When it begins to become cold, he will go back into the bedroll with Mariona.
No. With Merrin.
The two are not the same.
It feels stranger, to climb into bed with her, than it has felt to lay with any woman in these past two decades' memory. There is a tension in him, an anxiety, that he last remembers from seminary, being ordered into the bed of an instructor who had commanded him to please her. He failed, which students of hers almost always did, at that task, and was hurt about it.
It is perfectly obvious to the Esta of today that this was exactly the thing Madalin found enjoyable, hurting men for failing to please her. It is astonishing to him, now, that even when he was seventeen years old, this could possibly not have been obvious to him. But part of Esta thinks that inverse-Mariona -- Merrin, he must remember that name -- will prove to be that again for him: a more powerful woman who finds something to do in bed with you that a man ought to enjoy, and ensure that you do not enjoy it, because she is pleased to make you feel a failure as a man.
Esta mans up about it, crushes down all fear, and climbs into the bedroll. It is certainly shameful for a man to fear being naked next to a pretty girl who has not yet humiliated him. She's probably Chaotic Good, anyway.
Well. Dark-Tapestried Lawful Evil.
The two may not be the same.