Lucy Lamb Doctor's Wife by Sara Seale

Author:Sara Seale [Seale, Sara]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

“Have you seen but a whyte lillie grow

before rude hands had touched it;

Have you mark’t but the fall of the snow

before the earth hath smutch’t it—

Smutched—smitched—it’s the same meaning, isn’t it?” she broke off to say. “I mean about the lamps smitching.”

“Very likely. How does it go on?”

She sang the rest of the little air, aware of his cool eyes watching her, and faltered on the last line.

“Yes, it’s like you,” he said, and turned towards the open door between their two rooms.

“Bart—” she said, aware that in this moment the initiative could lie with her—“will you come back and tuck me in? It’s been—it’s been such a lovely evening.”

“Very well,” he replied, and returned to his own room. When he came back she was in bed. Her clothes were strewn about the room, where she had dropped them in happy inconsequence. He picked them up and laid them carefully over a chair, then came and stood by the bed, looking down at her.

“Thank you,” she said, and thought how tall and strange he seemed in his dressing gown.

“What for?”

“My lovely evening, the frock and the pearls and—for coming yourself, after all.”

She looked very small in the big bed with her arms stretched above her head; he could see a small pulse beating in the hollow at her throat.

“If it pleased you, then I’m glad,” he said a little formally, and she suddenly stretched out her arms to him.

“Will you—will you kiss me goodnight, Bart?” she asked. “You—you’ve never kissed me—not that I’ve expected you to,” she added hurriedly.

“Why not? I married you, didn’t I?” he replied, and bent over the bed.

His eyes might be cold but his lips were warm against hers. In some unchartered fashion, she knew again, that the moment could be of her making, but she had no knowledge, no certainty, to turn him from that other dead love.

“Thank you,” she said, resisting the desire to touch him. “Could you—could we—make it a habit, do you suppose—like tucking Pierre in for the night?”

“I don’t see why not,” he replied with a strange expression. “Goodnight, Lucy, and sleep well.”

He was gone, and the door closed between them. She blew out her lamp and, almost immediately, fell asleep.

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