Tonight it was not. It was a low, merry sound of genuine amusement.

It was sexy.

He moved in her with deep, rhythmic strokes, prolonging the encounter for as long as he could, listening to the wet, sucking sounds of their coupling, feeling her smooth, wet heat about the near-pain of his erection, knowing the relief of having a woman again after a long dearth.

She clung to him with her legs, spread her hands over his buttocks, and held herself open and relaxed. She made no other moves of her own. It was clever - or innocent. It gave him more time to savor the satisfaction of sex.

But after several long minutes, he became aware that she was no longer passive. Her inner muscles had tensed, and her hands were straining against his buttocks as if to hold him deep and prevent his withdrawal.

He quickened and deepened his strokes until he felt her sudden shudder of release a few moments before his own came.

He must remind her, he thought just before falling asleep, that he had fulfilled his part of the bargain. He had pleased her.

He woke an indeterminate time later, still on top of her, still inside her. He disengaged and moved to her side. "I beg your pardon," he said. "I must weigh a ton." "Only /half /a ton, I believe," she said. "You do not need to apologize.

Don't ever apologize." "Never?" he said. "Not for any reason?" She sighed sleepily. "I will have to think about that one," she said. "Perhaps we could arrange our lives so that we never do anything that calls for an apology." He found himself half smiling again in the darkness - the candle appeared to have burned itself out. "A happily-ever-after?" he said. "Do you really believe in such a thing?" "No," she said after giving the question some thought. "And I am not sure I would want it even if it were possible. What else would there be to hope for in life? What else would there be to work toward? I would prefer happiness to a happily-ever-after." "What /is /happiness?" he asked her. "A moment of joy," she said without hesitation. "Only a moment? It sounds not worth working for, then," he said. "Oh, there you are wrong," she told him. "The whole of life is a single moment. There is nothing else /but /this moment, is there? Always this moment." In his experience moments passed and were gone forever. "The whole of life is joy, then?" he said. "It is /all /happiness?" She could not possibly be /that /naive. "No, of course not," she said. "But one moment of happiness can make the whole of life worth living - like leavening in bread. It can show what life can be and is meant to be. It can give one hope in the dark times.

It can give one faith in life and the future. Have you /never /been happy, Elliott?" He felt a huge nostalgia suddenly for the way life had used to be - a long, long time ago. A lifetime ago. "I was happy enough a few minutes ago," he said. "You think you are being flippant," she said. "You expect me to scold you for thinking that s - " She drew a breath and rushed onward. "For thinking that /sex /can bring happiness. But it can. Sex celebrates life and togetherness and love." "I thought," he said, "you did not love me." That silenced her for a while. "But I was not the one who said I was happy a few minutes ago," she said. "/I /was celebrating love, then?" he asked her. "Oh, you foolish man," she said. "Of course you were. There are many kinds of love. You are not in love with me. You do not even love me. But you love… this night." "Our wedding night," he said. "Sex." "Yes." "Sex is love?" "You want to provoke a quarrel with me," she said, and she lifted herself onto her elbow so that she could prop her head on her hand and look down at him. "Admit it." /Did /he? Perhaps she was right. Perhaps he was trying to set this night into perspective. He had married a woman today whom he barely knew, who frequently irritated him, who was not even attractive. He had bedded her tonight because it was their wedding night, and he had enjoyed the sex because he had been without a woman since before Christmas.

And even tonight, even now she annoyed him. She was a romantic with her belief in happiness and love. For her even sex was love. She believed there was joy to be found in most of the situations of life.

And yet she had lost a young husband to consumption - a slow and cruel death. Presumably she had loved him. "You ought to be sleeping, not talking philosophy," he said more harshly than he intended. "I may want you again before the night is out." "/You /ought to be sleeping too," she said. "Perhaps /I /will want /you /." He almost laughed aloud. They were back where they had started this night. "Perhaps," he said, "we ought to do our wanting now while we are both wide awake and our sleeping afterward." He spread a hand over the back of her head and drew it downward so that he could kiss her.

She stretched one leg across him until she was straddling him, and then she lowered her head so that he could continue to kiss her.

The novelty had certainly not worn thin yet.

And the night was not half over.

14

HAPPINESS did not always come just in fleeting moments. Sometimes it lingered for a while.

Vanessa had no real illusions, of course. This was not a love match and had never been intended as one. He did not love her and she did not love him - not really anyway.

But she /was /infatuated with him, and surely - and strangely - he was with her.

For now anyway. For a short while even if it did not last.

They were to enjoy that most romantic of all interludes in life - a honeymoon.

They made love more times during those three days and four nights than Vanessa could count. Well, not quite. It was thirteen times in all.

Afterward, she thought that if she had been superstitious, that number might have struck her as ominous. She ought not to have counted.

She had never enjoyed anything more in her life than those thirteen lovemakings. He was beautiful and virile and skilled and thorough.

But it was not just the lovemaking.

They took their meals together and talked while they ate. They talked of books they had read and discovered that they had read very few of the same ones. But that could be rectified. "I will read all the books you have read," she said recklessly, "so that we can discuss them." "I will /not /read everything you have read," he told her. "History was never my favorite subject at school. Instead, you may tell me everything that happened in the past that I need to know." "Oh, goodness," she said, "wherever would I begin?" "At the beginning?" he suggested. "With Adam and Eve?" "I'll start with the Romans in Britain," she said, "since very little is known about the tribes who were here before them. The Romans are fascinating, Elliott. They lived lives that were in many ways more sophisticated and luxurious than ours. And yet we think we live in such an advanced civilization. Did you know, for example, that they knew a way of heating their houses that did not necessitate wood or coal fires in each room?" "I did not," he said.

He listened with apparent interest while she spoke of Roman Britain and how it had influenced the lives of the British even to the present day. "Especially in language," she said. "Do you have any idea how many of our words originated from the Latin?" "Would we be compelled to live in silence if the Romans had not come here, then?" he asked her. "Or, heaven help us, would we all be speaking Welsh or Gaelic?" She laughed. "Language is an ever-growing thing," she said. "English would just have been different without the Romans." She suspected - indeed she /knew/ - that his knowledge of the past was far more extensive than he admitted to. No educated gentleman could possibly know absolutely nothing about the history of his own country and civilization, after all. But she did not care if he was teasing her with his apparent ignorance. History was something of a passion with her, but she could not always find people who were willing to listen.