Duncan shivered and started to turn onto his side, then grunted as he collided with something hard. Opening his eyes, he stared at the white linens hanging before him, bewilderment briefly gnawing at his brain. Then he realized that the bone-chilling cold beneath his back and buttocks was the drafty castle floor, and that the white cloth before his eyes was a bedsheet. He’d fallen out of bed.

Grimacing, Duncan eased into a sitting position, groaning as his back protested the shabby treatment it had received. He was getting too old to be subjecting his body to cold, hard stone for a bed. There had been a time when he would have simply bounded from the floor after a night spent there and gone cheerfully about his day. This was no longer that time. His back was aching, his head throbbing, and he’d be damned if the early morning light pouring through the chamber window was not blinding him as well.

Sighing, Duncan rubbed the back of his neck to ease its aching and glanced toward the bed, his movements stilling as his gaze fell upon the young woman sleeping there. Who? Oh, aye. He’d been married the day before, he remembered and smiled to himself. She looked fair worn out, his little bride. He could not recall, but was sure that he had worked her hard through the night. Duncan had never let too much drink stop him before.

Moving to sit on the side of the bed, he eyed her silently. He had found her appealing when she was awake, but while sleeping, with no sign of the stiff disapproval on her face that he had borne since meeting her, she looked even more so. Reaching down, he scratched his nether regions and smiled to himself. No doubt he had loved the disapproval right out of her.

’Twas a shame he could not recall it, however, Duncan thought with a sudden frown. Just the thought of bedding her made him stiff as a dead cornish hen. ’Twas sore irritating that he could not remember the act. Scratching his scalp above one ear, he peered at her a bit irritably. No doubt she would recall. She had not drunk overmuch at sup. Come to that, she had not eaten overmuch either, mostly picking at the food presented. In truth, she had looked more repulsed than anything by the fare. There seemed very little here that pleased her. What if his loving was one of those things?

The thought was a bit dismaying. If he had been too drunk to even recall now what he had done, mayhap he had been too drunk to offer her the tenderness and care bedding a virgin required.