Roman Summer (24 page)

He pulled her against him. His hands moved caressingly, touching her hair, making a frame for her face, drawing her closer, then holding her off.

‘You know,’ he said, as if in awe of the discovery, ‘I’ve gone through most of the motions in dealing with women, but I’ve never known before this need to have and to hold ... to love and to cherish—and the rest; never felt as caveman-fierce as I do now. Of course I realise what’s happened to me.
You
have. But it’s a new exp
erie
nce for me and I may overplay it. So are you going to bear with me, my all-in-all, if I need to show the
world pretty blatantly that you’re mine, my woman,
my
prize?’

S
he laid her head in
the hollow of his shoulder,
equally in awe of a nearness to him in spirit and in body which she had never thought would be hers by right of love. She said a little fearfully, ‘I can’t believe it’s happening, but if it is, I think I’d be sad and worried if you didn’t want to claim me—like that.’

‘Or like this?’ A forefinger under her chin turned her face up to his, and he kissed her long and deeply, taking lips which at first quivered shyly to the demanding touch of his, but then softened to a response that was all acceptance, all tenderness, all gift of herself.

For a long time after that they said nothing coherent; spoke only by look and touch and smile and
little
wordless murmurs of delight and promise to themselves of the ultimate mastery and sweet surrender to come.

Then they were spent, and only holding hands like children.
Erle
stood, drawing Ruth to her feet. He fingered a pocket, took something from it, tossed it in his palm, and showed it to her.

‘My
soldino
,’ he said. ‘For your pennyworth of sky that I have to give you. Come and see which bit you’ll have, and be sure to choose one with plenty of stars.’ Laughing, she went to stand on the portico with him. Head on one side, she pretended to consider the expanse of the sky. ‘I
think
,’
she said slowly, ‘I’ll have the bit that’s east o’ the sun and west o’ the moon.’

‘And which bit is that?’

‘How do I know?’ she teased. ‘A good astronomer could probably tell you.’

‘The book says I have to afford one
soldino
’s worth or sky. Astronomers come too expensive and they aren’t thrown in,’ he retorted.

‘All right, skip the astronomer. Suppose
you
choose?’

‘I was hoping you’d ask me.’ Putting his arm round her, he turned her in the direction of the dark mass of the Casa, just discernible against the horizon. He said, ‘I’ll go for a short-term bargain. I’ll buy you the whole of the dawn sky on just one morning—the day that we first make this place our home, yours and mine. Would you regard that as value for money, my Ruth of the Biblical name and the eyebrows that got left out in the wet until they rusted up?’

She smiled up at him, enjoying the whimsy. ‘I couldn’t ask for more, and as a present from you I’d settle for a lot less,’ she said, and offered him her lips again in infinite hope and
trust of
t
heir future together.