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How she had loved market day in previous years, but this fall it was unbearable to stand next to Nathaniel as he spoke to customers—to stand so close to him in their little stall as he smiled pleasantly at her when her heart was bursting with discontent and restlessness.
There was no moon, but the glow from the inn’s windows gave her pause. Besides, it was immoral to barter kisses for trinkets. She told him so.
Snow fell, the first of the season, but it was the lightest caress of white upon the ground.
The kisses he’d planted on her mouth lingered, deep as cuts upon her flesh, and their memory made her ache. Yet she muffled this pain, tried to erase his touch from her mind. She decided she’d imagined the whole encounter, possessed by a strange, feverish dream. She could be good, she could forget, she must.
“I’ll think of you the night of the party, Judith, when I rush through the forest and tear open a stag’s throat with a single bite. I’ll remember how the red of the ribbon matches the red of its blood.” “You’re a madman,” she said, freeing herself of his grasp and adjusting the shawl. “Go, chase the moon, tell it your lies.”
She found no pleasure in his embrace, not the faintest ember of it.
She’d always known her lover would come from beyond the forest. Gently she closed the door behind him and showed him the bed where a warm meal might be had.
