‘You’re being silly,’ he retaliated, biting into it.
‘I’m not. Really, I’m not, Florien. I’m curious. When you make love to a woman, can you feel with those hands of yours?’
‘That’s none of your business.’ He was astonished by her boldness and titillated at the same time.
‘If you were to run your hands over my body, would you feel how soft my skin is? I take a lot of trouble with it. I rub oils into it every night after my bath and only wear silk to sleep in. Here,’ she said, thrusting her arm at him. ‘Feel how smooth it is.’
‘What are you playing at?’ he retorted angrily, frowning at her with his dark eyebrows. ‘I don’t want to feel your skin. Keep it to yourself.’
‘Surely you don’t mean that.’ She looked hurt. ‘I know I’m being foolish, but love does that, doesn’t it? So I’m told. I’ve never been in love before.’
Florien couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Her words suddenly put a whole different complexion on the situation. He looked at her steadily, disarmed by her apparent vulnerability. She gazed back with limpid eyes and smiled sweetly, like other women smiled and he felt his heart swell with joy. His mind told him to be cautious, but the blood was already pumping through his veins at such a speed that he didn’t hear the small voice of reason. ‘I’ve never been in love before, either,’ he said impulsively, lured into a fragile sense of security.
‘I’ve tried to ignore my feelings, Florien, because I know Aunt Cicely would kill me. She would say I’m too young for love. But I want you. I want you now.’ She bit her lip because she knew her little speech was clumsy. From the books she had read, and tired of, women spoke of love like that. Of this ridiculous battle with their feelings. So she had moved a little too swiftly onto sex, she presumed, but Florien was too surprised by her declaration of love to notice.
‘I love you too,’ he replied, turning to her swiftly and taking her hands in his. ‘I’ve tried to ignore my feelings as well, but your face torments me as much by day as by night. I can’t seem to get you out of my head. You’re just not like anyone else. You’re wonderful.’ Alicia was amused by this sudden outburst. She only wanted to sleep with him and here he was almost proposing. She had opened the door an inch and he had blown the whole thing off its hinges.
‘Where shall we go then?’ she said, suppressing a giggle.
‘What?’
‘Where shall we go, to be alone?’ she repeated, hoping she wasn’t taking this too fast. How men put up with the tedious rituals of courtship she couldn’t imagine. She was very aware that she was taking the lead and behaving like a man, which Florien probably wouldn’t like so she decided to speak once more of love. ‘I love you, Florien, and only you. I want to be close to you. To feel your heart against mine, your body next to mine. I want to give myself to you. I want you to claim my innocence and make me a woman.’ She was delighted with her speech this time and even more delighted by the gypsy’s response. He jumped to his feet.
‘Come with me,’ he said, taking her by the hand. He led her up the orchard to a door in the wall that opened into the cluster of barns and outhouses. She smothered her laughter and tried with some success to act the part of a vulnerable young girl in the first flush of love. Florien was so astonished by his own good fortune he didn’t notice the cracks in her performance.
He led her to a barn filled with hay bales. Golden beams of light entered through the holes in the wood and caught the tiny straws of hay, setting them aflame with the red and amber rays of sunset. With a pounding heart he climbed to the top where the flat surface of bales lay beneath the timber roof of the barn, giving them a secret, sweet-smelling bower in which to discover each other undisturbed. Then he turned around and held her by the shoulders. ‘Are you sure?’ he asked, his dark eyes caressing hers with tenderness. Alicia pulled a small, girlish smile and nodded. She tried to imagine how Leonora would reply. Mutely, she deduced unkindly and continued in the same vein.
Florien knew what he was doing. He had slept with enough girls to know his way around a woman’s body and yet he was nervous. So nervous that if it hadn’t been for the exquisite undulations of Alicia’s pale body he might not have been able to perform. She lay on the hay with her eyes half closed while he kissed her and undressed her, stroked her and admired her and like a cat in sunlight she stretched and sighed and purred with the enjoyment of a woman with a large capacity for pleasure.