Disclaimer: Isn't this copyright free by now? Anyway, not making money, and no infringement intended.
Summary: Jane and Edward's wedding night. And it's not smut.
Rating: K+, I can't think of a reason to make it T.
Bedtime
After the wedding, everything went on as before. We walked home, then spent the day quietly, while the sun went down and darkness settled over the roads. The preceding days had been full of excitement, action, emotional tension - I was tired. Soon I told Edward that I wanted to retire for the night. He said: "All right, my darling, I'll be up directly." I climbed the stairs to the first floor, and there I hesitated. Should I go on to the second floor, to the little room where I had slept the past days? Or should I enter his room? Was it still his room, or was it ours now? We were married, after all, and this was our wedding night. But I knew nothing of the rituals and conventions of these circumstances. Surely there was a natural and easy way, but I was confused, couldn't think clearly. I tried to concentrate. I knew Edward, I knew the man I had married: what would he expect?
A moment ago in the sitting room he hadn't seemed particularly aware of any momentous occasion, he had bid me goodnight as always. Well, not exactly as always. What did "I'll be up directly" mean? Up to my room, to retire for the night myself? Up to our room, where you'll be waiting? And where was "our" room, is such a place existed?
Finally, I decided that going up to my own room was the most prudent course of action. I had some stockings to mend. I would sit down to my needlework and wait to see what happened next.
Not half an hour had passed when there was a knock on the door. "Yes?" He stood in the doorway, his poor blind eyes searching the space before him. "Jane?" "Yes, sir?" His eyebrows were knotted together in a most menacing way, but a smile was playing, invisible to anyone but me, around the corners of his mouth. "Jane, you really must stop calling me sir." "I will try, sir." He sighed in mock exasperation, we both laughed. So good it was to laugh with him again.
He took a tentative step into the room. It was unfamiliar territory to him, so I put my hand on his arm to guide him. "What are you doing?", he asked. "I am mending some stocking, s- I mean, Edward." He bent his head down, as if to look searchingly into my face. I could see that he was puzzled. It was clearly not what he had expected, but what *had* he expected?
Suddenly, he took both my hands and squeezed them between his with great force, so as to almost hurt me. "Oh! Oh, my poor Jane, my little darling! I am so very sorry! How could I have been so thoughtless?" And he kissed my hands, and my face, and my hair. "Edward, what is it, what is it?" "What is it, she asks? Why, we are married! You are my young bride, finally, finally, young Mrs. Rochester, and what do I do? I send you off to bed with all but a nod!" He let go of my hand and started to pace the room, but he soon stopped, for fear of running into furniture or upsetting a candle and setting the house on fire. He seemed very distressed. I walked up to him and took his hands in mine, as he had done a moment before. I wanted to soothe him, but didn't know what to say. "Well, we did not have a very usual wedding, did we?" "That is no excuse." I saw that he was about to fall into one of his fits of depression, so I spoke very fast. "I know what we can do. Let us pretend this last hour never happened. Let us imagine we are in the sitting room, and it strikes nine o'clock, and I say 'I am tired, Edward. I want to go to bed."
He did not answer, and suddenly cold fear gripped my heart. What if I had said the wrong thing? What if our married life would not be the bliss I had imagined?
But then I felt his lips on my face, on my mouth, on my neck, and he whispered into my ear: "Come, come." He took me to his room, which was full of all variety of wild flowers that Mariah had picked and put there for us. He took me in his arms and pressed me to him, and all my doubts and worries disappeared. "Forgive me, my darling, my sweet love, forgive me. Can you forgive this brute of a husband, who loves you more than he can say, and deserves you less than ever?" His caresses and kisses did not stop, and though I wanted to speak, I could not.
The rest of the night I will keep to myself. I will only say that never again was I unsure of what to do when it was time to go to bed.