“By the gods, Selenay, I have wanted to do that from the moment I saw you!” he breathed.
She lifted her face wordlessly to his, but he shook his head, and with every evidence of regret, loosened her from his grasp.
“No,” he said, “I dare not, or I will not stop with but a kiss.”
“No?” she asked, feeling obscurely disappointed. “Then—”
“But I can do this,” he said, interrupting her. He dropped to his knees, clasping both her hands in his. “Here it is only you and I, not our countries, not our Councils, only ourselves to satisfy. We will please only ourselves; we will answer only to our own will, here. Selenay, I ask this for myself, and for myself—would you, will you, grant your hand to me in marriage?”
He had read her riddle; more than that, he had answered her invitation and her challenge and met it, his Prince to her Moon Maiden. And now—now, away from all witnesses, all eyes, he had asked her to wed him specifically for himself, and not for his country.
If this wasn’t the answer to her questions, she could not imagine what could be.
“Yes,” she whispered. “With all my heart.”
He leaped to his feet and took her in his arms again, and her whole body thrilled to the caresses that he bestowed on it. She would quite willingly have torn off her own gown and melded her body with his there and then. It was his restraint that stopped anything more from happening.
And though a great deal of her was frustrated and disappointed, the rest of her was grateful and full of admiration at his self-control.
“Here,” he said, as he actually stepped away from her, then took her hand and bestowed a tender kiss on the palm. “You may be only one Moon Maiden among twelve, but we should not take the risk that you are missed. Let me help you mask again.”
And so she stood, burning with desire for him, as he, clever as her best maid, masked her hot cheeks with the silver ovoid again, and placed the veil over her head, and the chaplet atop it. Then he retrieved his own mask and resumed his guise as well. “Shall we walk?” he asked, “my own lady?”
A shiver went up her spine at the caress in his words.
“To cool ourselves,” she murmured in reply, and he laughed.
“I think that cooling is what we both need, my Moon Maiden!” he chuckled. “It is just as well that our masks will hide our faces, or they would surely betray us to anyone with eyes in his head!”
He took her hand, and led her back toward the festivities, at a far more decorous pace this time. She was glad of the night air and the chance to get her pounding heart to quiet itself. Her hand trembled in his, and he felt the trembling, and tightened his fingers about hers for a moment.
They passed other couples on their way to the dancing-lawn, making use of the little bowers and grottoes of the gardens, standing or sitting together. They also passed places shrouded in darkness from which little sighs and murmurs came that made her cheeks flush again, and a stab of envy lance through her.
But Karath took no notice, or at least, did not appear to. They sauntered on together, like any couple on a leisurely stroll, until they stepped onto the lawn below the terrace and into the full glare of the torchlight.
She did not know what she would have done then, but the situation was taken out of their hands by a wild game of crack-the-whip that crossed their path the moment they stepped onto the torchlit grass. The trailing girl seized Karath’s hand in passing, and since he still had Selenay’s she was perforce now the running, laughing, end of the “whip” until she in her turn could grab another hand.
Before long, the scampering line was too unwieldy to be a whip, and became a dancing, running snake, winding its way among the more sedate and older courtiers, who either laughed indulgently or frowned and snorted behind their masks. Around and around they went, in and out of the ornamental bushes, until everyone that had any youth in his body had been caught up in it; the musicians seemed to have been infected by the excitement, for they did not stop or even pause in their playing, until Selenay was out of breath, her side aching, the corners of her mouth actually hurting from all of the laughing and smiling she was doing. When they snaked around a potted rosemary tree, she finally let go of Karath’s hand and that of the person behind her so that she could drop out of the line. The person behind her ran up and grabbed Karath’s hand to keep the line going, and he was soon out of her sight.
With her hand pressed to her side, breathing hard, she sought out a stone bench that was too exposed to be a choice of lovers, and sat down on it. She wished she had the fan that she had lost, somewhere back when the dancing began. But at least the breeze was cool, and her gown was light; she fanned herself with a piece of her veil, and took deep breaths, waiting for the stitch in her side to pass.
But she had not been there long before Karath appeared again, and wonder of wonders, he brought a fan for her! He handed it to her with a graceful bow, and she thanked him and wafted herself with it, wondering gratefully if there was any other man here who would have thought of such a thing.
He took a seat beside her on the bench, and covered her free hand with his own. “One thing only, my own lady,” he said, quietly, his voice barely audible over the music. “Is it your pleasure that we make our choice known tonight, or would you—”
“Tonight!” she said quickly. “If we wait, if I go first to the Council—there will be objections, however trivial, and the Councilors will want to argue it over for days and days! But if we simply tell them, at the unmasking, they will accept what they must.”
“You are as wise as you are beautiful,” he said warmly, patting her hand. “I would not have thought of that. And—how fitting, for any who might recognize my costume if we are standing together at the unmasking—”
“Or better still,” she said, suddenly seeing it all in her mind’s eye, “—on the terrace!”
His eyes sparkled behind his mask. “Oh, well thought! How soon before midnight strikes?”
That, she could answer, for there was a time-candle visible from where they sat. She pointed, and they could both see that there would be just enough time for them to slip into the Palace and get into place before the trumpeter marked the moment of unmasking.
Giggling with a giddy exhilaration, she now led him in through an unguarded door in the public part of the Palace, then back through the maze of corridors to the terrace door where she had so lately stood. There was no one there now, not even a page, and the doors stood open. Together, hand in hand, they walked out onto the terrace at the exact moment that the trumpeter sounded the call of midnight.
With a cheer, the masks came off—all but theirs. With an instinct for the drama of it, they both waited until the rest of the guests noticed that there was a couple standing alone on the brightly-lit terrace where the Masque had taken place—
—that one of the figures was a Moon Maiden—
—began to grasp that the other must be Prince Karathanelan—
And at that moment, he pulled off his mask and flung it behind himself, as she pulled chaplet, veil, mask and coif all off, shaking her hair loose so that it fell down around her shoulders. And as the guests saw that it was her, he again pulled her to him, and bent down in their first public embrace and kiss.