"The fireplace is going," he says.
I glance toward the east parlour. The fire, the original brick surround, the wingbacks in deep green, the room warm and amber and exactly what I drew in my notebook the first week I arrived. I look back at him.
"Has been since Tuesday," he says. Carefully neutral.
I take the lapel of his shirt in one hand. "Tuesday."
"The flue needed—"
"Nash."
"Yes."
"Thank you," I say. "For the fireplace. And the tile. And the weatherstripping. All of it."
Something in his face shifts. Settles. "You're not angry."
"I was going to be," I say. "And then I walked into the east parlour and saw the fire going and thought about Ruth and decided I'd rather just be grateful."
He reaches out and tucks a loose piece of hair back from my face, his thumb at my cheekbone, and leaves his hand there.
Behind us a small focused weight lands on both our feet simultaneously. We look down. Rivet has abandoned her window seat, crossed the room, and planted herself squarely across both our feet with the satisfaction of a dog completing a long-running project.
"She left her post," Nash says.
"She's been working toward this for months," I say. "She deserves a moment."
He looks down at her. Then at me. Then he takes the glass out of my hand, sets both glasses on the hall table, and says, low enough that only I can hear it: "Show me the owner's suite."
"Top of the stairs," I say.
"Show me anyway."
I take his hand and show him.
The owner's suite is the most beautiful room in the house. I built it that way on purpose — the original plaster rose, the iron bed from Ruth's grandmother's era made up in white linen, the dressing table with the triptych mirror, the lamplight doing something particular to the plasterwork that I always knew it would.
I unclip the pearl earrings and set them on the dresser and look at him in the mirror.
He crosses the room and finds the first pin in my hair without being asked, sets it on the dresser, finds the next. I watch him in the mirror doing it — this large, careful man taking my hair down by degrees in the lamplight — and my chest does something I stopped pretending to have a category for weeks ago.
When the last pin is down he puts his mouth to the back of my neck.
I reach back and get my hand in his hair and pull and he makes a sound against my skin that I feel in my knees. His hands find the fastenings of the dress — patient, unhurried, undoing each one — and the fabric opens and falls and he turns me around and looks at me in the lamplight.
He looks at me the way he looked at this house the very first night. Like he can see exactly what it was always supposed to be.
"Nash," I say.
"I know," he says. "Come here."
I pull him toward the bed and he comes down over me and I get my hands in his shirt and pull it open and put my mouth to his chest and work my way down — his stomach, the trail of dark hair below his navel, the muscles tensing under my mouth. His breath goes sharp when I get to his belt. I undo it withoutbreaking eye contact and take him out and wrap my hand around him — thick and hard and already wanting — and watch his head drop back against the pillow.
"Maple." Wrecked. Like my name is the only word he has left.
I put my mouth on him and his hand fists in my hair and he says "Christ" and then just breathes, shallow and unsteady, while I take my time because he takes his time with everything and I have learned from the best. I work him slow and thorough until his hips are moving and his grip in my hair has gone tight and he's saying my name like a warning.
"Come here," he says, pulling me up. "Right now. Come here."
