The Endless Forest

  She might have said, I loved you even then, but her bravado only reached so far.

  The two chambers above the kitchen were simply furnished, each with a dresser, a small table under the windows, a few chairs, and a bed. In the second room the bed was very old-fashioned, high enough to require steps, with curtains that could be pulled closed to keep out the sun, and a canopy of faded fabric heavily embroidered. It was a bed for a princess, and the very sight of it made Martha step backward over the door swell.

  Daniel seemed less overwhelmed. He went straight to the windows that looked out over pasture and woodland. When he turned around again he seemed to have come to some kind of decision. “You need sleep,” he said. “I’ll take the other room.” Before she could think of how to respond to this surprising declaration, he was most of the way out of the room, turning his body so he could slip past her. Martha caught his hand and he stopped. The two of them stood together in the narrow doorway, his gaze so intent, as if he meant to see into her head and see what she was thinking. She said, “Wait.”

  “It’s all right,” he said. “We’ve got years ahead of us.” She forbade herself to drop her gaze. “I am very tired,” she said. “But can’t we sleep in the same bed? Just sleep?”

  Now there was a question.

  Daniel doubted that such a thing was possible, but he also was determined to give her what she wanted. It was the least he could do after such an abrupt wedding, without so much as a proper wedding supper. And worse still, without a wedding ring.

  In the hurry to get away it was the one thing that hadn’t occurred to him. They were almost to Johnstown when he realized what was missing, and he told her immediately. He was ready to see unhappiness or disappointment on her face, but she only looked puzzled.

  “There’s no goldsmith in Johnstown,” Daniel told her, “but there is an Irishman who fixes clocks and he sometimes has things to sell. We could stop there—”

  She stopped him with a soft shake of the head.

  “Is a marriage legal without a ring?”

  It was the first question they asked of the lawyer, who assured them that the law did not insist on a ring. But it still felt wrong, no matter how unconcerned Martha seemed to be. He would have to put it right as soon as possible.

  Now Martha was sorting through her bag and making neat piles of things. He saw something edged in lace, a set of hairbrushes, a tin of tooth powder, a pair of rolled stockings.

  She said, “I won’t be long,” and without waiting for a response she ducked behind the dressing screen. When she came out she was wearing a night rail that brushed against her bare feet, with their high arches and long toes. She had plaited her hair and it swung as she walked, bumping the base of her spine.

  She climbed the three steps to the bed and sat on the edge, her hands folded in her lap.

  “I think this will be a very comfortable bed to sleep in. Come, Daniel, I’m not going to bite. Come and sleep.”

  Sleep was going to be hard to come by; now he had not only her bare feet to put out of his mind, but curiosity about how exactly she might bite him, should things ever get that far.

  The last person Martha had shared a bed with was Callie, when they were girls. After Callie’s father disappeared and Jemima ran off, Curiosity took them both in and gave them a chamber together. It had seemed too large a gift at the time, a quiet, safe place where they could talk without worry that they would be overheard.

  What a treat it had been to sleep in a bed made up with cool linen and pillow slips that smelled of lavender. How comforting it was to have Callie sleeping beside her, better than a warming brick on the coldest nights. Every time she went to bed with a full stomach she had wondered how long she could count on what she had.

  Now that old feeling of safety and comfort came back to her, and she slipped away, contented, half asleep before Daniel ever came to lay down beside her.

  She woke to the sound of rain drumming on the roof and the smell of apple wood on the hearth. Had she ever been so comfortable before in her life? If so she couldn’t remember. It would have been the most natural thing in the world to slip back into sleep.

  If it wasn’t for the fact that there was a man in the bed with her. Daniel Bonner, who was, oddly enough, her husband. Martha turned onto her back slowly so as not to wake him and saw she was too late.

  He smiled at her. A sleepy smile that asked nothing of her but acknowledgment. She said, “Good morning. What time is it, do you know?”

  “The hall clock struck six not long ago.”

  “You’ve been watching me sleep.”

  “Do you mind?”

  She shook her head. It was interesting to her that he watched her openly and without excuse. For her own part, she found both things very difficult. Daniel had worn his shirt to bed, open at the top so that his throat was plain to see. Why it should move her so strongly she couldn’t say. Looking at classical sculpture she was most often drawn to the strength of leg and arm and back, but now the sight of Daniel’s muscular throat started a warm pulsing that moved up her spine and spread out.

  Of course she could do as she liked. She could run her fingers along Daniel’s jaw to feel the bristle of his beard or kiss the hollow at the bottom of his throat and test his pulse with her lips. Any of those things were her right, but for the moment she was content to study him as he studied her.

  Martha had heard quite a lot about the etiquette of the wedding night from her friends who had married first, marching into foreign territory armed with the advice of mothers and older sisters and grandmothers. The trouble was, there was no consistency in any of the reports. Some of it was shocking and some of it was frightening, and some of it was even funny, but there was precious little practical in the guidelines handed down to a bride or even in the firsthand accounts.

  Her own engagement had ended before Amanda could bring herself to speak of such things. She wondered now what Amanda might have said. It seemed unlikely that sweet, quiet Amanda would give advice as Sylvie Steenburgen’s mother had. Mrs. Steenburgen had told her only daughter not to worry, the business was messy but it didn’t last long; she herself used the time to compose menus.

  Margaret Bickman’s mother had told her to submit once a week and no more, and that complaining would do her no good; in fact, it might only serve to drag it out. And, most important: She was never to lift her night rail higher than her waist.

  Dorothea Ennis had heard from her grandmother that it was a great deal of fuss about nothing at all and that once she had three children she should come again and ask how to keep from having more.

  And Annie Chamberlain’s mother, Martha’s favorite of all her friends’ mothers, had said that if it turned out Annie didn’t like it, why that meant her husband was as new at the business as she, or if not, he was a selfish bugger who needed an education. If they worked at it, Jane Chamberlain explained, they’d soon find it was a fine way to spend an evening alone, and the best way there was of really getting to know each other.

  Technically Martha understood what was supposed to happen. Certainly animals had provided a lot of information over the years: dogs in the garden, pigeons on her windowsill, cows at pasture. None of whom kissed, which brought her back to the original problem. If he didn’t kiss her, what then? Was she to wait until he was ready? And did it mean she was not attractive to him?

  He said, “You look as though you’re trying to do long division in your head.”

  That made her laugh, a little at least.

  Then he sat up and, without another word, got out of bed. Martha was so surprised she didn’t know what to say. Maybe he wanted to go right back to Paradise, but it was raining so hard, that seemed unlikely. He disappeared behind the dressing screen and began the noisy business of emptying his bladder into the commode. Martha wondered if all men took such a long time. She knew so little about the way they were put together. There was splashing at the washbasin, and when Daniel appeared again he was damp and half dressed.
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  He said, “I’ll be right back,” and to her astonishment, he went out and closed the door behind him.

  Martha sat up in her surprise and tried to make sense of what had just happened. Apparently there was to be no kissing—he hadn’t even kissed her after the ceremony in the lawyer’s office—and nothing else either. Why this should be the case was unclear. Certainly no explanation was coming her way. She didn’t know if she should be insulted or thankful. Or simply sad.

  There was nothing for it, and so she lay down again and watched the rain pearling on the windowpanes.

  There was no sign of Mrs. Allen in the kitchen, but she had left a note. It was written in a spidery, uphill hand and announced that her daughter had fetched her to help deliver her eldest granddaughter’s first child, and she would likely be away until tomorrow. If they cared to stay they were welcome. She had made up a breakfast tray, and they were to help themselves to whatever else they found to eat. There was a bath in the workroom and if anybody wanted to bathe she suggested the best place to do that was before the kitchen hearth. In any case she hoped they would stay. Michael would be pleased if they did.

  Daniel thought of the horses, and remembered that one of the farmhands was there to see to them.

  By blind good luck they had come to a place where they could be alone. They had the house to themselves, and firewood enough, and food. It would be foolish to set out for Paradise in a downpour when there was no pressing need.

  Molly’s litter was playing in front of the hearth. He whistled and they all looked his way, but Hopper was the only one who came running in his tumbling puppy way. Daniel took a minute to rub the potbelly and let his fingers be nibbled.

  “So,” he said to the pup. “I have to go back upstairs. I’m as nervous as a girl, but that stays between the two of us, if you please.”

  The tray was heavy with dishes: warm biscuits under a folded tea cloth, a lump of new butter sweating water, a plate of bacon, a jar of gooseberry preserves, and a jug of water.

  He found Martha seated on the edge of the bed with her hands folded in her lap. She was watching the storm, and she gave him no more than a glance as he put down the tray.

  He had done something wrong, clearly. Rather than ask about it he sat down beside her—he didn’t need the stairs as Martha did—and took her hand and folded his fingers through hers.

  Martha shifted a little, as though she might want to get up and walk away.

  He said, “The biscuits are still warm. Aren’t you hungry?”

  She looked at him then, and he saw that he had insulted her somehow but that she was trying to control her feelings. They would eat breakfast, her look seemed to say, if that was what he really wanted.

  What he really wanted was something very different, but again he reminded himself that she should be the one to set the pace.

  The truth was that Martha really was hungry and so they went about filling plates and then they sat there on their perch on the side of the bed and ate. Daniel told her about Mrs. Allen’s note, but his tone didn’t indicate how he felt about any of it. And why, she asked herself, was she so ready to be insulted?

  The food helped. The biscuits were tender and the preserves sweet and tart at once. She would have liked tea, but the water was very cold and good. None of that changed the fact that Daniel had run off without even kissing her, but on the other hand it was nice to sit beside him like this in the quiet house with the rain coming down. Outside the world was wrapped in mist, but this chamber over the kitchen was warm. She felt her irritation seeping away, and try as she might to call it back, it was soon gone for good.

  She heard herself sigh.

  “That bad?” He was smiling, but there was a wariness about it.

  What an odd thing marriage was. Two people who could—by laws of man and God both—do what they pleased together, who liked and even believed that they loved each other, though those words hadn’t been spoken out loud. Who had spent a good part of the previous day wrapped together on a settle, trying to stop doing what they now could not start.

  She said the first thing that came to mind. “This butter is very good.”

  “It is,” he agreed. And then: “But you’re meant to eat it, you know. It won’t do much as a face cream.”

  And before she could raise a hand to her face, he leaned toward her and licked the corner of her mouth clean. Just that simply every muscle in her body flexed toward him, and her mouth opened on a silent sigh.

  For a long time they kissed in that awkward position. Plates on their laps, side by side, his body turned toward hers and his head canted. Daniel smiled against her mouth and broke away to take the plates and put them aside. Then in one fluid movement he turned back to her and took her down onto the bed.

  And this was what she had hoped for. Kissing Daniel was something wondrous and strange; serious business, certainly, but not a humorless one. Even now his smile drew her in, and she caught herself laughing.

  At one point he left her for what could have been no more than three seconds, long enough for her to take stock of the way her body was reacting to him; the heavy thud of her pulse in her wrists and throat; her mouth, already swollen, and most disconcerting, how damp she was in places that had never perspired before. Then he was back, two fingers thick with butter.

  “What—” she said, but he had already smeared it over her lower lip and down her neck to the base of her throat. When he kissed her this time his tongue touched hers and the bright taste of new butter blossomed between them.

  He worked his way down and down, nipping and licking and drawing her flesh into his mouth. His amazing mouth, so warm and tender and fierce. It robbed her of her ability to draw a breath. She moved to push him away—just for a moment, just for the chance to let her mind catch up to her body—and then froze when her right hand encountered the jut of a shoulder beneath the sling he wore to protect his ruined arm.

  She looked into his eyes and for that moment the playfulness was gone. He said, “As long as I don’t put weight on it or lift anything heavy I should be equal to—this.”

  “I should hope so,” Martha said, and then blushed and blushed again when he laughed. He rubbed his face against her breast, and why did it seem so natural? If anyone had described such a thing to her she would have been—

  Intrigued.

  “Don’t,” he said. “Don’t look away. You never need apologize to me. I like that you’re curious. Do you want to touch my arm? You can, you know. You can touch me anywhere.”

  It was something he wanted her to do, and so Martha ran her fingers lightly from elbow to wrist, tracing the shape inside the sling. “That doesn’t hurt?”

  “Oh, no,” he said. “You couldn’t hurt me, not like that.”

  Impulsively she bowed her head to kiss the injured hand. Then Daniel pulled her back up so they were face-to-face.

  The next kiss was so deep that Martha thought she might melt into a puddle. The soft, often washed cotton of her night rail felt like sackcloth against her skin, so that it seemed the most natural and important thing in the world to rid herself of it. Daniel helped her, nudged her this way and that until he could lift the gown up over her head and raised arms.

  “You have beautiful breasts.” He used the tips of his fingers to trace around a nipple in a hypnotic circle that made her arch toward him.

  “I have freckles,” she said, breathlessly.

  “And I intend to make myself familiar with every one of them. For example, right here.”

  Oh, the things he did with his mouth. The licking and tugging and soft suckling went on and on until she gasped and would have turned away, except he had spread his hand on her back to hold her there, where he wanted her. She was the sole object of Daniel’s attention, and she burned with it.

  Martha found herself lifting her hips, something that surely must mark her for a wanton. Except he liked her like this; he had said so. She needn’t pretend.

  The feel of him, the rough beard
and the calluses on his fingertips and the muscles that clenched and rolled under his skin, the expanse of his back, these things wound her up in a fog that she might get lost in. And still she wanted more. She wanted everything.

  “Come,” he whispered against her mouth. “Will you come to me now?”

  She nodded, though the truth was she was sad to have the kissing part over so quickly. Men didn’t much like kissing, her newly married friend Sally Roth had told her. Oh, they would kiss if that’s what it took to put a wife in a receptive mood, Sally said. But once that goal was achieved there would be no more kisses until he wanted to start over again.

  “Like a highway toll,” said Sally. “One he will shirk if he can.”

  Daniel pulled away suddenly and looked her in the face.

  “Where is your mind?” he asked. “You went away there suddenly.”

  So she told him about Sally and Sally’s pronouncements on the proclivities of men.

  Daniel laughed out loud.

  “It’s not true, then?” Martha said. She was embarrassed to sound so eager for an answer.

  “It’s not true,” he said. “Or maybe it’s true for some men, but not for me. I like kissing. Or better said, I like kissing you. A lot.”

  “Oh,” Martha said. “Good.”

  His mouth twitched as though the effort not to laugh cost him dearly. “While we’re talking,” he said, “are there other mysteries you’d like cleared up?”

  “Dozens of them,” Martha said. “But I’m happy to wait and see if I find the answers on my own. I’ll let you know if I run into any difficulties.”

  She shrieked when he grabbed her and pulled her up against his chest, both of them kneeling now in the middle of the bed. She was entirely naked but he still had his breeches on, though they had slid down his hips. That was her last observation for a good while, because he seemed intent on demonstrating to her how very seriously he took this kissing business.

  Poor Sally, who had married her father’s law clerk for his reliable ways and calm good sense.