"How marvelous that it is so close to your mother's room. She must have always come when you had nightmares."
Again, her reaction surprised him. Eli could not remember ever calling for his mother at night, but he sensed a topic for exploration. "Did you have many nightmares as a child?"
Emily nodded. "My parents could never hear my cries. Our rooms were too distant from one another. It was always a nanny who came-if anyone."
"Well, if you have a nightmare now, I shall hear you, and I shall come at once," he promised.
Her smile seemed somehow wistful. "Thank you, Eli." She glanced down the portrait-less hall. "I think I shall enjoy it here very much."
Chapter Fifteen
Emily bent to inhale the sweet scent of a rose. "I have found a new love, aside from horses."
"Of course you have-me." Eli looked up long enough to wink at her, then returned to his work, clearing underbrush and spreading manure beneath the roses along the north walk.
"Well, yes, there is that-I mean you," Emily said. "But I also meant these flowers and gardening. I've never seen such beautiful grounds in all my life."
"Wait until we have returned them to their former glory." He wondered, as he had a dozen times in the first two weeks of their marriage, when and if her feelings for him might surface again. They had not, since that first morning here, and he fervently wished they would, along with an opportunity to kiss her again.
"It would seem the restoring might be more quickly accomplished if you allowed me to help." She frowned at him.
"Perhaps sometime," he said, giving her the same, vague answer he had before. "I don't want to overwhelm you with all that needs to be done around here." He had already shown her the field that was theirs, and they had discussed at length what might do well planted there. They had talked about the possibility of selling of some of their garden flowers to local estates, as well as taking the apples from their small orchard to market. Though the parcel of land that went with the cottage was not large, Eli believed that, if tended carefully, it could turn a profit. Enough, with his small income, to keep them at least as comfortable as they were now.
"Stop working a minute and take a drink." Emily appeared at his side, a dipper in her hand, and the bucket he had felt too heavy for her to carry.
He accepted the dipper, gulping the water too quickly, so that some trickled down the sides of his mouth. Emily touched one of the squiggles of water making its way down his chin. "What am I to do with you, Mr. Linfield?"
"What do you want to do with me?" he asked, brows rising up and down as he flirted shamelessly.
She laughed. "Everything. But you won't let me. I can work, if you'll only teach me how. I know I was horrid that first day, with my missing brush and my clothes thrown about, but have you seen my room since? And do I not look presentable?" She turned her head, showing off the simple knot at the back of her head.
"You look more than presentable," he said, eyeing her bare neck. He took another drink to cool himself, then licked his lips, wishing he might lick hers instead. "And I have seen your room. That you managed to contain all your numerous articles of clothes within that one, narrow wardrobe is a feat indeed." He had stood in her doorway for a moment every night, checking to see that she was well and that nothing troubled her. Though it was wrong, he almost wished she'd have a nightmare so he would have an excuse to come into her room and comfort her in bed. Patience, he reminded himself. All in good time. The sweet torture of wanting her was not entirely unpleasant.
"I am glad one of us is looking well." Emily's nose wrinkled as she stared at him. "But you, good sir, are not. You've more dirt on you than the plants you've been digging about. I believe you shall require a bath before dinner. I shall help."
A surge of cool well water caught him square in the chest and across his face. He sputtered and blinked as the bucket clattered to the ground and Emily ran away shrieking. Feeling as shocked as he had the morning she'd told him she thought she loved him, Eli started after her, tossing the dipper aside.
He caught her easily, her slippers being no match for his boots and the longer strides he could take on the cobbled path. He grasped her from behind, lifted her around her middle, and swung her once around.
"Eli," she shrieked. "What will the neighbors think?"
He laughed. "We have no neighbors, remember? Claymere has not been inhabited for many years, and I doubt it will be for some time to come." He set her down and turned her in his arms to face him. "Thanks to you, milady, I am quite wet. And we are quite alone."
They had been behaving thus the past several days, dancing around one another, hinting at things to come, and at their feelings for one another, sometimes getting close to crossing that line into intimacy, but always she had withdrawn before he might explore those avenues.
No more. "Do you realize that tomorrow we have been married for two weeks?"
"The best weeks of my life." She placed one hand on his shirt sleeve and the other on his soaked shirt front, over his rapidly beating heart.
"Do you mean that?"
She nodded vigorously. "I do. I feel-different here. Free. Happy. Accepted."
Loved? "Excellent. All that chocolate is working."
She laughed, a sound he heard frequently and never tired of. "It is."
"And yet … you repay me with a bucket of water to the face."
"It was for your own good. You were beginning to smell like the manure you spread."
"I shall keep that in mind for future reference." He would. He would bathe every night if that was what it took to be close to her.
"May I ask how your first weeks of marriage have been?" Her eyes flickered to his, and he glimpsed the vulnerability he had seen before. He understood it better now. She is worried about pleasing me.
"Aside from the forced bathing, it has been-wanting." Eli took a chance, hoping his gamble was not too great.
Hurt widened and filled her eyes. "How-"
He could not bear her stricken expression and rushed to explain. "I want more time with you. The days are not long enough. I want more laughter, more time before the fire at night reading stories, more hours to ride and walk and dine together. More kisses. I want to hold you close as you sleep and see your face first thing when I awake."
"Oh."
He watched her swallow and waited for the blush he was sure to follow. It didn't.
Instead her hands fidgeted on his shirt. "I have been wanting those things, too. Only I did not know if it was proper for a wife to feel that way."
She too … His heart pounded beneath his wet shirt. "We do not concern ourselves with what is proper in this household. We concern ourselves with what is right. Do you feel it is right for a husband to want, very badly, to kiss his wife?"
She nodded.
"I, likewise, feel it absolutely correct for a wife to want to kiss her husband. I feel I have let you down." Eli hung his head as if shamed. "I promised you would want for nothing, and here you are, practically starving for affection. We shall have to remedy the situation at once."
Instead of laughing at his silliness, her look turned more serious. "Please, Eli," she whispered. "Don't tease about this. Of all the things I fear I shall make a mull of, it is this. What it is between us is most of all what I am frightened of-of losing."
"What is between us is only going to grow." He took her face in his hands as he had that morning in her room, and bent to kiss her. This time his lips lingered, exploring the softness and shape of hers and feeling his heart soar when she kissed him back.
Slowly, tentatively, her hands slid up his arm and chest to wrap around the base of his neck. Eli felt himself pulled closer, his wet shirt pressed against her bodice. Their kiss grew fiercer, full of need and desire and passion. The wick had finally caught fire.
But he intended it to be a slow burn. Like a precious candle, he intended to savor every drip of their ardor and stretch out the moments before them. They were in no hurry. They belonged to one another and had a lifetime together to look forward to.
With a last, playful nibble to Emily's bottom lip, he pulled back a little, allowing them to catch their breaths and him to regain his sanity. Restraint. If he was not careful he might make love to her right here amongst the roses, and that was no way to treat his wife-at least at first.
"You realize we are kissing one another out in the open, in the middle of the garden, in the daylight hours."
"We were kissing," Emily corrected. "You stopped." The pout she gave him could only have been learned from her sister.