“Let’s not stay here for the winter, then.”
Talbot smiled as they entered her room. He wondered at what else Elizabeth had learned from the dairymaid.
He’d never seen anyone who was so genuinely interested in other people’s lives. He believed himself to be a fair and kind master of his estate, but he was never so generous with his concern or affection, so open or unrestrained as to inquire about every single child his tenants' wives had brought into the world.
The things women talked about had never interested him much – he was always more interested in art, history, and society than in the minutiae of common people’s lives – yet whenever hiswife considered it essential to inform him of some little detail she’d heard or observed during the day he found himself utterly captivated by her accounts as he watched her walk around the room while unpinning her hair or unlacing various items of clothing.
Who would have thought that there were entire lives being lived around him, lives touched by sorrow and joy, illness and death, betrayal and intrigue, all etched in the lined, sun-kissed faces of the villagers who he’d never thought about as more than numbers in his ledgers, but who were, thanks to his title, his responsibility.
“So I told Mrs. Harrington that, when I had typhus, Mrs. Barlow used to -,” she said, and the words snapped him out of his poetic musings.
“When didyouhave typhus fever?” he sat up in bed, agitated at the thought of her suffering, but even more frightened by the idea that she could have been lost to it like so many had been.
“When I was about seventeen,” she replied and then cocked her head to the side, “a few months before I attacked you in the street,” she added with a grin.
No wonder she looked so young and frail, he thought as he revisited their first meeting with even more self-reproach.
As Elizabeth continued telling him about Mrs. Barlow’s homemade typhus cure, Talbot tried to memorise every little detail, expression, and gesture on her face, feeling as if some catastrophe could at any moment take her from him.
He wanted to hold onto her, protect her from whatever outside forces might attempt to hurt her – and they were always outsideforces in his mind, for he didn’t allow himself to consider that he could ever be the cause of her unhappiness. He loved her!
Spurred on by that thought, he got out of bed and stepped in front of his wife as she had both hands lifted while she worked on her hair. Her breasts were poking through her thin nightgown and looked very inviting.
Colin noticed the exact moment Elizabeth’s hazel eyes darkened with desire and, as always, her response ignited a storm of pride and passion inside him, but, above all, it caused him to want to bring her pleasure – in bed and outside it.
Their coupling that night was tinged with desperation on his part – he wanted to make her writhe and moan as much as possible to reassure himself that she was there, with him, and that she was alive and well. He bit and sucked and licked her tender white thighs, her shoulders, and even her breasts, strongly enough to leave marks, secret little signs that told the tale of their pleasure.
Lizzie’s face was contorted and her brow was furrowed in concentration as she moved underneath him with increasing urgency, but when she opened her eyes just as she reached her peak, there was a longing in them so strong that it almost made him lose tempo. It seemed to him that she was just as desperate as he was, but for what, he had no clue.
When they were both spent and satisfied, he kissed her eyelids and rolled onto his side of the bed.
“Colin, you trapped me,” she said in a hoarse voice, and his breath was knocked out of his lungs.
No one said anything for what felt like eternity. She then gently pushed his shoulder.
“You’re lying on my hair, move.”
Colin wordlessly helped her free her hair and watched her braid it. For once, he wished there were fewer candles burning in the room, for he was sure his face would betray the absolute terror he had just experienced.
“Good night,” she said with a small smile, and he even managed to respond.
You are your father’s son,he thought, and that damning verdict echoed in the darkness of the night for hours and hours until Colin finally managed to fall asleep.
Chapter 21
Elizabeth’s eyes woke up earlier than the rest of her body did. The dream she’d had must have been strange and unsettling, for her heart was racing, but she was unable to recall any details about it. She turned her head towards Colin, who slept like the dead, and examined every one of his features, stunned by how different they looked when completely relaxed.
Not many would call her husband classically handsome – his jaw was too square and his brow too high, but there was no other man whose presence alone exuded such raw might and self-assuredness, which to Lizzie was far more attractive than a pleasing symmetry.
Yet lately, there had also been a softness about him. She’d felt it in his glances and the way he talked to her. Sometimes he made her feel like she was an egg he was gently cradling in his hands, careful not to damage it.
She finally managed to get to her feet, still unsteady from the nothingness of being asleep. The dawning sky pulled her to thewindow. Although it was August, the floor was ice-cold, and the morning looked misty and wet.
Lizzie remembered Hannah telling her they called themcobweb mornings. She admired the comparison, then wondered whether God was amused by this description.
Thank you, Lord, for creating such a beautiful world for us to live in,she thought as she did most mornings, almost tearful today for some reason.
The sight of the sky, her husband sleeping, misty cobwebs, being here, being in this moment, it was all too intense, toomuch.
