Love Then Begins by Gail McEwen, Tina Moncton Page A

happy, I have no plans to behave myself.”
    “Silliness, I think, is highly underrated in marriage.”
    “But not before it?”
    To his delight she laughed a little.
    “Oh, but I’m glad to be out of bed for a change!” she said teasingly instead.
    “Be careful, love. That sort of statement could easily be misconstrued.”
    “You know I couldn’t possibly mean I don’t want to be in bed . . . Well, with you anyway . . . Or . . . ”
    He noticed how delightfully she blushed when he winked his eye at her and laughed.
    “But I missed this place,” she said.
    “Mmm. And do you still have grand designs for it even though the book shelves are sorted to perfection?”
    She smiled. “Not perfection by any means, my love. Love cannot make you that blind! But whatever happens to fashion and taste, I think this place should remain exactly as it is.”
    The kiss he planted in gratitude on her temple glided downwards over her eye and cheek and ended up being equally as gratefully received by her mouth. How strange to feel deprived of her presence after a mere hour, he thought to himself. It must be that he not only loved her, he must actually need her.
    “I love this room,” she said as the kiss broke. “I love Clyne, too. I cannot believe how strange it is to barely have ventured out of first this one room before I married you and then…that other room when I did marry you and yet I feel I love all of it. As a home.”
    “You don’t know how happy it makes me to hear you say that,” he murmured into her hair.
    “And I know you love it, too. You’ve told me so and it is obvious. But . . . Why? Why here? Why this little inconsequential corner of the world? There was nothing before to keep you here that surely could not have been found anywhere else? What is so special about this place? Why did you come to love it?”
    He looked at her, still smiling. There was that little frown between her brows that she developed when she was confronted with facts and circumstances she did not wholly comprehend. He had seen that frown develop in very delicious circumstances during the past days and he had come to love it enough not to always want to wipe or kiss it away anymore.
    But it was probably too early yet to be completely truthful in his answer. He did not think he had words to explain it well or to make her understand. After all, she knew nothing of London, very little of what his life had been like and even less of what others had thought he was. However, they would be going to London at some point in the near future, so perhaps it was time to begin, very gently, to lay the groundwork for some of the things she might hear. He slipped his arm around her waist and let his fingers run up and down the soft fabric of her gown, revelling in the intimate gesture, a husbandly liberty that he took full advantage of.
    “Life in London was always so complicated,” he explained. “Appearances must be kept up, obligations met, all that nonsense. People there care more for what they think or expect one to be, rather than who one really is.”
    He leaned in and kissed her shoulder.
    “There’s only so much of that, those thoughts and expectations, that a man can take before needing to get away.”
    Holly sat a little taller while meeting his eyes, her curiosity apparent.
    “A complicated life in London . . . You said that before and I have wondered about it. What sort of complications?”
    “We-ell,” he said carefully. “There was the complication of my name and family. When my father died I refused to assume his name. I wanted nothing to do with it – not the name, the man or his deeds. My whole life and expectations were passed to me by a diseased family member, yet I still did not care to cast it off completely—only certain parts of it—and that is where it becomes . . . complicated.”
    She took his hand in hers and lifted it to her lips. “You are nothing like your father,” she said. “Whatever your name is.”
    He