Joan Wolf by Margarita Page B

by the fuss he created, Nicholas was truly delighted with his son, especially as the weeks went by and the baby became more alert. He spent one fascinated hour observing the heroic efforts of little Nicky as he tried to get his hand into his mouth. And he became completely reconciled when he went into the nursery one afternoon at the sound of crying, picked the baby up, and the crying stopped. Tentatively he rocked the child in his arms and was rewarded with a beatific, toothless grin. Nicholas grinned back. Nicky was fine, as far as he was concerned. It was Margarita who was letting herself be overwhelmed by it all.
     
    * * * *
    As the weeks went by and the baby grew and began to eat some strained food and sleep for longer periods, the physical demands on Margarita lessened and she began to turn once again toward Nicholas. By Christmas she was riding again, and in January she began to talk about redecorating the house. Nicholas, whose love for the castle was second only to his love for the land, was pleased by her ambition and told her not to worry about the expense.
    If Nicholas had found her absorption in the baby irritating, he was finding the resurrected Margarita even more difficult to deal with. He had not approached her with anything even remotely suggestive of passion since last January, a year ago. First her sickness, then her advancing pregnancy had made it impossible for him to even consider forcing sex on her. She was perfectly healthy now, but still he hesitated. He was not afraid that she would reject him. He knew she would not. Margarita would never shirk what she considered to be her duty, no matter how unpleasant she might find it. And she had found it unpleasant. That was a truth he could not disguise from himself. Nor did she do anything that would indicate to him her willingness to resume relations. Never, when he kissed her cheek, did she offer him her lips. Never, when he put a casual arm around her shoulder, did she turn to him in a welcoming embrace. She treated him, Nicholas thought bitterly, as if he were her brother.
    The problem was that he did not feel at all brotherly toward her. They were sitting in the library one evening after dinner when he asked her to play for him. She fetched her guitar, strummed it softly, then asked, “What would you like to hear, my lord?”
    “Anything you like,” he said, stretching his long legs toward the fire. “Something in Spanish.” He loved to hear the soft liquid sounds of that language on her lips.
    She tilted her head a moment in thought. Then she said, “There is a poem by Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz that I put to music for myself. The words are the words of a woman writing to her lover. “My love, my lord,’ she says, listen to my weary plaints awhile.’ She misses him and longs to see him. All of nature, she says, is a reflection of her grief.” Her fingers moved over the strings and she began to sing:
    Amado dueño mio,
    Escucha un rato mis cansadas quijas...
    Nicholas sat very still, his eyes on his wife. She had a lovely voice, untrained but clear and true. The firelight cast a glow on her intent face. Nicholas looked from the profile of eyelid and lip down the shoulder and breast and bare arm. He watched the hand that was moving so expertly over the strings.  The turn of wrist was so vulnerable in its white, veined fragility.
    She had come to the last plaintive line: “Regare mi esperanza con mis ejos ,” she sang softly. The last notes died away, then looking up at Nicholas, she smiled. “Is that not lovely, my lord?”
    A smile, reluctant and wry, flickered across his lips. “Very lovely, Margarita,” he answered, with just a hint of weariness in the tones of his voice.
    The next day he drove over to visit Catherine Alnwick who was once again in residence at Sothington.
     
     

CHAPTER FOURTEEN
     
    He looked at her, as a lover can;
    She looked at him, as one who awakes.
    Robert Browning
     
    There was one aspect of Margarita’s