Besides, he did not want to sit alone – strange, really, when he had been dreaming of returning here by himself. "We will retire to the drawing room," he said, getting to his feet and going to draw back her chair, "and have tea brought there. Or coffee?" "Tea, please," she said, and he looked at the butler and raised his eyebrows. "And that," he said as he led her toward the drawing room, her arm drawn through his, "was gauche of me, Maggie. I should have left the ordering of the tea tray to you. You are not a guest in my home, are you? You are my wife." "How improper it would be," she said, laughing again, "if I were only a guest. I /will/ pour the tea, however." Which she proceeded to do as soon as the tray arrived in the drawing room. He watched her, poised and elegant and beautiful. Still a stranger. Was it inevitable in any new marriage? Was it possible to know any woman in advance of living in intimacy under the same roof with her?

He had courted Caroline for several months before offering her marriage, and they had been betrothed for several more months. And yet he had not known her at all until very close to the wedding. And even then, he supposed, he had not completely known her – only one fact about her that had repelled him.

Perhaps it did not matter that he had known Maggie for less than three weeks. "It /is/ awkward, is it not?" she said into a rather lengthy silence as they sipped their tea. "The silence?" he said. "I could keep talking," she said. "So could you. But not forever. What /do/ we talk about, Duncan?" "What do you talk to your brother about?" he asked her. "And your sisters?" She was looking directly at him. "I am not really sure," she said. "With strangers and even acquaintances I can keep a conversation going indefinitely. It is a part of being polite, is it not? With my family I do not have to make conversation.

They talk, I talk – we do not have to make any effort to find topics. They just happen." "And are you ever silent with your family?" he asked.

She thought. "Yes, often," she said. "Silence can be companionable. It can be that even with close friends." "I am neither family nor a close friend, then?" he asked her.

She stared back at him. "You /are/ the one and must be both," she said. "But can friendship be forced, Duncan? Or the /ease/ of friendship?" He was feeling a little shaken, if the truth were known. He had not been finding the silence uncomfortable. If he had been, he would have filled it with some form of conversation. He had spoken a great deal about his home and family and childhood, for example, since their arrival. But he had not asked her anything about her own life. Those details would have filled the rest of the evening.

Of course, he realized suddenly, /he/ was at home. She was not – not in a place that had had a chance to /feel/ like home yet, anyway. Woodbine Park was a strange place to her. It was understandable that she was a little uncomfortable. "We are not enemies," he said. "No." "Are we not therefore friends?" he asked.

She smiled. "We are /lovers/," he said. "Yes." "But not friends?" "I think," she said, setting down her cup and saucer, "I am just tired." "And a little depressed?" he asked softly. "No," she said. And she laughed suddenly. "That would be disconcerting after I told you earlier that I am always an optimist. I am just tired and forgot for a moment that marriage is a journey, just as life is. I must not expect it to be perfect from the start. If it were, we would have nowhere to go with it, would we?" "Our marriage is not perfect?" he asked her. "No, of course it is not," she said, still smiling. "We married for imperfect reasons, and we have been married for only a few days. I want contentment, happiness with husband, home, and family. You want … well, you want simply not to regret your marriage as deeply as you fear you might. They are not impossible dreams, are they? For either of us?" He had been struck by her honesty from the start of their acquaintance.

She was being honest now. Her expectations were not impossibly high.

Neither were her demands of him. "I do not regret it," he said.

It struck him that if he were here alone now, he might also be feeling lonely – even though Toby was coming tomorrow. He was not feeling lonely now. A trifle irritated, perhaps, but not lonely. And not unhappy. "Thank you," she said. "One day you will say it with more conviction, I promise." "And you will tell me one day," he said, getting to his feet, "that you are not only contented with our marriage, but happy. I promise." He reached out a hand for hers and drew her to her feet. "And one day," he said, "we will be able to sit a whole hour together in silence without you feeling awkward." She laughed again.

And then she drew her hand from his, wrapped both arms about his neck, and leaned in to him, pressing one cheek against his. His arms closed about her. "Oh, how I have /longed/," she said, and paused for such a long time that he thought she would not continue. But she did. "How I have longed all my life for just this – a home of my own, a husband I can like and respect, intimacy, togetherness, the promise of happiness within grasping distance. Duncan, I /really/ am not depressed. I am … " She drew back her head to look into his face. She did not complete the thought. "Lusty?" he suggested. "Oh, you horrid man!" she cried. "You know words like that are not in a lady's vocabulary." He gazed back at her and said nothing. "Yes," she said softly. "/Lusty/. What a deliciously wicked word." Women were complex creatures, he thought as he kissed her – and /that/ was surely the original thought of the century. Lust for them was not the simple need for a thorough good bedding. It was all mixed up in their minds with marriage and home and liking and respect and romance and love.

And for men? For /him/?

He deepened the kiss, opening both their mouths and thrusting his tongue deep, spreading his hands over her buttocks and snuggling her in against his growing hardness.

He too had longed … For a woman in his arms and in his bed and in his –

Life?

Heart?

He did not know and would not puzzle now over the answer. But he /had/ longed.

Yearned. "Maggie," he murmured into her ear. "Come to bed." "Mmm," she said on a long sigh. "Yes. That is a /good/ part of our marriage, is it not?" "Shall we not analyze it?" he suggested, settling her hand on his arm. "Shall we just /do/ it? And /enjoy/ it?" Her lips curved into a smile and her eyes brightened with merriment. "Yes," she said. "To both. I think you are making a wanton of me." "Good," he said.

20

THE morning after her arrival at Woodbine Park, Margaret was ashamed of the way she had allowed herself to be overwhelmed the evening before by the newness and unfamiliarity of everything in her life.

She had found herself during that lengthy silence in the drawing room missing her family, Merton House, Warren Hall, the familiar round of her daily life. And knowing that everything was changed forever with no chance – ever – of going back.

Which had all been quite absurd. Why should she wish to go back? And it was not as if she had lost her family forever. She had merely got what she had longed for all of last winter.

In the morning everything looked brighter – even literally. The sun shone from a clear blue sky beyond the windows of the bedchamber she shared with Duncan, and she could see the view out over the park at the front of the house. And a lovely view it was too with the house situated as it was on the crest of the hill. Beyond the inner lawns she could see the trees that circled the park, the river to one side, the roofs of some of the houses in the village, the church spire, and farmland stretching like a giant patchwork quilt to a distant horizon.