“Tell me about your mother,” she said.
Ah, it was starting again, was it? The probing at each other, the unmasking, the getting to know each other at ever-increasing depths. It was something that he and Caroline had not done. He was not sure he wanted to do it with Abby. Except that she wasn’t giving him much choice. And he seemed unable to resist. And it must continue if theirs was to be a real marriage with a chance of lasting contentment.
He felt a lurching of sudden longing for his mother, who had died far too young, exhausted no doubt by the hardness of a cruel life. He sighed.
“If I had to describe her with one adjective,” he said, “it would beproud. We lived in a house unworthy of the name. It was really fit for nothing but to be pulled down. She kept it spotlessly clean and tidy. She keptmeclean and dressedme in clean clothes every day even when they were so patched that there were patches upon patches. She forced me to sit silent and idle in a corner for a whole hour at a time whenever I retaliated against those children who called me names by callingthemnames with language that belonged in the gutter. She insisted whenever I showed signs of slouching along the street, hoping not to be noticed, that I straighten my shoulders and hold my chin high. She always did the same herself. No one walked with a more regal posture than my mother, even when she was carrying a heavy basket of laundry.”
“What did she look like?” she asked.
“It seems strange,” he said, “but I do not believe children really notice how their parentslook.Children do not see their parents aspeople, but only as mother and father. At least, I suppose that applies to fathers too. She was thin rather than slim. She was pale with faded fair hair. But when I bring her face to mind, I can see that she must once have been pretty. Perhapsverypretty.”
She smiled and raised one hand to run her fingers lightly along his facial scar.
“I was incensed when she acquired afriendjust before I left,” he said. “I had looked forward to the day when I could be the man of the house and enable her to take in less washing and have a few brief spells each day simply to put her feet up. One of my most enduring dreams was that I would come home one day having spent some of my earnings on a new dress and new shoes for her and see the look of surprise and delight on her face when she saw them.” He sighed, then continued. “He was a groom at the big house a few miles away, that friend, and he bought her a dress and a bonnet one day while I was at the village tavern trying for at least the dozenth time to persuade the publican to hireme to muck out the stables. I wanted to kill that groom. I wanted to rage at the pleased look on my mother’s face. I hope he continued to look after her when I was gone. I hope she had a few happy years before she died. I wrote to her a few times from India. I even sent her money. But she could not write back. She could neither read nor write.”
“You loved her,” Abby said.
“We did not deal in such emotions,” he said. “The poor do not, you know. They cannot afford love.”
“Oh, Gil,” she said, “you cannot possibly believe that. Even with the few details you have given me, I can tell that your mother loved you. And it is perfectly obvious you loved her.”
“I do not know anything about love,” he said. He could not imagine his mother ever using the word. He was quite sure she never had while he lived with her.
“Of course you do,” she told him. “You love Katy.”
He closed his eyes and did not say anything for a while. Truth to tell, he was fighting a soreness in his throat and up behind his nose. It would be shameful indeed if he allowed it to reach his eyes.
“I have not seen her since she was a baby,” he said at last. “I do not even know what she looks like now or what her voice sounds like. I do not even know how much she can talk. Whendoesan infant learn to speak? She would not know me. It is possible she does not even know of my existence. She would probably be frightened of me if she saw me, especially if I tried to take her from the only home she knows.”
“Love will not always cause you pain,” she said. “And even when it does, it is better than the alternative. Being without love would be only one remove from despair. I cannot imagine anything worse.”
Was she asking him to loveher? Was she hinting thatshe might lovehim? But it was only a word, was it not? He would not be able to define it if his life depended upon it.
“You love Beauty,” she said. “And she loves you.”
“Old softie of a dog,” he said, and she laughed. He loved her laughter. There. He had used the word in his head. Helovedher laughter.
But he wanted their relationship to stay like this. Pleasant—except when they quarreled. At this moment it was very pleasant, without any of the wild passions, almost all of them dark, that had swirled through and about his first marriage.
He found her mouth and kissed her, and then prolonged the kiss because she was warm and soft and inviting. He pressed his tongue inside, and she sucked on it before he curled the tip and stroked the roof of her mouth until she made a low sound deep in her throat.
“Come across me,” he said. When she looked inquiringly at him, he moved his hands to grasp her by the hips and lift her over him until she was straddling his body. Her knees were on either side of his hips, her hands spread over his chest, and her hair was falling forward in a tangled cascade over her shoulders.
She had a body that delighted him—flat stomach and ribs, breasts just large enough to fit into his hands, rose-tipped nipples that hardened easily against the light stroking of his thumbs. Her hips were shapely though not large. Large enough, though, he thought, to allow for the easy passage of a child. Her legs were slim and long. And her skin in the candlelight was the color of alabaster and as smooth as the finest silk.
He guided her over him and drew her down onto his erection. Her eyes closed and she clenched inner muscles about him, and it was exquisite pleasure-pain.
“Ride,” he said.
Her eyes flew open and came to his. Then they drifted closed again and she rode. He lay still for a long time, reveling in the feel and sight of her, his hands and forearms along the outsides of her bent legs. His body urged him to grasp her hips, to drive up into her, to force a climax and release and relaxation. His mind, that hornet’s nest of churning emotions for the past several hours, commanded him to be still, to allow himself to be... loved. Orenjoyed. That would be a better word. For there was no doubt that she was enjoying what she did.
And then her eyes came open again, looking very blue in the guttering light of the almost-spent candles, and her hands slid up to his shoulders, and her head bent closer to his.
“Gil,” she whispered, and he obeyed instinct and grasped her hips and took them swiftly and together to the place for which they strove.
The breath shuddered audibly out of her when finally they were still and the tension had gone, and he brought her down to lie full on him, her legs relaxed on either side of his own, her head turned face in against his shoulder. With one foot he nudged up the bedcovers until he could grasp them with one hand and pull them higher.
“Gil,” she murmured again.
