“You have yet to ask your wife for her opinion.”
“Do not be kind to me, Edith,” he said, continuing to show me his back, his head now hanging under his hands. “I have watched you be kind and gracious and amiable with everyone. I beg you not to treatmelike everyone. I entreat you to be true withme. Do not spare me because of your good nature. Your charm is what made me think I could never have a hope of you.”
“I do not understand what you—”
He spoke over me in a rush. “Why would I infer that I stood a chance due to your kindnesses? You are kind to everyone. You are patient with everyone.”
I covered my mouth that now smiled. I did not want him to think I laughed at his earnest expense. And so I said, “Why would I assume I stood a chance due to your honor? You are dutiful and upright with all you encounter. Husband, come back—”
Almost to himself, he said, “Must I blunder in every way of measuring?” He hesitated and then continued, still in his measured manner, but his words were bitter. “I have yet to behold your breasts, the idea of them having tormented me since Nyossa and the moment I, at last, have you in my bed, I rutted into you without undressing you and looking at you and touching you. I can only guess at the softness of your belly, for I did not kiss it first. I do not know the exact shape of your hips, only how they felt against mine. I have never fully seen your tattoo without some part of your dress covering the handiwork. Even in that paler green you wore in summer that I did not permit myself to look at wholly or for very long. The strap of it covers the lily that runs up onto your shoulder. I have longed to see you and I did not take the time to look. You are my wife and I treated you like paid for company.”
As he spoke, lost in his own indictment, I undressed. I let the wet cloth fall from my hand. I undid the laces on my boots, removing them and my socks. I loosened the ties on my dress and stays, lifting them over my head. I stood in my shift and peeled it off as well. Where they fell, I did not see.
He did not hear me.
I approached him, bare and shivering and wrapped my arms around him from behind as he spoke his last words. “Sweetheart,” I said into the top of his spine, “I would rather be rutted by you than made love to by the most skilled of seducers. For it is not seduction I seek. I seek you. Do you not see that?”
He was as stone in my arms. But I had stone magic.
“Turn around,” I said.
His hands slid down to the back of his neck and then fell loosely to his sides, unresponsive to my touch, but he did heed me and turned in my arms, eyes closed.
“Open,” I whispered, bringing my hands down to hold his.
He swallowed and he did. In the retiring sun’s light that streamed in from the side of the skins, he took me in, eyes unable to stop on one part of me, continuing to search. He looked upon my full breasts, something my mother and ultimately, my first husband had despised, but every lover after had praised. He saw the subtle curve of my belly, the fat starting to gather under my navel with age. He took in the plump flare of my hips and the thatch of hair between my thighs. My legs had always been, not quite sturdy, but strong and stronger yet from walking everywhere in Eccleston. I had once wished my feet were smaller, but now I was grateful only to have feet that took me places, that allowed me to stand here with him. He inspected the intricacies of my tattoos from shoulder to fingers. And he caught his breath. His voice was husky when he spoke. “Why would I ever call you ‘beautiful’ when I can call you Edith? Your name is interchangeable to that word’s meaning. In it, the scope of everything I wish to look at in this world is outlined.”
I felt my eyes sting with tears, but I did not let them fall. Instead, I said, “Come to bed, husband. Come take your time with me, as you say.”
85. Edith
In the morning, he woke me but not to seduce, although his hardness pressed into me from behind, where he lay alongside me. His right hand was on my belly and his left propped up his head just over mine. Into my right ear, he spoke. He asked me if I knew my time of birth. I told him the third moon of winter, but by the Tintarian calendar I did not know, as Perpatane had a longer winter. We surmised it to be right around The Thawing. He told me his time of birth was just before that. He asked what age I would be. I said it would be my thirty-ninth winter. He said this would be his forty-fourth. I did not dwell on how that was the time my bargain with my goddess came to an end.
I asked him how he had gotten us wedding rings in such a short time. He told me Anwyn had forged them when he made my hagstone’s chain, but Alric had kept them in his wooden chest, unsure if he should present them.
“You have had these for some time?” I asked into the dark, bringing my right hand under the covers to his, interlocking my fingers with his over my belly.
“When I returned from Sealmouth, I had resolved to try and be a good husband.”
“And you were. You have been.”
He paused. “I have strived to that aim. I will achieve it one day.”
I turned to him so that our bodies mirrored each other as much as they could, my round softness with his lean hardness. I wrapped my left toes around his right anklebone. I could not see his face in the dark, but I found it and kissed him. “You are the finest husband,” I said, unguardedly. I kissed him again. “And I love my ring,” I whispered. My mouth sought his a third time.
“Do not start something with me this morning, wife,” he said, but his right hand parted my legs and slid between them. He did not enter me but his forefinger coaxed pleasure from the knot of flesh there, his calluses instructive and intuitive.
When I cried out against his mouth and reached for him, he stopped my hand. “I am yet upset with myself. Though our second time was what I wanted for us, you must make me suffer. Make my prick weep for the thought of you and your little sex all day.”
We resumed our speech of everyday things. I asked him to tell me more about his family, if I would meet them another time, with less holiday-making and more conversation. I asked him to list all eight of his nephews for me twice, trying to remember all their A names as Aines and Artho had kept with their parents’ tradition. He asked me which book we would read next. He asked why I liked lavender, why I chose a ranunculus to tattoo on my hand, how I had become a scribe and so on.
“Why didn’t you wake me last night?” I complained.
“It was early in the morning. But I did need to know you wore my ring and I was able to slip it on your hand while you still slept. I just did not wish to wake you or the cat for that matter.”
“You have another woman in your rooms now. I think I will name her Tabitha. Unoriginal but it fits her. She prefers our room to most. She must have slept in the dormitory last night.”
“She is welcome as long as she does not prevent my touching of you.”
