"Promise?" asked Gregory. "I thought it was a demand."
Then he kissed her again, and it was a while before she thought coherently.
They celebrated the sunrise in much the same manner, then dressed and breakfasted, their gazes locked so completely it was amazing their hands found their mouths. Then Gregory sighed with regret that he must tear his gaze away from her and went to bring the horses.
They rode for some while in silence, only looking into one another's eyes now and then and smiling. At last Gregory said, "Does it not seem to you that the whole world must be in love today?"
"It seems so indeed," Allouette said with a tender smile.
Then her eyes widened in shock and she stiffened. "It seems so in cold fact! Listen a moment and see! Every living creature near us has copulated last night and this morning, even though most of them were far from their seasons!"
Gregory lost his smile. He gazed off into space a few moments, listening to deer and foxes and even earthworms. Then, with a feeling of dread, he reached farther and listened to the thoughts of the people in the nearest village, only now going out and about their daily rounds though the sun had been up for an hour and more, and the plowman should have been in the fields long since. He turned to Allouette, words of dismay on his lips—and saw her smiling at him with a dreamy, lazy, satiated look. 'It would seem, sir, that we must forfend, or the birth rate of the whole kingdom will soar as the overflow of our lovemaking stimulates all living creatures around us."
"We shall have to find some way to block our unwitting projections, then," Gregory said, "for I do not mean to deny myself your desires, whenever and wherever they may occur!"
Allouette gave a low, exulting cry and leaned forward from her saddle to kiss him.
All around them, birds began to bill and coo.
Allouette broke the kiss with a laugh of delight. "You see, sir? Even our kisses are infectious!"
"May the world catch a plague of love, then," Gregory said fervently and reached out for her.
She held him off with a teasing smile. "We must be careful, sir, or folk who are not in love will copulate with whomever is near, simply because the one they love is not." Then Allouette's eyes brightened with inspiration. "Your house! What great good luck that you have begun to build walls that absorb telepathic energy!"
"What great good fortune indeed!" Gregory said fervently and reined his horse up against hers, catching her about the waist and holding her tightly against him. "I cannot wait to finish it! Come!"
There was a strange double booming and a moment of dizziness; then Allouette looked around to see the clearing with Gregory's wall of pale blocks at its center. "So that is what it is like to teleport," she said in a shaky voice. "I think I shall prefer to fly in the future, sir, if it is all the same to you."
"Only if I may share your broomstick."
Allouette turned to give him a smile and a kiss, then slid off her horse, calling, "Come! For we must have four walls about us ere nightfall!"
"Even at that, it will be hard to wait." But Gregory slid from his horse and glared at the underbrush, which began to form itself into rectangular blocks.
Allouette watched him craft the first block, then float it into place, face twisted with the effort. Having learned the process, she pitched in herself, forming the blocks with her mind, matching the molecular structure he had fashioned, then floating them into place by telekinesis. Gregory watched her with more than agreeable surprise; in fact, she turned from placing the first block to see him gazing raptly at her with an expression that should have been censored. ' 'I had known you learned quickly, but not as quickly as that—and from observation alone! How did you know the structure of the molecules?"
"Why, I probed into it with my mind, foolish man, and felt out which atom had bonded to which!" But the tone she had meant to be scornful turned teasing and she couldn't help a smile. ' 'If so minor a feat as that is apt to kindle desire in you, I shall never dare learn anything."
"Then school is out." Gregory caught her hand.
She gave it a squeeze as she gave him a look that was half promise and half feigned irritation. "Finish your walls first, scholar. Then mayhap I shall give you another lesson in life."
Gregory spun away, calling, "A hundred blocks, quickly!"
Allouette laughed, but inside her triumph was mixed with a rejoicing that she had thought she would never regain— indeed, that she had unknowingly come to think wrong.
They worked all that day and the underbrush in the vicinity disappeared, transmogrified into the blocks that fitted into a wall that grew amazingly. When the outline of the building was clear, though, her old ambitions for grandeur and luxury reawakened. "If you intend for me to dwell here with you, male, you shall have to make me a building such as I have ever dreamed of holding—not simply a cottage or even a small manor, but a tower!"
"Why, a tower let it be, then," Gregory said, and the blocks all lifted into the air, sorted themselves out, and came down in a circle sixty feet across.
"Why do you stare so?" Gregory asked softly. "Do you not know that love lends a man the strength of ten?''
"I had thought that came from a pure heart." Inwardly, Allouette both trembled and rejoiced, for he had said the word "love." Oh, he was scarcely the first to have spoken thus— but he was the only one since Orly whom she had not purposely compelled by her projections, and the first since Orly whose love she had wanted for her own sake, not as a means to an assigned end.
By evening, the ground was clear for a hundred feet around and the wall was ten feet high. Gregory turned to her, weary but hopeful. "Have I crafted enough of my dwelling to prove my earnestness?"
"You have." Allouette stepped close to him, and closer still as she said, "There are walls enough to protect the countryside from the effects of our delight. It lacks a roof, of course, but it will cause little trouble if the songbirds couple like turtledoves."
Gregory made a cooing noise. She laughed and pressed against him to stop the cooing with her lips. When they broke apart, she gave a little shriek as he swung her into his arms, then clung to his neck laughing as he carried her through the empty doorway and into the ring of blocks.
She had spoken truly—any birds who did fly over them that evening behaved most outrageously, even allowing for the fact that it was early summer. So, for that matter, did the bats, and the insects had a reprieve that evening. It was just as well, for they were behaving insanely, too.
As she lay wrapped in the arms of the first man she had ever begun to really trust, weakened and dazed in the afterglow, Allouette trembled, for she had to admit to herself that she was truly in love again at last, and the vulnerability that created frightened her.
Gregory felt her shivering. "What troubles you, love?" he said tenderly. "Tell me the wound, and I shall heal it."
"Only I can do that," Allouette said into his chest, not meeting his gaze. "I feel so horribly guilty, Gregory."
Gregory was still, then said sadly, "I had thought you were healed of that."
"Of thinking sex evil? Oh, be sure that I am, and what your mother did not mend, you now have!" She felt his lips on her forehead but resisted the diversion and explained. "Naetheless, I am supposed to be seeking penance, and I have found only ecstasy!"
"Ah," Gregory purred, and there was a wealth of understanding and reassurance in the sound. "Take what comfort you can, love, for you have already saved a widow and her children, not to mention two whole villages. Take what strength I can lend, for I am sure you will find yourself weary work to do."
"Well," Allouette said, "if you put it that way, I suppose ..." She let the sentence trail off and tilted her head back to accept his full kiss, letting the energy it gave tingle through her.