THIS CHAPTER HAS A MILDLY EXPLICIT, LOVING, CONSENSUAL SEX SCENE. Please don't read it if you don't like such stuff! You can easily skip it and wait for the next, and last chapter, and miss nothing important.

I suppose we had some notion that this was to end in marriage.-

Charles Dickens

-OO-

When she awoke, she saw the gleam of his eyes, studying her face.

"Have you been awake long?" she whispered through a blurriness of sleep. It should be startling to wake up next to a man.. But already it would have seemed more strange that there were an empty place where he should be.

"I'd just decided I'm not awake at all. I must be dreamin'," the back of his curled fingers tenderly stroked her cheek, the delicate, sensitive shell of her ear; softly stranding through her hair from her forehead through to the shining curls which lay loose on the pillow. Her heart quickened - she closed her eyes as he came near. He was going to kiss her. This time, he really was.

His lips were so warm on hers. Gentle kisses, here, and there. Taking his time. The press of mouth to mouth was so tender, sensitive lips pulling away slowly then finding one another again, making such sweet sounds. Fragments of talk:

"So this is what it feels like..."

"What does? Love?"

"John... I want..."

"Yes," he murmured, "What do you want, Miss Margaret? Do you even know?" He was feeling a great deal more like himself after such a sweet, comforted sleep; his powerful sexuality wakening, interest firing up in her soft curves under loose cotton,. He remembered the other night, how much she had wanted... things that were strange and new and unknown to her; well, maybe tonight he could give her something of that.

He began gently on undressing her, unhurrying, a button undone here followed by a kiss on newly-bared skin, another button, another kiss. She was being brave about it; but he was sure as he could be that it was an uncomfortable thing for this protected young woman to be made naked in front of him. He tenderly persisted, baring her to the soft light, one candle steadfastly burning on either side of her bed.

He knew she was nervous - a certain quality to her stillness, a tension to her breathing; but as he cupped the bare flesh of her beautiful breasts, stroked their firm curves, touched the tiny hard peaks of her nipples, throwing into it all he had of awe at her beauty and delight in her, she shivered a little and her skin flushed with heat.

His fingers caressing her were so gentle. After a moment his head dipped to her breast, his tongue lazily, slowly, circling its little peak and sending delicious shocks on a long, downwards pathway, and then he was suckling her, not like a child but as a lover. Every time his tongue washed over her nipple a delicious thrill stirred. Pleasures she had never known or found herself, but which he seemed to know, through instinct or experience. She could trust herself to him and he would take care of her. He would bring her through this insistence of awoken demands and safely to the other side. She looked at his dark head on her breast, tenderly stroked his hair, his cheek, no words in her for the huge emotions she was going through - she loved him but she more than loved him - she adored him, she wanted to be consumed by him.

Her nipple slipped regretfully from his mouth as he moved up to kiss her again, refreshing her with his love, and his hand slipped down over the shaping of her breasts and down to her soft tummy, gentle, slow swirls - but now she seemed suddenly anxious, guarding herself, and as his hand moved lower she tensed up and panicked, twisting her body away.

"It's all right," he murmured to her, hands falling away. "We can just lie like this, Margaret. Just sleep wi'me if you'd like," making it clear he would force nothing on her, his beautiful, delicate, innocent girl, and he turned onto his back so he was vulnerable himself and unthreatening to her, his arms, his empty hands, relaxed at his sides, eyes half-closed. God knew he was still tired enough almost to desire sleep more. Almost.

After a moment she turned herself back to him, anxious that he might feel rebuffed, and leaned over him, and looked at him, and stroked her fingers down his bare arm from the shoulder, over the lean curve of his bicep, down to his fine strong forearms and up again and down. He watched the wanderings of her fingertips and saw her lips frame a little smile as she experienced a thought he did not know.

"Mr Thornton. Would you carry me across the mill yard?"

"Carry you across the mill yard," he repeated, thinking about it. "This is somethin' you want, is it?"

"You must take your black coat off first. Then snatch me up in your arms and stride with quick steps and all the hands must see,"* she was bubbling with laughter now, and he loved to hear such happiness from her, even while he had no idea what she was talking about. Her lips still curved but her eyes hazed over, serious, concentrating, as they went back to his prone body, gently, carefully pulling down the cover to bare his chest, and a little further, right down as far as the limits of her bravery allowed. He lay very still and let her look, and touch him, whatever she wanted. He closed his eyes, trying to keep his breathing very steady.

She was finding and tracing the flying wings of his collarbones, oddly delicate, the long fine tendons at his throat, stroking him and kissing him as he had stroked and kissed her, over his breast down to his flat, tight stomach, arriving at last at the fine dark pelt that began just under the tiny bump of his navel.

Now she was terrified, her heart beating loud enough to sound in her ears. She wondered if he could hear it too.

He was watching her. "Say what you're thinkin'," he said, low. "You can say anything to me – "

She swallowed over a dryness which seemed to have formed in her throat. "I am nervous," she confessed. Her fingertips continued to play in the soft dark hairs just above where the cover was drawn. He knew her thoughts exactly; should she, would she, explore further, where his maleness would shock her?

"I won't stop you," he said with a glimmer of a grin, "but you don't 'ave to."

She considered that, very grave and serious. "But you want me to," not quite a question.

He made a little rueful face -"I'll not deny that. But, sweet Margaret," he lifted a hand, traced around her mouth with one finger, lazy and loving, "I don't want anything you don't choose of your own makin'. We can take it slow as you like. There's nothing you have to do."

Wide, thoughtful eyes turned on him. She said, "Mr Thornton, in London Zoo – why are you looking at me like that?"

He straightened up his mouth, which had been beginning on a smile: "I'm just struggling to think where this might be goin'; but go on – "

"In London Zoo, there is a hippopotamus – now you ARE laughing at me!"

"I'm sorry, Margaret, but a hippopotamus, at this moment, considerin' what ... is enough to startle anyone - ?"

"I'm trying to tell you something, Mr Thornton," she insisted, but almost laughing herself.

"I'm listenin'. I promise I am. But keep doing that while you tell me – " He took her hand and moved it down his body again, and thus encouraged her fingers began to drift once in the hairs that led to his sex as she told her story:

"It's a male hippopotamus – "

"I guessed."

"And sometimes – "

"I'm sure."

"But you see, Mr Thornton, ladies are not supposed to view such things. When the poor creature is... in that condition – screens are drawn along the side of his pool if ladies are present to protect us from the sight - but not always fast enough." Her anxious eyes engaged with his, urging him to understand the point of this story and he thought he did:

"It frightened you? Havin' seen this awful sight, you swore you could never marry? Is that it, my beloved Miss Margaret, who has just promised herself to marry me?"

"No, not at all! You have got the wrong idea entirely... what I want you to know is... that unlike many women, to whom it comes as a surprise or so I have heard, I do know what a... what a male body is like."

"A hippopotamus's."

He could not keep from letting a little grin slip out and after a moment she joined him in quiet laughter; hers of chagrin and relief and shyness and delight, because she loved him, and because she felt very loved besides.

"Well, my lady Margaret, d'you know what, I think this'll make it easier – " and with one swift movement he reached over her to pinch out the candle by her side of the bed, and then his own. He pulled up the covers around them both and then they were touching naked, tangling together, bare arms and hands and thighs and knees in safe and cosy darkness.

-OO-

An hour had passed... and he was kissing her and apologising and murmuring, "I'd no intention for that to happen."

"I wanted it to. Shhhhh... Let's sleep."

He laid his cheek against hers for a moment. She could feel unfamiliar roughness around his mouth and chin. She adored him.

"You will have to marry me now," she said; and with their heads together they laughed, and kissed, sweet, sleepy, content. Falling asleep together. As they would do for the rest of their long lives; no more partings, never.

-OO-

Author's Note:

*In case it's not clear, Margaret is thinking here of the young spinner who fainted in the yard, referred to in a previous chapter.

This was originally posted on AO3 and I've given this scene a few cuts, to not fall foul of the rules here on explicit material.

One more chapter to post which will go up tomorrow, and a happy little epilogue with it. Thank you so much to anyone who has read this far!

NB: there really was a hippopotamus at London Zoo from 1850, and quite likely Margaret and Edith would have seen it as it was an immensely popular attraction for Londoners. He is part of another story to come and only briefly referred to here, for the fun...