That was - nice," I observed some time later - gingerly, foolishly, in the low tones experience had taught carry less than whispers.

Nell gave me an indignant nudge. "Watch out with that faint praise, my child."

I smothered a giggle. "I didn't want to give you cause for putting on any airs. Ow!"

I wriggled happily as she buried laughter and a gentle kiss at the nape of my neck. "Careful! You'll have us both on the floor if you keep that up," she murmured softly.

"Your fault." I countered, reaching for her hand in the darkness.

"My bed is bigger than this," Nell mused, absentmindedly. "My bed at the Chalet, I mean. Well, my bed at home is too, of course, but that's rather further away."

My heart skipped a beat. "Take me there, one day?"

She gave a quiet snort. "To my cottage? Or to my bed?"

I rolled over - very carefully, for the bed was indeed a remarkably narrow one - until I lay facing her. "Either one sounds just fine to me..."

When she spoke, I could hear that she was smiling, and her voice had a faraway quality to it. "I'd like that. I think you'd like it, too. It's gloriously out of the way - oh, the village is lovely and welcoming and always feels just like coming home; but the cottage itself is some way off the beaten track and, well - you don't have to have one eye open all the time, or whisper behind closed doors like this. Nobody's watching, there's nobody near enough to see. Not," she added hastily, "that there's not a certain charm to whispering behind closed doors. Tonight, I wouldn't change a single thing."

"Oh, but it would be wonderful to open the curtains and jalousies and watch the stars, without worrying we'd be overheard," I traced the outline of her jaw with my fingers as I spoke, gently matching the familiar visual to the newly-discovered feel, noting with pleasure the decidedly feminine angularity.

"Exactly. And as to my rather more spacious bed at the chalet - well. Oh, Con, we would have to be so very careful. It's the most unwise course of action imaginable - but I don't think I could not."

I chuckled in the darkness. "Well, as I say - it was rather nice, after all."

"Libel! Oh, in that case, consider all offers rescinded. I shan't mind too much -" I chuckled and placed a finger across her mouth, and she fell silent.

"No, you're right. I - I don't think I could go back to living so closely with you and not - at least occasionally - you know."

Her fingers twisted among mine. We lay in silence for several minutes and I found myself marvelling at the new discoveries of this closeness, her familiar body in a completely novel context. Up close, she felt and smelled and sounded just as she always had, and also nothing at all like I had ever known her.

"Nell?"

"Hmm?"

"You were surprised, weren't you? That I wasn't entirely the unsullied novitiate?"

She exhaled slowly, in meditation. "Only a little. Balance of probabilities, rather than any strong inkling, I suppose - with a healthy dose of caution thrown in for good measure." She paused, brought my fingertips to her lips. "Tell me? If you want to, that is."

I smiled tenderly, though Nell couldn't see me. "Her name was Annie. She was the younger sister of my brother Charles' greatest friend, and two years older than me, though we were neither of us very much more than children, really. Oh, she was beautiful, and clever, and I suppose I just thought she was exactly as I wanted to be when I was older too. There was something captivating about the way she moved - so strong in herself, so self-assured; I'd never seen a girl like her before.
"Our families knew each other, more or less, and she was always welcome at our house. It's strange to think how much has changed in such a short space of time - she slept in my bed more times than I can count, and nobody thought anything of it. I was never entirely sure how usual or otherwise it was - the other things we were doing in bed, besides sleeping, I mean. But then - did the Well trial cross your consciousness much?"

Nell nodded her head against my arm. "I was in London. I remember it, yes."

"I was at Oxford. My uncle, I don't think I've mentioned before, is a psychologist. My father, I probably have mentioned, is a newspaper editor. It was a great area of mutual interest for them both, professionally. I came home that Christmas and my father had this awful look on his face. I don't know how, but I knew exactly what it was about, and sure enough the first afternoon Annie came round to see me, my mother made it clear we must stay and talk in the drawing room, where my brothers and Nancy were too." I stopped for a moment, collecting my thoughts and sort through the rapidly shifting responses I had experienced: anger, at being chaperoned in such a way; guilt, knowing full well this supervision had been warranted; confusion, as things which had seemed fine and normal had been suddenly reclassified as neither of these things; and frustration, at being thus barred from talking through this confusion with Annie, who might have understood - and knowing that even if we had been free to talk, neither of us had the words to articulate what was happening.

"I tried to write to Annie, once I was back at Oxford. But I didn't dare express myself too clearly, for fear of my letter falling into other hands, and in any case I hadn't much to say. What do you say? 'Thank you'? 'Help me'? 'All best wishes for your future'? I don't even know what she's doing these days - Charles must know, but he's never said, and I've never asked. Oh, I can't pretend I loved her, Nell - not in the way I imagine a girl expects to love a husband - but it was queer to have it all suddenly rearrange into something quite different and then disappear like that."

Nell squeezed my hand, and I knew that she understood.

"Then there was - someone else. Edith. Her room was two doors down from mine, and she read Literature. Her people were outlandishly wealthy, I believe, and thoroughly bohemian. She was what you might call a breath of fresh air, though it was very contrived, in a way. She was fearless - she used to strut through the town in trousers, waistcoat and cravat, just daring anyone to comment.
"It - it wasn't the way it had been with Annie: we had just fallen in together, somehow flowed naturally from going arm-in-arm like any girlfriends to the kinds of kisses that we thought maybe everyone else was sharing, except it seems to turn out that everyone else wasn't, after all; but with Edith, it was as though she spied something in me - she sought me out. But after all that, and all her parading about in britches, all she wanted to do was sit beside me and hold my hand while she talked."

I stopped for a moment, pressed a kiss on Nell's collarbone. The smell of her skin made me shiver slightly, and she drew me closer, perhaps thinking me cold. "That rather frightened me, when I thought about it - that she had seen something it was becoming clear one ought to keep well hidden. After that, I left well alone."

Without saying a word, Nell held me steadily, and I felt safer than I had done in a long time. At length, I placed another kiss on her cheek. "What about you?"