"Right," Thorsby answered himself.
CASTLE PERILOUS — KEEP
Linda came out of a tropical night and into the gloom of the castle keep, passing through the portal that linked Sheila's world with Castle Perilous.
It was late afternoon, castle time. An ordinary day. Walking along the hallway, she passed servants and tradesmen going about their appointed tasks, along with a well-dressed nobleman or two about on business. She greeted the people she knew and smiled at those she didn't. She'd often wondered what the total population of the castle was. It must be enormous. She'd been here almost five years, and new faces presented themselves almost every day. To take a census, you'd have to count the population that lived in the various castle "aspects"-the worlds to which the castle provided access-as well as permanent castle residents. And then there were the Guests: people and other beings who had wandered into the castle through any one of 144,000 magical doorways.
The final nose-count would very likely be surprising. She turned down the hallway that led to her bedroom, still thinking of Gene and of what had begun to develop between them.
She was now regretting that it had happened; or rather that it only halfway happened. If Dalton and Thaxton hadn't blundered by, something might have, and then the affair would have been a fait accompli. Now she had to decide whether she wanted to go through with it. With the alcohol wearing off, she was beginning to see that that would be a tough decision. What would be the mood the next time she and Gene met? What would she say? What would he say?
She didn't relish facing him. Would they simply smile and pretend it didn't happen? Maybe that would be best. Or should they talk it out?
She wondered if Gene was already having second thoughts. Never once in all the time she'd known him did she get the slightest hint that he regarded her as anything but a good friend. A buddy. One of the guys. She had felt no spark, not the faintest throb, in all that time. She began to search her own feelings to see if there was something in her, some tiny glowing coal of desire beneath the sisterly warmth she felt for him.
She would be surprised to find anything. Maybe… maybe she just wanted to get laid.
Well, what was wrong with that? Perfectly natural. She hadn't slept with a man since…
She stopped. Good Lord, had it been so long that she couldn't remember?
Was it Tom Fahey, the man she'd been engaged to for three years? No wait. There was the insurance agent-her insurance agent, who had come over to change the beneficiary on her life insurance and ended up asking her out….
Was that after Tom and she had broken up, or before?
During?
Yes, during. It was during the breakup. Yes. She and Tom were just about through when she'd gone out with… She started walking again. What was his name? Phil. No, Stu.
Stu Stockton! Yes. Brief fling, that. One of the few, if not the only, brief fling of her life. On the rebound, sort of. Or did it happen before Tom and she got back together for the last time?
She laughed. She was obviously repressing all that. Better left repressed, too. Cover it up, let it lie. The dead past. Shudder.
So, it had been either Stu or Tom. When? Well, that would have been, oh, almost five and a half, maybe six years ago.
Six years! She didn't believe it. It couldn't be six years. But it was. She couldn't believe she had been nonvalent-incapable of bonding-in all that time. Not the slightest urge to pair, not the slightest quiver of desire… Well, not quite. There had been some nights, some cold and lonely castle nights, when she would have liked another warm body in her bed. Not just because Perilous was cold and draughty on occasion. But because she had felt the need to share her feelings with somebody. She had wanted someone to share a life with, to be a part of someone else's life. She had wanted to touch, to be touched. To sleep with somebody's arm around her.
And, yes, to make love.
She wasn't a cold fish. She wasn't asexual. It was just that she was picky.
Picky, picky, picky, her mother's voice came out of the dark ages of early memory. Eat your dinner, you're not eating. You're getting so thin. Miss Skin-and-Bones! You're too picky, Linda. A fussbudget about food. Too hot, too cold, too sour, too chewy; Linda had always had an excuse not to eat. And she had remained thin and fussy into adulthood. Picky, picky.
And about men, too. Not just anyone would do. In high school she had had few boyfriends. She liked to think she had high ideals. Well, that was true. Maybe too high. Tom had been a wonderful guy, but he was picky, too. More so than Linda. Way too picky. Always judging, always criticizing; first everybody else, then her. She had never measured up to his high standards, and she had wearied of the constant sense of failure she had felt.
So maybe high standards were a lot of hooey. Maybe getting laid was just what she needed, for once. Or twice. (Had Stu been just a lay? She barely remembered him. No, there'd been something more to it. Hadn't there?)
Repress, repress.
She reached her bedroom door and grasped the big wrought-iron door handle. The "lock" was her own: a magic spell that would admit only her.
Something occurred to her. What if Gene came knocking? What would she do? He might have interpreted her leaving as a signal to meet later. In fact, she had had that in the back of her mind.
Was she afraid of scandal? Afraid for her reputation? She laughed to herself, Did anybody care about those things these days? Well, maybe, but they didn't apply in Castle Perilous, at least among Guests. Whatever mores held sway among the native denizens of Perilous, she knew that her fellow Guests wouldn't bat a collective eye at a little bed-sharing. It went on all the time.
What if Gene didn't come? She wondered how she would feel about that eventuality. Rejection? She didn't want that either. Boy, had she opened a can of worms.
Why don't I take a little walk? she thought. Put it off. She left her door and continued down the corridor.
If Gene came home and found her gone he'd probably get upset, even ticked off. Now that she thought of it, that fetching look she'd given him couldn't have been interpreted any other way except as a come-on. So, he comes knocking, expecting, and… she's flown the coop. Nothing like leading a guy on and then shutting him off. There were words for the kind of women who made a habit of it. "Coquette" was the polite term.
She wouldn't blame him if he did get a little pissed off. Turning a corner, she came upon the Queen's Dining Hall. Earlier there had been an infestation of flies here. The flies seemed to be gone.
She went on down the hall and made a few turns, two rights and a left, threading her way through the maze of the castle keep. An old castle veteran, she knew her way. She rarely got lost now no matter where she went.
She passed a pretty sitting room, doubled back, and went in. The far wall was cut with six French windows, the extreme right one leading out to a bartizan turret high on the keep that gave a sweeping view of the Plains of Baranthe, some thousand feet below.
The other windows were quite another matter. They looked out onto different worlds altogether: parkland, farmland, forest, plain, and river valley. Nothing spectacular in any; simply pleasant landscapes.
Linda took a seat on the comfortable couch and put her legs up. The situation called for some thinking.
She was distracted by how appealing the room looked. The rug was Oriental, with a design that looked more Indian than Persian. There was a lot of furniture: an ornately carved rolltop desk; a tall, white-lacquered chest of drawers; a walnut trestle table; slat-back chairs; an oaken Gothic stool; several wing chairs; several bookcases holding leather covered volumes; lots of shelves and dressers displaying ceramic pots, cameo glass vases, bronze statuettes, enamel boxes, silver tankards, and other items of interest.