Chapter Nine #2
When his legs could function again, he lifted her and walked them into the shallows, then sat with her on his lap, her head resting against his chest while a dove cooed in the shadows, siskins warbled, the afternoon sun warmed his back and water lapped gently around them.
Finally, with a sigh, she lifted her head. ‘I suppose we must go back now. Duties await.’
He shook his head at her. ‘I can’t call you “Mouse” after this. No, you’re a water sprite sent to enchant me. A true naiad.’
She angled her head. ‘Naiad?’
‘In Greek mythology, naiads were nymphs sent to guard the springs. Beautiful, light-hearted, kind. As you are.’
She nodded. ‘I feel so ignorant! Mama never let us learn anything beyond needlework, dancing, a little music and how to manage a household. If it weren’t necessary to know a modicum of mathematics to do that, I wouldn’t even know my sums. I so envy the education you had at university!
’ She made as if to continue, then hesitated.
‘What is it?’
‘Well, I couldn’t help noticing what an excellent library Thorne Hall possesses. I’ve always felt…cheated, that I never had the opportunity to learn more. Would it be possible, once I’ve finished my household duties, for me to…study some of the books there?’
‘Of course. They are your books now, too, you know.’
She gave him a brilliant smile that made him feel guilty for not previously offering a permission she seemed to have been waiting for. ‘Not that I’m not grateful for what you’ve already allowed me to learn here at Thornthwaite.’
He moved against her. ‘I love what you’ve been learning. And what you’ve been teaching me, like today.’
She chuckled. ‘I want to learn everything. Everything that gives you pleasure.’
‘You’re an excellent pupil. Though I believe your instincts are better than any tutoring.’
‘You would encourage me to…continue following my instincts?’
‘With all my heart.’
‘You are certain? I was… I was afraid I might have shocked you.’
Rafe sighed. ‘Oh, please, continue shocking me.’
She gave him another kiss. ‘Then I will.’
Gradually, as his thoughts slowly broke free from the fog of desire, with a niggle of discomfort, Rafe marveled at how freely they’d frolicked beside and in the river.
Not that he expected someone to discover them.
It was still too cool for local farm lads to venture here, seeking relief from afternoon heat.
This stretch of the stream was bordered by woodland and a few open glades; there were no meadows nearby to feed cattle that needed human tending and Herdwick sheep, trained to their traditional high meadows, would never stray this far, requiring a shepherd to come in search of them.
But…to make love openly, in the woodland, for anyone to see if someone had stumbled upon them…
Juliana appeared not to entertain any such concern.
She rose calmly and walked back to the jumbled assortment of clothes they’d left on the blanket with no haste, seeming perfectly at ease.
After he followed her over, she gave him a gentle kiss before she helped him back into his garments while he assisted her, but there were no teasing aftertouches to underline her sensual power over him.
She’d turned from siren back into assistant as if the change were completely natural, exhibiting no awkwardness at all in making the transition.
Indeed, already her attention had turned to musing about the possibilities for dinner and wondering whether the skill of their apprentice cook might extend to preparing a meat pie with roasted vegetables.
While Rafe wondered when his wife might suddenly turn temptress again.
After their activities at the stream, he wasn’t sure he’d be man enough to respond if she did try to lure him into a tryst in one of the forest glades they passed on the way back to Thorne Hall, or in a conveniently empty stall in the hay barn.
But tonight in the privacy of their bedchamber…
As he helped her remount, she gave him a luminous smile. ‘I hope our interlude relaxed and refreshed you. It certainly did me.’
‘I’m so relaxed I may doze off and fall out of the saddle,’ he retorted only half joking as he swung into the saddle.
She chuckled. ‘I’ll chatter to you, then, to make sure you stay awake. After your legendary performance at the stream, you are due some rest.’
‘A performance nowhere as legendary as yours.’
She made a wry face. ‘If I confess something, will you not take me to task?’
His curiosity piqued, Rafe had no idea what might be coming next. ‘That’s hard to promise, but as I’ve never yet known you to do something I would find worthy of chastisement, I suppose I can.’
‘Those years ago, when as a young girl I watched you swimming with your friends while I observed unseen… I imagined doing what we did today. Not the fulfillment part, of course—I had no inkling yet that such a thing was possible. I envisioned just…having you all to myself, being able to touch and caress you with the river as my assistant. Using the assets of the natural world to enhance and extend my embrace.’
Once again, she’d surprised him. ‘How old were you then?’
‘Fourteen, fifteen, perhaps. Old enough to have…urges and desires that were quite strong, though I didn’t understand them at the time.’
‘You’ve always been a child of nature,’ he said, marvelling anew at this further testament to how deeply sensuality was embedded in her nature. How could he have been ignorant of that for so long, thinking her a meek and girlish innocent?
‘I suppose I am. I imagined us splashing and playing like otters, even dozing as we drifted along, hands clasped together. They do, you know—otters. Though they usually return to their dens or caves for sleeping, I’ve seen them floating along, a mother on her back with her baby on her belly, or two adults, clasping each other with their paws so they could move together as they napped.
Keeping each other close, as you held me close in the shallows today.
And then, in the deeper water…’ She sighed.
‘It was even more wondrous than I’d imagined. ’
She looked over to smile at him. ‘Perhaps you are a child of nature, too, and are only just realizing it.’
His brain stretched to try to accommodate that totally unexpected possibility. Did he, frolicking naked in forest glades, possess a hitherto hidden and more deep-seated sensuality?
Before today, he certainly would never have predicted he’d become an avid participant in an interlude like the one just passed.
But for the still-simmering nerves in his sated body, he found it hard to believe the tryst had actually happened, that he’d not just awoken from some wondrous erotic dream.
Even in his army days, he’d not looked favourably on soldiers coupling with their partners out of doors.
Not that he was shocked by it; such things happened regularly when soldiers were on campaign, bedding down in tents or wrapped in blankets on the ground.
Even when billeted in buildings, stables, or the huts they constructed, true privacy was limited, but those with wives or temporary women were unwilling to refrain from claiming the comfort they offered.
To be truthful, he’d always found it coarse and a bit distasteful. But what had happened today at the river had been…magical.
She spoke of learning from him, but he was learning, too, from his ever-surprising wife.
Learning to appreciate sensuality as natural, beautiful, somehow…
pure. Unsullied by a man’s lust or a woman’s attempt to use a man’s desire to twist him to her will.
An exchange of pleasure for pleasure, each partner intent only on fulfilling the other.
Teaching him to appreciate simple things of nature he’d looked at but not truly seen.
The wonder of pollarded trees, where a single oak might provide everything from bedding to fodder to roof thatch to the decking for a warship and do so for hundreds of years.
The tree serving its master as faithfully as a hound, but for much longer.
Showing in her drawings how charming was the smile on the face of a Herdwick lamb. How mischievous the expression of a red squirrel, how majestic the dive of a peregrine falcon.
She seemed to go through life as if she were picking a bouquet of wildflowers. Unlike the large blooms cultivated in a garden, each flower was often small and delicate. But massed together, they created a mosaic of stunning beauty.
And she offered them to him, almost every day, some new, perfect collage of unexpected insight or ordinary but extraordinary beauty.
He’d thought he was rescuing her when he proposed this marriage of convenience, that they would have an amicable union based on friendship and shared history.
He was beginning to think that she, if not rescuing him, was certainly changing him, broadening and deepening his understanding as she dazzled him with sensuality and gradually opened his eyes to a surrounding world that he’d never fully appreciated.
Like Turner, whose unique paintings revealed the wild natural beauty within the objects and events he painted, while other artists merely captured the outward image of them.
His chest expanded with a depth of emotion—until abruptly, with a little pang of alarm, he caught himself.
Yes, the unexpected complexity he’d discovered in Juliana…
intrigued him, but he mustn’t let his feelings get too carried away.
They’d established this marriage on a bedrock of friendship.
An…expanding of his affection was harmless enough, he supposed, but friendship only is what their relationship must remain.
‘You’re quiet,’ Juliana observed. ‘Not falling asleep, are you?’
‘No. Just…reflecting. I thought we might take a tour of the library tomorrow,’ he said, steering himself back to safe and prosaic ground.
Excitement lit her face. ‘Tour the library? That would be wonderful. Are you certain you’ll have time?’
‘I’ll make sure of it. What do you want to learn from there?’
‘Oh, everything!’
Rafe laughed, charmed by a display of enthusiasm other females would probably reserve for the prospect of buying gowns or attending balls. Certainly her sister, Aggie, would never have seen exploring a library as a treat.
‘There’s a bit of everything in there. Papa was a great collector, as was his father before him, so you’ll find a good selection—literature, translations, natural history, botanical texts.
If I’m recalling aright, there’s an edition of Bewick’s A History of British Birds.
Wonderful illustrations, which I think you will find inspiring. ’
‘I shall work all the harder tonight and tomorrow morning to finish my tasks, so I have time to study any books you allow me to take away. I should particularly like to read any that will instruct me to better assist you in managing Thornthwaite.’
‘Learning is valuable for its own sake, whether the knowledge you acquire is practical or not. Particularly if what you learn about gives you pleasure.’ He paused, feeling the truth of it. ‘As it delights me to offer what gives you pleasure.’
She looked up, a wisp of a smile on her lips. ‘As you well know, it delights me to do the same.’
‘Then how can we not get on well together?’
‘Indeed we shall,’ she confirmed, urging her mare to pick up the pace as they reached the carriageway leading to Thorne Hall, set like a jewel on the verdant crest of the hill beyond them.
He would indeed be delighted to open her to the possibility of formal study she’d apparently always craved to have. A fitting response to the insight she was giving him into the natural world that was her domain.
They were partners, just as he’d hoped. Partners, lovers and warmly intimate friends.