“I suppose it was something that made me think that you could have been with him,” I said.
“I can stop enjoying it,” she said, with a wry smile. “I can put you off of it and tell you to leave me be and that I am far too tired.”
“No,” I said, scooting down in the bed and lying down on the pillow to look at her. “Obviously, not. I should be counting myself lucky to have you, not casting aspersions on you.”
She did not say anything.
“I suppose you have not been wanted often in your life,” I said.
“No one has ever wanted me the way you want me,” she said in a small voice.
“Agreed,” I said, cupping her cheek with one of my hands. “I like it, too.”
She met my gaze.
I kissed her, a slow, sweet, and thorough kiss.
She squirmed in close to me, pressing her bare skin all along the length of me, from my chest to my shins. I wrapped my arms around her, holding her tightly against me.
Another kiss, this one just as thorough.
She sighed into my mouth.
I toyed with the waves of her hair.
The kiss ended.
I did not let go of her.
“Is it enough?” she murmured.
“What do you mean?”
“The wanting,” she said. “As you said last night—this morning, I suppose—before we came to bed—we have neither of us trusted the other.”
I toyed with her hair and looked into her eyes. “I do not know, my Elizabeth, I do not.”
“What is want without trust?” she said. “It seems changeable, like the storm winds. Must we not learn to trust each other somehow if we mean to continue?”
“We must,” I said. “Yes, we must indeed.”
“How do we do that?”
I thought about it.
She kissed my chin. She giggled and said I needed to be shaved, and she ran her fingers over the hair was that coming in.
“Oh, do I need to be shaved?” I said, rubbing my face against her shoulder.
She shoved at me, giggling wildly, and I rolled us both over and pinned her down and kissed her again and…
At any rate, there was little more serious talk after that.
Later, after I had been shaved and dressed and washed my face, I came down to the breakfast parlor, where Elizabeth was sorting through a stack of letters.
“What are those?” I said.
“Invitations,” she said. “To balls, to dinners.” She lifted one. “To Vauxhall with the Petersons.”
