Page 24 of The Handfasting
She gave him a skeptical grin. “I don’t see how there could be much difference.”
“What? O’ course there’s a difference. Come on, I’ll show ye.”
Together they piled and packed the snow until they had a vertical mound that was about her size. He rounded the top into a ball for a head. She formed two stubs to serve as chubby arms. Then she sought out two small pine cones to make eyes. He made a small snowy nose, and he stuck a curved twig under it, turning it into a frown.
“Why is she so unhappy?” she asked.
“Because she looks like a snowman.”
“I told ye there was no difference.”
He scowled and stroked his chin, studying the sculpture. “Perhaps if ye found some beautiful flowin’ hair for her.”
She perused the glen and found golden drifts of fallen pine needles near the trunks of the trees. While she was busy gathering them, he set to work. He patted together two small globes of snow and plucked a holly berry to perch in the middle of each one. These he affixed strategically to the front of the body. Then he waited for her return.
First she gasped. Then she giggled. It was a delightful sound.
“Shame on ye, Sir No?l,” she scolded, unable to keep the laughter from her voice.
“Shame?” he asked, all innocence. “Why?”
Her silvery eyes danced as she came up beside him. “Ye aren’t goin’ to leave her like that.”
“Like what?”
She gave him a chiding elbow. “Undressed.”
“She’ll be fine,” he assured her. “She won’t get cold. She’s a snowwoman.”
“’Tisn’t the cold I’m talkin’ about, and ye know it.”
He reached out and turned the frowning twig into a smile. “But look how happy she is now.”
She shook her head. “Ye’re a naughty lad.”
He winked at her. “Ah. Wait till ye see my snowman.”
For a moment, she only stared at him. Finally her eyes went wide, and her mouth formed a shocked “O.” She started pelting him with the pine needles.
He laughed and shook off the deluge. Then he caught her about the waist and hauled her to him.
Kissing her felt as natural and instinctive as breathing. Her lips opened to his as readily as a lock to a key. Her laughter spilled into his mouth, and he lapped up her joy. Their tongues touched, and the current bolted through him, making him instantly hard and eager.
If it were summer, he would have spread his tabard on the soft grass and made sweet love to her, right there and then.
But the world was wet and frozen.
So, between kisses, he gasped out, “Let’s go back…to the keep…before I turnye…into a snowwoman.”
Shaking off his lust, he took her hand and began the short hike home, happy he’d made her smile. But by the time they emerged from the wood, in view of the keep, he was already thinking about her warm bedchamber.
“I’ll race ye,” he said.
“What?” She giggled.
“Come on. Whoever is first to the gate gets to undress the last.”
She was still puzzling out whether it would be better to win or lose when he bolted off across the snow.
