“I’m sorry about that,” Dunstan said. He was so quickly through the curtain and around the bed that she saw nothing.
She had promised herself that she would look, though no one had so instructed her, for she thought it her duty as a wife. Her husband must not think that she was ashamed of him or that she found him ugly to look upon.
The gentlemen seemed to have started up the stairs as soon as the ladies had reached the hall. Britamund had not even had the time to find a position she might hope to hold all through the excruciating wait while her husband was undressed by his men.
“Wake uuuuup!” Eadwyn crooned from somewhere shockingly close to her bedside.
Britamund had already stood naked before her sister and even before Gwynn on many occasions, but Ana and Ogive had never seen her so. However, that was not what troubled her.
This was different from all the baths, all the tryings-on of dresses, all the costume changes in their little games. This time her naked body was not a temporary condition, but the goal.
“I’m proud of you, too, sister!” Gwynn declared.
Britamund smiled faintly.
Dunstan looked as if he had been kicked and was trying not to cry out in pain.
Britamund stared at him in horror. She scarcely recognized him. He was a man, just like any man, and she was not alone with him, though she soon would be.
“Where are… we going?” Britamund murmured in confusion.
Dunstan leaned his head over her shoulder and whispered, “To bed, beloved.”
Subadult Baldleg fixed her filament to the edge of the bench and leapt to the floor. A wiser spider might have lowered herself down the strand, but she was giddy with fun, and taking risks only increased her pleasure.
She had lost count of how many of the legs she had visited, for she had visited more legs than she had legs to count. Still, she knew she had not visited them all.
“Lose something down there?” Egelric whispered.
Lady Gwynn leaned closer to listen.
Drage winced. He had told the spider not to bother his Mama, but he had not thought of poor, timid Hetty. He was a little sorry he had brought his spider now.
But perhaps she was only crying because of the wedding. Alred had sworn he would cry, though Drage did not see why he should—or, if it made him cry, why he did not put a stop to it, since it had been his and Papa’s idea.
“Ach du lieber…” the Duchess mouthed. “Oh, Alred…”
Her little hand crept out and found her husband’s.
“Underneath his kooky, funny-mustached, middle-school-art-teacher exterior, he has this sublime mother-of-pearl beauty, and inside of that there is a little something sinister that he carries coiled up like a whip.”
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