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I get through the dinner service, unnerved by the change in Irene...something I hadn’t quite picked up on until today. When it’s time to leave, I make my way to the door and Edouard meets me there, lifting my coat from the peg and holding it for me as I tuck myself inside. “You shouldn’t be doing this,” I whisper. “Irene...”

“I know,” he says.

I turn toward him. His gaze drops to my mouth and remains there just long enough to make me feel like I’m on fire. My cheeks are flushed, my body overheated at the mere thought of the way he kissed me the last time we were alone. In moments like this I no longer care what the church says about intimacy. I don’t care about his duties to the town, or what people would say if they knew, or that everything I want from him is a sin. I just don’t care.

His eyes close. “Perhaps it’s for the best that we can’t be alone.”

“I disagree,” I reply softly.

His eyes fly open, and his chest rises and falls too quickly. “Meet me,” he whispers. “Later. Only for a moment.”

“Where?”

He hesitates. “Your barn...will you be warm enough there? I won’t ask you to stay long.”

I smile. It wouldn’t matter it he asked me to meet him in the Arctic Circle. I’d remain forever. “Yes. I’ll watch for you.”

His eyes are the brightest, most vivid blue. “Then it’s a date.”

* * *

I sit downstairs in the dark. Amelie and Henri are already in bed, and they must be asleep at last, given that they are finally, praise be, silent. It’s impossible in a house of this size not to hear them when they’re intimate, and the truth is that everything about it sounds painful. The headboard thumping against the wall, their muffled cries. I once asked Amelie if it wasn’t awful—because really, how could it not be?—and she laughed and assured me she wouldn’t be following him to the orchard for something she didn’t enjoy.

I understood her point but not the mechanics of it—the way something that seemed uncomfortable and sounded terrible could be pleasant enough to seek out—but now I think I do. Wanting Edouard like this feels more like than pain than pleasure, but it’s the sweetest sort of pain. The kind that tortures me. And if relief lies in following that path—the path my brother and Amelie go down far too many times a day...well, I’m desperate enough to try.

I see movement in the dark and cross the yard to the barn, gathering my coat around me as I walk.

“Marie,” he whispers from just inside the door. Even in the darkness I can see the look on his face—adoring and hungry at the same time. He reaches out his hand and I allow him to pull me close, my heart hammering in my chest.

My face presses to the smooth fabric of his shirt and I breathe him in. “Will you still smell like this, even when you’re not a priest?” I ask with a small laugh and he smiles, cradling my jaw in his hand.

“Yes, I imagine so. Will you still want me if I don’t?”

I laugh again. “I imagine so.”

He leans down and kisses me. Softly, again and again, holding my face as if I’m something he treasures enough that he won’t put it down, not for a moment.

“One day soon I will do this in public,” he swears.

I want him to do so much more. I want relief from everything I feel. I want that spark I felt when his lips trailed away, when his hands gripped me hard. “Kiss my neck again,” I ask, blushing at my boldness.

“Marie,” he says, his jaw clenched, “I’m trying to restrain myself.”

His eyes have shuttered closed. He looks tortured, and were I a better person I wouldn’t persist, but instead it makes this hollow, needy thing in my stomach burst into flame. “I don’t want you to restrain yourself.”

With a low groan he gives in, tightening his hold on me while his soft mouth moves to my neck, pulling at the skin there in just the right way, the way that makes my desire bloom. I feel him, throbbing between us just as he was the last time, and when I arch to bring us closer, air hisses through his teeth and he crushes my skirt in his fist.

His mouth moves to mine again, harder and rougher and more demanding than it was.

His hands cup my breasts and when his thumb glides over one nipple I gasp. It’s...so much. Exquisite and torturous all at the same time. I wonder if it’s like this for him as well and the thought emboldens me. With my heart humming I slide my palm over the tented front of his pants, over the part of him that is hard and far too large to ever fit inside me.

He moans, low in his chest.

“I don’t know what to do,” I whisper.

His teeth are clenched. “You don’t have to do anything.”

“I want to, though,” I say. “Tell me.”