It was true: he was more damp with sweat now than he’d been on the street.
Tessa peered appraisingly at his choker, the badge of his Priesthood.She slid the tip of her thumb beneath one of the folds. “Will you show me…?”
Joseph reached under the layers of silk and withdrew the knot. Tessa undid it with something like glee, the edge of her lower lip caught between her teeth. She tossed one end of the neckerchief over his shoulder, then the other, tugging and unlooping till he was free of it. Finally, she draped his choker over her corset on the prie-Dieu. Their shed clothing, already in union.
She helped him shrug off his coat and threw that over the back of her méridienne, on top of her wrapper. Tessa dispatched his waistcoat nearly as quickly. But when she reached for his braces, he managed to stop her, capturing her hands in his. “That’s enough.”
She frowned, her eyes sliding down the length of his body. “Your boots, though—you’ll want to remove those.” She kicked off her slippers and directed him to sit on her méridienne. She knelt before him and bent her myrrh-brown head to the task.
While she popped open each button, he focused his gaze on her shimmering hair, so that he would not stare inside her gaping chemise. As she slid off the second short boot, Joseph stammered: “Would you— Would you let down your hair?”
Tessa smiled up at him and inched closer. He’d splayed his legs a bit, to give her access to the rows of buttons on the inside of his boots; now, Tessa inserted herself between his knees before he could stop her. Head bowed, she took one of his startled hands and placed it beneath her halo of braids. “The first pin is right…here.” She helped him extract it, and the long bronze plait began to unravel.
After seven and a half years of waiting, finally his fingers were plunging into those silken strands, unfurling each plait like a banner—so enraptured that she was squeezing his knee before he’d realized her hand was there. She’d braced her other hand against the edge of the méridienne, so her arm was grazing his other leg. His trousers were broadcloth; but never had they seemed so thin. With every dropped hairpin, he seemed to release more of her perfume; he was drowning in her scent and her softness and he never wanted to come up for air.
Tessa’s own nose brushed his shirt. “I love the way you smell: of myrrh…”
“You smell of gardenias.” Purity and ecstasy.
She tilted her face to him now, her bronze hair spilling over her shoulders. “Do you like it?”
“Very much.” What he liked—what he adored—was the scent of gardenias mingled withher: perspiration and something else he could not even name. He longed to taste her. Only his fingers lapped the pomegranate blush of her cheek; only his thumb licked at the corner of her luscious mouth. But she was more masterpiece than meal. His hand plunged down the soft column of her neck, across the exquisite workmanship of her collarbone, all the way to that bare alabaster shoulder.
And then he saw his hand against her skin, how it was several shades darker. He wore gloves so often; he could not blame that darkness on the sun.
“What are you thinking?” Tessa whispered.
“It would be different, wouldn’t it, if I looked more like my Haitian grandmother? If I were the color of pitch and my features were African?”
She squeezed his knee again. “I would love you if you weregreen.”
He looked behind her, to her wall mirror, which reflected only his curly head. “But not if I were black.” Why did it even matter to him, when his skinwasn’tblack? When she shouldn’t love him in the first place? Yet it mattered more than anything in the world.
“I want to say it wouldn’t make any difference at all. But I cannot truly answer that question.” Tessa stroked her thumb beneath his lower lip. “I have grown very, very fond of your person, exactly as it is.”
Joseph did not smile back.
Tessa knew he wasn’t satisfied. She rested her hand on his upper thigh and closed her eyes. “I shall try to imagine it. When I first came to Charleston, everything here was so new and strange, frightening even—the negroes most of all. But the longer I know them, the more beautiful they become to me.Thatis the truth.” Sheopened her eyes again—shining like hot myrrh in the lamplight. “I think it only would have taken me a little longer to fall in love with you.” She twined her fingers into the tight curls at his brow. “You are blackandbeautiful, my beloved.”
This time, he smiled back. She’d changed the verse; originally, it was:I am blackbutbeautiful. He finally understood the importance of “and.” He no longer felt fractured. He felt whole and truly colored for the first time in his life. He felt newly baptized, blessed to the bottom of his soul, because this woman loved him. “You’ve read the Canticles.”
“They are quite…inspirational.” Tessa caught her lower lip between her teeth again. “Now, will you come to bed, my love?”
Whatexactlydid she mean by that?
She took his hand in hers and sprang to her feet, lithe and agile as a doe. Somehow, they managed not to stumble over their shoes as she towed him across the bedroom—though her petticoats hindered him temporarily, making Tessa giggle and Joseph blush.
When she reached the end of the bed, Tessa released him, only to draw up the skirt of her chemise and climb onto the counterpane. Joseph tried not to stare at her legs, sheathed only in translucent stockings, one of them exposed all the way to her knee. He tried even harder not to watch how her breasts moved beneath her chemise as she slid backwards on the bed and then lounged on her elbow against one of the large pillows.
Tessa held out her hand to him. “Come here.”
What on Earth did she expect from him? Did she really believe seeing her like this would do nothing to him, that they could cuddle chastely like children? His only consolation was this: his member remained in a state of shock so profound that it seemed to be cowering, terrified rather than elated by its luck.
He chose to lie down on the far side of the bed, where he could gaze at her without touching her. Tessa did not approach him, but she did turn toward him. Her head on the pillow, she tucked her hands under her neck, so that her bent arms blocked her breasts, which was a mercy. But most of her hair had ended up eitherbeneath her or behind her. Only a few precious tendrils lay between them on the counterpane.
Tessa saw him looking, and she knew him as well as he knew himself. She pulled the gold-brown tresses from beneath her and flung them above her head. Her hair settled on the pillows like the rays of a monstrance. “Better?”
“Yes,” he laughed. “Even better.”
