QUESTIONS IN THE SILENCE
The morning sunshine shone into the parlor. Arabella walked in and sat down slowly on the bench, feeling a wistful ache inside her.
The house was so quiet and empty without Richard in it. When he wasn't there, she noticed the paucity of the place, the shabbiness. It seemed empty, vaguely dirty, neglected.
She leaned back on the carved wood back of the seat, looked out of the window and felt a strange nothingness in her heart.
I am here all alone: no family, no kin. None who even speak my language. And no Richard.
He was so strange that morning at breakfast. She smiled shyly, recalling his ardent lovemaking. However, since he left her bed, he'd grown distant.
He must be wondering what he did this for, she thought sadly. I am a Scotswoman, and a Jacobite. He is a world apart from me.
Even the little things, like the way they ate their porridge! There were so many tiny differences between them. He must regret that he had wed someone who had no real means of understanding him. She sighed.
Why else was he being so distant?
“I should do something,” she mused. She looked around. What was there she could do here? There was nothing to embroider with, and she only had a quill pen she'd discovered in Richard's chamber to sketch with. She couldn't cook, for the steadfast Bromley wouldn't allow that. She also had no inclination to sing, even if she'd been ready to do it without any musical accompaniment.
She paused, considering. Then she had an idea.
It was so much better, she reflected, tying her hair back and reaching into her sleeve where she'd stowed the scraps of spare linen, than just sitting.
An hour or two later, she heard feet in the hallway.
“Hello?” she called out.
“Mistress?” Bromley's slender face appeared in the doorway. He stared.
“If you could find a bar of beeswax, Bromley?” Arabella asked from where she stood at the sideboard, scraps of linen to hand, “I'd like it.”
“Mistress, you shouldn't...please,” he sighed. “You'll have me skinned. Imagine if he saw!”
“He'd be pleased I was making myself useful,” Arabella said firmly, pausing to look up from the surface of the sideboard. “As I'm sure you'll notice, the place looks better for a bit of a scrub.”
Looking at her with sheer horror on his face, the manservant hurried off. He returned a few minutes later armed with a bar of beeswax and some flannel squares.
“Mistress, if you're going to be cleaning,” he said firmly, “at least let me help.”
“Very well, Bromley,” Arabella nodded briskly. “It'll go faster. However, be sure to leave in time to make the supper. I won't have Richard going hungry.”
“No, mistress.”
They cleaned together. When the parlor was done, they went upstairs to the study. When that was done, they went down to the dining room. It was while they were in there, Arabella scrubbing the table, the scent of beeswax filling her nostrils headily, Bromley at the sideboard, scrubbing viciously at it, that her memories flooded through her.
As if she was in the room, she could recall Francine and herself, standing with Mrs. Merrick while she set the big table in the solar. The memory of them was as small girls, perhaps nine and seven. She felt her heart ache with sorrow.
“Bromley?”
“Yes, mistress?”
“You wouldn't happen to know anything about the fortress, would you?”
“Fortress? Duncliffe, mistress?”
“Yes.”
He paused. “No, mistress,” he said after a momentary pause, frown creasing his brow. “Nothing.”
“Oh.”
Not sure why he'd paused, Arabella frowned, and then turned back to her work. If there was aught amiss, Richard would tell her. She was sure he would
How could he, though, when he has sworn an oath to serve his king?
That made things difficult. Very difficult.
“Bromley?”
“Yes?”
“Is Richard, well...is he a serious sort?”
“Serious?”
Arabella nodded, seeing a frown on his brow. “Yes. I mean, does he, well, have convictions. About his king and his country, and things like that?”
“If you mean is he a loyal soldier? Yes,” Bromley nodded. “Couldn't get a man who takes an oath of service more to heart.” He nodded. “And not just that, either...he'd die to help his comrades.”
“Oh,” Arabella said in a quiet tone. On the one hand, that was good news – a loyal, brave, solid person was exactly what she would have longed for in a husband. Now though?
Now, when it would set him against everyone she knew and loved, when her own family was on the other side of that loyalty? Now, it was not good.
“If you worry about his ways...he's a funny sort,” Bromley confided. “Quiet, but thoughtful. He says little and thinks lots. A difficult sort, mayhap, but a good sort. You can't go wrong with Lieutenant Osborne.”
“No,” Arabella said softly. “No, you can't.”
They finished the dining room around luncheon. As Bromley hurried off to the kitchen to put together something for the midday meal, Arabella went to the parlor.
A steadfast, loyal, brave man. She should be so happy. However, those good qualities were what was going to make her life hard. How could she have subverted the course of the life of so solid a fellow? A man who must hate complications?
“I have ruined his life.”
She sighed. It was ridiculous to think that way, she knew, when she had married him so recently and it was clear they still found so much joy in each other's company. Yet in a way that made it harder.
She had married him under difficult circumstances – would either of them ever truly know if they would have done otherwise, in different ones?
“Does it matter?” she asked firmly. “He was my choice.”
That she knew more than anything. She had chosen Richard herself. It meant everything to her. She wasn't going to let aught else deter her. She would simply focus on that.
A scuff of boots at the door set her looking up hopefully. It was only Bromley, however. She sighed.
“Luncheon is set,” he said. He looked worried and not unsympathetic, the corners of his big brown eyes creased with concern. “If you're ready for it?”
“Thank you,” she said.
They went to the scrupulously clean dining room together.
As she ate the pie Bromley had made, she found her thoughts wandering to Richard and then to Duncliffe and her sister and brother.
They must be worried sick, she thought, the luncheon sitting heavily on her stomach at the thought of that. They had no idea where she was! The last either of them had seen of her, she'd been being dragged away by some madman in a crowd.
She pushed back her chair and stood. She should leave! She was a fool to stay here! She should tell her family she was safe! It was so selfish not to. Why was she even staying here?
“Richard won't miss me if I go,” she told herself firmly. She walked through to the hallway, reaching for her coat. He didn't really care about her, she convinced herself as she strode into the parlor to find where she'd left her outdoor shoes. He was coerced to marry her by some sense of obligation, and he cared for her from a loyalty to rectitude. He wasn't really in love with her.
“I might as well just leave and spare him the trouble of finding out the mess he's made.”
She was about to stride out into the yard when she saw someone she recognized.
“Richard!” She stopped dead as her eyes took in his tall, handsome form, his gaunt face and those stunning eyes.
“Milady,” he said, bowing low. When he looked up, there was a glimmer of something in his eye. She blushed.
“You are back early,” she said, trying to sound nonchalant though fire blazed through her body at the very sight of him now.
“I saw Bricknall at lunch,” he said succinctly. “Which meant that I could return home to my wife.”
He bowed to her and when he looked up there was a delicious glimmer in his eyes that set her heart racing quickly.
“Well,” she said, striving for composure, “if you've not had luncheon? Bromley makes an impressive pie.”
“I know,” Richard nodded. “But it's not the sort of thing that will assuage my hunger now.”
“Oh?” Arabella asked, her pulse beating in her head, making her senses swim.
“Yes,” he nodded. “I came here with another appetite on my mind.”
At that, he leaned forward and, pressing her against the hallway wall, he kissed her. Arabella felt her loins flood with sensation and she leaned into his kiss, parting her lips to admit his tongue.
He looked into her eyes. Then, wordlessly, they went up the stairs together.
In the bedroom, he stroked her hair, staring into her face.
“You are so beautiful,” he whispered. “My beautiful woman.”
“Oh,” Arabella said lightly, though the blood throbbed in her loins, “you're also rather handsome.”
He chuckled and looked at her with such fondness she felt her heart melt. Very slowly, he thrust his tongue between her lips again and she sighed and knew her body was catching fire under his knowing touch as he pushed her backward.
They lay down on the bed together.
He looked down at her, a hand resting on her chest where the buttons of the gown held the neck shut. He stroked her.
“I want to spoil you,” he whispered, as she reached up to place a hand on his chest. She shivered and felt his hand reach round behind her, to where the buttons of her gown stretched from her neck down her back to her waist.
“Oh?” she whispered as he unfastened each button slowly and knowingly.
“I want to give you as much joy as I can,” he whispered, kissing her back, leaving a little trail of kisses down her spine to the place where it met her buttocks. She tensed and felt her whole body shudder as he rolled her over, then moved down lower, his mouth questing for her abdomen and then lower yet.
She gasped in utter astonishment as he parted her thighs. It felt as if her whole body wanted whatever it was he was doing, and yet she had no idea what it was. All she knew, as she closed her eyes and reveled in the touch of his mouth on her, was that she liked it, very much indeed.
His lips were hot, almost scalding, and he licked her folds, his mouth exploring her, tongue gently questing between them to the small, hard nodule in the center.
She almost cried as it found it and then began to lick it firmly and regularly, making her sigh.
“Richard,” she whispered, feeling the slow urgency start to build inside her, making her toes tingle and her body start to ache.
“Yes?”
She didn't know how to say any of it. How to describe the slow building sensation inside her, the fact that she wanted him to do something else now, that she wanted him inside her. Somehow, though, he seemed to know, or he wanted it as much as she did, for he moved back.
Slowly, he put his knees where his chest had been and then, reaching down, pushed himself into her.
She cried out and closed her eyes as her body melted under the sweetness of his presence. He filled her and fulfilled her in a way she'd never felt before. He moved out, rubbing sweetly on places inside her that seemed to crave his touch. As he pulled out and pushed in, she felt the slow ache start to build inside her and felt that same sensation start to wash through her body, building and rising and growing.
She bit her lip, trying to hold off the wildness of feeling that was overwhelming her.
Unable to hold back, she screamed and, seconds later, teeth gritted, Richard cried out too. He collapsed on top of her, she held him in her arms, and they lay together.
Her whole body felt as though it was bathed in sweetness, every thought drifting slowly through to her like bubbles rising in syrup. She lay back and let the sweetness of the memories and feeling drift through her slowly.
He stirred, kissed her cheek and lay beside her, and she moved closer, letting her body press against his. They lay like that, side by side, the breeze cooling the perspiration on their skin where they lay on the bed, limbs wrapping each other.
Later, she opened her eyes sleepily and felt him kiss her cheek. She felt drowsy, as if she should sleep, though the sunshine, filtering through to her eyelids, told that it was still mid-afternoon. She sighed and nestled closer, loving the feeling of him in her arms, the warmth of his body pressed against her. She knew that, no matter how worried she was, how much was unresolved, she would always have this sweet, wonderful closeness to him.
At this moment, all was well with her.