“You have not seen what I have. People, good people, dragged away by mobs. Anger so palpable that one look is enough to make a man tremble. Men and women hurried up steps to a scaffold where they view the brutal blade of their demise. My father gone for so-called treason to the state. My mother struck down in trembling horror for his fate. My brother gone to La Force for his beliefs. Me, here, gone from my home for fear of…”
She grabbed a shaking breath.
He wrapped her close to him. “Listen to me and believe this. No one will drag you away from here. No one will hurry youto a scaffold or show you any blade of destruction. No one will take me away from you. Not to a prison or to an early death. No one will ever take you from me. You are mine and I am yours.”
Tears now dribbled down her cheeks in a cascade she could not stop. She dashed them away. “I want to believe that. I do! But how can I?”
He took her lips in a fierce claiming. “I will show you. If you cannot believe me now, I understand. You have little proof. But I will prove it, hour by hour, day by day, year by year. I want you for all my life. Let me show you that you can trust me with all of yours.”
On a gasp, she arched up and kissed him again. Her tears cold and bitter on her skin, she shook away her terrors that she could lose him to accident or harsh circumstance. “No more skating.”
He brushed a tendril of her hair from her temple and under her hat. “What would you like to do instead?”
“Take me back to bed. To our bed. I want you, your warm skin on mine, absorbing all your kindness and your care for me. I promise you that I will summon all I have to give to you in return.”
And so he led her back across the icy pond to their sleigh. He jingled the bells on the reins and took her in his arms to kiss her with new hunger.
Their horse, good fellow, tossed his mane, instinct leading him across the meadow toward his stall, his barn, and his groom, who came out to meet them all.
On the cobbled path to the house, Evan took his wife’s hand and led her, running to the back kitchen door.
The young maid and footman in the kitchen startled at their appearance.
“Your supper, my lady.” She curtsied. “My lord.”
“Taking it up, sir, ma’am,” said the footman. “Just now.”
“Good. Do set it out,” Inès told them.
“After which you may leave,” Evan said.
Stepping into the hall, Inès giggled. “You realize that they know what we are doing.”
As she faced him on the steps, he took her hand and said, “I do hope so!”
She barked in laughter and turned for the stairs. He patted her on her derrière, and she yelped.
“Sir!”
“Go!”
#
Their supper was stone cold by the time they went down to the dining room. But they cared not a whit.
He took the master chair and she took her husband’s lap.
He attired only in his banyan and she in a quilted silken robe, they fed each other slices of roast beef and bits of baked potatoes, sautéed turnips and carrots. They drank red wine and shared the taste of it on each other’s lips and tongue. A pudding of chocolate and swirled vanilla was left untouched. Evan took his wife back upstairs to bed.
The moon and stars glistened in the black-velvet night sky when Inès rose naked to find her robe and don it.
His eyes flicked open. “Where do you go?”
“Come with me,” she told him, and he rose, eager to please her in any way at all.
“Hungry, are you?”
“Only in one way,” she said, and led him, hand in hand, down the stairs, this time to the main salon. There she put him to a large, old Tudor chair and said, “I have a gift for you. I wanted to do it before now…but then”—her eyes flashed wickedly—“we’ve had much else to do.”
