Page 66 of The Beloved Escapade

I begin again this morning. The same tools laid out in the same order. Nothing is the same

From the personal journal of Matteo di Bianchi

* * *

On their last afternoon, Uncle Henry rowed her out to see the seals, and there were no seals, and they both knew there were never going to be any.

The cove let them out through the cleft into a long gold light. He pulled along under the white cliffs with the ease of decades at the oars. Lucy sat in the stern with her shawl about her and watched the island slide by: its ledges, gulls, and turf. She printed every piece of it on herself. Tomorrow, it would be a pale shape on the horizon. The day after, a secret.

When they were well out and the water held them privately, he feathered the oars and let the boat ride.

“Grey House,” he said. “You treat it like something you are keeping for me. I will not have it.”

“Uncle—”

“Spend the money. Live in the house. Warm the rooms. Buy what you want. And then go. See the places. That is what it is for.”

He glanced at her, softer now.

“And you will not go alone. You have found a man who carries the road in him. Take him with you. You have my blessing, Lucy-bird. All of it. Every mile.”

Lucy smiled across the boat. The smile cost her, but it held.

“Every mile, Uncle.”

“Send word through Matthew. Disguised as orders for statuary.”

He took up the oars and rowed her home under the white cliffs, talking of which passes were open in June. She listened, and laughed, and tried not to think about Lorenzo’s silence, only to enjoy her final afternoon with her beloved uncle.

She went to Lorenzo that night.

The house had gone down into its sleep, board by board. She lay in her bed, listening to it settle and to the sound of the sea. Her uncle’s blessing rang on in her, every mile, and she could not lie there under it another hour, being blessed and unbelieving in the dark. So she rose, and did not let herself think, and went barefoot down the passage with her heart loud, and scratched at his door.

He opened it at once. He had not been asleep either. He was in his shirtsleeves with the collar open and his hair wrecked from his hands, the candle behind him. At the sight of her, his face did what it had not done in days. It opened.

“Lucia—”

She stepped in past him and turned, and reached up, and kissed him.

She was asking. She knew what she was asking, even as her hands slid up over his chest and felt his heart going hard under her palms, even as she came up on her toes into him. Not this, not only this. She was asking, Say you want me. Not the venture, not the partner, not the fortune. Me, in a room, with nothing at the end but myself.

She could not ask it in words. The words had been sitting locked in her chest for nearly a week. So she asked it in the only other language they had, with her mouth and her hands and the whole of her offered up, seeking reassurance the way another woman might seek pleasure, and hoping he could not tell the difference.

For a moment, he went rigid under her hands. She felt the withholding begin. Her heart began to go down.

And then it broke in him, whatever it was, dam or vow or grief, and his arms came around her, and he answered.

Lawks, how he answered. He kissed her the way the tide came up the Severn, everything at once, her name and Italian and her name wrapped inside the Italian. The candle went somewhere. The bed found the backs of her knees. Lucy went down into the pillows with the weight and heat of him following her, and thought, dizzy, singing, There you are, there you are, I have found you.

His hands were already at the ties of her wrapper. He worked them loose with careful, shaking fingers, then slid the garment off her shoulders. The cool air of the room touched her bare arms. He pushed the fabric down farther, past her elbows, until it pooled at her waist. His palms followed, grazing the soft skin of her upper arms, then the outsides of her breasts through the thin night rail. She felt the heat of his hands even through the linen.

He found the ribbon at her throat next. One slow pull and the night rail loosened. He eased it down, baring one shoulder, then the other. The fabric caught for a moment on the swell of her breasts before he drew it lower.

Cool air and his warm breath moved over her newly uncovered skin. He made a low sound in his throat when her breasts were bare to him. His mouth followed his eyes … first the hollow of her throat, then the slope of one breast, then the other. He kissed the soft underside, the curve, the tight peak of her pleading nipple, lingering until she arched into him and her fingers tightened in his hair.

She reached for his shirt with unsteady hands. He helped her, gathering the linen and drawing it up and over his head in one motion. The sudden expanse of his bare chest and wide shoulders filled her vision. She set both palms flat against him, feeling the heat of his skin, the hard muscle beneath, the quick rise and fall of his breathing. Her hands moved over him without hurry. Across his chest, down the planes of his stomach, up again to the broad slope of his shoulders. He shivered under her touch.

He finished with her night rail, drawing the rest of it down over her hips and legs until she lay bare beneath him. His shirt was already gone. He kept his breeches on. The weight of him settled over her, warm and solid, the cloth of his breeches rough against her bare thighs. His mouth returned to her throat, her collarbone, the sensitive place just below her ear. One of his hands traced the line of her side, from the curve of her breast to the dip of her waist to the flare of her hip, learning her again as though the shape of her were a map he had nearly forgotten and was grateful to reread.