“Only to me,” he whispered to himself. Then, on a smile, he repeated, “Only to me.”
The water bubbled in the bucket. He carefully put the lid on it and carried it up to their bedroom.
She was just sitting up in bed, the sheets puddling around her hips. She was naked and faced him with the smiling welcome of a wife. The room, bathed in blue shadows, cast her in a sensuous silhouette. Yet she dazzled him. Her dark eyes dreamy, she lured him with a toss of her long hair and a lover’s pampered pout. “You were gone too long. I missed you.”
“I wanted to get warm water for you to bathe.”
She noted the bucket in his hand. “You think of everything.”
“I am afraid not.”
“Why?” She was bemused. “In what have you failed, dear sir?”
He went to her, threading his fingers through her hair. “I wanted to bring you supper and have that ready as well as the water before you awoke.”
“Come here,” she beseeched him, and drew him down over her to kiss him and press him to her. Her skin was creamy and supple. His own was set aflame as she murmured, “You are all I want.”
He caught her up against him. “I want you with a ferocity I cannot assuage.”
“Never do that. I would die if you never wanted me again.”
Chapter Seventeen
Not since she was fourteen had she spent days where she lolled about, careless of time or circumstance.
She extended her arms to whirl around in the garden, with the big house, the servants, the world faraway. The falling snowflakes came in such quick succession that her smiling husband had a white hat and broad white shoulders. “This is new to me, this…this freedom!”
He caught her to him. “As having you is glorious to me.”
His words pricked her. Would she forever be that to him every day, every hour? The longer they stayed here in seclusion, the more she thought she might be free of all her past. Of that most horrific obligation. For still, no one had appeared to ask her for news of her progress.
So she resolved not to allow that lack to ruin her day or her joy of the moment. She stood on the points of her pattens and pecked him on the lips. “I have not skated since I was a gangly girl.”
“Ha!” He put one arm around her waist and led her to glide with him over the glossy, iced pond.
“When were you ever gangly, my darling?”
“When you did not know me. When I was young and silly and believed—”
She snapped her mouth shut.
He slowed their pace. “What did you believe?”
The compassion she saw in his eyes and heard from his lips had her shaking her head and denying the terrible words she might have said. “I believed that people lived an ordered life. They learned discipline from their parents and history from their teachers. They found someone to love and lived forever and ever in a mutual endeavor and…”
She had turned away from him as she spoke, and so he skated around to face her. “People do live an ordered life. They do learn how to behave and work and prosper. They do find love and live long lives of mutual enjoyment. Please look at me, Inès.”
She girded herself to take his argument with a grain of salt. “There. Tell me.”
“You don’t believe me,” he said with certainty.
She frowned and glanced aside.
He caught her cheek, not allowing her retreat. “I will prove it to you.”
“No, I— There is no need, Evan.”
“But there is. How can we go on together if you don’t believe that what we create is a better life for ourselves, our family, and our society?”
