Free Twelve Kisses by Lindsay Townsend Page A

then,
urging both of them on. Now he was dead, and David had returned
from many wars quieter and harder and very much a man.
    Alis stared at his broad shoulders and narrow flanks, at his
lean legs effortlessly controlling the big chestnut stallion and
felt a mingled alarm and desire. Tonight, they would be utterly
alone together and for the first time.
    So? You are eighteen. You played your part at the wedding and
through the marriage feast. Do not let him cow you now!
    “ I will tend the horses and empty the panniers. You make up the
bed. There is straw ready and blankets inside.”
    His curt order returned her to herself. They had stopped
outside a small, low building with two lean-tos on each end—stable
and forge, she guessed. She had scant time to see more before David
whisked her off the back of her horse and set her down on the
frosted grass. Stiff from riding, she tottered a few steps toward
the doorway.
    “ Stay.”
    She kept on walking, but he snatched her back. “Did you not
hear?”
    Saying nothing, she stared at his hand gripping her shoulder
until he released her. She was determined not to be spoken to as if
she was a hunting hound.
    He was unabashed. Instead of apologizing or stepping aside, he
tossed her over one shoulder, seemingly oblivious to her gasp of
protest. Bearing her as if she weighed no more than a Christmas
favor, he nudged the door open with his knee. Ducking with her
slung over his back, he stalked through the door and set her down
easily inside. “Bad luck for a bride to stumble on the threshold.”
He left her, saying, “I like a good, full mattress.”
    Had she been younger, she might have cried, or thrust out her
tongue at his tall, retreating figure. Instead, she shrugged out of
her new furs and set to work with the strength of anger.
    * * *
*
    David tramped through a light scattering of snow to the
stable. The horses snorted and shook their manes and tails,
probably reacting to his tension. As he fed and groomed them, he
thought of Alis and wished things were different. All his plans
were melting down.
    He loved her that was the devil of it. He had wanted her as
soon as he saw her again, even after a four-year absence, but she
hated him as the enemy, as one of Henry Tudor's creatures. Perhaps
he should not have demanded her hand in marriage, but why not? She
would be safe with him.
    Words would not come to him easily now. War had beaten
softness and openness out of him, but he knew he had to be open
with Alis. He wanted to be—not soft, exactly, but gentle. He longed
for her to smile at him as she did as a girl. Her face these days
was a sheet of ice.
    So warm her, man!
    That was the other danger, he knew. She made him
parched-throated and aroused him with no more than a glance. You tossed her over your shoulder like a war
captive rather than a wife. She made him
white-hot, red-blooded. He wanted at one and the same time to
master her and to make her pretty trinkets, adorn her with silver
and gold.
    So do so. Use and give what you have already. Do not let your
courage fail now. She is a woman, treat her so. Be her
husband.
    He grinned at the thought, his breathing hanging with the
horses' in the byre, and patted her gray palfrey. “Easier to shoe
you than to woo her, I think, but we'll manage, “ he told the mare.
“I have twelve days.”
    And better yet, twelve nights....
    He braced his shoulders and turned to go back.
    Inside the small cottage—which he had chosen because it was
homely and comfortable, and his parents had lived here in their
happy early years of marriage—Alis had set a spark to the kindling.
A fire warmed the hearth, and its light played around the wattle
walls. She had swept the beaten earth floor with an ancient twig
broom, stuffed odd cracks in the walls with straw and moss and even
brought the cobwebs down from the lower rafters. The sheets and
blankets had been laid out, and Alis had packed the rough sacking
mattress with enough straw to stuff it like a