Page 123 of The Gathering Storm

She took the hand, kissed the palm, drew the arm around her. She was aching for him. She stretched her whole length against him. Then they were kissing; she smelt the scent of his skin, tasted his mouth. She wanted him unbearably. She slid her hands up through his hair, the better to pull him against her. And then without pause or difficulty he was there, inside her, and she felt every nerve ending swoon at the sensation.

She lifted to meet him, drawing him further in, and they strove together, matching rhythm, matching need, harder and faster. She wanted everything, everything. There was no sound but their ragged breathing; she clung like one drowning, feeling a great, hot wave of glorious, agonising pleasure build until it overwhelmed her, and she cried out and heard him make the same sound, felt him pulsing inside her; and it was as if they were falling weightlessly into a hot, dark place of silence.

Warm and safe in his arms, she slept, knowing he had drifted off before her, glad he had known he could. The sentinel part of her mind told her he must go back to his own bed before the servants were up; but when it woke her in the first grey light before dawn, and she lifted her head, she saw his eyes were open. He was watching her with such a great gladness of love she wanted to cry a little.

‘Is it all right?’ were his first words.

She pushed herself up onto one elbow so that she could look down at him. This was Lennie, whom she had known most of her life. Lennie. But this morning he was something else as well: a man, a male animal, just unknown enough to make his familiarity thrilling; just familiar enough to make his unknowable maleness safe. She could venture out onto him, daring as a child on the ice, knowing he would not let her fall through. In wonder she traced his features with her free hand, his brow, eyes, cheek, nose. When her fingers reached his lips he kissed them, then captured the hand, and said it again, needing an answer. ‘Is it all right?’

She didn’t speak, but eased her body over him, felt with a smile that he was already hard for her, manoeuvred herself to take him inside, and in a strangely unemphatic movement, like seaweed swayed by the current, they mated again.

Afterwards she lay on her back and he propped himself up to look down at her. ‘Polly,’ he said.

‘It’s all right,’ she said, smiling up at him.

‘Did I—?’

‘I wanted it as much as you did,’ she reassured him. ‘Everything’s good. I can’t feel anything but safe with you.’

A slight shadow seemed to pass across his face. ‘Only safe?’ He hesitated. ‘I want to take care of you, of course I do. I would never let any harm come to you. But – but I don’t want to be a father figure to you. That’s not what I want at all.’

‘Oh,’ she said, with a smile she hadn’t known she had in her, almost a wanton smile. ‘I don’t think of you as a father figure, not in the least. That’s not what this was about.’

He kissed her then, for a long time. She felt she could not get enough of kissing him. It had been nothing like this with Ren, nothing like this with Erich. This felt so complete, as if every sense and particle and aspect of her was involved, engaged, and satisfied. This was everything. This was what she had wanted always, and had never had a name for.

When he stopped kissing her at last, he lifted the hand his still held captive to his lips, and said, ‘Will you marry me? I want to be married to you.’

‘I think after last night we really had better be, don’t you?’

It was all right to speak lightly. That was part of the everything.

‘You said you’d always felt the same way about me,’ she went on. ‘And, you know, I was in love with you, too, when I was young. Somehow I took a wrong turn. I was so headstrong and sure of myself then. But all of that feels like a shadow to me now – only this is real. I don’t know why it’s taken me so long to realise that you are the only person I could ever have married. You’re the only one who understands who I am.’

He kissed her hand again, unable to speak.

‘But you must go back to your own room now,’ she said. ‘The servants mustn’t see you leave my room.’

‘But – I can come to you again? Tonight.’

‘Every night,’ she said. ‘Please.’

Basil halted in front of a woman exiting Fortnum’s and said, ‘Good day and well met, madam!’

Charlotte looked up from putting on her gloves. ‘All hail to you too, sirrah!’ They exchanged a handshake. ‘Why the Shakespearean language?’

‘Covering my shyness,’ he said.

‘You, shy!’

‘You have no idea.’ He eyed the prettily wrapped parcel in her hand. ‘Buying frillies?’

‘Sugared almonds for a dinner party. Frillies indeed! Where did you get such an expression?’

‘Isn’t that what they’re called? I wouldn’t know,’ he said blandly. ‘You’re looking very prosperous. I like the hat.’

‘And you’re looking …’ She surveyed him. ‘… absurdly handsome. Quite terribly film-star-ish. Please tell me some happy lady is getting the benefit of all this …’ she waved a hand over his tout ensemble ‘… fine edifice.’

‘Sadly not,’ Basil said. ‘I am forced to embrace the tranquillity of celibacy.’