Disclaimer: Characters of Jane and Edward Rochester the creative property of Charlotte Bronte, the words in italics are John Donne extracts, the asterisked quote at beginning is a Keats quote.
Her body was awash with pleasure, splayed lazily across the hillocks of quilt, Edward's arm curling around her waist, they held each other close.
"Happy Valentine's day my darling" he whispered as he pressed a kiss to her cheek "my sweet…"
As he spoke, his voice echoed connotations of bliss, fresh remnants of the love they had just made. Sinking surrenderingly into their abundantly cushioned bed, she gathered the duvet around them, inhaling the sent of their bodies interwoven in the sheets; she drifted sleepily into her own memories of how they had spent the day together as she whispered into his ear "Ever yours, fair star…"*
Earlier that day:
As they had stepped out of the house that morning, casting off the dusty, mundane air of Ferndean, Jane rejoiced in describing to her husband the calm bounties of nature's winter palette, leafless trees, stark and bare, with branches dancing up into a sky of white, dusted with deep charcoal smudges. "It is the sky that you have the most fondness for seeing, *a sky of steel!" She told him. He chortled slightly "I suppose as a gentleman I should curse such weather as cold and damp, dreary for heart and mind, and instead lay preference for a balmy, flourishing summer instead?"
"Only by convention, for you sir, are no gentleman! But some prefer the cooler hues of winter to the liveliness of so many springs and summers. I have often heard poets describe their love as roses… Perhaps they were talking of winter roses"
"But let us say that one is arguing that a season so associated with frost and bitter temperatures could not possibly portray love, in all its warm splendour"
"Then, sir I would disagree with them, for the fact that all the trees are shed of any outer brightness, and are bare for all of nature to see them, seems to take on a manner of intimacy, and if you could see the branches, then you too, sir would soon see the likeness between them and the passionate clutch of lovers' arms"
Lost in their talk, the cool breezes of winter must have gusted them along in their paths, for Jane stopped abruptly in her tracks as she saw the jagged stabs of rubble, the remnants of Thornfield Hall.
"Jane?" Edward murmured, surprised by their sudden halt, his eyes blindly poking around in their sockets, in one of the half-hearted attempts he often made to strain some vision into his blighted eyes
"It's the hall…" Jane replied delicately. Realisation then settled into his demeanour, he and Jane sunk into brief contemplation before Jane suggested
"Do you want to see it?"
Edward gave a small, solemn nod in agreement.
"Describe it to me, Jane" he said, giving her arm a half affectionate, half persistent squeeze as they stepped their careful step into the courtyard. Hesitantly, she portrayed what she saw "the walls are darker, greyer and all of them half-crumbled, weed-ridden…" She stopped and watched his blind eyes swell with awkward, solemn emotion. She laid her right hand gently, reassuringly on his arm. "Keep going" he whispered, half-smiling. Then, an image glinted into vision at the corner of her eye; a path, which bore at the end of it a stained wooden door which was half-shrouded and hidden in one protective claw of a tree, stretching over it.
"It is the orchard!" She exclaimed.
"What? The orchard? The very orchard we walked in? Lead me to it, Jane, Thornfield may be dressed up with any sentimental articulation, any verbal artifices one may like but the physical state of it now is a mere mimic to my perceptions of it before, which remain unchanged!" He said this gruffly, in a deep and sardonic tone to the old hall.
Sensing his wish to avoid the resurgence of old and painful emotions, I consented and lead him through to the vivid wilderness beyond the door. It, unlike the hall had remained undamaged; occasional blooming faces of winter roses appeared in the dark emerald fields of dormant buds. The cherry, apple and pear tress all were leafless, providing striking outlines of black branches clutching at the sky. Nothing could rival its blissful tranquility.
Nothing, perhaps but the sudden and surprising movement Edward made, as he softly whirled her into his arms, snaking both of them around her waist, turning her to him. Then, finally, he cautiously but tenderly found her mouth with his own.
At the first contact of their lips, Jane returned her husband's sudden burst of affection with equal passion, slipping her fingers into the thick black mass of his hair, pushing his mouth onto hers with an intensity that increased, burningly, beautifully...
As his lips peeled away from hers, Jane opened her eyes and curiously gazed into his, savoring the last ripples of heat swimming in her body which were quickly revived as Edward dipped his head, burying it in the nook of her neck and whispering
"Hail Bishop Valentine, whose day this is…"
She recognized the enflamed language that could only be penned by John Donne, coupled with the realization that it was the fourteenth of February, the day of memoriam for the Christian martyrdom's, the day birds traditionally nestled to their lifelong mates.
"I had forgotten you liked Donne…" She smiled, teasing him with feigned indifference. The painful associations that had seemed to simmer below the surface of his heart had been stilled and frozen with the strength of the gaze he held now as he smiled the smile he seldom used, loaded with warmth, the same expression he had used when she returned to him from Gateshead.
Another cold sweep of winter air urged the couple to instinctively tighten their grasp on each other, and then finally, with one last fleeting glance at the Thornfield rubble, walked each other back to Fearndean amidst the backdrop of the sun drifting to its afternoon climax in the sky.
Edward's smile as well as the description of the orchard were based upon those from the book