Patrick Turner lay in his bed staring at the ceiling. He had no hope of sleep coming to him in what was left of the night. Every fiber of his body throbbed with the awareness that just downstairs, Shelagh lay, cuddled up in a blanket on his couch. His lovely Shelagh— warm, and soft, golden-haired and fragrant, and wearing his pajama top! Bloody hell. The implications of that were not lost on him, though he doubted she made the connection. And though he'd been very careful to keep their relationship very chaste since their engagement—both to protect her from gossip and because of her innocence and the need for her to move at her own pace towards intimacy with him—his desire for her sometimes threatened to rage out of control. Right now he wanted nothing in the world but to go down to the living room, lay his body against her warm, soft form, coax the pajamas from her and make deep and passionate love to her.
He tossed restlessly in the bed, finally sprawling on his back and laying his arm over his eyes. He ached for her; had for many months. Good Christ! He was reacting like an 18 year old boy, thinking with his hormones. But there was something achingly sweet about reining in his desire for her, holding it throbbingly in check. His love for her was so powerful it sometimes frightened him. Could a man really love and desire a woman this much? He'd thought many times about how they had grown to love each other, so naturally and gradually that they each found themselves in love before they realized it. Lord knows he had tried to stop it, Shelagh even more than he, but there had been no way to undo the feelings. He knew he was what a medical school buddy had called "stupid in love." Incurable. And, he thought a little smugly, so was Shelagh.
He'd started to realize that a woman lurked beneath the nun's habit when Shelagh had first revealed that her mother had died when she was young. They'd known each other, had worked together, for some 10 years with him knowing nothing about her personally. Her quiet concern for and attentions to Timothy had been a bridge between them, their mutual attraction growing unbidden but also, once recognized, beyond their control. He'd felt it like an electric shock that day in the parish hall kitchen, when their eyes met while discussing spirit lamps. It had somehow emboldened him to follow her into that same kitchen after the 3-legged race, to recklessly kiss her hand, a selfish, impetuous act he still felt ashamed of. He'd tried to wall off any feelings for her after that, as she had as well, he knew from the times they'd discussed it. But their growing love, a forbidden love, only grew stronger as they tried to deny it.
He'd felt it again so powerfully, a warm, wonderful glow, after their impassioned plea before the council for an x-ray van. He smiled. Shelagh's emotions showed on her face like words on a page. She was incapable of hiding them. He'd looked in her face as she said, "You were really quite tremendous," and saw deep, abiding love for him reflected there. And he was helpless to not love her back just as strongly.
There had been so much pain on both sides as they tried to not love each other. Dear God, he had suffered as if with a gaping wound when she'd been in the sanatorium. The not-knowing had tortured him. Was she recovering? Might he lose her before he'd even gained her? Had she gotten his letters;? Had she read his letters? Did she really return his feelings? Was there any chance they would be together?
He'd despaired of that, after learning she was writing everyone but him. But he couldn't not write her. Somehow it had been easier to share his feelings, veiled beneath oblique comments and vague language, in letters. Even if she did love him back, would she really take the enormous step of renouncing her vows for him? He would never ask it of her, could only hope that she would.
Then had come that unbelievable day when she'd called him out of the blue. Him. Not Nonnatus House or Sister Julienne. And he'd gone out like a questing knight, determined to find her. Determined to make her his. It had all happened so magically, meeting on the misty road, wrapping his coat tightly around her, a substitute for holding her in his arms. Her volunteering that though she knew him so little, she couldn't be more certain. Certain that she loved him. That she wanted him. That she would change her entire life to be with him.
He'd seen her then, for the first time, without the habit. A woman, with fair hair and a slim, shapely form. He'd half-run towards her, instinctively reaching to embrace her, changing it at the last minute to a mundane doctor's gesture.
The wonder of all of it, that Shelagh loved him and had given up so much to be with him, that was what made the sweet agony of waiting for her possible. Two more days, as they had told Timothy tonight, just two more days, and she would be in his bed and in his arms, not on his couch. Then he would unbutton the pajama top and make her his.
He rolled his head to look at the clock on the bedside table. In ten minutes he would need to be up, getting ready for the day. He'd be tired, that was certain. But Shelagh, soft and warm and wearing his pajama top, was on his couch downstairs. Losing a few hours of sleep was not a bad price to pay for that.