Page 10 of The Accidental Wedding
Her fantasy lover . . . Warm, strong . . .
Skin to skin with nothing between them. The heat of his body, the hard, relaxed power of it curled around her protectively . . . possessively. The warm weight of his arm . . . Legs entwined, his brawny, a little hairy, pressing her calves between his . . . His breath, matching hers, in . . . out . . . in . . . out.
She lay entwined with him in a soft, soft bed, sharing warmth, skin against skin, sharing dreams and plans for the day, after a splendid night of making love . . .
That part of the morning dreams were always a bit vague. She had only the haziest ideas of what making love entailed. From barnyards, she knew the mechanics and it didn’t appeal in the least. It looked ugly and brutal.
Mama said for men it was a necessity; for women, a duty to be endured and the pathway to endless, heartbreaking child-bearing. Which was even less appealing.
But from Grand-mère she knew it was a source of joy.
Grand-mère had discovered it late in life. She’d been widowed for fifteen years, with no thought of taking a lover or a husband until Raoul Dubois, a handsome peasant with broad shoulders and strong hands, had set her in his sights.
Maddy was thirteen and had witnessed the whole thing with amazed fascination.
To Grand-mère’s embarrassment, Raoul had pursued her relentlessly, undeterred by her lack of encouragement, their difference in station, or even the difference in ages—all of which Grand-mère used to try to drive him off.
Raoul would simply shrug those big broad shoulders of his. And Grand-mère would eye them, sigh, then renew her defense. Her increasingly halfhearted defense.
“Non!It’s unthinkable! You are a woodcutter, and I—”
“There was a revolution, remember? In France now we are all equal.” His grin was ironic; he knew, everyone knew, that the class differences were the same as they’d ever been.
“My father would roll in his grave.”
Raoul shrugged. “Fathers roll. It is their fate.”
“But I’m years older than you!” Grand-mère would argue. “It’s inconceivable!”
Grand-mère was born in the same year as the poor, martyred queen, Marie Antoinette, of whom they must never speak. In ’93, the queen had been cruelly guillotined. She’d been eight and thirty, which made Grand-mère well past fifty.
Raoul was a widower, a man in his prime, just turned forty. “What are years?” he would say with a smile. “You are a beautiful woman, and I, I am a man. That is all that matters. I ask for nothing, not marriage, not property, only you,ma belle.” And he would smile that smile that had showed Maddy a side to her grandmother she’d never imagined, blushing like a girl and fluttering indecisively.
It took Raoul two years, but he wore her down.
After Raoul and Grand-mère became lovers, Maddy learned that sharing her life with a good man—the right man—made all the difference in the world to a woman who’d lost everything. Grand-mère was a new woman.
The anger and bitterness faded. With Raoul in her life, she was full of joy and laughter and . . . verve.
Maddy would wake sometimes in the night or the early morning and hear them making love. The sounds had alarmed her at first, but seeing her grandmother’s shining eyes in the morning, she knew that the sounds were misleading, that it was something wondrous.
At other times she’d waken and hear them lying in bed, talking, the light murmur of Grand-mère’s voice and the deep rumble of Raoul’s. It sounded so peaceful, so cozy, and the lonely girl she was ached for the time when she, too, could lie in a bed, talking quietly in the night with her man.
Raoul and Grand-mère had five happy years, until a falling tree took Raoul’s life, and the joy left Grand-mère’s eyes forever. She died within a year of him.
But she’d left Maddy a precious legacy: the knowledge that with the right man there was joy to be had in the act of love.
Men and women always lie,cherie, even in bed, but in the act itself, there is honesty,Grand-mère had said.And with the right man . . . ahhh, bliss.And she would sigh.
Maddy would probably never marry—she was too poor and had too many dependents, but somewhere, she hoped, there would be a Raoul Dubois for her.
At the moment, he only appeared in her morning dreams, faceless, nameless, wanting nothing, only her . . .
Oh, to wake every day knowing that whatever the day brought, she would not be alone, that whatever troubles they face, it would be together. And that come nightfall, in this bed, they could find joy together.
She didn’t need a prince or a rich man. Just a man and a cottage to share it with . . .
A cottage . . .
