Grahame, Lucia (15 page)

The sound of his breathing told me how much this pleased him.

His hands lingered at my nipples for a while longer and then moved
on to the row of flat little shimmering buttons that ran from the top of my
breasts to the bottom of my hips and held the soft lace tightly against my
skin.

My husband began to release those buttons slowly, one at a time.
My breasts spilled out of the lace. He bent his head toward them. I wrapped my
arms more closely around his neck and gasped and writhed like a woman in
ecstasy as his mouth nuzzled one nipple and his fingertips pulled gently on the
other.

In reality, I wanted to wrench myself away. It wasn't his fault.
Even Frederick's fingers, which had rarely touched me quite as tenderly and
skillfully as these, had become clumsy irritants after my miscarriage. My
breasts had been so sore then that the lightest touch was torture. The raw
sensitivity had faded, finally, but they had never been filled with the old,
sweet yearning again... except for one moment at Fontainebleau.

My husband brought his head up and gazed at me in rapt silence.
Then he began to unfasten the remaining buttons. He slipped the nightgown down
over my shoulders, over my waist and hips and legs, and let it fall from his
hand to the floor at the bedside.

"Lie down," he said thickly, as if he'd had to force the
words out of his throat. His hands guided me backward. The weak, cold moonlight
puddled over the bed like watered-down milk. I lay there in the thin,
ungenerous pool.

"You're so beautiful," whispered my husband, looking
down at me. "You don't know how much I've wanted you." By means of
another soft sigh, I tried to convey in a ladylike fashion that I, too, was at
last plagued by the same fevers.

He slipped off his shoes and then his jacket. It fell to the floor
and covered my gown. He removed his tie; the strip of silk glided out of his
hand like a serpent and disappeared over the side of the bed.

He lay down beside me, with his body turned toward me and his head
propped up on his left hand. With his right hand, he lifted a loose strand of
my hair and twined it idly around his fingers.

"I wanted you the first time I saw you," he whispered. I
heard him swallow. This openness, this self-revelation on the part of my
reserved husband, who had for so long carefully hidden his desires, was painful
to me. Nothing burns a liar's eyes as cruelly as the clean light of truth.

I could feel my skin glowing with embarrassment; but I was sure it
could pass for the wanton heat he longed to ignite in me.

"I wanted to break every rule," he was saying. "I
couldn't believe that a stranger—that anyone—could make me feel that way. I
wanted to snatch you up and carry you off like a prize." He let the strand
of hair fall back to the pillow and began to trace my jawline with light
fingertips. "I couldn't think of anything but you, of what it would feel
like to have you... like this."

I reminded myself of what I must do.

"I wanted you, too," I whispered hesitantly, turning
toward my husband. It was truer than anything I had said to him for weeks,
months. I
bad
wanted him, for that one brief moment in the forest. Now I
could not even remember how it had felt.

"Did you?" he said with something between a soft little
laugh and a sigh. But then he grew silent and abstracted.

At last he said gently, "Fleur, don't ever be afraid or
ashamed to show me that you want me. There are no rules here, no boundaries. Do
you understand me?"

"Yes," I whispered bravely, but I couldn't keep my voice
from shaking a little.

He moved closer and seemed about to cover my lips with his mouth.
Quickly I moved my head. I lifted my hands and unfastened first the pearl stud
that held his collar shut and then the topmost button of his shirt, baring his
throat. I twined my arms around his neck and began to shower little kisses upon
that long, slender throat and upon his cheeks, his eyelids, his jaw, and his
earlobes. He closed his eyes and stretched his neck luxuriously the way a cat
will when it is being groomed by another's tongue.

His right knee, still clothed in fine black summer wool, moved up
slowly to insert itself between my thighs and drive them gently apart. I
yielded with a little sob of feigned urgency.

Instead of insisting upon taking my mouth, he now began to return
the little butterfly kisses I had given him. His right hand moved back to my
breast. Again his fingers began to stroke and press and pull. I twisted
sinuously and made the whimpering sounds of a creature in delicious torment.
His breath quickened; his touch grew rougher, more insistent.

I let out long shuddering groans and began to move my hips in
sharp, inviting spasms.

"Ah," came his low whisper of triumph, as if he had
hunted me down at last.

His left hand was tangled almost cruelly in my hair, like a
conqueror's.

His right hand slid downward from my breast, over my stomach, and
further still. His fingers knotted themselves in the soft mat of curls that
covered my groin and pulled at them gently.

I gave a little sob and increased the rhythm of my hips.

Now his fingertips found the tiny bud of flesh whose long-ago and
now unimaginable hungers had brought me finally to this, to the necessity of
simulating a forgotten ecstasy.

I could sense his excitement, how he was straining to keep it in
check.

He moved his finger still further, down to the gates he'd longed
to break since he first saw me. He began to slide his finger inside, as if he
reveled in taking possession of this most private part of myself.

It should have slipped in easily, but it didn't.

It hurt.

In my stupendous ignorance, I had supposed that masculine lust and
vanity would prevent my husband from comprehending the undisguisable message my
unreceptive flesh conveyed. It had taken Frederick months to acknowledge the
significance of that desert dryness.

But I'd been wrong.

With a sharp, almost angry intake of breath, my husband released
me and pulled away.

He got up from the bed.

Trying to suppress my anxiety and shame, I sat up and leaned over
to reach for my nightgown. My fingers found, not lace, but light wool. I came
up with his jacket in my hand and held it against me protectively.

I heard my husband give one hard little gasp of disbelieving
laughter as he pressed his forehead against the cool glass of the closed
window. I saw him bring his right hand up in a fist.

I knew the game was up.

An electric violence, just barely kept in leash, radiated from
him. I trembled, certain that he was about to smash the windowpane and would
then turn upon me clutching a long shard of glass in his bloodied hand.

I couldn't speak or cry out. I could only wait.

But he merely let his fist fall slowly against the glass and then
stood there for a long, long time with his back to me.

He seemed to be fighting for control.

At last he turned around. His face was in shadow.

"Well," I heard him say in a voice that he managed to
keep entirely level, "it seems we have some things to talk about."

I clutched his jacket against me with one arm and pressed the
fingers of my other hand against my mouth. I really couldn't believe that he would
insist upon
discussing
a matter so delicate and so humiliating. I had
expected only an outburst of anger followed by hours or even days of silence.

He walked slowly toward me, but no longer with the effortless
grace that had once fascinated me. There was something tight and withholding in
the set of his shoulders and his back.

I felt sick with a vague dread.

He sat down on the edge of the bed and let out a long, tremulous
breath. His shoulders relaxed a little. I released my own breath slowly, almost
silently.

He lifted the fingertips of his right hand—it was open, palm up,
and harmless—to my chin and tipped my head up slightly so that I was forced to
meet his eyes.

I thought I saw something glistening on his cheek. The night was
warm; perhaps the effort of keeping such a harness on his anger had caused him
to perspire.

"Fleur," he said. And then again, "Fleur."

He made it sound beautiful and tragic.

"Was it always like this for you?" he whispered
haltingly. "I mean... with... Frederick, too?"

I hesitated for only an instant. I really didn't want to sink any
further into the quagmire of lies, but I had to answer quickly. Otherwise my
reply would seem calculated. If I told him the truth, that it
bad
been
that way at the end of our marriage but not at the beginning, I feared that he
might keep probing until he found out about the baby.... I couldn't have
withstood that, to reopen that wound which had never really healed, to expose
all my pain to him.

So instead I laid the capstone on my prison of lies.

"Yes," I said, and bowed my head.

"Well," he said again, this time with a rather strained
little laugh, as if he were trying to leaven all the wretchedness that filled
the room like a miasma, "we have quite a problem here, haven't we?"

"It doesn't have to be a problem," I whispered
desperately. "It wasn't a problem for Frederick. He never let it
interfere. We... managed."

"But I'm not Frederick," he said.

I swallowed painfully. If only he were. Frederick would never have
subjected me to this gentle, merciless inquisition.

"Is that all you want, Fleur?" he asked after another
long silence. "To... manage, as you put it?"

"What else is there to do?"

He laughed that low, exhausted little laugh again.

"I don't know," he said. "This is... ah... outside
the realm of my experience." He made it sound almost like a joke, as if he
were trying to nudge my spirits up a little. "No wonder you seemed a
bit... skittish," he remarked. "Why didn't you say anything? I knew
something was wrong back there in Paris. But I thought you needed time to get
accustomed to me. I never dreamed it was more than that."

"I ought to have told you," I said after another
excruciatingly long silence.

"Yes," he said. "You should have. If I had known
how you felt about... these things, I would have... approached you
differently."

"Or not at all," I said with a rather hard laugh as I
slid my eyes away.

In an instant his hands were on my shoulders. He held me tightly.

"Look at me, Fleur," he said. So I did.

"Don't ever think that," he said. "Do you think
knowing this would have made me care for you less?"

Then, with a sudden air of self-consciousness, as if he feared his
touch was unpleasant to me, he released me.

"I love you," he said. "And I love you for trying
to please me tonight. It was a mistake, and I wish you hadn't done it, but I
love you for it anyway....
I
don't know what to do, Fleur. I wish I
could
make
you want me the way that I want you. But I'll take your love
in whatever ways you
can
give it. All I insist upon is that
whatever
happens
between us be real. Do you understand what I'm asking of you?"

"Yes, I think so," I whispered. My eyes stung.

For a second I thought he was going to put his arms around me, but
he seemed to think better of it.

"Will you do that for me?" he pressed softly.

"Oh yes!" I said, only because I knew I had no choice. I
could hardly turn to him now and tell him that everything was a lie.

"I don't think it will be easy, Fleur," he said. He
sounded exhausted now. "We'll have to feel our way. It won't be
painless."

"I know."

I was used to pain; it was beginning to feel like an old friend. I
could hardly imagine life without it now.

But even so, his next words ripped away one of my few remaining
consolations, that little sense of comfort I had gained from falling asleep in
his arms.

"I don't want to sleep here with you tonight," he said
reluctantly, as if he hated the possibility that his words might wound me.
"It's not that I don't love and want you. I do. But I don't want to lie
here beside you tonight, wanting you as I do, and knowing that it's not the
same for you. I'd rather go on sleeping apart, at least for a time.... You can
always come to me, you know, if you feel like..." He let the sentence
trail off.

"Like what?" I whispered numbly.

"If you ever feel like... making love. I'll never turn you
away. No matter what happens, I'll wait for you. We can go as slowly as you need
to."

He was so generous, so patient. I felt overwhelmed and so unworthy
that I was almost in tears. I guess he could tell, because he tried to cheer me
up again.

"After all," he said with a forced little laugh,
"we have the rest of our lives."

But that night he slept on the sofa in the sitting room.