“But I don’t know any stories. And I sing
badly.”
“You may not be excused,” Adam told her with
mock severity. “If you do not perform, you will bring bad luck upon
our house.”
“Well, I wouldn’t want to do that, after
you’ve been so nice to me,” she said. “Just remember, I did warn
you about my voice.” She launched into “The Twelve Days Of
Christmas.” By the time she got to the five golden rings, everyone
was singing along with her, enjoying the repetition of verses. Her
performance ended on a burst of applause.
“Next, the captain of the guard,” Blaise
called out, and a burley, bearded man took Aline’s place on the
log.
After everyone in the great hall finally
finished sitting on the Yule log, it was rolled into the fireplace
where, at last, with a ceremonial flourish and shouted wishes for
good fortune in the coming year for all who dwelt at Shotley
Castle, Adam lit it. There was little question that it would burn,
since there were already other, smaller logs ablaze in the
fireplace and a good supply of kindling had also been heaped around
the Yule log to make certain it would catch fire.
A short time later, Adam pushed his way
through the crowd to Aline’s side.
“Look there,” he said, turning her so she
could see Blaise and Connie standing under the arch at the entrance
to the hall. As they watched, Blaise took his wife’s face between
his hands and kissed her. And, wonder of wonders, Connnie’s arms
crept around his waist.
“Do you think it’s aught we’ve done?” asked
Adam. “Or is it the spirit of the holiday? Or, perhaps, an excess
of wine?”
“Does the cause matter?” She met his eyes.
“So long as they are in agreement, let us not question why.”
“And we?” he murmured. “Are we in
agreement?”
“On what, my lord?”
“Aline, do not play the coy maiden with me. I
am not a young knight, willing to sigh and smile and whisper sweet
words and await a lady’s beckoning. I am a grown man and I know
what I want. I believe you also know what you want.”
Unable to maintain such intense eye contact
with him any longer, she looked away toward the arch.
“Where did Blaise and Connie go?” she asked.
“I don’t see them anywhere.”
“No doubt they have gone where you and I
should go,” he said. “To bed. Together.”
“That’s certainly blunt.”
“I am no poet, to sing you pretty songs.”
She had no answer for that. She saw the
burning desire in his eyes and she wanted to respond to it. Before
she could say anything, the castle folk surrounded them.
“Lord Adam, you’ve not yet kissed your
guest,” a woman cried. “Under the mistletoe with you!”
There was no way to escape the well-meaning
women who now pushed Aline toward the archway, nor the men who
urged Adam to join her there. With servants and stableboys and
men-at-arms looking on, Adam took Aline into his arms beneath the
mistletoe…and slowly bent his head to her…and kissed her quickly
and sweetly.
An instant later, a young man trying to
juggle five dirty wooden plates he had seized from the nearest
table captured the fickle attention of the merry throng and all
returned to the great hall, save for Adam and Aline, who remained
beneath the arch.
“Lady?” His hands were still on her
shoulders. The question in his eyes was unchanged. He must have
seen the answer in Aline’s gaze, for he swept her off her feet and
into his arms and carried her up the curving stone staircase.
“Adam,” she protested weakly, “everyone will
know what we’re doing.”
“What do I care?” he demanded with all the
fine distain of the lord of the castle for lesser beings. “What do
you care?
”Besides,” he went on, kicking open a wooden
door and then kicking it shut again behind them, “they will never
notice we’ve gone. They have their food and drink and their games
to entertain them. Here in my chamber, no one will disturb us.”
“If I were one of them,” she said as he laid
her upon a huge, curtained bed, “I would notice if you were
gone.”
“Notice instead that we are here, alone
together, and the door is now bolted.” He suited action to his
words before returning to the bed, pulling off his belt and his
tunic on the way. Then his hands were in her hair, the golden net
was cast aside, and a flood of dusky curls cascaded over his
fingers.
“Yes,” he murmured, “just as I imagined it.”
He pressed her backward until she was lying beneath him. His kiss
was deep and demanding. Aline answered it with rapidly rising
desire. When he finished, he pulled away from her only long enough
to remove her gown and underdress. Quickly his large lands traced
the outline of her breasts against her shift. Through the sheer
linen he kissed the tip of one breast. His hands moved lower,
caught the hem of her shift, and began to pull it upward. She cried
out at the roughness of his palms against the sensitive skin of her
upper thigh.
“Aline,” he said with a groan, “tell me true;
are you yet a virgin?”
“No,” she whispered. “I am so sorry, but
no.”
“Do not regret it. I only asked because I
don’t want to hurt you through ignorance. I have no taste for
frightened girls. I need a full-grown, hot-blooded woman to satisfy
me.”
“At the moment, Adam, I do feel
hot-blooded.”
He moved away to divest himself of the last
of his clothing while she watched him through half-lowered eyelids.
He knelt above her, a broad-chested man with a mat of dark hair
that narrowed across his flat belly. She saw the scar along his
leg, the old battle wound he claimed warned him of coming bad
weather. She did not have long to consider it, for she was
immediately presented with the proud evidence of his need for her.
She opened her arms to him and pulled him close, and when she felt
him pushing against her, she lifted her hips to meet and accept
him. His cry of passionate pleasure was echoed by the sigh on her
lips.
He grasped her tightly and pounded into her,
shaking the bed with the force of his mighty thrusts. And Aline,
having once sworn that she would never again lie with a man, forgot
all of her resolutions and gave herself up completely to his desire
and her own. For she did want him, had wanted him since the first
moment when she saw him clearly, standing in the great hall in his
chain mail. He was all she had ever dreamed of in a lover, fierce
and demanding, but tender, too, and he did not let her go until she
lay sobbing in his arms, satisfied as she had never been satisfied
before.
* * *
Sometime during the night Adam rose to pour
wine for both of them and to put more charcoal on the twin braziers
that warmed his room, before he rejoined her under the quilts.
“You claim to have no male relative,” he
said, sitting beside her with the winecup in his hand. “Is your
mother still alive, or have you a guardian? Who shall I ask for
your hand in marriage?”
Aline nearly dropped her winecup, until she
realized it was inevitable that he should be curious about her. So
far he had been remarkably forbearing, asking only a few questions
about her origins and how she had come to Shotley. As for wanting
to marry her, well, he would change his mind when he knew all there
was to know. The thought made her sad.
“My only living relative is a sister,” she
said.
“Then your brother-in-law is your
guardian.”
“I have no guardian.” Trying to delay an
explanation she thought he wouldn’t believe, she said, “Adam, I
should have told you before we made love. This may make a
difference to you. I am a divorced woman.”
It was his turn to clutch at his winecup. His
face grim, he drank deeply.
“For what reason were you divorced?” he
asked. “I find it hard to believe that you would commit adultery.
Are you barren, then? If that was the cause, it would not matter to
me. I have no strong desire to see small children in the nursery
here, except for grandchildren.”
“I don’t know if I can have a child or not. I
never had the chance to find out. My husband didn’t want children.”
She had to say it. He deserved to be told. “He left me for a
younger woman. He was generous about it; he let me divorce
him.”
“Generous? To hurt you so badly?” he shouted.
“Desire for another woman is not an acceptable reason for divorce.
Only adultery, or a too-close blood relationship that is not
discovered until after the wedding has taken place – or,
occasionally, bareness, are reasons for so serious a step. Why did
you not fight it through the church?”
“The church had nothing to do with it,” she
said. “It was a civil matter.”
“I do not understand.”
“Neither do I.” She hesitated, then plunged
on. “Adam, I know how Connie felt before I came here, because I
don’t have anyone to talk to, either. And, like Connie, I have to
tell someone. I swear that what I am going to say is the truth. I
am trusting you with my life.”
“You can trust me,” he said. “I will not
reveal your confidences.”
“First, I want you to know that I wouldn’t
believe what I’m going to tell you if it hadn’t happened to me. If
it weren’t still happening to me.” She looked right into his eyes
and said, “By a means I do not understand, I came here to Shotley
from another time and another place. I was sitting in a library,
looking at a Book of Hours. I glanced up to the library window and
saw the falling snow. Within the blink of an eye I was standing on
the road to Shotley Castle, and you and your men were about to ride
me down.”
“Some magic has been worked on you.” He rose
from the bed. Putting down his winecup, he began to prowl about the
room, a magnificent, firm-muscled man in the prime of life. “Do you
know who would want to place you under an enchantment? Perhaps,
your former husband?”
“I would be very surprised if he ever thinks
of me.” She got out of bed, too. “Adam, where I come from, we don’t
believe in magic.”
“What other explanation can there be for what
has happened to you?”
“I don’t know.” She ran her hands through her
hair. “I’ve thought and thought and I can’t come up with any
answers. All I remember is what I’ve just told you.”
“You have acted as though you belong in this
time.” To Aline’s dismay, he began to look doubtful. If Adam didn’t
believe her story, if he turned away from her, what would she do?
Perhaps, if she told him more about her background, that would
help.
“If I seem to be in my natural time,” she
said, “it’s Gramps’ doing.” She explained about the museums Gramps
had taken her to and the books he had read to her and her sister.
“Luce never cared much about history, but I devoured everything
Gramps said and every book he wanted me to read. He even talked
about medieval Christmas customs, though I didn’t know you waited
so long to light the Yule log.”
“I think I am no coward,” Adam said, “but
what you have just told me frightens me.”
“It frightens me, too,” she admitted. Still
unclothed, she began to shiver. “Please tell me you believe
me.”
“I believe that
you
believe what you
have said.” He put his arms around her, holding her close. “I know
an honest woman when I meet one. There is no guile in you. There
must be some other explanation than deceit for what you have told
me.”
“Thank you. It’s so good to tell someone
about this.” Afraid she would begin to cry, she broke away from him
to stand facing a corner of the room, with one hand over her mouth.
A wooden chest sat in the corner, the kind used in the twelfth
century to store clothing. Adam’s tunics and extra hose were
probably in there. The chest had a finely carved front panel. On
top of it sat a – and a Book of Hours. Aline let out a wild
cry.
“Adam!” Seizing the book, she held it out to
him. “Whose book is this?”
“It was Judith’s.” He took it from her.
“I haven’t opened it, have I? And I have not
been in this room until you brought me here.”
“That’s true.”
“Take the book to the candle there, where you
can see it better, and open it to the December page. I will
describe the painting to you.”
“Are you saying this is the same Book of
Hours?”
“It’s a test for me, Adam. Open it!”
Sitting down upon the bed, he did as she
commanded and she gave him every detail of the December painting.
When she was done she was shivering so hard she couldn’t stand. She
knelt in front of him, both of them naked, the book in Adam’s
hand.
“This is the book you were reading in the
library,” he said. “the very same book. What can it mean?”
“Perhaps it means that there is some reason
why I was sent backward in time,” she suggested. “Some purpose. To
bring Blaise and Connie together?”
“Or were you sent to comfort me in my
loneliness?” he asked. “Am I important enough to receive such a
benediction? No, I do not think so.”
“Perhaps we will never know,” she said.
“Perhaps my being here is a Christmas blessing and nothing
more.”
“A blessing is not nothing. Will you stay
with me?” he asked. “Or will a day come when you must return to
your own time?”
They gazed at each other wordlessly, until
Adam put down the book and lifted Aline off her knees and into his
arms, to make love to her again. Afterward, she slept on his broad
chest and did not dream at all.
“Aline, I have made a decision,” Adam said.
They were still in his room, drinking hot spiced wine and eating
bread and cheese that he had commanded be brought to them. “I will
not delay as I might otherwise have done. I will reject caution and
say what is in my heart and I ask you to do the same, for if we
wait, we may not have the chance again. We have known each other
but a few days, yet in that short time you have stormed the
ramparts of a heart I thought was safe against passion. You have
given me new hope and made me feel young again. Last night we asked
what your presence at Shotley, in a time not your own, could mean.
Perhaps it was for this that you came.”