"Do you miss it?" she asked suddenly, her words all sliding together.
"Being in love." She said it as if that were natural, obvious; as if he were a fool not to have known, though it was hardly a question characteristic of her usual self.
He sighed and shrugged his shoulders. "I miss something," he said, "though I know not how to name it."
"Should someone love you--" she began, and trailed off, her head tilting as she thought.
He laughed. "I think no one should have the heart to love me," he told her.
At that she stopped, and turned to face him, looking up at him in genuine distress. For a moment she held his gaze, and then stepped forward, rising on her toes to kiss him.
"I have," said she. "I have heart enough for both of us."
He stared at her, surprised, bewildered. She'd been drinking spiced wine, and he could taste it on her breath, on his lips now, sweet and strong and heady. Slowly he smiled, shaking his head. "Too much drink has made you soft, Evelyn," he told her, resting his hand on her arm.
She laughed. "No - only foolish. Soft, I was already."
"And yet you cannot be so foolish if you know yourself to be a fool," he said.
"You must think me a fool regardless," she said. "And you are not mistaken. To be certain, you have hardly earned my favor."
He narrowed his eyes. "Hardly earned--"
"And yet you have it," she went on. "And my heart, also." It seemed that once she had started speaking she could no longer stop, for the next words came tumbling from her lips in a rush. "And perhaps I am a fool, perhaps I was a fool ever to let myself love you - howe'er, I love you, and fool or not I find myself tonight to have the courage to tell you as much, and - and, if you should allow it, sir, I should like to kiss you some more."
"I...will allow it, aye," he said slowly, and she smiled so gladly, and so shyly, that he hardly recognized her, ere she leaned up again to press her lips to his.










