Time After Time (191 page)

One of his hands twisted gently in her hair, helping her change the angle of her head to be more comfortable for both of them. His other hand found hers and placed it on his shaft. Their clasped fingers ran up and down while she licked and sucked.

It was an intimacy and a power Margaret had never known before. He was in her teeth, in her heart. Totally vulnerable. Totally trusting. Totally connected. Soon, she tasted something salty, and Theo pulled her to her feet with a grunt.

He tossed her onto the bed, a rustling cascade of skirts and petticoats. Together they fought with the buttons and tapes of her dress, trying to get her clothing off as quickly as possible. He peeled part of her bodice down to gain access to a bosom pushed high by her corset. Shoving her chemise aside with his chin, he murmured her name several times while he laved her body with his mouth.

Desire made Margaret’s hands and fingers dumb. She was molten and whimpering. No longer flesh. No longer bone. Turned to smoke by want.

Theo apparently still had control of his faculties. He pulled her skirts up, untied her drawers and stockings, and wrenched them from her body. With hands that were at once both strong and tender, he rolled her to her stomach and gathered her rump in his hands. His lips were on the nape of her neck purring sweet, encouraging words into her ear as he moved into her.

They had never coupled like this. Indeed, Margaret hadn’t known it was possible. He rocked into her, again and again. The hard, uncompromising planes of his body against her back, his thighs against hers, and his mouth on her neck. Tension began to build in every part of her. She was too full of emotions, pulsings, and feelings, to do anything but mewl softly into the bed, seeking release.

“You are precious to me, Margaret mine,” he whispered as his hips pumped into her. At those words, her world broke apart into A dozen lighted pieces that streamed past her eyes.

He thrust several more times before collapsing atop her. Even then, his hands moved over her, depositing gentle caresses over every part of her body while his mouth pressed into her hair.

He shifted his weight to lie next to her after a time. She finally managed to roll her head and examine his half-open eyes. Theo smiled, relaxed and satiated. All trace of frustration was gone. He looked younger and more himself than he had since his return.

His hand began to lazily untangle her hair, mussed from his fingers, and smooth it out behind her. For long minutes, neither spoke. It seemed vital to hold one another, breathing the air warmed by the other’s lungs, and enjoying the power of full, present togetherness for the first time since his return.

In this moment, there was simply nothing left to do but to tell the truth. He might no longer feel or want it. But he had it, and she could stay quiet no longer. Taking a deep breath to prepare herself, she whispered, “I love you.”

She wanted to close her eyes. She wanted to leap from the bed and run away. She wanted to beat her fists on his chest and demand a response. But it could be rejection. So she forced herself to remain still and to train her eyes on his face. She waited.

• • •

His next breath lodged in his throat, and Theo felt his chest constrict. His wife was lying beside him, regarding him levelly. He could see her pulse in her neck, still elevated. Her cheeks were flushed from the moment. She looked happy. Calm. Not as if she had shaken the foundations of his life. He must have misheard her, then.

He sat up. It seemed a more dignified attitude might bring some clarity. “Did you just say that you love me?” he asked.

She rolled onto her back, seemingly intent on removing her clothing now that she had regained control of her hands. She glanced up, smiling and nodding as if this were the most natural thing in the world.

There was a ringing in his ears. He repeated dumbly, “You love me?”

She was rolling her dress off her hips now and not paying him close attention. As if she wasn’t invested in his feelings. “Yes.”

“That’s what’s changed?”

Her hands stilled. Finally she said, “I think I’ve always loved you, Theo. That is to say, I don’t think I ever stopped.” He wanted to reach for her. He wanted to crush her beneath him and kiss every sweet inch of her. But her words had frozen him.

She continued, “I had been telling myself I didn’t for so long it was difficult to admit I did. When we married, there was scarcely time to draw breath, let alone ponder everything that changed in a few brief weeks.” She stood up and removed her corset and chemise. “I was trying to guard my heart, Theo. But where you’re concerned, that’s impossible.”

Quite nude, she knelt to scoop up her discarded hairpins before crossing to the armoire, shuffling around for a nightdress and drawing it over her head. Each movement was precise and elegant and detached.

She loved him. Had always loved him. Couldn’t resist him. Was that right? If so, would it be in bad taste to jump on the bed and holler?

Still frozen, however, Theo enjoyed the spectacle, taking the excuse to try to make sense out of this evening. Their fight, their joining, this confession: it was too much to be believed. She sat at the vanity and began brushing out her long, brown tresses. He stared at her reflection in the mirror and blinked several times. It was as if a warren of rabbits had burrowed in his ears. He could hear the timbre of her voice, but the words didn’t make any sense. She … loved him.

“Are you ready to sleep?” she asked with a full smile, looking at him in the mirror as she tugged her brush against a snag.

Sleep? He had too many questions! Picking just one out of the ether, he said, “So many letters, Margaret. There were so many letters. Why didn’t you tell me?”

Her brows knit together. “I thought I had. I thought you knew. Does this really change so much?”

“Yes!”

He needed to touch her. He stumbled from bed and half-knelt behind her to braid her hair. He ran his fingers against her scalp and down the thick, honeyed lengths in his hands.

This touch felt somehow more intimate than their coupling had. The daily ritual of it felt worshipful and reverent. This was how he loved his wife. Through a thousand quiet touches, each one a silent prayer of thanks and praise. He sectioned her hair carefully and began pulling the pieces together in a rhythmic pattern.

It was magical. Who had first figured the braid out? How did it work? As he watched the plait take shape, he knew this was the architecture of intimacy. This moment was the foundation of their future life together. The life he had always wanted was his — even with everything he done and seen. Even with the precariousness of life. Margaret loved him. He loved her. He fumbled with a blue ribbon. Once it was in place, they both moved toward the bed.

“Whatever is the matter?” Margaret asked, pulling back the covers and sliding in.

“You said you didn’t love me. Couldn’t love me. I didn’t believe you at first, but … more than a year.”

“It only seems a change if you have changed your mind.”

Theo climbed atop her, setting a hand on either side of her face and leaning close. “So this has been what’s wrong, Margaret mine? You were finally able to admit that you loved me and thought I did not reciprocate?”

She closed her eyes and whispered, “Aye. I could not see any of your former tenderness in you. Your letters have grown so short.”

He brushed his mouth over her neck to make the devising of words difficult before rolling on his side, facing her. He waited for her to look at him again. He couldn’t articulate what he needed to without being able to see the gold-brown windows to her soul.

After a long minute, she opened them and he said, “Margaret, the things I’ve seen and the things I’ve done … it chills me to me to the soles of my feet. I don’t think I can tell you. I don’t think I want to. But never mistake my reticence for lack of affection. Never doubt I love.”

Her hand grazed over his cheeks, accepting and comforting, but then she laughed. “That promise didn’t work out well for Ophelia.”

He kissed her softly. “I am no Hamlet. I have loved you for many years. More than you know. You are my wife. I have always been faithful to you. I have always cherished you, even when you were absent from me. I will for the rest of my days. And beyond.”

“You had better, Theo Ward, because I cannot survive another broken heart.”

“Shall I tell you, then, of the war?”

She nodded. And so he tried to find the words. “It will hardly surprise you to know you were right. I act now, every day, in ways that would have been unimaginable to me a year ago. But
ennui
, Margaret, is too weak a word for what is left inside a man once he’s walked a battlefield … ”

He talked for hours. Margaret brushed the tears away from his cheeks and whispered over and over again, “I’m so sorry. I love you.” He reciprocated in kind.

Slowly, the tension in his muscles receded. She was not running. She was not horrified. She loved him still. Perhaps he
could
have everything he wanted.

After his tale had ceased, he bundled her close and waited for the slowing of her breath. The promises they had made to one another tonight he wouldn’t have any trouble keeping.

Chapter XVI

In the final week of his leave, Theo ensured that Margaret was scarcely more than an arm’s length away from him. Often far closer.

“Samuel Dix is a fool,” he murmured against her neck one afternoon when he pressed her into a hidden space between the woodpile and the kitchen.

“Oh?” Margaret panted.

“To have a woman who wants to be his wife close at hand and not to take her? Let the record show that I couldn’t resist you. The moment I knew you wanted me, I had to make you mine. Taking you in the stable was entirely mercenary.”

“Yes, you get all the credit. I had nothing to do with it.” She writhed against him like a hydrilla in a stream.

He chuckled. “I didn’t say that. The musk of you. The flash of your smile. That indecent dress you wore to the dance. They were all designed to addle my brain. And they did. For which I should punish you.”

He squeezed a sweet handful of her bottom and she squealed, cuddling into him with a gasp. “Theodore Ward!”

“I love the sound of my name on your lips. Sometimes I think I hear it on the breeze at night, you gasping it, just like that.” His hands wandered farther.

She swatted at him and tried, half-heartedly, to put some space between them. “Are you going to make me crazy all day?” she demanded.

“Yes. And then tonight, we’ll explode together.”

And so it was, until the days of his leave had ticked away: whispered words of love, tortuous moments of expectation, and blessed release. When he found himself again on the platform boarding a train for the front, Theo once again moved between everyone assembled, ending with Margaret.

He cupped her face. “I love you.”

“I love you,” she responded. Her tone was unwavering. Certain. Thank the Lord.

“I will return to you.”

“I know. However long, whatever the cost, I will wait.”

He kissed her then. A kiss to fill the encroaching loneliness. A kiss to provide sustenance for their separation, however long it might endure. After their lips separated he paused, breathed in her scent, and released her, running to the train. He worried if he tarried any longer that he might not go.

He watched out the window for a long time, until the blurring of foliage was burned into his mind, obscuring the haunting memory of Margaret’s eyes. Those beautiful, brown wells, fearful and strong at once. Before they had reached camp, he had started a letter.

Dearest Margaret Mine,

I am but half an hour removed from you and already I ache for your touch. I feel as if in the past week, we have achieved the promise that was whispered to me the first time I saw you. In that moment, you caught me beyond redemption. I knew at the first touch that you would change my life. For everything we have been through, it was always before me: what I thought we could be and knew somewhere deep inside that we would be.

Oh, the years we have wasted, the tribute we have given to our pride and to the expectations of others! I would mourn those lost embraces and phantom existences, but that they have brought us to the present moment, when I have you and know the value of what I possess. The trust and love shining in your face this morning, Margaret, was worth a lifetime of sacrifice.

But now we face the present alone, for who knows how long. A winter of waiting, surely — and hopefully only one more fighting season beyond that. I can only endure the separation because I know we are now committed to a shared vision of the future and because I feel that our love burns brightly enough to allow for both the future of our marriage and the nation to be warmed by it. I will do my service and return to you, knowing we will be blessed by my participation in the cause of liberty. From now on, we will be
selfish
and retain our blessings to our own family, however.

I close now, remembering you in my arms this morning with the first strains of day dancing through the window. I will not speak of things that might insult your modesty, but you will know, I think, to what I allude. You are the melody of my life, Margaret, and I find my purpose in your arms and in your eyes.

Your
loving
husband,

Theo

• • •

My dearest Theo,

All day after you left, we were bereaved. The singing of birds outside the window was an insult to our mood. Did they not know we were a household in near mourning? Slowly, in the week since you left, we have become accustomed again to life without you. But it is for me a half-life. Less than that, really. I do not know whether your visit home was a net good or ill. I was tolerating your absence before. Now I am as one trapped in a nightmare without end. Come back and revive me with a kiss.

No words could spring from your pen that would insult my modesty, Theo. Where you are concerned, the term has changed meaning. To be modest with you is to have decorum, to be appropriate for the situation. And since our situation is marriage, love, passion — then nothing should be held back.