The Honeymoon by Dinitia Smith

be married if not because they’d committed themselves wholly to each other?
    She sensed there was significance in Charles’s telling her about his and Cara’s “arrangement.” But could it really be that he was saying he wanted her? Not possible. He wasn’t attracted to her at all, except that he loved to talk to her.
    A week later, it was a stiflingly hot day, the height of the summer heat in July, the intense heat that came only once or twice each year. Her father was resting in his room at Bird Grove and Marian made her way through the fields to Rosehill, the meadows dry, the grass golden brown, the insects buzzing around her.
    As she rang the bell of the house, it seemed unusually quiet. The maid said that Mrs. Bray had gone to Bishops Teignton to see Mr. Noel, and the servants had retired to their quarters, driven in by the heat. Mr. Bray was in his study.
    She knocked on the study door and from within came his answering call. As she entered, the room was dark, the curtains drawn against the afternoon sun. He was sitting in the shadows behind his desk. There was a green velvet divan on which he took his afternoon rest, an oriental rug thrown over it, and great, soft pillows piled upon it. His books were stacked untidily on the shelves and newspapers piled on the floor around him. Behind the desk, a great, stuffed owl was mounted on a pedestal, and there was a marble bust of a Greek maiden, the tip of her nose brokenoff, her neck long and graceful, her hair curling in tendrils about her face.
    “Ah — there she is!” cried Charles, rising to greet her. “My soul mate. Do you know, I believe I have an affinity with you unlike any I have ever had with another person.”
    She felt a sudden danger in the rush of his words, in his naked declaration in the isolation of the room, at this new closeness to him. “Thank you,” she said warily. It was true that it sometimes seemed, in the excitement of their mutual understanding and in the intensity of their conversation, as if there were no boundaries between them.
    She stood across the room from him, dwarfed by the high ceiling. He came closer. They were several feet apart. He studied her, taking her in from head to foot in a way he never had before. Then he came forward, reached out suddenly, took her in his arms, embraced her, and kissed her.
    His full lips were on hers, his body against hers, and she felt a fierce sensation shoot up through her from her legs to her breast.
    She tried to extricate herself, but he said, “No,” and kissed her again.
    At first when he made love to her, it hurt, and she cried out and he withdrew. “I’m so sorry,” he whispered. “I don’t want to hurt you.” But she let him enter her again.
    What happened next occurred so quickly that there was no thought involved, only urgency. It was her first taste of this pleasure, and once that taste had been taken and that boundary crossed, there was no going back.
    Afterward she cried with shame at what she’d done, and he held her. “It’s your first time,” he said, and she nodded through her tears. “Thank you,” he said, “for that gift.”
    As he pulled on his clothes, she asked, “But what will we tell Cara? She and I, we’re so close. I love Cara. She’s like my sister.”
    He sat down beside her on the divan and put his arm around her shoulder. “You don’t have to tell Cara. She already knows.”
    “But how could she know? This is the first —”
    “Cara sees everything. And you know that I have her permission. It’s the same for her with Edward.”
    Cara was scheduled to return that evening from Bishops Teignton. The next day and the day after, Marian didn’t go to Rosehill.
    Then a note came to Bird Grove from Cara.
“I miss you, dear friend. Where have you been? Why have you deserted us? We are having a party with music on Saturday and we want you to play the piano.”
Cara missed her! She was inviting her to play the piano. Marian was afraid to face her,