She fumbles everything in her delight, though even that is shadowed through with the fear that he'll be gone when she looks back at him, like some Dickensian ghost. The note to Mrs. Hughes is written, nearly illegibly, conveying the bare minimum.
She is grateful that it is wet and December-cold, because that (and her concern for his knee in such weather) is the only thing that keeps her from pulling him behind a tree as soon as the Abbey falls out of earshot.
Instead she waits until the cottage door is closed and locked and then she is on him. They tangle and trip into the darkness. Buttons scatter. She is slick with want when she finally takes him roughly on the stairs, skirts hiked, knickers frantically tugged aside. She can't imagine anything beyond the blinding feel of him inside of her body. She tastes him like copper on her tongue.