The Fulfillment (11 page)

It wasn't
that it was any brighter in the room. Perhaps they themselves had a new brightness. Her head was in a spot where it fit beautifully, and one of his hands rested on a part of her where it utterly belonged. They'd been like that long enough for their breaths to cool, their pulses slow.

“Why did you cry, Mary girl?” Aaron asked.

“I didn't,” she denied, not knowing she had.

“There were tears on your face,” he said, and laid his lips to the outer corner of her eye to kiss it.

“There were?”

“Yes,” he remembered, “I could taste them.”

“When?”

“Right after I made you feel beautiful.”

She reached an arm around his middle and squeezed him, saying, “Oh, Aaron, you did make me feel beautiful…so it must have been a beautiful tear.”

“That's never happened to you before, has it, Mary?”

“The tears, you mean?”

“No. I mean what came before them.”

“No, Aaron, never before.” Her heart was beating rapidly again, realizing that she was openly talking about the act that had always before seemed, if not surreptitious, then at least beyond words. Aaron lay there holding her hand, gently rubbing her arm that lay over his chest, thinking of her body being denied its most precious birthright for her seven married years, and again, silently this time, he called Jonathan a fool.

“What was it that happened to me, Aaron?” she asked, and he pitied her ignorance, yet thrilled to it, knowing he was the first to teach her. He pulled her face close to his neck and moved his jaw across her forehead.

“The same as what happened to me later. Didn't you know, my darling, that for a woman it can be as strong and complete as for a man?”

“How could I know, Aaron?” she asked, pulling her head back to look up toward his face in the dark. “I only knew what one man had taught me. I didn't know there was anything else.”

He rolled her onto her back then and leaned across her chest with both of his elbows on the pillow under her, his hands smoothing the hair back from the sides of her face.

“My beautiful Mary girl,” he said, “You've come to me as innocent as a bride, and I can't thank Jonathan enough. But I pity him his ignorance and what he's missed in you.”

He kissed her face all over then, running its smooth, fine length and stopping at each closed eye to feel the flutter of it under his lips. He came to her mouth, and she reshaped it to fit his. But instead he touched hers in a silent command to
be still. But when he lowered his lips near hers, she again was ready for his kiss. When he drew back a second time and laid a finger across her lips once more, her eyelids flickered open in puzzlement. But a curl of hair on his forehead tickled them shut again as she felt the warm, wet tip of his tongue glide over her still upper lip. Her mouth relaxed as the warmth and its following coolness played across her bottom lip, then across one eyebrow and down toward her ear. Then, like hearing the ocean in a seashell, she heard the roar of loud deafness as he licked the inside of her ear.

She squirmed then and rubbed her ear on the pillow under her, and to her surprise, a giggle bubbled out of her.

He backed off a bit and said in mock sternness, “Oh, so the lady laughs at my ardent persuasions.”

“I can't help it, Aaron. It tickled. Besides, it made me squirm, wondering who taught you all these wicked tricks.”

“Wicked tricks? Up till now my tricks have been making you feel beautiful, and suddenly they're wicked?”

“All right, so they're not exactly wicked…but how did you learn them?”

He thought of the women when he'd been to town, the ones who'd demanded no chivalry. But the woman in his arms now was different, more precious.

“Does it matter?”

“No,” she whispered. Yet having had what she'd had of him tonight, she wanted to own all his life that had gone before. She knew a vague
regret at not having been his first, and he felt a bit of the same for her.

“Don't let it matter,” he said.

And Aaron's mouth set out to make it not matter. His lips began again their interrupted meandering until hers began the same “wicked tricks,” and their roles subtly exchanged. Without knowing when she began, Mary was kissing him in the way he'd just taught her. His body's response hearkened again to the tune she played on him, and she learned with it that he was not yet finished being her mentor. Within a tightening arm she felt herself swung upward, rolled onto his stomach, his hands guiding her until she was astride him.

“Aaron…” she whispered, feeling oddly exhilarated and shamed at once.

“Shhh…it's okay. Let me show you.”

And for the first time in her life she looked down from above on the act of love, and with sensual delight felt newfound freedom as her body was given free rein. But she was unskilled at this rhythmic caprice, so he murmured to her and guided her and his hands were there on her hips to encourage when she faltered. Her hair swayed across her back sometimes. Other times it fell onto his face and chest. Its silken skeins fell into his open mouth as his head arched back, and she learned from him a new kind of gift, one she could give him. And she gave it as she'd never given before.

 

Lying once again quietly, only their hands touching, there came the sound of a growling stomach, and Aaron suddenly slapped his belly
with an open hand, making a loud clap in the silence. Then he curled his body and rocked up and off the side of the bed in a single action. He felt for their clothes on the floor beside the bed, and when he'd found them, said, “Come here, wench, and let me make a decent woman of you.” He reached out in the dark, found an arm, and pulled it until she was kneeling on the edge of the bed in front of him.

“Put your arms up,” he commanded, and she did as she was bid. He dropped the partially but toned nightgown over her head. Then he buttoned up each button, right up to the high, eyelet-trimmed neck, before he said, “You've escaped the eye of the dragon this time, but I warn you, you won't for long.” And he put his own pajamas back on, then asked, “Now can I light the lantern?”

“Whenever my lord wishes.”

He struck a match, and the room sprang into brightness.

“Your lord wishes some food. He is hungry as a dragon.”

“Indeed, I heard the dragon within him roar a minute ago.” She couldn't help the giggle that escaped her.

He picked up the lantern, laughing, too, and held out a hand to her. But before leading her out and down the stairs, he took the time to kiss her in the bright glow, holding the lantern aloft.

“C'mon, wench,” he said, and she followed him, smiling.

 

They sliced thick slabs of bread, layered them with butter and gooseberry jam, and drank the
fresh milk they'd gotten that night, rich with the cream that had not yet separated to its top. He licked the gooseberry jam from her outstretched fingers, and she thanked him with a hesitant kiss that cleared his upper lip of milk froth. Standing in the pantry slicing their second pieces of bread, she curled her bare toes, and he came up behind her, putting his chin on her shoulder, and told her no wench could run from a dragon with toes like that. When his hands strayed upward, she threatened to do them injury with the bread knife. He admonished her lest she injure instead what lay beneath his fondling fingers, and they ate more bread and jam with laughter in their eyes and finally sat, with sleeves in the bread crumbs, holding hands across the tabletop.

“We have to go to bed now, don't we?” she asked.

“Yes. Even dragons and wenches need sleep.”

“Even when they don't want to?”

“Even when they don't want to. Especially when there's corn to plant tomorrow morning.”

They got up then and brushed the crumbs from their elbows, leaving more on the tabletop unnoticed, each one a beautiful blot on the kitchen Mary had always left in meticulous order. They went up with arms around each other, the lantern in Aaron's free hand. At the door to the front bedroom they stopped, and he set the lantern on the floor at their feet. The light, rising to their faces from that low angle, highlighted their lips, leaving their eyes in shadow.

Aaron reached out and touched Mary's gilded lips with his fingertips. “I would never sleep with you beside me all night long, and I
wouldn't let you sleep, either. If it weren't for that corn, neither of us would care. But I'd better leave you here.”

Then the exaggerated shadows of the two became one on the opposite landing wall before he leaned to pick up the lantern and hand it to her. He went down the hall to the other door, but when he reached it, turned to look back at her. They both stood just so for a long time.

And they opened both doors at once, each turning into a separate room. But they left the doors open, as if the essence of one another might drift through the hall to help ease them into sleep.

 

When Aaron awoke, it was first light. He came awake as if an alarm had sounded, but none had. He'd slept like something hibernating, after the wearying release his body had needed so badly. The memory of it swept over him now as he got out of bed silently. Before changing clothes, he crept to the open doorway of the room up the hall.

Mary was still asleep, lying on her back, with both hands palms-up on the pillow like a child. Her hair was strewn all over the pillow, and the quilts covered her nearly to her chin. The only parts of her nightgown that showed were the eyelet ruffles at wrists and neck. He went a few steps farther into the room so he could see her features more clearly in the dim, dawn light. Her childlike face looked open, even in sleep, just as it had the night she'd combed her hair back for the dance. He wished she would awaken and
raise her arms to him, but she didn't, so he gazed at her, contenting himself with memory.

But the day lay ahead with much to be done, so he went back to his own room, dressed, then crept as quietly as he could down the creaking steps toward the morning chores.

 

When Mary awoke, it was slowly, luxuriously, slipping into consciousness to test it, then slipping back out after finding she wasn't ready for it yet. When it finally suited her and she opened her eyes to it, her first thought was that something was wrong. The sun was bright and high and Jonathan had not yet clanged the household awake with the stove lids. Looking quickly down at the clock, she found it had stopped at a quarter to three…then she remembered why.

Aaron.

And all the memory of last night followed his name.

How had she ever slept so late? It must be midmorning already! Like a thunderbolt it struck her that she'd forgotten to pump the wash water last night to lose its chill…and she'd promised Jonathan to help Aaron plant the corn. How in blazes was she ever going to do all that after getting started so late in the day?

She tore into her clothes, tore the sheets off her bed, and dropped them over the railing in the hall. Before they hit bottom she had already attacked Aaron's bed, ripping its sheets off. Her hair was still flying free, but she didn't stop to put it up now. Instead, she grabbed her brush from the bedside stand where Aaron had left it
the night before, and ran downstairs with it. She could do her hair after the boiler was filled and heating. She scooped up the mound of sheets at the bottom of the stairs and turned the corner into the kitchen with her feet tangled in their trailing folds.

There she stopped in surprise. Simmering on the range was the copper boiler, all filled with steaming water. A smile broke across her face, and she hugged the sheets to her, hanging her head back as she whirled in a circle with her feet twisting into the sheets and her hair flying out behind. Just one happy name filled her being.

He had pumped and filled the boiler for her, and now into his favor she read the compliment of his lover's gift. All the years he'd helped her, doing small favors, all the considerations that were so typically Aaron, now found new and untold value in Mary's eyes. She looked at the simmering wash water, and its warmth was nearly hers.

Standing among the sheets, she brushed her hair and, when it was smooth, went into the pantry where there were clean rags on the shelf. Tearing a strip from one, she caught her hair back with it and tied it behind her neck, then began her washday preparations.

During the warm months the washing was done on the concrete porch where the wooden washer was kept. The hot water had to be bailed from the boiler and carried outside. Two tubs for rinsing were set on a wooden bench beside the washer. These were filled with cold water, pumped from the cistern. The first step in washing clothes was always to boil the white clothes
in the boiler on top of the stove before turning them into the washer. But today, getting a late start even in spite of Aaron's favor, Mary procrastinated and scarcely felt guilty when she deferred the boiling till next week. Something had to be skipped to save time if she were to help Aaron at all in the fields today.

Standing on the porch in the sun, Mary worked the handle that made the agitator churn the clothes inside the washer. She looked down past the vegetable garden into the east field, but knew Aaron wouldn't be there. It had already been seeded with small grain. He would be out in the south ten, which was hidden from view by the woods. She looked out toward the south and thought of him there and hurried the day toward him. Through the sorting, soaking, agitating, dipping, wringing, and hanging she worked toward him, breaking only long enough to go into the buttery and dip some fried-down pork out of the crock and put it on the back of the stove to begin warming for their dinner.

The sheets were slapping in the noon wind, the shirts and pants dancing an inverted jig to their own beat. Coming up the field lane beside the woods, Aaron saw the clothes basket turned upside down in the yard and looked for Mary on the porch. But the overturned basket told him the washing was done and she must be inside cooking dinner. He had unhitched the team, leaving the marker at the edge of the field, and had driven the horses up the lane, walking behind them.