They were not estranged.
Perhaps there would be another child.
When he came for an occasional visit to Wyldwood-and surely he would come for Jeremy’s sake-they would perhaps share a bed for a few minutes each night and she would be able to feel this pleasure again.
She tried not to feel dejection when he drew free of her and moved off her. He would return to his room now, and she would feel the remembered emptiness of being alone once more. But differently from all those other times, she would have pleasant memories with which to warm herself until she slept. And perhaps he would come back tomorrow night.
He lay beside her for a while, turned toward her. Then he rested a hand on her stomach and made light circles with it. He sighed audibly.
“For a while,” he said, “I thought it was perhaps more than duty.”
She turned her head sharply to look at him. He was half smiling.
“It was not duty,” she said.
“You just do not like me very much, do you?” he said. “Or is it sex you do not like? Or both?”
Joy went crashing out of her again, and she felt her eyes fill with tears.
“I am sorry,” she said. “I did not satisfy you. I did my best. I am sorry.”
“Damn,” he said so softly that she was not even sure he had uttered such a shocking word.
He turned sharply away and sat up on the side of the bed, his elbows on his knees, the fingers of both hands pushing through his hair. Elizabeth felt two tears spill over, one to pool against her nose, the other to plop off onto her pillow.
“I am sorry,” she said again. “What did I do wrong? Tell me, and I will do better next time.”
“What has she done to you?” he said. “This is all her doing, is it not?”
“Whose?” she asked, bewildered.
“Your mother’s,” he said. “You are not naturally frigid, are you? I thought so until today, but I have seen you laughing and flushed and happy. You are warmly maternal with Jeremy. Do you hate me so much? Or are you merely a product of your mother’s rigid ideas of what a lady should be?”
But she had heard only one thing. She stared at his back in horror.
“I am not frigid,” she protested. “I am not. I feel things as deeply as anyone else. How could you say such a cruel thing? I am sorry if I do not satisfy you, but I am not frigid.”
She turned over onto her side, spread her hands over her face, and tried-unsuccessfully-to muffle the sobs she could not control.
“Elizabeth-”
“Go away,” she wailed. “Go away. You are horrid, and I hate you. I am not fr-frigid I wish you would… I wish you would go to the devil.” She had never, ever said such a thing aloud, or even thought it, until now.
For a few moments she did not know what he was doing. She waited for the sound of the door opening and closing. But then the bed beside her depressed. He had come around it and sat down. He was wearing his dressing robe. He set the backs of his knuckles against her hot, wet cheek and rubbed them back and forth lightly.
“Forgive me,” he said. “Please forgive me.”
She turned her face into the mattress, shrugging his hand away.
“No,” she said. “How could you say such a thing after… after what happened. I thought it was wonderful. Obviously I know nothing. It was not wonderful at all, was it? Go away, then. Go away and never come back. Jeremy and I have lived without you for three months. We can live without you for the rest of our lives.”
“Elizabeth,” he said, and she had the satisfaction of hearing distress in his voice. “My dearest, I had no intention of hurting you. Curse me for a fool that I ever said such a thing. I do not believe it. We did everything wrong from the start, did we not? We allowed this marriage to be arranged for us. There was nothing too wrong in that-it happens all the time. But we made no attempt to make it our own marriage. We allowed awkwardness and perhaps some resentment to keep us almost silent with each other. And then my father died and everything fell to pieces. It was all my fault. I should have persevered. I should have been more patient, gentler with you. I should have tried to talk with you.”
Again, she had heard only one thing, her face still buried in her pillow. My dearest. He had called her my dearest. No one, in her whole life, had ever called her by any endearment, except the shortened form of her name-Lizzie.
“Is it too late for us?” he asked her. “Is there any chance of making a workable marriage of this one we are in together?”
She shrugged her shoulders but said nothing. She did not trust her voice yet.
“How have you thought of me all year?” he asked her. “I have thought of you as a beautiful, unattainable, aristocratic icicle. You cannot have thought of me in any more flattering terms.”
“Morose,” she said into her pillow. “Dour, humorless.Wondrously handsome.”
“Am I still all those things?” he asked after a short pause.
“You are still wondrously handsome,” she said.
“I have assumed,” he said, “that you despise me for marrying social position.”
She turned her face out of the pillow, though she did not look at him.
“I have assumed,” she said, “that you despise me for marrying money.”
“Lord God,” he said after another pause, “you would think that two reasonably intelligent adults who happen to be married to each other would have found a moment in which to talk to each other in a whole year, would you not?”
“Yes,” she said.
He sat there looking down at her for a while. She lay still and did not look directly at him. She felt that a great deal had already been said.
But what, really, had changed?
He got to his feet suddenly and turned to slap her lightly on one buttock.
“Get up,” he said, his voice brisk and cheerful. “Get dressed.”
“Pass me my nightgown, then,” she said. He had dropped it over the other side of the bed.
“Dressed,” he said with more emphasis. “Put on your warmest clothes.”
“Why?”
“We are going out,” he said.
“Out?” She stared at him with wide eyes. “Why?”
“Who knows why?” He looked down at her and grinned-her stomach turned a complete somersault inside her, she would swear. “We are going to talk.
Perhaps we will build a snowman. Or make snow angels. That would be appropriate for the occasion, would it not?”
“The doors are all bolted,” she said foolishly. “It is almost midnight.”
He said nothing. He merely continued to look down at her and grin at her.
He was mad. Wondrously, gloriously mad.
Elizabeth laughed.
“You are mad,” she said.
“You see?” He pointed a finger at her. “That is something you have not known about me all year. There is a great deal more. And I have not known that you could possibly laugh at the prospect of being dragged outside on a cold, snowy night in order to make snow angels. I daresay there is a great deal I do not know of you. I am going out. Are you coming with me or are you not?”
“I am coming,” she said, and laughed again.
“I’ll be back here in five minutes,” he told her, and he strode to the door and left the room without a backward glance.
Elizabeth gazed after him and laughed again.
And jumped out of bed.
Five minutes! Never let it be said that she had kept him waiting.
“You lie down on your back,” he explained, “and spread out your arms and legs and swish them carefully back and forth. Like this.” He demonstrated while she watched and then got to his feet again and looked down at the snow angel he had made. “Rather a large one.”
“The angel Gabriel,” she said softly.