Page 37 of Lord of the Darkness

Ariana laughed, and did just that, sure now that everything would be all right.

***

It was the end of the first week of February, and Benedict had been past the fever for three days now. Days in which his alarming weakness had begun to recede, in which movement had begun to feel mostly normal, although his shoulder ached continuously, but he didn’t care. That pain told him he was alive. Alive, and with a wife who declared that she loved him, as he loved her.

James had dropped into a chair at his bedside that first day after the fever broke, and warned him that, if he wished the good use of his arm for the rest of his life, he would have to move it, to cause himself pain, by steady and careful strengthening exercises.

Benedict had asked him where this wisdom came from, not liking the idea, and James had fixed him with that bright green gaze and simply replied ‘from the battlefield, where if you couldn’t move, you’d die’.

That was a sobering enough comment to make Benedict comply with the suggested exercises, despite the pain.

Now, apart from the pain of those exercises, he suffered another pain entirely – the pain of desire thwarted, not by Ariana’s unwillingness, but by his own need to heal. She wanted to explore all that they had not yet done, just as much as he did – but she refused to risk tearing his wound open again. At least another week, she had demanded, and he had kissed her hard, but agreed to that demand.

Now, as he sat beside her in their parlour, both of them writing letters, he far more carefully than she as his shoulder complained at every small movement, an idea came to him.

That idea arrived because, in answering a letter from his man of business with respect to one of his farms, he had consulted the almanac – and realised that, in barely a week, it would be Saint Valentine’s Day.

He closed the almanac, sanded the letter, and carefully put aside the small lap desk.

***

Ariana set aside her letter to Helena, in which she was laying out all that had happened, and how happy she was – all but for the fact of Benedict’s injury - and turned to him. He met her eyes and she smiled at what he saw there.

Carefully, he leant to kiss her, a kiss full of love, a kiss which explored the sensation of her lips, and spoke perhaps more than any words he had ever said.

“Let’s do it again,” Benedict said when they finally broke apart.

“Do what?”

“Let’s get married again – well, I know that’s impossible, but at least let’s ask the Vicar if he will guide us to say our vows to each other again, before God. I want us to say our vows in the knowledge that we’re both willingly and joyfully assenting. And then to start our marriage again from that moment and try to make a better effort of it.”

Ariana thought about the idea, and liked it. A broad smile curved her lips.

“Yes, let’s do that, please.”

“Ariana,” he asked, searching her face with his sad eyes, “will you marry me?”

“Yes, of course.”

“I’ll speak to the Vicar tomorrow, then.”

***

She took his hand in hers. He kissed her again and she shut her eyes tight, allowing the feel of it to wash over her. She could feel herself getting drunk on his love as on the best wine. She felt like they were getting away with something, like this was too good to be allowed and someone would be along shortly to make them stop.

Kissing each of his knuckles in rapid succession, she said, “I would marry you every day if I could.”

“I think twice is enough.”

Benedict smiled, and they went on kissing while dusk fell, and the shadows of evening deepened outside.

When they slept that night, they slept in each other’s arms, and Ariana wished, with all her heart, that they might do more – but she had demanded that he wait another week, until he was better healed. The night brought dreams – strange, heated dreams, from which she woke in a light sweat, with her body aching in odd ways, pleasant ways.

She stretched, wondering where Benedict was, for she was alone in the bed. Languid, she slipped back into sleep, until Peggy came to wake her some time later.

“His Grace has been into the village and back – he requests that you join him in the breakfast room.”

“He’s been to the village?”