This started off on Friday night as "birthday present" to the Richobel shippers, but I neglected to finish it before my actual birthday on Saturday so here it is now. Also, I hardly ever write in the present tense like this, so I don't know if it's awful or not.

This works on the premise of: "What is Isobel had accepted Richard when he asked her to marry him at Thirsk but everything else remained the same?" This is a oneshot, I think.

At the time she was not entirely sure what made her accept his proposal. It certainly wasn't the way he phrased it; it had sounded more like a business proposition than anything else, sitting there together at a little trestle table in Thirsk. Rationally, she had thought she would say no. She was even ready to say it, she paused and drew the very breath with which she would gently put him down. But then, she saw the genuine disappointment in his face; the crushing effect that even the anticipation of her rejection had on him. She couldn't say it. It caught in her throat. He was her friend; she couldn't hurt him like that. She knew he was happy when he was with her and she couldn't spoil that; happiness is so hard to come by. So she smiled at him, gratefully, and gracefully too, she hopes, and said yes.

She likes this version of events. She likes to think that she accepted him out of some degree of higher motivations. Rather than it being just because of the thought, the memory, the fear, of that grey, all-consuming loneliness she has found herself feeling these days; particularly when she sits alone at home in the evenings; particularly just after he left her after the dinners they shared together, with a handsome smile and a gallant kiss on the hand, that kept floating irrepressibly back into her mind for the rest of the night. She likes to think, but she can't say for definite.

All she can say for definite is that now it has paid off. She is glad they went ahead with their wedding in spite of the accident, although they were unsure at the time. It pays now to have someone in the house every time she comes home, someone to distract her from the void in her chest which she now realises was previously occupied by something completely dependent upon her son's heartbeat. It helps that he's very kind to her, that he has seen and understands grief; and knows that sometimes she wants to be alone, sometimes she needs company to keep her sane, sometimes she must do something or else she'll go mad, sometimes she feels so helpless and weak that all she can do is stare into the dying embers of the fire. He understands so well, and, in his quiet way, he sets about helping her as best he can. It helps even to live somewhere else, so that every step in every room, every brick is not coloured with Matthew.

He whispered to her quietly on their wedding day. I love you. Only once, and he hasn't done it again since. It was quiet enough for no one else to hear but loud enough for neither of them to mistake what was said. He's so kind to her, so very kind, and he cares, actively he cares for her; and, though he hasn't said it again, she knows he meant it, from the bottom of his heart.

But he's not her husband. He is and he isn't. They both wear their rings, and sometimes she catches him looking affectionately at her left hand. Sometimes she catches herself looking affectionately at his. She shares his bed. But they haven't slept together; not yet. On their wedding night they fell onto the sheets beside each other, tired out from the trip to the registry office in York, their legs just starting to taper off in opposite directions, but their hands locked together. They fell asleep together almost like children. During the night his arms seemed to move over to mimic their hands, and he held her. But that was all. He thinks that she isn't ready for it; and in absolute truth, she doesn't know for certain whether she is or whether she isn't, but she hasn't the courage to tell him that she thinks he might be wrong. She hasn't the courage to seize him by the lapels of his jacket, the front of his pyjamas and say, "I need you. I just need you." The trouble is, if they wait until she's absolutely ready, they may be waiting forever. Certainly there is no hope for them if they wait for her to recover from Matthew's death. They will wait forever.

…...

They live together very politely, he thinks. It's supposed to be impossible to always be polite to the person you live with, especially if there's only two in the house, but they're managing pretty well up until now. Heavens, when she smiles at him it's almost shy. When she's quiet, he always checks that she wants him to be there.

"If you want to be here," she invariably replies, throwing him a reserved but pleasant look.

To which he never quite knows what to say. But generally he stays; because he does want to be there. That's the point of all of this, he supposes. He wants to be here, he's vowed to be.

He'd like to say he thinks she's coping admirably with everything that's happened to her. On the surface she is. She's gracefully composed; she's dignified in her grief; she's strong. She scarcely misses her daily visit up to the house to see her grandson, he knows she even helps to console Mary, sometimes Edith too, just by talking about him to them. She's remarkable, he thinks. Ruefully. He finds her fortitude literally superhuman, and it frightens him.

The point is that no one should be coping the way she is. If he wasn't living with her, he'd hypothesise that she was putting on an admirably brave face and crumbling the second that she was alone. But he's living with her and he hasn't heard her cry once, not even quietly at night. He won't let himself sleep until she does just to check. No one should be able to cope the way she's coping; he thinks it's probably unhealthy. He knows what she needs: she needs to scream and rage and howl, or she needs to break something, watch something completely shatter, or she needs to hit him, to batter his chest with her fists, or she needs to make love with a violent intensity, enough to break her, to just break her, and allow her to feel again a strong feeling that's not pain. But as much as he knows that this is the case; equally he knows that she must choose the time herself. When she's ready.

Not that he wants to put off making love to her. It's only that he knows he has to. He's loved her for a very long time; he knew that when asked her to marry him. Sometimes he wonders what their marriage would have been like at this point if Matthew hadn't died, but that thought seems so alien to reality that he never reaches any conclusions; it's just unimaginable. He's loved her body and soul, and now that he lives with her at times it's very difficult to forget that. To him she's strikingly beautiful, she's always beautiful, even in black, even with her eyes tired and her face deeply lined with fatigue and sadness. Every time he presses a chaste kiss to her temple or her cheek and gets a brief scent of her, the salt of her skin and the lavender of her hair, he has to close his eyes against the tide of feeling, of longing it causes him. He thought it was bad when she was in France. Longing is so much more difficult when it's for someone who is constantly close enough to touch. The mornings when he wakes holding her more often than not he's hard, and he has to get out of bed quickly before she wakes up and notices. He hates to think of her waking alone, but he knows he has to. He has to.

…...

He thinks she doesn't notice when he slips out of bed early to run himself a cold bath. It's quite endearing, really. And gallant, very gallant indeed. And, she's realised since she's been living in his house, so hopelessly Richard. Trying to be good, but in the most infinitely frustrating way. She hates to think of him being frustrated too by this whole process and knows he has every right to ask her to fulfil his needs. But she knows he would never dream of asking. And she's too shy. For the first time in her life, she's painfully shy. She opens her mouth to tell him it's alright, and no words come out. Possibly because "alright" isn't exactly how she'd describe their situation at the moment; but it alright of him, there's nothing wrong with wanting. God knows, she knows that. She can't even tell him she loves him; wonderful, frustrating man. She wasn't sure before, but living with him she's grown to be sure. It's too hard. This, of all things at the moment, is too hard.

…...

It's something small in the end. It's cold, it's icy outside, and she slips when she goes out to pick the milk bottle up from the doorstep. The fall itself is very slight and doesn't hurt her, but the bottle breaks at she hits it against the step, cold milk soaking through her skirt and glass shattering next to her hand, cutting her, but not deeply. He hears a smash and is there in seconds, running throught the front hall in his shirtsleeves. He helps her up; wraps her first in his arms and then a moment later in a blanket as he settles her into an armchair in the sitting room. She is shivering from cold and shock.

There is a little shard of glass in her hand. He gets his medical bag; the tweezers, antiseptic, bandages, extracts it as carefully as he can and cleans the wound. It's only when he's wrapping the bandage around her hand that he looks up at her face and sees that she's crying. Tears are streaming quietly down her face. He says nothing until he has finished the bandage.

Then he gets up from the stool he was perched on, sits on the arm of her chair, draws her into his arms, pressing her head against his chest as she begins, at last, to howl.

"Yes," he whispered to her softly, "Yes. That's it, Isobel." Pressing a hand to her shoulder and then wrapping it further around to embrace her more securely, "That's it, my darling. Just let it all out."

Her body does not so much shake as convulse with grief. The sobs wrack her throat so hard that they are silent, her mouth moving furiously. He holds her injured hand gently against her chest, preventing her from making it any worst by beating her fist against her knee. All he can do is bury his face in hair and wait for it too stop, breathing the soft smell of her. He feels her head tremble against his, and his thumbs brush soothingly against her sides.

For a long time they are still, like that, holding each other, together. He moves first, kissing her cheek once, moving down to her jaw and kissing once there too. Chastely but fervently, wanting to convey all his love.

"Isobel," he tells her quietly, "Anything you need. Anything."

She is quiet for a few moments. She picks up his hand in her good one; kisses the tips of his fingers softly, seductively, drawing the last softly into her mouth and sucking for the briefest of seconds. Then she looks almost abashed when she look up into his eyes, having made it very plain just what she needs.

"I want..." she murmurs a little helplessly, still not knowing how to ask in words, "I need..."

But she has asked as clearly as she needs to. He only waits a beat longer. Standing, he helps her up and leads her silently towards the stairs, silently up to their bedroom.

He takes her face in his hands and kisses her properly, breathing her in, licking her lips, drawing her lower lip between his own.

"Is this what you need?" he asks her.

"Yes," she breathes back.

"Lie down, then," he tells her, "Please, Isobel, just lie down."

He touches every inch of her as he undresses her, not troubling with any of his own clothes, he can wait. Her emotions seem to be too wrought for her to trouble much about exposing her body to him; she looks shy as he removes her corset, but he sinks his mouth into her bosom so reverently that it seems to assuage any worries she has. He spends an inordinate length of time playing with her nipples, kneading the swell of her bosom, refusing to divert his attention so that in the end she wraps her open legs around one of his clothed thighs, rubbing herself frantically against his legs as he continues to lavish attention to her breast. She comes with a whimper, his mouth sucking gentle patterns on her breast, a surge of moisture from her centre soaking through his trousers.

It's only then that he caves in to her plea to touch her, there. She is beautifully hot, and sticky with more heat, and he barely pauses before he is rubbing more circles on her nub, pushing her folds apart with his fingers, pressing only lightly, so that she has to grind her hips against his hand to feel him as she wants to. He is painfully hard for her as she rocks herself to another climax against and then on his fingers, but he wants to do this for her, he wants to make her feel something good, for once in these painful months. She can take whatever, however much, she likes from him, because this is love and this is what he wants to give her.

By the time he has given her her third orgasm by lavishing kisses on her sex, holding her hips fast so she when she ruts herself violently against his lips the beautiful taste of her dances across his mouth, she is crying, moaning softly, shaking from the force of her climaxes and the calls of his name that have been torn from her throat. Her sex, lying softly beneath his hand where he is cupping her groin, is swollen, and he knows that if they make love now he is going to have to be very careful with her.

"Richard," she murmurs, "Richard... just... Inside me. Now."

He's already holding her body, smoothing her skin, soothing her, and one by one he has removed his layers of clothing while he was waiting for her to recover. He's amazed he doesn't come the moment he slides into her, and feels her exquisite tightness excerting the same blissful pressure as her arms around him. He hears her moan again, throatily, and it's all he can do to keep still until he knows she's alright. When she wraps her legs around his waist, he knows it's alright; it feels alright. He begins to move, setting as slow a pace as he can manage.

He kisses her lips, mouthing against her collarbone. He can feel himself quickening, and he puts his hands on her breasts to try to help her along.

"Richard," he hears her murmur hoarsely to him, "Richard, it's alright."

He continues to thrust carefully, making himself go slowly.

"Richard," she tells him again, "Harder. Please."

She pushes her pelvis higher up, making him go deeper into her. He groans, muffling his face on her shoulder. He can feel her kissing him. His hand slips further down between them, he knows he can't last, and back to her sex, brushing her as tenderly and as carefully as he can.

"Richard," she whispers, her head slowly rolling upwards, drunken with sensuality, "I love you. My darling, I love you."

He knows she's telling him it's alright again, but it's so much more powerful when she says it like this.

"I love you, I love you," she chants it with his movements, "I- Yes!" she stiffens hard against him as her climax hits her, and groaning in final relief he finally feels his release as he spills himself between her legs, his head still buried in her shoulder.

They collapse together back on the bed, panting, their bodies wrapped inextricable together, hearts hammering against each other.

Finally they are still and silent. For a long time they are still and silent, but not asleep.

"Richard," she finally speaks, her voice barely above a whisper, "That was-..."

"That was no less than you deserved," he told her, "That was what you needed."

"Yes," she agreed, "By God, I needed it."

They were both quiet again for a few moments.

"That was wonderful, Richard," she told him quietly.

"Thank you, my darling," he replied, "You've no idea how glad I am to hear that."

She kissed him once on the lips.

"I meant it, you know," she told him after a while, "I love you."

"I love you too."

He brushed his hand round her face, smiling at her. Her lips split into a small smile too.

"Sleep now, my love," he told her; and once more she buried her head against his chest.

End.

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