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She blinked at him. “You have not...before?” He shook his head. “Not ever?” she marveled. “But how can that be? When you are so...” She made a vague gesture in front of his face.

James flushed. “I...was always very busy with my lessons,” he said lamely. Gods, he sounded pathetic!

“No one ever caught your eye?” she wondered aloud. “Not even at a summer fair or in the square on market day?”

“Is that when you’ve been kissed?” he guessed shrewdly.

Gunnilde started guiltily and he knew he had hit the mark.

“I’ve never been to a fair or market day,” he admitted when she did not speak.

“Wycliffe Hall is rather an austere place, I suppose. We were not raised to mingle with our tenants or nearby villagers.”

“What about feast day celebrations?” Gunnilde reasoned. “You must have mixed with friends and neighbors at those times.”

He shook his head again. “My mother saw those as an opportunity for public prayer and private reflection. As time to catch up on one’s studies.”

Gunnilde’s expression wavered, and her eyes filled with compassion. “Why James, you poor thing! No wonder you have not... I mean, to be raised so...so joylessly .”

He should be bristling with affront at being so pitied, he realized. From anyone else, it would be intolerable, but for some reason he was not offended, far from it. Was he enjoying her solicitous concern? Inwardly, he was reeling even as he accepted her tender care.

She rubbed a palm comfortingly up and down his arm.

“It does not matter,” she declared. “We can do those things now, together. There must be a very fine market in Aphrany, I think, and next summer in Caer Lyoness there are sure to be fairs aplenty. There is absolutely nothing wrong with being chaste. I think it makes a nice change for a man to be.”

“Chaste?” He was startled by the term.

“Well...” She hesitated. “The word seems an appropriate one, does it not?”

“I suppose,” he agreed, still feeling rather discomposed. He coughed. “Tell me about your summer fair.”

“The summer fair at Tranton Vale?” she asked, propping herself up on her elbow. Her weight distributed in a way that made his body perk up with interest. It was not just her hair that was abundant. He needed to put a little distance between them if he was not to embarrass himself.

“Well, it is a vastly noisy and busy affair,” Gunnilde reminisced, happily unaware of his inner turmoil. “They come from far and wide, the entertainers and the troubadours and folk to sell their wares.”

“And who kissed you there?” he asked, cutting to the heart of the matter.

She looked faintly embarrassed. “His name was Ted, and he came to the fair with his cousin to make merry.”

“And how old were you?”

“Sixteen. His cousin approached my friend Muriel, and Ted and I fell in step behind them. We started talking as young people do, about our likes and dislikes. I don’t remember much about him except he was very fond of mulled cider and had an amiable manner.”

“Then what happened?”

“We talked some more and ate hot pies. He bought me a ribbon from a peddler and I...”

“Repaid him with a kiss?” he suggested. She laughed and nodded. “What happened to the ribbon?”

“I wore it till it fell apart.”

“Hmmmm.” He was not sure how he felt about that. “What about market day?”

“It was much the same, only this time I was eighteen. We had traveled to Greater Derring in a large party to attend the May Day market. I was invited to dance around the May pole with the other maidens.”

“Your friend Muriel was with you?”

“Yes, and a few others besides. We all danced and afterward we tarried awhile in the town square.”

James looked at her face, imagining her four years younger and dressed in white. “What was your swain’s name this time?” he asked, careful to keep his expression impassive.

“Dickon,” she replied promptly. “He was there with his uncle to buy a horse. I think my friend Rachel was his first choice in truth, but she picked another, so he made do with me.”

“Dickon sounds like an idiot,” he said dismissively.

“Yes,” she agreed. “He was a good kisser though.” Her eyes dropped to dwell on James’s lips a moment.

“Was he?” Why did his voice sound like that? He cleared his throat. “What about his kiss was good?”

“Well, he did not seem in any great hurry about it. It was as though he had all the time in the world.”

So...she liked being kissed slowly, James thought. That was worth knowing. “And what about the feast day?”

“The what?” She looked flustered.

“The kiss you had at a feast day.”

“Oh, that.” Gunnilde’s eyes averted, and she turned rather pink. “That was, well, a bit different.” Curiously, after being so open about the first two kisses she seemed reluctant to discuss the third.

“It was someone you knew?” he guessed and heard her faint gasp.

“How did you—?”

“Who was it?” he demanded, propping himself up on his elbow so their noses practically touched. “Conway?”

Gunnilde sighed. “Yes,” she admitted reluctantly. “You’re far too good at guessing games.”

“When and how was it?”

“James...”

“Tell me,” he insisted. “If I had any experience to speak of, I would share it with you.”

This caught her attention, and her lips formed a silent oh . She took a deep breath. “Very well. I was nineteen and it was somehow...both better and worse.”

“Better in what way?” he asked immediately.

“Well, I suppose because I had always been invested in my future husband, as I thought of him then. I believed him to be a significant person in my life. After all, the other two I had no expectation of ever seeing again.”

That made sense, he supposed, though of course, he had been her future husband all along, not Conway. “Then...how was it worse?”

“Well, you see, quite honestly...”

“He was not as adept as Dickon?” James guessed.

“No, he was not. He sort of kept his mouth open a lot. Also, he had eaten fish at the feast,” she confessed in a rush, “and his moustache was droopy and sort of got in the way.”

James felt an unexpected pang of sympathy for Arthur Conway. “I see.” He fell silent and could feel Gunnilde’s slightly anxious gaze upon him. He lay back down, staring up at the ceiling. “Is there anyone else I should know about?” he asked at last.

“Anyone else?” She shook her head. “The only other person I have kissed is you.”

Now it was his turn to be evasive. He did not want to ask the obvious question. Imagine being told he was a poor kisser. Still, it seemed unfair that he should take all and give nothing in this exchange. She had been so open and frank with him, and he had not been entirely truthful.

It seemed the least he could do was share his own background, however pitiful. “I did not entirely tell the truth when I said I had no experience at all,” he admitted slowly. “You see, when I was fifteen something happened which—” He halted, unsure how to continue.

“Yes? Something happened?” Gunnilde shuffled closer to gaze down at his face. She looked concerned.

James huffed out a breath of air. Best to get it over with at once.

“My father took me to a brothel in Caer Lyoness. He thought it was high time I learned about women and how to deal with them. He was drunk, of course.” He gave her a level look.

“He’s often drunk,” he added. Gunnilde looked so stricken and mortified on his behalf that he could hardly meet her gaze.

“He was very disappointed when it did not have the desired effect on me. In fact, it had the opposite. I was disgusted. The nudity, the lewdness of it all... I wanted nothing to do with any of it.”

Gunnilde made a noise in her throat. “It must have been very shocking to you,” she said carefully. “After living so sheltered a life with little to no society. To then, suddenly find yourself in such a place and surrounded by...all manner of things. Your father must be the veriest fool of a man!”

James gave a short laugh. “Well, you will find no argument from me there. When I refused to...to partake...to take my pick of the bunch, he made me wait downstairs for him for over an hour. The women were merciless in their teasing of me. They kept touching my face, telling me how beauteous I was and how I shouldn’t be shy.

I hated it. Their overpowering perfume, their breath on my face, the way they talked, the mocking way they laughed.

Even worse, I hated the men that came through the doors.

Men like my father. I never went anywhere with him again. ”

“I’m not surprised.” Her expression was grave. “Did you never tell anyone, your mother for instance?”

He shook his head. “I told no one until now. My parents are rarely in accord. It would just have been another cause for strife between them.”

“They have found little happiness in their marriage?”

“They have found none that I am aware of. My mother is an exacting woman with high standards and only my father’s social position ever made him acceptable to her.

He is a spendthrift and a drunkard and has accrued many debts over the years.

That is why the estate alone does not generate enough income to sustain itself. ”

Gunnilde leaned across and placed a careful kiss upon his brow. “Thank you for trusting me with your story, James,” she said sincerely. “I want you to know I mean to be very patient and considerate with you.”

He blinked at her. That had not been his intention; however, he could see the mood had shifted. As usual, he had made things awkward. “It was not my intention to—”

“No, I know, but even so.” She hovered for a moment, looking uncertain of her next move.

Then she gave a small nod, and shuffled up the bed, breaking their eye contact.

She grabbed her pillow and plumped it down above his own.

Once she had it arranged to her satisfaction, she reached for him, wordlessly urging him closer and gently angling his head until it lay against her breast.

“Let us just lie like this awhile,” she said. “Unless you find it uncomfortable.”

James considered this. “It is not uncomfortable,” he said, though his face felt hot, and he was not sure where precisely to put his arms.

“Good.”

After a moment, he simply passed an arm about her and turned into her, fully relaxing into her cushiony warmth.

He felt strangely light and unburdened and.

..yes, relieved . She knew everything, all about his debts, his dissolute father, and why her husband was so woefully inexperienced when it came to the wooing of women, and still she lay here by his side, her arms around him, comforting him.

He had told her of his most shameful memory, a thing he had never thought to tell another living soul. He could not quite believe he done such a thing. And yet, instead of feeling embarrassed or regretful, he felt...strangely elated.

What was it she had said before? Something about a husband and wife being duty bound to accept the other’s flaws and shortcomings as their own and keep them concealed safely away from the world.

Such a concept had never occurred to him before.

His own parents had certainly not subscribed to such an ideology.

He closed his eyes. The notion appealed to him; how could it fail to, when he was such a flawed individual himself?

Certainly, its application so far had been incredibly freeing.

Not only had Gunnilde accepted his story quietly and without interruption, but she had also, at its conclusion, expressed herself firmly on his side.

She had not apparently found his own part in proceedings laughable or inept.

Instead of finding his disgust unfathomable, as his father had, she seemed instead to think it inevitable with the upbringing he had received.

James felt himself drifting off into dreamless sleep as her fingers touched his head, carefully sifting through his hair, her fingertips gently grazing his scalp.

At this precise moment in time, it was hard to believe Gunnilde had any faults for him to hide.

So, how in the world was he supposed to uphold his side of the bargain?