Free Tigana by Guy Gavriel Kay

thing, he still couldn’t say why he’d followed her; for another, the closet where they were hiding was only marginally large enough for the two of them, and he became increasingly aware of the fact that Catriana’s perfume was filling the tiny space with a heady, unsettling scent.
    If he had been half in a dream a moment ago he abruptlyfound himself wide awake and in dangerous proximity to a woman he had seriously desired for the past two weeks.
    Catriana seemed to arrive, belatedly, at the same sort of awareness; he heard her make a small sound in a register somewhat different from before. Devin closed his eyes, even though it was pitch-black in the hidden closet. He could feel her breath tickling his forehead, and he was conscious of the fact that by moving his hands only a very little he could encircle her waist.
    He held himself carefully motionless, tilting back from her as best he could, his own breathing deliberately shallow. He felt more than sufficiently a fool for having created this ridiculous situation—he wasn’t about to compound his rapidly growing catalogue of sins by making a grope for her in the darkness.
    Catriana’s robe rustled gently as she shifted position. Her thigh brushed his. Devin drew a ragged breath, which caused him to inhale more of her scent than was entirely good for him, given his virtuous resolutions.
    ‘Sorry,’ he whispered, though she was the one who’d moved. He felt beads of perspiration on his brow. To distract himself he tried to focus on the sounds from outside. Behind him the shuffling of feet and a steady, diffused murmur made it clear that people were still filing past Sandre’s bier.
    To his left, in the room they’d just fled, three voices could be distinguished. One was, curiously, almost recognizable.
    ‘I had the servants posted with the body across the way—it gives us a moment before the others come.’
    ‘Did you notice the coins on his eyes?’ a much younger voice asked, crossing to the outer wall where the laden tables were. ‘Very amusing.’
    ‘Of course I noticed,’ the first man replied acerbically. Where had Devin heard that tone? And recently. ‘Who doyou think spent an evening scrounging up two astins from twenty years ago? Who do you think arranged for
all
of this?’
    The third voice was heard, laughing softly. ‘And a fine table of food it is,’ he said lightly.
    ‘That is not what I meant!’
    Laughter. ‘I know it isn’t, but it’s a fine table all the same.’
    ‘Taeri, this is not a time for jests, particularly bad ones. We only have a moment before the family arrives. Listen to me carefully.
Only
the three of us know what is happening.’
    ‘It is only us, then?’ the young voice queried. ‘No one else? Not even my father?’
    ‘Not Gianno, and you know why. I said only us. Hold questions and listen, pup!’
    Just then Devin d’Asoli felt his pulse accelerate in a quite unmistakable way. Partly because of what he was hearing, but rather more specifically because Catriana had just shifted her weight again, with a quiet sigh, and Devin became incredulously aware that her body was now pressed directly against his own and that one of her long arms had somehow slipped around his neck.
    ‘Do you know,’ she whispered, almost soundlessly, mouth close to his ear, ‘I rather like the thought of this all of a sudden. Could you be
very
quiet?’ The very tip of her tongue, for just an instant, touched the lobe of his ear.
    Devin’s mouth went bone dry even as his sex leaped to full, painful erection within his blue-silver hose. Outside he could hear that voice he almost knew beginning a terse explanation of something involving pall-bearers and a hunting lodge, but the voice and its explanations had abruptly been rendered definitively trivial.
    What was not trivial, what was in fact of the vastest importance imaginable was the undeniable fact that Catriana’s lips were busy at his neck and ear, and that evenas his hands moved—as