15 August 1959
Wakefulness came upon him slowly; it was not the sunlight that drew him up from dreams, nor the slamming of a car door outside or the call of a bird, nor was it the sound of Mrs. Penny fussing about in the kitchen. What it was he could not say, entirely, only that as he came back to himself he was flooded with warmth, and contentment, and when he sighed happily and turned his head, when he opened his eyes at last, he found himself face to face with Jean and nothing in all the world could be finer than that.
She was still lying beside him, but while he was still as naked as he had been when they fell asleep the night before she was wrapped in his own navy robe, and the sight of her delicate hands reaching out to him from beneath the too-long sleeves, the way the fabric parted and left an enchanting swath of her chest and the tops of her breasts bare filled him with a possessive sort of awe. Jean looked small, and lovely, and she wore his robe, was lying in his bed, and oh what he wouldn't give to keep her here, to have her with him always.
"Good morning," she whispered, her grey eyes travelling over his face, her face soft and somehow vulnerable - and all the more beautiful - without her usual makeup. Lucien could not help but smile, and since she was his, for an entire weekend, since they had no reason to concern themselves with anything outside his bed, he did not fight his impulses and instead reached out, let his fingers trail against her cheek, rising up to brush back the fall of her dark hair from her forehead.
"Good morning," he answered, his voice low and hoarse from sleep. The air was still, the winter sunlight wan and pale; it could not have been long past dawn, but Jean was awake already, had risen from the bed at least long enough to slip into his robe, but she had not left him there, had returned to him instead, had chosen, of her own accord, to lie down once more beside him, and that, too, was a beautiful thing. There was a reverence in him this morning, a sense of something truly monumental taking place here in the quiet between them. They were utterly unconcerned with anything save one another, and he was content.
"How did you sleep?" she asked him softly, and while his hand occupied itself with her hair her own reached out, gentle fingertips tracing the line of his beard, an expression on her face which he thought - he hoped - mirrored the awe, and the hope within his own heart.
"Quite well, actually," he confessed. And wasn't that strange, for Lucien could not recall when last he'd slept well; most nights he drank more than was wise before bed, and that did not make for a pleasant evening, and sometimes he still woke shouting in the dead of night, alone, with no one there to comfort him when the terrible dreams of days gone by plagued his heart. Not so, last night; he had not been drunk when he slipped beneath the sheets, and he had hardly moved a muscle, so complete was the peace that consumed him. She was a tonic, was Jean, the only thing he'd ever found with the power to heal his wounded heart.
"And you?" he asked, because he felt that he must, and Jean smiled fondly at him.
"Quite well, thank you, Doctor Blake," she told him. Her hand abandoned his face to drift instead over the plane of his chest, and the touch of her fingers against his skin reminded him forcefully that he had woken hard and hungry for her. In fact he would like nothing better than to roll her beneath him, to once more pour upon her every ounce of the affection he felt for her, but he could not say for certain whether she would be amenable to such activity first thing upon waking. He did not wish to ask her outright, but his need would not sustain him through a long seduction, and he wondered, for a moment, what course he ought to take.
He need not have worried about Jean's sensibilities it would seem, however, for her hand drifted down low on his belly even as she flung one lean leg over his thigh, and he realized she was still naked beneath the robe the same moment her hand settled upon his aching hardness.
Jean grinned, watching him as he shivered at her touch, as his head snapped back against the pillows and a low groan escaped him. That's that settled, he thought, and though he longed to kiss her he settled instead for rolling himself over her, his hands reaching for the tie of the robe even as his lips descended upon her neck, and she sighed, and touched him, and they delighted in one another then.
It was, he thought, quite the most marvelous morning he had known for some time. Peeling the folds of his own robe away from Jean's skin, watching as she was revealed to his hungry gaze, taking her then while her arms were still tangled in the robe and her lips were pressed against the column of his throat and they both of them gave themselves over to joy; he could imagine no finer way to start the day. Once they both recovered their breath Jean had tightened the robe around herself and slipped off for the loo, and so Lucien had tugged on a pair of sleeping pants and padded into the kitchen shirtless, intent on making breakfast.
He set the kettle to boiling first, knowing Jean would want her tea, and then he rummaged through the kitchen, gathered a bit of bacon and some eggs and some bread for toast, and though he never would have confessed to such a thing if pressed he was in fact whistling while he went. They had one entire, glorious day to spend together, and one night and one morning yet to enjoy before Jean left him for the pub, and all those hazy hours of indolence and comfort stretching out before him left him delighted and relieved. His body was loose and sated, his movements relaxed and unhurried, his thoughts focused, most entirely, on Jean and what they might do together.
They would have to speak of Derek, he knew. That was, after all, the reason they had arranged this weekend in the first place. But not just now, he thought, not at breakfast, when the day was only just beginning and he fancied he could almost feel Jean still wrapped around him. There would be time enough for Derek later; this moment, this morning, was for them.
"So you do mean to make breakfast, then."
Lucien whirled away from the stovetop, an egg still clutched in his hand, and found Jean leaning in the doorway, still wrapped in his robe, smiling at him fondly. What a picture we make, he thought; his own hair was a riot from sleep and the touch of Jean's hands, his chest bare, his feet equally so, and Jean; oh, Jean was a vision of decadent loveliness, swaddled in his robe and brushing her unruly curls back from her face, and they were standing together in his kitchen, bathed in the early morning sunlight.
"I promised, didn't I?" he answered lightheartedly. "Come on, then. I put the kettle on. You can put your feet up and have your tea and let me do all the dirty work."
"You know the life of leisure doesn't suit me, Lucien," she answered as she made a beeline for the kettle, and the two cups and the sugar bowl and all the other accouterments he'd laid out for her beside it. "I'd be quite happy to help."
"Let me spoil you a little," he answered, smiling and turning his attention back to the eggs. Yes, he wanted to spoil her, wanted to make sure her every want was seen to, wanted to show her the kind of life she could have, if only she would have him.
"You're very sweet." Absently, almost as if she didn't realize she was doing it, she lifted herself up on to her tiptoes and pressed a kiss against his cheek before she set about pouring the tea. The rightness of it, the sheer bliss of the sense of domestic normalcy that colored the scene, made Lucien's heart sing; it would be all but impossible, he thought, for things to go back to business between them after they had shared so much with one another, and that was all for the good.
"What shall we do today then, Doctor Blake?" she asked him. He heard the sound of a chair being pulled back from the table, the sound of Jean settling into it, the clink of a tea cup against a saucer, but he was quite focused on breakfast, and so did not turn to look at her.
"Breakfast first, I think," he said. "And then I thought we might take our tea into the sunroom, and after that, well, I am entirely at your disposal, Mrs. Beazley."
"I quite like having you at my disposal," she told him, but there was something almost wistful in her tone, something that sounded so very like regret he could not help but cast a glance at her over his shoulder. There was nothing troubling in her expression, however, and so he told himself he must have only imagined it.
"I wanted to say, Lucien," she added. "I should have said it last night. What you told me, about what happened in the camp...I know it must be very difficult for you to talk about those things. And I wanted to say thank you, for sharing that with me."
If he had been speaking to anyone else Lucien was certain those words would have dampened his bright mood, but coming from Jean they inspired only a further swelling of affection, for her goodness, her compassionate heart, for the tender way she treated him.
"It isn't something I like to remember," he told her slowly, "but it isn't something I can forget, either. After the war, it was too difficult to talk about, and as time went on I found that no one wanted to hear it. People prefer to remember our victories, and not dwell on our defeats."
"We do ourselves a disservice by burying the past," she said then, and he could not help but feel how perfectly they seemed to suit one another, how Jean's own grief had made her so understanding of his own, and how grateful he was to her for that understanding.
"But we can't live in the past, either," he countered, flipping the bacon neatly and pondering her words. No, he did not want to live in a prison of his own making, trapped by memories, but nightmares still haunted him in the dead of the night, and his hands still shook sometimes when he felt himself confined, and Derek bloody Alderton was sniffing around. He did not want to live in the past, but it seemed he could not outrun it, either.
"We have to make our own futures," he told her. And that was what he intended to do, starting here, starting now, with her.