You had come down to the Hearth because your rooms above it were cold and the fire in the common room had been going since sundown. Aldric was already at the bar and had a mug in front of him and a second one set out for you. He had ordered without asking. You slid onto the stool. The wood of the counter had a groove worn into it from a hundred elbows and yours found it right away.
You drank. You set the mug back down. The hand that met the handle looked wrong against the copper. Smaller. The nails on it were painted a red you had not painted them. You looked at the other hand. Same. There was a leather cord tight at your throat where your collar had been. You reached up and there was a stone at the front of it, warm from your own skin, cold at the bezel around it.
The shirt was no longer a shirt. Something laced tight at your ribs and pushed the chest up above it, which was a chest, and it was not the one you had walked in with. The apron of the thing hung at your waist over a green skirt. Frill at the hem. Frill at the top. There was a headpiece on your hair, a white ribbon or band, and the hair itself was longer than you had let it grow in ten years.
You smelled the pipe smoke from the farmer at the far table. That had been in the air when you had sat down and it had not changed. The fire in the grate cracked once. Aldric was still looking at his mug. He had not looked at you since you had sat down, but he was not drinking either. His hand on his own mug had stopped moving.
The keeper stepped up to the counter with a tray of empties and looked at you and did not react to what he saw. "Table six, love, when you can," he said. You nodded before you knew you had nodded. You slid off the stool. The floor met the sole of a shoe that was not your boot. Aldric watched you cross the room past him and did not say your name because it was not going to be yours. You said the line without turning your head.
You said the line without turning your head, on your way past to table six.
"Another round, love?"
You worked your circuit. You knew where the mugs were, which was strange, and where the barrels were, which was stranger. Aldric watched you from the bar. He did not drink. He waited.
When the keeper went to the back for another cask, Aldric stood up. He crossed the room without hurry. He did not look at the door of your rooms above the tap. He knew you would look at it first.
You did. You met his eyes across the room. You picked up your empty tray and turned toward the back stair.
He was two steps behind you all the way up. The stair creaked in the same three places it had creaked before you had come down for the fire. The room at the top of it was the one you had slept in that morning. The door was still open. He closed it behind him.
He did not undress you at the door. He set the tray on the wash stand himself and turned you around by the shoulders. He looked at your face for a long second under the low lamp. Then he untied the ribbon at your headpiece and set it down beside the tray.
The hair came down. He put his hands into it at the back of your neck. He tilted your chin up with his thumbs and kissed you like he had wanted to for longer than the ten minutes since he had recognized you. His mouth was warm and had ale on it and a piece of the roasted onion from the pot the keeper had brought out at sundown.
He walked you backward until the backs of your knees hit the mattress. You sat down. He knelt. He undid the laces of the corset with his teeth on the top knot and his fingers on the rest. It took him longer than either of you had thought. He did not rush. When the corset came apart the breath came out of your chest all at once.
The green skirt came up. The apron was already loose. He kept the choker with the red stone on you. He said nothing about it.
He came up onto the mattress over you. The straw creaked in the tick under his weight and yours. He watched your face while he undid his own belt and freed himself. He did not look away when he pushed in the first time.
You gasped once against his shoulder. He held there when he was against you. Then he moved. Slow. The mattress made a small sound at every stroke because the frame was old and the pegs were loose. The lamp on the wash stand flickered once and steadied.
He got faster after a minute. He put his forearm above your head against the bedstead to brace himself. His forehead came against yours. The red stone at your throat pressed cool against the base of your neck where his hand was. You reached up and put your palm flat over his hand there.
He shifted. He sat back on his heels and pulled you up onto him and you ended up on his lap with the green skirt bunched at your waist. Your knees fit on either side of his hips on the mattress. You took the pace over from him. He watched you with his hands at your hips over the fabric.
You leaned forward and kissed him with your hair falling around both of your faces like a curtain. You could hear the tap room downstairs through the boards. Someone was singing badly and someone else was laughing at the singer.
You came with both hands flat on his chest and your knees pressed hard into the tick on either side of him. He kept moving through it. He slowed once and started again. The second time he did not slow. He tipped you sideways down onto the mattress with him still inside you and pushed a few more strokes and then pulled out and finished on the white of the apron where it had bunched at your waist.
He held there breathing against your ear. Then he rolled onto his back on the tick beside you. The lamp on the wash stand had gone low. The sound of the tap room downstairs was still there through the boards, quieter now, closing up. The keeper was singing along with whoever the bad singer had been.
Your hand found his in the dark on the mattress between the two of you and stayed there.