She stepped forward with her head tipped to one side. “Alright. If you want to be authentic, you are going to have to make yourself look pale, clammy and ill.”
I nodded. Two could play at this game. “Should I also take off my shirt?”
With a shake of her head and a laugh that still made my chest swell every time I elicited it, she brushed her skirts to the side and sat down beside me.
“For the sake of Arthur and May, why don’t you keep your shirt on?”
“They’re gone. And they know better than to come back.”
“It is the middle of the day and there isn’t a storm cloud in sight. I suppose we can forgo authenticity.” She pulled my head into her lap and her fingers went to my hair. Her touch was as familiar as the warmth of a fire burning in Applewood’s hearth—as familiar as stepping through my own front door. And yet, evenwith that familiarity, when her skin made contact with mine, it wasn’t only with a sense of restful arrival. She would always be a delicate balance of home and adventure, of longing and holding, of the peaceful notes of soul-deep love and the heat of chronically ravenous desire. Her neck curved into a graceful bow as she bent over me and I was completely lost in the spark in her eyes, the shine in her hair, and the beauty that shone down upon me. “It’s no wonder I kissed you.”
She dragged a finger down my cheekbone and then across my jaw before sliding her thumb along my bottom lip. “It’s no wonder I let you.”
I slipped my fingers up through the base of her hair and pulled her down to me, needing her lips on mine. I didn’t have to pull hard. At the first tug, she dropped her head to meet me. When our lips touched I tried to pull the memory of our first kiss out from the dregs of my mind, but it remained hidden. I kissed her again and again, each time testing different angles, different pressures, sometimes with my hands in her hair and other times with my hands on her cheeks, but the moment was lost to me.
Evelyn’s hand slid down my neck and onto my chest. She fingered the buttons of my shirt, but I could feel the teasing smile on her lips. She was toying with me. This croft was too close to the road and the weather outside too cloudless for her to be quite that daring.
But that smile pressed against my mouth and those playful fingers pulled me completely away from our first moment together and into this one. I didn’t need to chase my past when my present was this delectable.
After several more moments, I lifted my head off the ground and tugged her head into my chest. “Have I told you how much I love that you and I share the same roof?”
“This one, or the one at Applewood?”
“Any roof where we are under, now that you mention it, but especially Applewood.”
“Not since yesterday.”
“That is an oversight.” I sat completely up, taking her with me. “Thank you for sharing my home and my life. Thank you for staying with me—not only that first night, but now. You didn’t only awake Applewood from a long slumber. You woke me as well.”
She pulled her head away from my chest but I snuggled her back up against me. With a laugh, she spoke into my waistcoat. “You're very welcome. I can’t imagine my life any other way.”
Years after that day at the waterfall, our children would complain about the fact that every time we traveled to London we made a stop at our lonely shepherd’s croft. They’d heard the story of how Evelyn and I met far too often, and were exasperated by the repetition of it.
But we never minded their complaints because behind them was an undeniable truth––we’d built a life where our children had been so blessed and surrounded by love, they had the luxury of finding it exhausting.
Every family should be so fortunate.
