"Well, she knows you're meant to get one a day starting the moment you get home," Goneril replied. She gave him an earnest look. "Promise you'll save them?" she said hopefully. And then undercut her own seriousness by stuffing the letters in her decolletage.

He tweaked her nose. "I promise," he said, "so long as you let me fish those out."

She smirked. "What do you think I put them in there for, silly?" she asked nicely.

With a surreptitious glance over both shoulders to make sure no one would observe, Faolin slipped two fingers into her cleavage, easing the corner of the letters upward until they were just visible. He kissed her, then tipped her face to the side to kiss her throat, her collarbone, before lowering his face between her breasts and drawing the letters out with his teeth.

Goneril giggled at the display, but pulled him toward her, fixing her hands on his hips. "There you go," she said humoringly. "Now you've nothing to complain about. Did you want literal breakfast, or metaphorical breakfast? Or both?"

He handed her the letters back, then ran his hands up her spine. "Literal breakfast. I've been awake since dawn going up and down those cliffs. Breakfast in bed?"

"You're supposed to take these," Goneril pointed out, and shoved the letters into his pocket before kissing him. "I've never had breakfast in bed before," she answered. "I suppose the question is, which bed?"

"You haven't? That is one of the world's greater crimes. Let's steal some breakfast things and do it." He shrugged. "I suppose it's back to the cot, in which case it is more breakfast on bed, but it works out much the same."

"Unless you count when I was little and sick and my mother would feed me porridge?" Goneril answered, linking her arm with his as she began to walk again. "No, no breakfast in bed. You sound like a connoisseur," she teased, and then let out a sigh. "That's one thing I suppose I'll be looking forward to at Imbolc. We need to spend at least one morning curled up lazily in a proper bed together."

"I told you. No one is allowed in my bedchamber unless I give them leave, not even Her Majesty. I can keep you all night." He gave her a squeeze around the waist. "But in this case I think this means we'd best have our breakfast quickly to let me start getting ready. Someone is supposed to be coming up with your books when they fetch the trunks."