"Demelza! Where are you? What are you doing?" Ross called, taking the black tricorn from his head and casting it down as it if had offended him.
He'd gotten used to her meeting him at the door when she heard Seamus's hooves, the nicker the stallion made when he caught sight of his stable, or Ross's own tread in the boots she polished every day. She'd come flying, her auburn hair like a flag, a piece of cloth wound round her head to keep it back, her skirts and apron no impediment to her swift feet. She was so little like Elizabeth at these times, her face frequently streaked with flour, her own sturdy boots muddy, a bright smile on her face and even more in her eyes, the color of the becalmed summer sea off The Lizard. She'd never manage to contain herself, breathless if she'd run from the fields, her cheeks rosy if she'd been working in the kitchen preparing the dinner, full of greetings and care, answers to whatever questions he asked. He often made an inquiry just to receive her cheerfully wry response, her perpetual exasperation with Prudie and patience with Garrick an endless entertainment to him.
Today, though, the courtyard had been empty and the hall, dusted and polished, held no young woman eager to wait upon him or offer a tankard of weak ale for refreshment. Verity had been coming round lately since their impetuous, necessary marriage, kindly offering to educate Demelza in womanly refinements, all those airs and graces that Elizabeth had, had always seemed to possess without any effort, and skills he realized she must have been taught from childhood that were never a possibility for Demelza Carne, who'd been happy with a stale crust of bread and a cuff to the ear. He'd found them at the spinet one day and prancing about the sitting room with their skirts held up so two rather fetching pairs of ankles were widely in view. Even in the lesson, Verity had more decorum, but Ross had been able to spy the shapely curve of Demelza's legs, the delicate arch of her stocking foot, and she'd been giddy and not teasing when he'd caught her eye, for all the world like an errant pixie Jud would have told him about when he was a boy. There was no sign of a visitor, no melody being picked out cautiously on Ross's mother's prized spinet, not even a basket of mending for Demelza to curse over quietly as she rued first one tear and then another. He hadn't thought he cared deeply enough about her to be worried, but he found he did and he was.
He walked through Nampara, calling her name and peering into rooms and alcoves. She might have taken Garrick out for a ramble or on some errand, but he didn't think it likely; she matched her day to his as best she could and knew he would be home in the early evening, before it was dark enough to light the candles. He'd been about to shout her name as he neared his study when he saw her, standing close to the window to catch the last light of the day, thinned amber like a pot of honey overturned, across her heart-shaped face, tangled in her wild curls, and staining the pages of the book opened in front of her. She was so intent, she didn't notice him at all, but he could clearly see the effort she made, tracing the words with a tentative finger, forming the sounds with her mouth, "And chiefly Thou O Spirit, that doth prefer," the roundness of the "O" making quite the prettiest shape of her red mouth, ready for a kiss, though he couldn't imagine the poetry would incline her so and her furrowed brow suggested she did grasp what she labored so to read.
"'Before all Temples th' upright heart and pure,/ Instruct me, for Thou know'st; Thou from the first/ Wast present, and with mighty wings outspread/ Dove-like satst brooding on the vast Abyss/ And mad'st it pregnant: What in me is dark/ Illumin, what is low raise and support;/ That to the highth of this great Argument/ I may assert Eternal Providence,/
And justifie the wayes of God to men,'" Ross recited, walking towards Demelza who stood stock still, her head ducked at first as if she braced to have her ears boxed, then regaining her regular posture but with wide eyes as she listened to his voice, that confident baritone used to orders and shouts turned to the purpose of beauty and edification and sheer delight in another man's foreign genius.
"What are you doing, Demelza?" he asked, an eyebrow raised as she hurriedly closed the book; he noticed how she stroked her finger across the printed page—in farewell or affection, he couldn't quite say.
"Nothing, Ross. Nowt of any purpose, I'm sorry, I should have your supper ready. It won't take but a moment," she said, a strangely cowed Demelza he was unfamiliar with.
"I wouldn't have thought Milton for you, but you've no need to apologize. I didn't know you had an interest," Ross replied, using the tone he might for a skittish mare. She was a woman, he saw that now so very clearly, as he hadn't when he'd hired her at the fair, a sniveling urchin only with those same great eyes, she was a woman so it worked, his voice soothing her but the warmth in her gaze rousing him in ways he had not anticipated.
"I haven't read much, it's hard, but Verity said I might try, it would be worth it and seems 'twas right, for when I make out the verse, it be ringin' in my ears the whole day. To think you know the lot of it in your own head! I shouldn't've come in without askin' first though, I see that. I won't come again, I'll keep to the prayer book she brought me, 'twill be enow," she said, so convinced he would deny her he almost wished to have taken a shelf's worth and dumped them in her lap until she laughed at him and the untidy room.
"No, Demelza, that's not necessary. You're the mistress of Nampara now, you keep the house well, the rooms are clean, the linen fresh and I haven't eaten this well in years. If you still have found time for your lessons with Verity and to learn Milton, I wouldn't stop you. Nay, perhaps one night you'll read aloud to me and let me rest my eyes," he said, meaning to speak in jest but finding the image peculiarly appealing, that bright head bent of her book in the candlelight, the majestic words uttered in her low halting contralto, and he saw himself with his head in her lap, where he might watch her lips, the apples of her cheeks half-shadowed, a long curl ready to be gently tugged, to draw her down to him. He would put the book aside and taste the words on her lips, tart and refreshing like cider, her eyes awakened like Eve's.
"That's nothing like! You should be off to your room, to rest a bit. I'll call you in a little while, when the meal's ready for you," she said, equally unsettled he thought, reaching for something ordinary to steady her. But he noticed she put the small, leather-bound book in her apron pocket and her hand fondled it and he knew he must withdraw to their room for a quarter hour or more, to remind himself of what was, how he was Ross Poldark and she his wife, not some witty French courtesan or winsome, teasing doxy, not educated Elizabeth who'd forgotten him, left him behind, but Demelza Carne Poldark, who'd just learned to read and practiced on the Fall of Man, just as he'd practiced it with her in the downy bed above stairs, his mother's silk fallen from her like shed shimmering feathers from Lucifer's wings.