposed to be his sacred temple to our mother. I don’t see how he can bring girls here and—and kiss them.”

Brinstan thought Caedwulf might have done more than kiss them in the garden, but he was not about to tell his sister so. He shrugged and said, “I suppose your father used to kiss your mother here.”

“I know he did. And she used to bring candles out at night sometimes, too.” She smiled proudly, pleased with herself as she always was whenever she did as her mother had done.

“Oh! Kissing by candlelight?”

“I don’t know. I suppose so. I don’t know what they did.” She turned her face away, and a fat coil of hair fell over it to hide it from his eyes. Still, he could hear her sorrow on her voice. “I don’t remember them happy at all.”

Brinstan laid a hand on her arm to comfort her, but one part of his mind was immediately distracted by the cloth of her sleeve. The lower part of her dress and the middle part of her sleeve were made of the same stretchy, clinging fabric, and something about the drape and cling of that fabric around her waist had been distracting him from nearly everything that evening.

If he had been asked at any time in the last fourteen years whether his Princess had a waist, he would have replied that she certainly had, but never had he truly noticed it before. A waist, he saw now, was not intended merely to separate one interesting part of a girl from another interesting part. As the fabric of her gown suggested—nay, insisted—it was specifically made for clinging to. It seemed a miracle to Brinstan that Dunstan had not noticed it all evening, though it was doubtlessly a good thing for his perfect nose that he had not.

“I think… they were happy at the beginning…” he mumbled.

“Better at the end than at the beginning,” she replied immediately.

“That’s… always something to look forward to…” He scarcely knew what he was saying. “I mean… better both.”

“Not many people are so lucky.”

He forced himself to look into her face. He had the impression that she was saying meaningful things, if only he could comprehend them. But he was thinking through a fog.

“Look at Alred and Matilda,” she said. “Look at Cenwulf and Colburga. My parents. They all started out happy and ended so tragically.”

“My parents were happy until the end.”

He still had one hand free. The only meaningful thing to do with it was to lay it on her waist.

It was as he had imagined, only unimaginably better. Her gown clung to her in crinkles, just as one would expect of a straight cylinder of fabric attempting to match a girl’s inimitable curve.

A young man’s hand, however, was precisely fitted to a young lady’s waist: the fingers longest just where the curve was deepest, the littlest falling just at the top of the hip, and the thumb thoughtfully arranged by the Maker so that she could be not only touched but held.

She did not pull away from him as he had feared. Instead she started talking more rapidly than ever with a voice that was taking on a higher and higher pitch. He could not understand a word of it, but he was beginning to believe that her chatter was in fact quite meaningless. She was only waiting for him to move to stop it.

The fog cleared, and he saw with startling clarity. She had known he would follow her outside. She had known he would not be fooled by her too-​perfect smile. She had been brave all evening, propped up by the thought of escape—not from Dunstan, but to him. She had come as far as she could, and he would only have to take one more step to meet her.

He had never dreamt that she would let him kiss her, nor even that he would dare to try, but that had not stopped him from imagining what it would be like. She had the prettiest, softest-​seeming lips of any girl he had ever seen. They were just as he had imagined, only unimaginably better.