A/N: I didn't know if I would need to raise the warning for this chapter to M but ultimately decided that it could continue to stay T for now. Also, just an update, I am pretty sick, work is getting out of control, and I feel like I just wrote a lot of chapters in a short amount of time. Just prepare for much, much, much slower updates. I don't want know when the next chapter will be.

Chapter Seventeen

She doesn't mean to, but Mary falls asleep waiting for Mack, in her white negligee beneath the white sheet of their bed. She put on her lotion and her perfume behind her ears, at the base of her neck, behind her knees. She imagines Mack finding it in all of those places and nearly forgets the most obvious of places–her wrists. Tonight, she danced with her husband and with her father. Her father, oh Papa, he danced so stiffly, held her so tightly by the elbows, as if he did not want to let go. "I love you," he told her finally, as the music fell away. "I don't say it nearly as often as I should but I do. And I've always wanted the best for you. I hope you married Mackenzie because he is the best for you and not because you think you deserve less–"

"Oh, Papa," Mary replied and did not care at all that people saw her lay her cheek on her father's beating heart. "He is the best for me. I love him."

He pulled her up by her shoulders. "But do you know him?"

"Papa," she censured. "What have you done?"

He admitted, "When you have children you'll understand. You'll worry about them. All the time."

"I know about him, Papa, and he knows about me and we don't love each other because of it but because we just...We just do. Don't worry about me," she kissed his cheek. "Worry about Edith." He laughed but she wanted to say: Worry about Matthew. Worry about him until he gets better. Oh, please, Papa!

She drank champagne and she danced with one of Mack's cousins. She danced with his father and his grandfather; he offered her a lemon drop and another glass of champagne. She looked at the stars and sighed. She actively, very actively, did not think of Matthew, where he'd been during the ceremony (the gall of him; she'd sat all through his stupid wedding) or even worse. The images of him falling still haunted her.

Nonetheless, she actively doesn't think of him now. She finds the nightgown she chose for her wedding night. It is white and maybe she doesn't deserve it but it is beautiful and delicate and she loves it so she chooses it, with it's tiny pink ribbons. Her cheeks blush at the idea of what is to come; anticipation curls in her belly. She feels new; she feels loved; she feels wanted.

She falls asleep and she dreams of rain, falling, wetting her hair and her eyelashes, rain so bright and blue she has to turn away from it even as she drowns.

"Mary," Mack whispers, his hand on her thigh over the sheet. "I'm so sorry. My grandfather stopped me and wouldn't let me go." She smiles sleepily at him. "He felt I needed a lecture about how lucky I am to have you for a wife."

"I love your grandfather," Mary whispers at him hoarsely, her eyes heavy lidded. "He is a very wise man."

Mack leans down in his pajamas and kisses her briefly. "He told me to tell you that you must call him Grandpop from now on." He makes a sound in the back of his throat and leans down for another kiss, lingering over it. "Remind me why we're talking about Grandpop on our wedding night?"

She winds her arms around his neck, pulls him down beside her. She is still beneath the sheet and her nerves are humming but something else is humming, too. She kisses him sleepily, drowsily. It's as if the entire wedding, the nerves, the planning, the tension of her family, the activity of actively not thinking of him, suddenly hits her. "I'm sorry," she tells him. "I'm tired. And I'm nervous."

"Why?" Mack asks and kisses the corner of her mouth, one side and then the other, her nose, her chin. "Explain it to me. Isn't that what marriage is? And now, isn't that what we have?"

She grins at him. "We're married." She kisses him fully, and he moans a bit. "But I am nervous. Because you've been with a lot of woman–"

"Mary Jo," he whispers, his forehead furrowing.

"I told you I don't hold it against you," she hurries on. "It's only...It's only that...I'm afraid I'll disappoint you. I'm afraid I won't be as good at it as–"

"Mary," he tries to soothe.

"I thought about not saying anything." He kisses her chin, the hollow of her throat, her ear, her temple, her bare shoulder. "But then I would be nervous the whole time, and then I definitely wouldn't be good at it..." She takes his cheeks in her hands. "Wait. Listen. I know you're good at it. Obviously."

"How do you know that?" he asks with a twinkle in his eye.

"Because when you kiss me my eyes roll into the back of my head," Mary exclaims.

"And when you kiss me," Mack replies, kissing her closed eye lids. "The same thing happens to me. Maybe it isn't me, maybe it's us. Maybe we're so good at it. Now, do you want to find out or not?"

She grins, brushing her nose against his. "I do," she whispers.

It's like a dream and it has nothing to do with the fact that she is sleepy. His hands are light, like brush strokes on a canvas, until they aren't, until they grip, until she knows he is taken under just as much as she is. And every piece of clothing that is removed, feels like a layer being shed, a weight to hand off, until they are finally seeing one another fully and completely. He tells her he is going to worship her body for awhile and she laughs, because even the most sacred moments between them involve laughter, and she tells him that isn't possible, that he must be crazy. He says that he will do his utmost and he does. He does. He kisses every part of her he can find; he uncovers spots of herself she didn't know existed. She gasps and moans and when she reaches for him, she is surprised into a giggle when he gasps and moans too. She is shocked that her touch arouses him and when he sinks, sinks into her, and kisses her so that her toes curl into the bed, and she grasps the skin of his back, she can only exhale the words: I love you. Her brain cannot process anything more than that, even after it is over.

I love you. I love you. I love you.

"Mackenzie." She kisses his tanned shoulder. It turns out he is tan all over.

"Hmm?" He replies, winding her hair around his hand.

"We are good at it." Though winded, they both break into laughter and it starts all over again.

Later, she asks him for her nightgown. "Where is it?"

"You don't need it," he replies. They are both bleary eyed, exhausted.

Her toes reach for him. "I do. I can't sleep naked beneath this sheet."

"And why not?"

"Because what if someone comes to our room?" she pokes him but can barely lift her hand to do it, she is so tired. "And I've never slept naked before.

"Never?" he asks and tickles her. "Who would come to our room?" he wraps her arms around her, sliding his hands along her naked skin. "You'd think they'd know better."

She is already asleep.

She doesn't know it but he strokes her hair back from her face until exhaustion takes him under as well.

She is only half aware of a horrible knocking at the door as light streams through the window. She has never known exhaustion like this, so completely tired and carefree about the world around her so no, she doesn't open her eyes or even move. Mack makes some type of miserable moan while the knocking continues and she hears his bare feet hit the floor.

There is some whispering at the door. And again, Mary is so blissfully tired she does not care because nothing can be as important as what happened with her husband last night. And to think she never thought she would get married.

"Mary," Mack whispers and she raises her head slightly, blinking at him. "Lavinia would like to speak to you."

Mary feels as if cotton is in her mouth. Have two worlds suddenly collided? "La-Lavinia?"

"Mary," Lavinia weeps in the doorway, holding her hand to her chest. "I am so sorry. I wish I didn't have to bother you. The butler–I just don't know what else to do. I don't know where he is, Mary. I can't find him and I'm worried and I just..."

Mary is aware that Mack is pulling the comforter up over her naked shoulders and holding her hand. "I'll...I'll be out in a moment Lavinia," she tells the other woman as the door closes.

Mary sits up, her feet don't touch the floor, and brings the sheet with her so she is covered, even though Mack saw it all the night before. "Mary," he whispers, touching her hair. "Are you awake?"

"Yes," she says and stands, bringing the sheet with her. "Why is Lavinia so upset? Why is she so upset and at our door so early?"

"It's after noon," Mack tells her then let's out a huge sigh. "And Lavinia hasn't seen Matthew since the middle of the night, the night before the wedding. She seems...She seems to think you'll be able to find Matthew." He pauses, looks into her eyes, as the sheet slips lower. "No one will think less of you either way."

"Either way?" Mary cries out, suddenly, startling awake. "Do you know how many times I've imagined this? He's hurt. He fell or slipped, drunk and hit his head. Or he's hurt himself on purpose."

Mack goes very still. "No, I don't know how many times you have imagined this."

"Not now, Mack," she squeezes his hand. "This doesn't mean anything except that this is Matthew and something is...where is he?"

Mack hangs his head, then presses a kiss to her palm. "All right. We'll go look for him."

She knows she loves him then, loves him even more than before. She knows that love is ever expanding, ever evolving, because on the day after their wedding, after a night spent touching naked skin to skin, he is willing to put on a pair of pants and find Matthew, the man Mary loved before him.

Lavinia is nearly hysterical and believes that somehow Mary will know where Matthew is. "I swear I don't know," Mary tells her. She wears a skirt and a blouse but her hair is only plaited. Her hands shook as she did it.

They search the grounds, all of them, Mack's family and her own. Mary is embarrassed beyond belief and she is shamed by her father's lack of response. She can only be glad that Isobel did not come. And of course, Lavinia is no help at all and more than that, she is panicked as the minutes go on and on and there is no sign of Matthew. Mary wants to panic. She wants to shriek. But she is still and silent. So she goes on walking, and walking, as she and Mack used to do last summer. Mack's family compound skirts the very edges of the Mary's grandmother's and Mary keeps walking, trying to breath, and heads directly to the pond.

What if he tripped? What if he fell into the water? What if he slipped stones into his pockets–

"Matthew!" she cries. He is on the ground, his calves in the water, his forehead bleeding from a rock. "Matthew!"

He doesn't stir and for one startling beat of her heart she thinks he is dead.

Her world does not have a Matthew in it.

The ache is intolerable. She cannot breathe.

And then he groans. Just groans aloud and Mary's eyes smart with tears. "I hate you!" she spits and then goes to her knees beside him, shaking him. "Are you all right? What's wrong?"

"...Much s-stronger than I thought..."

She sees the two bottles of the moonshine beside him. "Oh, Matthew. What were you thinking?"

"You told me that I made you sad. You told me we never laughed," he blearily opens his eyes. "I love you and I've always loved you. And you told me you were glad that I chose Lavinia, even though I was telling you it was the wrong choice. You told me," he wets his lips. "You told me you were glad that I chose Lavinia because otherwise you would not have met Mack."

"Matthew..." She is crying. She doesn't mean to be but she is.

His finger touches her cheek briefly, her braid hangs between them. "I'm sorry I didn't go to your wedding. The better man won, I s'ppose. But I just couldn't..."

"Are you all right?" she asks as her tears fall onto his shirt.

"You told me you were glad I chose Lavinia because otherwise you would not have met Mack."

"Oh, Matthew," her chin drops to her chest, her braid falls onto his chest. "What am I always telling you? You must pay no attention to the things I say."

Matthew cups her cheek and there is a gasp.

When Mary looks up, she sees Mackenzie and Lavinia just close enough to hear.

Mary moves away from Matthew. "I found him," she whispers as tears stream from her eyes. "I found him."

A/N: That's all I got for you folks. I am all out of words and need to go take some nyquil. Comments/Reviews would be much appreciated.