He calls her Bertha among the tall reeds, his thin lips pressed into a line that she's sure is meant to be reassuring and instead makes her legs knock together at the knees; he calls her Bertha because there is no name for her but the one he gives, no name for her because who was she before she met him? He calls her Bertha and she cannot think of the language to reply, not when there's patois at the tip of her tongue and English thick and sloppy like molasses at the back of her throat, slick anxiety running down her vocal cords like sticky cane juice.
He calls her Bertha and mother always said to name was to keep, so she slips her hand into his silently. Looking up, she can't help but notice the way his face is marked by creases around his cheeks and the corners of his lips. They walk along the shore and she lets the ocean pull her feet into the earth, the sinking sand. The sea whips its spray and her hair tumbles loose around her shoulders. She cranes her neck to see him, standing behind her, hands by his sides. The gold of his pocketwatch shines.
"Are you ready for dinner, Bertha?"
She stares out at the horizon and closes her eyes for a brief moment; grains of sand tickle between her toes.
This must be what it feels like when everything starts to change.
They walk hand in hand back towards the house; she counts their steps, counts his pulse beats – a syncopated rhythm.
He walks her to her room, shiny floorboards creaky beneath her covered feet. The door creaks when she pushes it shut with a loud exhale.
There's a dress laid out on the bed, long sleeves and delicate needlework, cinched in at the waist. The hinges squeak and there is the smell of juniper and tobacco that clings to her mother's skirts. –s'me. She pulls her shift up over her head to change into the dress for dinner.
one day there'll be a different dress for you, nice and white and pretty and you can get out.
The dress fabric is rough against her skin, itchy against her bicep, but she just smooths down the fabric of the skirt as mother starts to pull and button and fasten everything up, hiding her away beneath layers of ruffles or sweet smells.
he'll be wanting you down to dinner.
She stares at her reflection for a second, her palms hot against her cheeks and she remembers standing on hot stones with her face towards the sky.
Walking towards the dining room, bunches of skirt in her hands, she wonders if the women in England are like this, act like this for him, for Edward; she pushes the thoughts down deep like sowing seed in neat rows of fresh upturned earth, burying burying burying. There is no doubt that she will reap what comes; future unavoidable but determined.
He tells her he loves her, toneless and brusque like the way he says everything, the way he says Bertha, while her lips are curled around the rim of a porcelain teacup, another object whose worth she cannot possibly fathom. The tea scalds her tongue so she smiles at him instead, folding her hands delicately into her lap. She smiles without showing teeth, like mother has told her a thousand times.
She cannot think of anything to say.
He speaks for them instead – "Shall I ask your mother to bring out the fish?"
Calm waters, calm waters, and she nods her head.
And after dinner feels as it always has.
His hands, rough and weathered, scratching along the outside of her thighs as he peels the dress off her bit by bit. She tips her head back, his kiss salty along the corner of her mouth; his eyes are bright in the black of the room.
She has never made much noise, not even when his fingers brush against her in a way that makes her sink down onto the mattress for support. His hand grasps at her bare hip and she can feel the ache all the way down through her bones and marrow into the thick blood that collects inside of her. He licks a line along her collarbone, across the tops of her breasts, between her ribs, pushing parts of himself through the gaps of her skeleton, through the gaps in her, sowing seed, she knows, so that she will never stop thinking about him, never stop remembering, never stop.
Her fingers push deep into the flesh of his back like searching for a weakness, and he presses his lips to the crook of her neck, breath hot against her skin with a deep rumble of a laugh.
It is his name that tumbles past her lips just as he pushes his way into her, settles his hips against hers with a low groan. Sweat collects on his shoulderblades, makes him slick and they move together, fluid as the ocean. He chants the name that isn't her name against her hairline like a charm; her fingers slip into the thick mass of his hair and there is more, there is more, there is murmurings of love again, that word, and a laugh that rises up through her body comes out as a soft moan.
And in the dark, he keeps her close, arms wrapped around her. "You will come with me to England?"
She turns to face him, and he pulls her taut against him. Her arms lying loosely on his shoulders, her fingers twine up into his hair.
She goes where she must, she goes where she needs to, she goes where she goes.
"Yes."
He grins then, fingers tracing patterns on her skin.
"Once we leave this place," he says, excitement coloring his words, "I can treat you like the queen you are."
She closes her eyes and curls her toes beneath the sheets.
She goes where she goes.