Page 197 of Faceless

“That is a fine alternative. Yes?”

She kissed his throat again, sleepier this time, and her hand moved from his chest up to the side of his neck, and from his neck up into his hair, and she drew his face down so that his mouth was against hers and she kissed him slowly, with unhurried patience, not yet entirely awake and not intending to let waking interfere with the pleasures in front of her.

His hand on her belly had not moved. He was holding very still, in the hope that she might consider this a chaste good morning between husband and wife and not press the matter further.

She was not so generous.

Her hand left his hair and travelled down the length of his side, and rested at last on his hip in a position from which she could feel exactly what he had been hoping she would not feel. She made a small, considering sound against his mouth that suggested she had now confirmed what she had already strongly suspected and was satisfied with the confirmation.

“Lizzy. My love. Please —”

“Please what?”

“I cannot — I have not — I came straight from the cell last night. I have not bathed properly. I have shaved, but I have not — and you are — Good Lord, Elizabeth, you are five months gone. You cannot want —”

“I want.”

“My love —”

“Hush.”

She kissed him again, more deeply than the first time, and her hand moved on his hip with the unmistakable suggestion that she intended to be done with the question of his propriety within the next minute and a half.

He took her wrist. Gently. He held it against his hip with his own hand, neither pushing her away nor permitting her to continue, and he drew breath against her mouth.

“Elizabeth. Listen to me. I have wanted nothing in four months at the Tower more than I have wanted you. I have woken from dreams of you that I have not been able to put out of my mind for a day together. I have spent the better part of a hundred mornings imagining this exact circumstance. I am not refusing you. I am only — I am afraid. I do not know whether — at this stage — whether it would be safe. Whether it would hurt you. Whether it would hurt the child. I have not had access to any person of whom I could ask. I would not, my love, for the world, do anything that would —”

“Fitzwilliam, the only way you could hurt me at this hour is to leave the bed.”

He did not, for a second, answer.

She lifted her face to look at him. The grey light at the window was enough, now, that he could see her properly for the first time since he had come in. Her hair was pulling loose from its braid and twisting down her back. The fine hollow at the base of her throat was the same one he had spent months at Auchengray learning by the touch of his lips. She was looking at him as if she had decided some hours ago what she intended for the morning and was waiting only for him to consent to it.

“My aunt assured me, when I had occasion to ask her, that whatever pleases me remains perfectly safe at this stage and shall remain so for some considerable time yet. The child is, by every measure I can take of him, in vigorous health. He kicks me at all hours. I require no further evidence of his survival. What I require, Fitzwilliam, is my husband, who has been kept from me for one hundred and twelve nights. I will not be put off until you have bathed, because if you propose to put me off, I will follow you to whatever room you propose to flee to and lock Hodges out, and I shall tell him precisely why.”

He laughed. It came up out of him before he had thought to suppress it, and he caught her face in his hands and kissed her hard. She kissed him back, and the question of whether he was prepared to consent to the morning was answered without his having had to do any further work towards it.

It was like the dark months and nothing like them. The same nearness. The same speech lowered for no one but each other. The same enclosed world. But there was no concealment now. He could see her face. She could see the cost prison had exacted from his.

He kissed her again, not hungrily now but repeatedly, as if the body were making up an account of losses and refusing to leave any of it unpaid. Her brow. Her temple. The corner of her mouth. The hollow below her ear. Each touch drew her more quietly into him, but she lacked some of the vigour of five months ago.

“You are tired,” he said at last against her hair.

“A little.”

“More than a little.”

“You have come back from prison only to discover that your wife objects to accurate observation in all forms.”

“I knew that already.” His hand shifted, barely, over the child. “Does it pain you?”

“Not now. My back at times. My feet when I have been too long up. A general conviction from everyone around me that I ought to be preserved in cotton and broth.”

“A sensible conviction.”

“Traitor.”

He kissed her smiling mouth and then grew serious again so swiftly she felt the change before she saw it.