Starlight at Eventide
Chapter 10
In the depths of middle night, Merry felt the great bed move. He roused from his light doze but did not stir, not wanting her to think she'd awakened him. Estella rose quietly and he heard her depart the coach. She was only taking a sniff of the air, he guessed, though this forest was not the safest place even for that. When she returned unhurriedly through the little clearing several moments later, he relaxed. The trees had not made a sound.
Merry was glad to see her wake. It meant there was a chance the evening might continue where they'd left it off.
He had taken great pleasure and no small amount of pride in showing his lady just how well he remembered how to love her, but after thrilling him with another aided climax, she had grown weary and asked if she could just be held for a time. It hadn't taken long for sleep to claim her. Merry had waited, trying not to be concerned, or disappointed, hoping she would wake and feel up to resuming their lovemaking, but he would not push the matter. This night was more for her than for him.
She went to the window and he heard the soft whisper of curtains being drawn back. Light from the newly risen moon spilled into the coach drowning the glow from the coach's small brazier. She came back to the bed and sat beside him. For a very long time, she didn't move, but Merry could almost feel her eyes on him, trailing over his naked body as he lay, stretched out on the bed. He was just preparing to turn to her when he felt slender fingers gently stroking him, trailing over his back, buttocks and thigh. He smiled, giving up his pretence of sleep. She chuckled and started kneading those fingers into the corded tissue of his shoulders.
Merry sank back down with a very contented sigh. It had been ages since she'd rubbed his back! She was very good at it and had always been able to soothe the accumulated tensions of sword practice or a day in the field better than a cold brew or a pipe ever could. And his tensions were long overdue being subject to her capable attention. He grunted with pleasure as she pushed down onto his shoulder blades.
Her fingers had lost none of their power and skill, Merry was delighted to note. She climbed onto his back and used all her weight and an elbow to apply pressure to a spot on his right shoulder that always gave him trouble. The resulting burst of almost painful warmth made Merry groan again.
She had donned his abandoned shirt to go outside and the tickle of it gliding across his back as she moved was almost as enticing as the wonderful heat from where she sat upon him. They both were such titillating diversions that it was becoming very difficult to focus on enjoying the massage and not being distracted by the lithe body giving it.
It was strange how familiar and yet how different she felt. Hobbits, by nature, tended to give their whole heart once they'd fallen in love and they rarely remarried, even after the death of a mate. Perhaps the germ of Merry's arrested desire had lain in that inclination? He did not know. She was so changed from the sturdy lass he had known. But the touch of her hand, the way she moved and the tender care with which she caressed him were unmistakable. Like seeing the features of a long lost friend in the faces of his surviving kin, he was rediscovering his wife in this vibrant and slender body. And he had missed her.
He rolled beneath his lady and drew her down to lie beside him. Moonlight bathed her face in shades of blue and silver and ignited an indigo fire in her eyes. A tiny diamond, still clinging gamely to a strand of her hair, glittered in the light. She looked even more ethereal and Elvish than she had standing beside Arwen, but as he gazed lovingly down upon his wife, her breath hitched in a sob and Merry saw a tear glitter down her cheek.
He kissed it away.
More came, salty and bitter. He attended them as he had the first, cradling her head in his broad hands and kissing her with deep and abiding passion, giving the most earnest promise he could make: she need never fear, for he would not refuse her again.
Her crying quieted and she tentatively returned his kiss, but there was uncertainty in her touch and, somehow, deep sorrow. Merry paused and pulled back.
"What's the matter, my love?" he asked.
She bit her lip and reached up to stroke his cheek.
"I tricked you into coming here," she whispered. "It was unworthy of me."
More tears. Merry wiped them away with his thumb.
"I am glad you did," he said. "It seemed I had lost my way."
Her eyes travelled over him again as if memorizing his features. He could feel the longing in her gaze.
"Some would say there was more to life than the sweetness of a lover's embrace," she whispered softly. "They would say that once the children were begot such sport was a waste of time."
"And you feared I felt that way?"
She smiled a little.
"For once, I couldn't tell."
He grinned back. "Pippin once chastised me for expecting you to read my thoughts."
She looked away, unable to meet his eyes. "I'm glad you couldn't read mine."
"Estella?" Merry drew her chin gently back towards him. "Maybe it is time for us to begin to talk to each other more? Things have changed, in many ways. There was a time when I knew your heart as surely as I knew my own, but that voice in my ear speaks less often now. I think we've become, as good friends will, so comfortable with one another that we no longer feel the need for words. But I don't want that easy quiet to become an empty silence."
Tears glistened in her eyes again. She nodded unhappily and kissed his palm. He felt the dampness of her cheek and knew he need only be patient. She was a quiet lass, but there was a weight in her heart so heavy he could almost feel it.
"Do…do you know, when I was sick," she began, "the one thing that kept me here was your heartbeat. It was constant, never faltered, never failed. It was my… tether to this world. I held onto it as tight as I could because I didn't want to lose you."
Her arms slipped around his great chest as if to illustrate her claim. He settled her protectively into the hollow of his shoulder, tucking her head under his chin, as was his long habit.
"I'm not strong, Merry," she continued. "You and the boys thought of me as some kind of rock, but it was an act. All of my strength comes from you."
Merry opened his mouth to speak, but then shut it. These were words that had been pent up inside her for a long time. It would be wisest to let them flow while they might. He stroked her hair gently and listened.
"Diamond once told me that you would not be long for this world if I died, but I don't think that's true. Such a cowardly course. No. While so many others relied upon you, you would not be so selfish."
Her inference was that she would not be as strong. Merry's heart gave a sudden flutter like the beating of a moth's wing.
"You used to put spiders into my hair." She struggled to smile. "And yet, when I saw you standing there, full grown in that open field, I thought you the princeliest hobbit I had ever seen." Her voice grew surer. "There was something vast in your eyes, like a cornfield that stretched from horizon to horizon, all touched with golden fire." She rubbed her cheek devotedly against his chest. "You were so wild, fierce and dangerous, yet I'd never felt so completely safe in anyone's company. You filled a great emptiness that I'd never even known I had. And when you touched me…"
She sighed and moved in memory of that long ago dance. The motion sang a siren's song to his body.
But when he stirred to answer it, she checked herself; there was more she would say. She held him at arm's length, studying his face as if for answers written there. "How could any lass not love you?" she whispered at last. He felt her falling back into a quiet, distant place, that strange, vast room of her spirit, that part of her he did not understand. As closely as they lay entwined, it now yawned like a chasm between them.
"You've seen such wondrous things," she went on. "Beauties like Queen Arwen, heroes like the King, and places beyond my dreaming. I don't think I really grasped the reality of it all before." She looked about the moonlit cabin. "It's so much grander than anything in the Shire. How could I hope to keep you in the face of such wonders once my duty was done?"
"Duty?" Merry's voice was sharper than he'd intended. "You never saw our sons as a duty."
"No," she agreed quickly, "I never did. And I never will. But I didn't come here for such a noble cause as begetting the future Masters of Buckland. I came to you tonight, dressed like this and armed with Elvish potions for a very selfish purpose." After a moment, she drew a breath and seemed to draw the courage to continue from it.
"I came because I couldn't bear facing a lifetime without you, without this." She stroked his cheek and the heat in her touch was unmistakable. Her hand dropped onto his chest and the fingers spread wide across it. "Not exactly an admirable calling, is it?"
"Admirable or not, I am glad you did it." He covered her hand with his own to assure her. "Would you have nothing for me to look forward to of an evening but a pint and a pipe? And Pippin for company?"
She chuckled, but the bitterness was still in her.
"It has long been time to talk, Merry. I am guiltier of this silence than you. I was afraid…no, terrified of what you might tell me." She drew a deep breath and he felt her move further away. "But… I must find the courage to hear the truth," she said in a voice as soft as a whisper.
Merry sat up on the bed. Had his lack of desire truly made her feel so vulnerable? He had worried about her physical ability to withstand him, but had not taken into account how his abstinence might make her feel. She was right, he had thought of her as a rock. He who still pined a cousin fifteen years gone, whose fear had swallowed his desire, had thought her an emotional tower of strength. It was little wonder her grief over Eadoc had so confounded him.
"If you want me to tell you that truth with words, I will," he said looking her firmly in the eye. "Though I doubt I could speak plainer than my presence here tonight does. But if it's words you want to hear, then I will speak them." A slow, joyful light came into his blue eyes. If her strength came from knowing he loved and wanted her, then he would make her into a tower again. He drew her up into his arms. "You didn't trick me, lass," he whispered, so close to her hair that her curls tickled his lips. "I needed time to think and now I have. You're a part of me, Estella, the other half of my soul. I love you more now than I ever have and, yes, I want to make love to you. I've never bedded you to make babies, though that's been a blessed result. I married you because I wanted you, wanted to celebrate what we had, you and me. Just as I do now, and always will." He lifted her chin and found it trembling. "I give you my vow again; I want to grow old with you, I want you beside me, in my heart and in my bed for as long as we both will live."
He didn't need words to know how ardently she accepted it.
He had missed this.
He had almost forgotten how good she felt, smelled and tasted, and how wonderful it was to lose himself to passion. His body had awakened easily to her touch and her slender fingers were no less skilled in arousing him than they had been at working the knots out of his back. They had always been forceful in their lovemaking, but Merry had started this evening gently, testing his mate's mettle, feeling his way. She proved still to be a very physical lover, but her slender body now had a feral quickness she had never shown before. It electrified him more than he had anticipated.
Sweat-slicked legs slipped around his back and clutched him about the waist as Estella writhed against him. As self-controlled and equable as he was in his every day life, he stirred to almost animal intensity at her touch. Teasing, stroking, suckling and straining, they charged the air in the sumptuous coach with crackling tension. He revelled in it. It was his escape from the constraints of his position as Master of Buckland, his reminder that part of his heart remained in the wild, open fields of Rohan. He pinned her still for a moment and took a kiss, plunging his tongue deep into her mouth.
She answered by arching up and wriggling playfully from beneath him till he had to release her. With her legs wrapped around him, she could control the teasing game somewhat, at least to the point of keeping his mouth and other equally eager parts just out of reach of their goals. He growled hungrily and latched onto what was still within his grasp, a reddened breast, drawing as much of it as would fit into his mouth and flicking the end with a maddened tongue. Estella gasped and rolled them both onto their sides, though the position gave her no advantage in their lustful game and even gained him a sweet inch beyond her guard. She jumped and tried playfully to squirm away, but he held her fast and pushed his way into her depths.
She hesitated in surprise and he rocked back, withdrawing. The angle of their bodies made a deep penetration impossible, but he knew she could feel every inch of him gliding along her engorged folds. Her grip on his waist slackened and she drew a ragged breath that let him know his tactic had caught her attention. With a wolfish grin, he rocked back in. She was usually the master of this game, despite her smaller size, able to teasingly deny him until he almost burst from need, but this time he would turn the tables. He would bring her to such heights as she had never known before.
With fluttering quickness, he began a shallow rhythm, pushing only a little way into her before rocking back out again. It had the desired effect. She drew in another searing breath and her eyelids fluttered as if she were spellbound by the sensation. He granted her nothing but teasing, quick and regular thrusts while doggedly denying his own urge to plunge deeper.
She whimpered, but still he held back. A frown of deepening concentration fixed on her face and her body began to move with his. She was so warm and soft, and keen, and so completely alive in his arms. He feasted upon her neck and the hollow beneath her ear, letting the salty taste of her body and the musk of their passion infuse his senses. He was vaguely aware that he had already shattered her saucy defiance, but it took most of his focus to hold himself back, to resist the now almost overpowering need to bury himself in her.
Her whimper became a soft, breathy, undulating cry that swelled in time with his thrusts. It he could just hold out a little longer she would peak. A memory of their first blissful union suddenly came keen and clear to his mind; Estella, her long hair tumbled about her on the flattened corn, her sweet depths pulsating around his flesh at their culmination. Not yet! He fought the urgent longing to feel her warmth around him again, as glorious in the springtime of their love as in its eventide.
With a gasping cry, Estella suddenly pulled herself closer, drawing him in with frantic urgency. The motion undid the last of Merry's tenuous control and he fell upon her, unrestrained and hungry, covering her body with his own and plunging into her all the way to the hilt.
Conscious thought held little sway in the depths of their passion. Merry moved as instinct and pleasure bade him, exploring the treasured spirit in his arms with more than touch. Her cries were louder now, a keening song, punctuated by his mighty thrusts, the voice of a passion he both shared and observed from somewhere beyond. They settled into a vigorous but perfect rhythm as if no time had passed since their last encounter, two straining forms matched in fervour, escalating to a fever pitch. And still they rose higher, ascending together, locked as one, eager now to reach the heights they had once known so well.
The first thrill of his own culmination crested within him. When they were in tune like this, Merry could sense her spirit; a solitary beacon of white light, infinite in patience and strength, and blessedly unchanged despite the trials of that last devastating year. It reached out and bathed him in its glow. While his body strained, slamming heavily into hers in the raw heat of their lovemaking, he embraced her soul with tenderness. She arched and gave a visceral cry, not a scream or whimper, but a sound unique to herself and to that moment. He loved hearing it. It meant joy, utter, primal exultation and deep satisfaction. It was a sound only his love could draw from her. She fluttered around and under him and at last, with the blood hammering in his ears and the fire of it igniting every fibre of his body, he let himself go.
She was with him in that place of ecstasy too. It was as if they possessed one mind, the thoughts of one seeming echoed in the mind of the other. It had been a very long time since she last joined him so. He felt the bright spirit of the one he loved, and yet this night, as her essence filled his heart, he was also aware of what lay beyond her; a vast, windswept hollow where stars raced by high above.
It was the place he had seen in the depths of her eyes.
He now understood what he could not before. This was Estella, the fearless dark under the stars. This was the rich womb that had given life to his sons, the source of her mystery and the essence of her being.
The stars! His thought was jubilant.
I have never seen them, came her answer, though not formed of words.
But they are you. He was confused.
I… had hoped they were there. Most women dare not even do that much.
He cradled her spirit and gazed up at the vast, bejewelled heavens. They are beautiful. How can you not see them?
Her spirit gave a shudder like a sigh. We have been the defeated for so long, we have forgotten even the rumours of what we once were. But it is no matter. What I see is beautiful too.
Suddenly, he saw in his mind this joyous realm as she perceived it; a vast, endless plain of gold under the roof of a clear blue sky. And in the centre was a brilliant golden light; his light.
Perhaps it is good that we cannot see our own true natures? But I see you, Merry Brandybuck. And that is why I love you.
The moment was fading, they were returning to the world of life and rumpled satin. Merry, trembling from the aftershocks coursing through his body, gathered up his spent wife and drew her tight to his chest.
He had no words that would not seem clumsy or inadequate after the meeting of their minds and he did not know what he should say if he did. She did not see the power and majesty of the dark under the stars, did not know her own precious nature, but she saw him.
Perhaps she saw him greater than he was, but he felt humbled and honoured by her vision. She had painted such a grand picture, greater than a humble hobbit could ever aspire to, but even as she placed him on high she could not see the wonder that was within herself. It tore his heart. She could not see! Within his wife's being he had seen the dark under the stars of the world's beginning. Perhaps all women held, unrealized to themselves, some morsel of that power that brought the world into being? He did not know, but he did know what a treasure Estella was even if she did not realize it.
It was a revelation he would need to think on and to ponder the meaning of her haunting words, but one course he had already decided: he would teach her to see those stars. He would open her eyes and she would know the treasure that she was. In the time that was left to them, he would find some way to teach her to know her own worth.
"I think… I think I'm glad I took the Queen up on her offer." Estella was getting her breath back and the smile growing on her face warmed Merry's heart. She hadn't looked so deliriously happy in a very long time. He supposed he hadn't either.
"What offer? The coach?"
"She gave me a phial, said I was to take just a sip…"
The hairs on the back of Merry's neck rose. He thought of the strangely familiar flavour he had tasted on his wife's lips.
"She told me that it was given her in Imladris, by her grandfather, but I've already forgotten the strange sounding name."
Merry shook his head. It couldn't be…
"It wouldn't, perchance, have been miruvor, would it?"
Her glistening face brightened with recognition. "Yes! That was it! You know of it?"
He chuckled and kissed her long and deeply.
"I do indeed," he said. "And I don't think this night is quite over yet."
The End