Page 133 of Faceless

He kissed her again because gratitude in him had always tended, where she was concerned, to become desire almost at once.

This time, when she laughed, it did not separate them. It melted into a sound that was in his chest. Her hands were in his hair. He drew the coverlet aside enough to gather her closer. The room was cold at the edges and warm where they were, the sort of winter morning that made a bed into a country entire. She came willingly and put her mouth to his shoulder, and he had to close his eyes.

“Fitzwilliam,” she said against his skin, and there was still wonder in the use of his name. “I do not think I knew before how well suited we are.”

“How unfortunate for your peace.”

“My peace has been in ruins since Hertfordshire.”

“Mine met an untimely end rather earlier this morning.”

She smiled without lifting her head. “That, at least, was my intention.”

He rolled her beneath him with a care that would have been impossible had he not already learned the measure of her body many times over. She took it laughing and then not laughing, both hands at his shoulders now, her face open to him in the soft Christmas light.

“You cannot do that,” she whispered.

“Why not?”

“Because I was about to say something cutting.”

“You may say it afterward.”

“That is tyrannical.”

“You married me under conditions which ought to have warned you.”

“On the contrary, I married a whisper in the dark. The tyrant is comparatively new.”

He bent his head, and whatever she meant to add dissolved into his mouth.

He had thought, before, that he knew what it was to fit another person. In the dark, he had learned hunger. In the nights after, trust. This morning, he learned delight, and drank of it in great, satisfying draughts.

Afterward, he lay half over her, unwilling to surrender the exact arrangement by which he might still feel her laughter in the looseness of her breath. It remained a grey Aberdeenshire Christmas and would, he did not doubt, continue so with northern perseverance until dusk. But the bed was warm, and she was beneath his hand, and one of the pillows had gone to the floor in the course of events, and there was no magistrate, no clerk, no Home Office, no case at all within the bounds of the blanket.

Elizabeth touched his mouth with one finger. “You look very smug.”

“I am married to you. I think I may be allowed a little self-approval.”

“A little?”

“A vanishingly little.”

“I shall permit it, because I am charitable at Christmas.”

“You are never charitable where my vanity is concerned.”

“I am charitable where it can be improved by management.”

He laughed against her throat, and she put her arms around him at once, not to restrain him, not to persuade, only because she liked to hold him there.

He lifted himself enough to look at her again. Her hair was in disorder. Her mouth was softer than it had been when she woke him. Her eyes, meeting his, held no reserve at all.

“Elizabeth.”

She heard the change in him at once. “What is it?”

He might have said any number of things. What came out was simpler. “You were right.”