Back In The Marriage Bed

Without saying anything else she moved back into the protection of his body, only realising that she had been holding her breath a little nervously when his arm finally rose and held her.

They had reached the top of the stairs and were standing in the doorway to the room before he said the words that made her heart turn somersaults of joy inside her body.

‘I dream of you too.’

He dreamed of her. She wasn’t alone in her belief…her recognition. Flooded with joy, she turned to him, holding his arm with her hand as she demanded, ‘You recognised me, then, the other night…in the restaurant?’

The abrupt, almost reluctant inclination of his head he gave in assent made her ache with female protectiveness. He felt embarrassed, almost afraid to reveal his vulnerability to her. Oh, how much she loved him. How wonderful it was that they had found one another.

‘It’s going to be so good,’ she told him tenderly. ‘We are going to be so good…’

Inside the room everything was just as she had dreamed. The large windows with the view of the drop down to the river and the fields and hills on the other side of it. The floor, wooden, polished, bare. The walls, bare too; the windows with their filmy ethereal curtaining. The bed…

Annie shivered as she saw it, unable to take her gaze off it as her eyes widened and focused unblinkingly on the oh, so familiar iron bedstead. Unlike hers, this, she knew immediately, was original. Very slowly and gently she reached out and touched the frame at the foot of the bed. The metal felt warm to her touch, warm and worn slightly with age. The bed was bigger than hers, much bigger, and piled high with creamy white traditional linen bedding. As she reached down and smoothed the edge of one of the covers she could almost smell the scent of lavender being released by her touch.

‘This bed…’ she began, dry-mouthed.

‘It’s a marriage bed,’ he told her quickly, and she could almost taste the bitterness in his voice. But before she could question it, turning to him, her eyes quickening with surprise, he was reaching for her, the fierceness, the immediacy of his desire surprising her. She had expected passion, intensity, and even male possessiveness, but this fierce, heated nowness he was exhibiting, this silent, hungry concentrated way in which he was reaching for her, holding her…