But in her web she still delights
To weave the mirror's magic sights,
For often through the silent nights
A funeral, with plumes and lights
And music, went to Camelot:
Or when the moon was overhead,
Came two young lovers lately wed;
"I am half sick of shadows," said
The Lady of Shalott.
~Alfred, Lord Tennyson, 1842

XXX

May 27, 1926

Having been engaged before, Jim expected the month leading up to the wedding to be both delightful and trying. He well remembered the frustration of having to restrain his physical urges for the woman he was deeply in love with – urges he'd thought died with Gracie, but had suddenly and startlingly roared back to life the first time he saw Jane Edna Peabody. From that moment, Jim had become excruciatingly conscious of time. Three months of dismissing his attraction to the petite assistant librarian with the gorgeous shock of chestnut-colored curls, brilliant gray eyes, and dazzling smile as unwarranted lust and attempting to repress it. When denial became impossible, six months of subtly attempting to ascertain whether Jane reciprocated his feelings. After weathering a few misunderstandings, one year of blissful but careful courtship. Now, only one-and-a-half months of engagement remained until the culmination of all the hopes and dreams he'd tentatively but avidly fashioned about a long and happy life with the woman he adored both platonically and romantically (he dared not envision children, not after what happened before). This should have been the easiest interim to weather. Instead, it was proving to be the most excruciating.

A little less than one month before their wedding – they'd barely made it two weeks into their engagement – Jim and Jane sat up late in her boarding house parlor, deep in conversation, as per usual when they were not not talking. The other residents of the boarding house had long since vacated the parlor, so they didn't even have the pretense of a chaperone. Out of concern for Jane's reputation, Jim hadn't intended to stay so late. But after so many months of diligence, he was starting to lose track of such things – he had warned her that engagement afforded a sense of freedom that courtship entirely lacked – and was startled and disconcerted when the grandfather clock in the hall chimed ten.

Jim broke off their conversation with a sigh. "I suppose it's time for me to go home."

Jane smiled wistfully. "Yes, I suppose so."

Once they both stood up, she reached over and turned off the lamp on the round doily-covered end table next to them. But the room was not plunged into darkness. Since they were sitting right next to the largest window and a full moon was shining, the room was flooded with a bewitching light that beautified everything it touched.

The assistant librarian was already stunning in the daytime. Beneath the moon, she was thoroughly arresting, like Venus come to life. Her light green tea dress furthered this enchanting illusion, billowing becomingly chiton-like around her lithe frame. However, while Jane's pale complexion and bare arms may have gleamed like polished marble in the moonlight, her body was anything but cold and forbidding as Jim reached out and pulled her into his arms. Quite the opposite – she melted into him with a moan, her eyes closing and her head tilting back as his mouth pressed heated kisses to her jaw, the side of her neck, the hollow of her throat, the tops of her breasts. The window was halfway open, letting in a heady late-spring breeze that mingled with Jane's pleasant scent of lavender soap and the strawberry malted that lingered on her breath from their jaunt to the Candy Kitchen earlier, further delighting his senses.

As he continued kissing every inch of her he could reach, Jane's tiny but commanding hands tugged at him with such fervor that the two of them ended up toppling back down onto the sofa, heedless of anything but exploring each other more fully. When she pulled him into a deep and demanding kiss, his hands, which had rested sedately on her waist up to that point, moved in completely different directions. While one hand went up to stroke her curls as she lay nearly supine beneath him, the other traced its way down to her hip and kept going, down the side of her thigh until he came to the bend of her knee. Slipping this hand beneath the hem of her skirt, Jim traced his way upward and fingered the embroidery on her garters. Jane's hands were equally as bold, running down his back and then cupping his bottom until he was panting and moaning into her mouth. In this instance, it was actually a good thing they weren't still standing, as his quasi-seated position did not allow him to press as fully into her as his body commanded. Had they been standing, he would have pressed her unceremoniously into the nearest wall.

They would have gone on in this vein for quite awhile, had it not been for a sharp creak of the house settling as the night grew steadily cooler. Brought abruptly back to their senses – for one heart-stopping moment, Jim thought it was someone coming downstairs – the fiancés parted and regarded each other with smiles that were both sheepish and elated.

Now that they had finally emerged from their daze, it was nearly quarter to eleven. Jim had jumped to his feet at the noise, but Jane still lay reclined on the cushions, beaming up at him. Before temptation could get the better of them again, he reached down and pulled her gently to her feet. "See me to the door?" he asked, his voice coming out rough and gasping.

Looking wide-eyed and breathless herself, Jane nodded.

As the two of them passed the main staircase and entered the front hall, still walking hand in hand, Jim reflected just how easy it would be for the two of them to slip quietly up to her room and close the door on the world. They could open the curtains to let in the moonlight, she would pull him down to lie with her on her bed, and he could see for himself whether the tantalizingly detailed embroidery on her garters was roses, or bows, or something else entirely as he unfastened them to roll her stockings down her legs…

Before Jim could continue this beguiling line of thought, Jane came to an abrupt halt and let out a little cry of pain. Jolted out of his reverie, he realized by the way she was now limping that she had bumped her knee on the edge of a much sharper end table than the lace-covered little puffball next to the parlor sofa. As she tutted at her clumsiness, Jim wrapped his arm around her waist and pulled her to his side. "Are you all right, dearest?" he asked concernedly, patting her injured knee. He gazed longingly at the stairs again. When he turned to see that Jane had followed his look, he felt himself flush. He wasn't ashamed of how much he wanted her, but he was starting to get annoyed with his spectacular lack of self-control. He'd already gone a quite bit further with her than he'd planned to in the parlor, and if he didn't get a hold of himself soon, he might just end up whisking her up to her room, after all!

Fortunately, it was too dark for her to see his discomfort. Unfortunately, the look she gave him was both impish and inviting, as if she wanted to both tease him for his temerity and take him up on it.

Jim could never resist one of her challenges. His hand found the back of her knee, their eyes locked, and the silence between them became dangerous again.

Trust Jane to defuse the gathering storm with her endearing candor. "Why is it so difficult?" she burst. "We've never had this much trouble saying goodnight on the porch!"

Jim chuckled and let go of her knee. "The porch is far less cozy, lacking comfortable sofas in particular." And staircases, leading to soft beds, in rooms with doors we can close.

Jane giggled, though her countenance still radiated the frustration he was presently experiencing. "Yes, that must be it!"

She still hadn't let go of his hand, so Jim conducted her through the front door to stand on the porch with him. Outside in the moonlight, her diamond solitaire sparkled and winked at him, as if scolding him to be patient. Jim lifted her hand to his lips and kissed her ring.

Jane regarded him with a smile that was almost shy, her boldness diminished now that they were in public. Or perhaps, he realized with a pang, her conscience was reasserting itself. She had always feared the strength of her own passion. "I wish we were already married," she said in a low voice.

Inside, such a sentiment would have driven him to distraction. Outside, his sense of propriety easily overruled his physical urges, enough that he had no compunction in leaning in and giving her a chaste peck on the lips. "You are going to make me a very happy husband," he predicted. "And I will make you as happy a wife as I know how."

"I don't know that much about lovemaking," she said, her eyes gleaming. "You may be disappointed."

Jim moved close again, this time to whisper in her ear. "Whatever you don't know and wish to learn, I'll gladly teach you. I have no doubt you'll do as well in lovemaking as you've done in our dance lessons. You were always a very quick study."

At that assessment, Jane looked thoroughly elated, which both delighted and unsettled him. Now he really had to go, before things got too heated between them again. Clutching her hands with his so he wouldn't be tempted to crush his body against the length of hers, he gave her a brief but heated kiss before he finally took his leave.

XXX

A short interval later, after he'd done what he needed to in order to take the edge off his frustration, Jim reviewed what had happened in the parlor in his usual rational and orderly manner. There was something that nagged at him about their interlude, something he hadn't been able to put his finger on at the time because he was too overwhelmed by his own carnal impulses. He remembered, just before he'd lost himself, looking into those wide gray eyes of hers. Beautiful eyes, so full of wanting. Not just for him, but for so many sweet and tender things he knew she didn't get in her girlhood or maidenhood, that she should have gotten, that everyone should get. It made his heart ache.

Jim had not known such privation until much later in life, when Gracie died. His parents, both academics themselves, had raised him with just the right mix of firmness and affection, and encouraged him to excel in his studies without being overbearing about it. Admittedly, there had been a few altercations with boys who favored the rough-and-tumble athletics that he displayed absolutely no talent or inclination toward, but once he'd figured out how to balance intellect with cordiality, his popularity soared and his boyhood was largely carefree. His coming of age was even happier, almost euphoric after the friendly feelings between him and Gracie blossomed into all the fullness of love and its many delights. Certainly, he'd experienced loss, first with his parents dying within mere months of each other shortly after he and Gracie had married, and then with the slowly but inexorably dawning realization that he and Gracie would never have children. But none of these things had ever shaken his conviction, nurtured by the charmed life he had led thus far, that the universe was fundamentally benevolent. It wasn't until Gracie died and he realized how alone he was, despite the many friends, acquaintances, and well-wishers he'd attained with his carefully cultivated courteous affability, that he finally understood what it was to despair.

Whereas Jane had discovered just how cruel life could be before she had the capacity to comprehend it, her parents taken by a fire well before her brain was sufficiently developed enough to form conscious memory of them. She had nothing left to comfort her except for one paltry photograph her aunt and uncle had hardheartedly kept locked away in a parlor she was not allowed to enter. The memory of her telling him this so casually, as if it had been etched into her psyche that a grieving child being denied even this smallest of luxuries was a matter of course, still made Jim twitch with anger if he thought too long on the subject. It amazed him that Jane could talk in such unbothered tones about her past, frankly but blithely relating memories of an austere childhood under the care of taciturn guardians who apparently believed any overt demonstration of tenderness or affection would ruin her, followed by a lonely maidenhood with no acceptable prospects to quell that poignant wanting in her eyes. (Of course, there were some things that she could not smile or even talk casually about, and never did.)

Jane even laughed while relating several of these bleak anecdotes, and Jim smiled kindly along with her while concealing the true depth of his distress, because he knew that she would not know what to do with his anger on her behalf. Nor did she need it. After all, her life hadn't been solely one of adversity. She hadn't been wallowing in despair when she met him, and Jim would never be so arrogant as to think that her life truly began the moment they started courting. She had already found happiness as Miss Marian's trusted assistant at the library, doing work that she loved and that stimulated her keen intellect. She was the honorary aunt of three wonderful children who loved her with as much fierce and unguarded affection as they did their parents. Miss Marian treated her like a beloved sister, Professor Hill treated her like a dear niece, and Mrs. Paroo treated her like a cherished daughter. Jane had found her family a long time ago. She didn't need him to ride in on a white horse and rescue her from spinsterhood – she would have lived a full and happy life even if he had never come to River City.

But that wanting look still haunted him. He hoped it would lessen as they grew closer and more intimate. However, if anything, it had grown more pronounced after they officially became engaged. Perhaps it was largely carnal in nature, after all. While Jim could certainly identify with such longing, he knew that to fulfill that longing prematurely would only bring her more pain, in the end.

He tried to remember if engagement was this trying with Gracie. While it was vexing, it was a rather different situation. They were both young and inexperienced. Their first time together was very nice, but not nearly so urgent. That kind of desperate desire didn't bloom in them until they'd both learned, through much experimentation, trial and error, a lot more about lovemaking. And by then, they were married, so they were free to explore their passions to the fullest extent. There wasn't this frustration of knowing – and not knowing.

But Jim wanted his first time with Jane to be romantic and memorable for the right reasons – not a desperate tryst, something rushed and whispered and guilty because they couldn't keep their hands off each other. It was less than a month before he could finally sate that wanting. If he could wait nine whole months for Jane to reciprocate his love, and spend an additional year carefully courting her, then a few more weeks should be nothing at all.

All he had to do was be patient. And if there was one thing Jim excelled at, it was dogged perseverance.

XXX

June 22, 1926

It wasn't until three days before the wedding that Jim realized his miscalculation.

For a man who prided himself on being meticulous and diligent in everything he did, it was amazing that he could have made such a glaring error in judgment. But in his zeal to maintain decorum so as not to tarnish his fiancée's reputation, it had been an easy thing to miss. (After all, it was quite challenging to maintain a level head when his mind was spending most of its resources trying to restrain the persistent but heedless inclinations of his heart and body.) While Jim had not quite retreated to the benign handclasps and smiles of yore, he'd certainly toned down the fervor of his embrace in the weeks leading up to the wedding. He also refrained from making the sort of heated statements best saved for honeymoon pillow talk.

While Jane's reactions to such embraces and declarations were highly encouraging and she was not wholly ignorant of passion, she still did not entirely understand the danger she courted when she looked at him with those irresistible come-hither eyes and smile. Under such tempting circumstances, even the most honorable man would break eventually, so Jim made it his mission not to allow those circumstances to develop too fully. He'd come perilously close to making love to Jane that night in the parlor, and he knew that while it would have been absolutely wonderful, they would likely regret their impatience later. So he maintained a small but scrupulous distance in the weeks following their heated interlude.

But perhaps he should have been more forthright about his struggles. The history teacher was rattled by the glimmers of frustration and confusion in his dearest's eyes when he no longer seized on the slenderest of opportunities to spirit her away to an alcove for a boisterous round of not talking. But she never pressed the matter. Whether it was due to her equally strong sense of propriety asserting itself, or the inherent uncertainty of a maid who did not know how to safely navigate these waters on her own, he wasn't sure. In any case, he found her reticence more reassuring than alarming. When they were finally married, he would thoroughly make up for this privation, in both words and deeds. In the meantime, Jim could always get Jane to smile by kissing her hands warmly and giving her a brief uncloaked glimpse of the sheer longing in his expression whenever their eyes met. These assurances of his ardor, as paltry as they were, bought him crucial time in which to shore up his rapidly disintegrating self-control – or so he thought.

He should have known this wasn't going to be enough.

Jim discovered his mistake quite abruptly when he and Jane were lingering together in the Ancient Languages aisle. It was a beautiful early summer evening. Naturally, the library was completely empty, which suited the fiancés just fine. Especially when Jane turned to him and said, blushingly but without preamble:

"I think it's time you learned what I know of passion."

By now, Jim was well-used to the assistant librarian's barefaced proclamations. But somehow, they never stopped catching him off guard. As Jim gaped at her, his mind racing in a thousand different – and mostly dangerous – directions trying to puzzle out exactly what she meant, she bit her lip and lowered her eyes to her tightly clasped hands. Yet her voice was resolute as she explained, "I don't think it's fair to allow you to marry me until your curiosity – and perhaps concern – is sated about what happened the afternoon William and I said goodbye to each other."

Still uncomprehending Jim nevertheless rushed to reassure her. "Jane, as I've told you before, it doesn't matter to me. I don't need to know what exactly happened that afternoon." Nor, quite frankly, did he really want to. "Those details are sacred to you, dearest. After all, I hardly think you're expecting a full accounting of every sweet moment Gracie and I shared."

To his horror, Jane's face crumpled and she squeezed her eyes shut, as if she was about to cry. "That was different. Louisa Grace was your wife. I was a silly girl who ought to have known better."

Jim's heart fell into his stomach – or at least, that's as best as he could describe the sudden jolting, sinking sensation he was experiencing in his chest. "You still punish yourself for this?" he asked, very quietly so his voice wouldn't shake or betray his dismay.

Whenever Jane adopted a position on an issue, she was nothing if not insistent. "My relationship – or affair, or liaison, or whatever you would call such an attraction – does not deserve the same dignity. You must wonder what I had the temerity to learn, and I thought I had better show you before it was too late to change your mind… "

At first, Jim was at a complete loss for words. What had life done to her? After watching the lovely but reticent assistant librarian blossom into a confident and self-assured woman over the course of their long courtship, he thought she'd finally believed herself worthy of love, an equal to him in love and loss. Clearly, she still had miles and miles to go.

But Jim would gladly walk them with her. Taking her hands in his – she still wouldn't look at him – he spoke in a voice that was soft but unyielding. "I am not going to change my mind. Even if you had gone to bed with William, I would not change my mind. I love you, Jane Edna Peabody. I love you for your flaws, not in spite of them. Your past helped make you into the bright, wise, wonderful woman you are today. I am no Dante, putting his Beatrice on a pedestal of impossible perfection." He regarded her with affectionate exasperation. "Gracie and I were passionately in love for many years. How could I possibly begrudge you one afternoon you spent with a man you loved just as much? As I've told you before, I have absolutely no qualms regarding your romantic past, however scandalous others may deem the matter – "

Jane's eyes snapped up to meet his. "Then why have you looked so apprehensive, these past few weeks?"

Later, he'd roundly castigate himself for his sheer stupidity. Now, all he could do is goggle at her. "Apprehensive?"

"You've been looking at me with that pensive look you always get when something is weighing heavily on your soul," she said miserably. "And you're afraid to tell me what it is."

Jim sighed. "So you deduced that I wasn't sure if you were too knowledgeable in lovemaking for my liking, and was second-guessing whether I wanted to marry you."

"Well, what else was I supposed to think?" she asked, her tone both sheepish and frustrated. "You don't kiss me the way you used to, not since that night in the parlor. You don't stroke my knee, or hold me nearly as close. You don't even tell me how much you want to make love to me, or how happy of a husband you'll be. I thought perhaps I'd given too much away that night, revealed something no decent woman was supposed to know."

She made as if to pull away, but he tightened his grip on her hands. "Jane, let me be very clear. I have been preoccupied, but not for the reason you think." He swallowed, for this was hugely embarrassing to admit. "I almost lost control, that night in the parlor. I was so dangerously close to whisking you up to your room, consequences be damned." He swallowed again, and lowered his eyes. "If I kissed you the way I wanted to, and held you too close, and told you everything I was thinking, we would have made love ten times over." He chuckled weakly. "Our reputations would be in tatters by now."

"Why didn't you tell me this?" she breathed. Jim could feel her looking at him, but in wonder rather than censure, if her tone was anything to go by. And he had been an avid student of the lilts and cadences of her voice for a long time.

But his throat had taken that inopportune moment to tighten, and his eyes had started stinging, so he couldn't answer. If he fell apart, she would tumble down after him, and then who would be left to put them back together?

But in this matter, his dearest was made of stronger stuff than he gave her credit for. Now she was the unyielding one, her steady hands squeezing his shaking ones. "I could have helped you carry this burden. After all, you're not the only one who's having trouble with resolve. You are not Atlas – you don't have to bear the weight of the world on your shoulders alone."

Jim finally mustered up the self-possession to meet her gaze. "I underestimated you," he said ruefully.

"And I you," Jane returned, just as ruefully.

He wasn't sure who moved first. All at once, their mouths met, his hand almost immediately trailing down her hip to cup her bottom as she grasped his hips and pulled them to hers. He had missed this so much. As his fingers moved even further down her thigh, she must have been emboldened by the support of the wall at her back, for she lifted her leg to encircle it both snugly and comfortably around him. Abandoning his quest for the hem of her skirt, he groaned and melted into her. This was not the first time he had ever grown hard while in her embrace – some days, he merely had to be in her presence – but it was the first time he had ever allowed her to feel it. And to his delight, she wholeheartedly welcomed the sensation, tightening her leg both eagerly and possessively around him. They began to writhe together, moving in seamless concert in the most intimate of rhythms, this exhilarating effortlessness no doubt due to all that dancing practice over the past several months.

Yet even as Jim kissed her long, deep, and continuously, their embrace was not quite the desperate free-for-all it had been in the parlor. Though Jane moaned and arched her back against him, and his body responded warmly and favorably to her touch in return, he managed to restrain himself from going any further. It seemed counterintuitive – they were pressed together closer than they had ever been before, the only thing separating their most intimate areas being their layers of clothing, but he was not in nearly as much danger of completely losing himself as he was that night. Jim surmised that it was because there were no couches or soft places in the library to tumble heedlessly onto, and even the basest of his primal urges couldn't countenance his first time with Jane being against a cold, hard wall – or splayed out on an unyielding table! He couldn't deny such images held a certain appeal, but not until after they'd gained a bit more experience. They both had many things to learn about each other, and he wanted to do these initial explorations in the privacy and comfort of their own bedroom. For now, the idea of making love to Jane in the library remained so preposterous that he couldn't help grinning, which utterly destroyed the rhythm of their kiss. Which was just as well – they had gone as far as they possibly could, without slipping beneath or outright removing their clothing.

"Dearest," he said breathlessly, backing out of their embrace and taking her hand in his. "This has been absolutely delightful, but we're going to have to curtail this conversation for the time being."

He was heartened to see the blithe serenity in her gaze. "Of course," she agreed, just as breathless. "I look forward to resuming it, very soon."