"You are the only esper in all the land who has done so by herself," Gregory told her. "Who else would care? Who else could guess? You are an empath as well as a telepath, and the brilliance of your mind is alloyed by tenderness!"
Allouette squirmed, eyes downcast. "You do me too much honor, sir."
"My words cannot do enough." For a moment Gregory dropped his mind shield and she caught a glimpse of herself as he saw her—a shining, ethereal vision. It lasted only a moment before he raised his shield again, but that was enough to make her tremble. "Sir! You do me far too much credit! Besides, I am nowhere nearly as beautiful as you think."
"No, you are more beautiful than even my thoughts can show," Gregory said. "Still, does the fact of your beauty matter so much as my perception of it?"
"Does it exist at all, except in your perception?" Allouette retorted, but she rode on, shaken.
Understanding that, Gregory shrugged. "You might as well ask whether the falling of a tree would make a sound if it fell in the depths of the forest with no living creature near."
"Of course it would!" Allouette frowned at him, relieved to be back on safe ground. "A sound wave is a sound wave."
"It may be a wave in the air, but if there is no ear for it to strike, is it truly sound?"
They rode on, companionably (and safely) wrangling about philosophy. The discussion produced no concrete results, of course, but it served Allouette remarkably well that evening as an aid to meditation.
She needed it. She had begun to imagine Gregory in bed holding her in his arms and had need to banish the vision.
Gregory managed to keep the conversation philosophical the next day, but Allouette gave it frequent tangents, goading him into talking about the arts and the social sciences. She listened with rapt attention. When she knew something he didn't— the anarchists had given her a firm but biased grounding in history—she told it to him. They compared notes on different versions of the same events with hilarious results.
That evening, as they cleaned their bowls, Gregory remarked, "You seem to be completely recovered from the ordeal of your healing—at least, in being rested and restored to full energy."
"In that respect, perhaps," Allouette said, frowning, "though in others, I doubt that I ever will."
"Surely you will recover from the healing." Gregory reached out to touch her hand.
His touch was light, ever so light, but it sent a thrill through her whole body. She shivered but forced her hand to hold its place. "Recover from the healing, yes—but will I ever truly be healed?"
"You shall," Gregory said with full conviction. "You have only to believe in your own inborn goodness and your own worth." His hand opened to cover hers and his eyes seemed to expand, filling her vision. "I believe in it," he said softly. "I believe you are a woman of immense talents and intelligence, born good and loving and generous. That goodness cannot be eradicated, only covered up, hidden even from yourself—but it is still there and is the true source of your beauty."
She shivered again, but the thrill had centered within her and begun to glow. "Surely you do not mean that you would fail to see beauty in me if I were wicked!"
"I mean exactly that," Gregory said, and his hand caressed hers. "Never before have I failed to shake off the effect of a woman's loveliness. Only you are so outstanding, so vibrant and brilliant, yet so warm and tender that I cannot resist your allure."
She could not stop trembling, so her voice turned harsh. "What a heap of nonsense! If you so believed that, sir, you would have attempted to ravish me even as I woke!"
"Never," Gregory said, with total sincerity. "Never could I seek to hurt you, and such would be hurt."
Allouette shrugged impatiently, as though the word itself made no difference. "Seduce, then. You would have sought to seduce me any of these past few nights if you truly could not resist my charms."
"It is your mind I cannot resist, not your body. Then, too, I have been reared to respect women and would never seek to force upon you attentions you might not want—fully and freely, of your own will."
"What good is it to me if you love only my mind?" she challenged, then spoke from a surge of anger. "These past days you have spoken a lover's words, sir, flirting shamelessly but never following your words with actions. I tire of such teasing. Make love to me here and now or be done with your blandishments and honeyed words."
Alarm shadowed Gregory's eyes. "Do you challenge me? Surely love cannot come thus!"
"Surely it can—if you have the courage for it. I think you fear the act itself, sirrah. You are willing to speak of it all day, to versify and make poetry of it, but poets only sing about the things they cannot do. If you mean what you say, give me proof in a kiss!" She leaned forward, eyelids growing heavy, lips moist and parting just a little.
Gregory hesitated, then seemed to hear Geoffrey's voice inside his head commanding, Take the cash and let the credit go! Suddenly he understood Allouette's misgivings and leaned forward, brushing her lips with his own.
What began as a brushing deepened most amazingly and most quickly. She gasped, then responded with ardor equal to his own, and in minutes he was lost in the wonder of her kiss.
After ten minutes of this, with only quick gasps of air, though, Allouette grew impatient. Would he never reach out to caress?
It seemed he would not. She reached out instead, finding his hand by touch and guiding it to the curve of her breast. He froze, then thawed and drew his fingers lightly over the swelling, and Allouette gasped with surprise at the exquisite sensations his touch evoked. Never since Orly's first caress had she felt such. How could this be?
Still, he seemed quite content to tickle and caress the cloth that covered her. She reached out for his hand again and, step by step and with a few whispered directions, guided him into deeper and deeper intimacies. She was amazed at his skill, for though he was undoubtedly completely new to the game, he seemed to know exactly where to touch, where to tickle, and how to use his lips to best effect; he was the strangest combination of virgin and experienced lover that she had ever discovered. Any presence of mind, or notions she might have had of planning, vanished into a jumble of sheer sensation as he touched here, caressed there, matching her thrill for thrill until they lay naked on a bed of fragrant bracken, touching and marvelling at the sensations they evoked in one another, sensations that spiralled upward and farther upward until their minds mingled in ecstasy and the world went away, stripping their souls bare and leaving them joined for a timeless moment as the essence that was the innate Allouette regained the ecstasy she had known with Orly and went past it, so far past that they seemed to reach the sun coupled, a sun that filled them and surrounded them, then burst into fragments that fell and faded, leaving them separate but paired again, and Allouette knew in her heart that she had regained herself, that her cure was complete.
Then they lay in one another's arms, gasping in amazement and, yes, even a little in fright, quivering and holding each to the other for dear life as their pulses slowed and the world began to come back. They lay embracing, catching their breaths, and began to become aware of tiny thoughts, sharp thoughts, larger and rapacious thoughts all around them, as though the whole world had fallen to copulating with them.
At last Allouette looked up at the stunned, disbelieving, and awed face that hovered over hers and whispered, "You had better intend to stay near me for a long time, sir, for I shall want many more such moments!"
"I shall stay," Gregory whispered, then smiled as his voice turned to a purr. "Oh, be sure I shall stay, most lovely of women, for as long as you will have me!"
She eyed him askance, her cynicism returning. "You should be careful what you promise, sir."