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I thought he was joking. “You mean weeks,” I teased. “Without assistance, I can only keep it in the severest style, such as I wore at Rosings.”
“No,” he refuted, looking at my reflection in the glass. “At Netherfield. Almost as soon as I came to know you. I wanted to gather it up in my fists, bury my face within it.” He matched word to action, shocking me. And then he swept me up within his arms; he did not bring me to my chamber but to his.
I was overwhelmed—to know he had thought of me with anything except contempt, the idea that he had looked upon me with desire, was shocking to me. He laid me on the bed, but I sat up. “I thought you hated me, hated all of us! You left—”
He stopped my words with kisses, frantic ones, but I broke free, putting my hands up to his face, his jaw stubbled and rough underneath them. The dusky firelight cast his face in shadow, but his eyes were haunted. I could almost feel his misery, even. Did he feel guilty for the desire he had now for his new wife?
For one moment, I thought of him in that great stately bed in the cliffside wing, surrounded by gold and white satin and blood-red flowers, a masterful lover with a different woman, a King William with his Mary. I shoved the thoughts from my head.
“I am not that young girl any longer,” I whispered, apologetic, trying to smile. “Though she and I do both have unmanageable hair.”
For long moments, he said nothing. He made no move to begin kissing me again. I did want his passion, almost desperately. If I could not have his love, I wanted this. But he must see me; he must give himself to me.
“I hope I am different, now, too,” he replied, finally.
I felt a measure of relief. “You are my husband, for one thing.”
“So I am,” he said, and it seemed the shadows lifted just a little.
Earlier, I could not imagine saying this, but now it seemed safe—if still a bit discomfiting. “On those nights when we are bickering, or you need to be alone, I think…I mean, I would wish…that we bid each other a goodnight, even so.” He looked a bit startled, so I blurted out the rest. “You need not come to me only when you wish to…that is, I have become accustomed, although we have not been married long, to—” I stumbled with my words, more flustered with the saying of them than I expected, finding myself flushing.
He smiled fully, kissing me again, but in a gentler, slower fashion. “You would like us to sleep together, even when your husband has behaved like an ass?”
“Especially then,” I nodded. “Or if I have.” I wrapped my arms around his neck, feeling us fit together fully, hard and soft, male and female. “It does not always have to be…this. But if you would not rather, or need time alone, you must say so.”
“I have been alone enough,” he said, his voice gruff. And when he began the loving again, he was himself, urgent, passionate and wonderful, the despair fading back into the past where it belonged.
