Dr. Clarkson drops her wrist, shakes his head, stands, turns his back. He's holding her, tightly, but she won't open her eyes. He tries to speak, but no words will come out. He starts to rock her, to shake her, to cry out her name…

"Charles, Charles, wake up," as she shakes his shoulder. "Wake up, mo ghradh. You're dreaming, wake up."

He jerks suddenly, sits straight up in bed, disoriented. "What?"

She's rubbing his back in small, soothing circles. "Shhh," she whispers. "it's just a dream." She leans back and urges him to lay back against her.

"Just a dream," he mumbles thickly. He scrubs his hand across his eyes and she settles him more firmly against her breast. She drops a few gentle kisses in his hair. He turns with a start and hugs her fiercely.

"What's all this then?" He won't raise his head; he only holds her more tightly. "Come now," she strokes his face gently. He takes a shuddering breath; her nightdress is warm and damp. He is crying. "Oh my man, what is it? Can't you tell me? Is this about your dream?"

He shakes his head. He can't tell her, can't admit that he's seized with fright sometimes. What if, what if. What if Clarkson was wrong? What if the cyst in her breast (she finally spoke of it after they'd made love that first afternoon; he'd felt the scar) wasn't benign after all? What if he lost her now after all those wasted years? These were thoughts he could banish, with some difficulty, during the day, but he had no control over his dreams. Always the same cold dread, her body in his arms, cool to the touch. He shudders involuntarily. But now, now he can feel her, smell her. She is warm and alive and holding him as tightly as he is clinging to her and thank God for it. He buries his face deeper into the hollow between her breasts and takes a few deep breaths.

"I'm alright, it's…it's foolish, really, all this fuss over a dream. Not real anyhow. I'm sorry I woke you."

She laughs softly. "I don't mind," and she settles him more comfortably against her and rubs soothing hands across his back and arms. She kisses his head again and hums that lovely little tune again.

He raises his head slightly. "Elsie?"

"Mmmh?"

"What is that you're singing?"

"Oh, nothing. Just something my aunt used to sing when I was small."

"A lullaby?"

Elsie snorted. "Hardly. Neither our aunt nor our mam was much for lullabies. No, it's a song of two sisters who fall in love with the same man and one drowns the other."

Charles can't help but laugh. "Well that's cheerful. Did she sing that round the fire at Christmastime?"

"Nooo, of course not," and here her brogue thickens, as it often does when she talks of home, which is rare indeed. "Just a song she sang, mostly to irritate our mam. I don't know why I even bother to remember the words."

"But why would your aunt want to," Charles begins, but Elsie cuts him off.

"Why would she want to bother and plague her only sister? Oh I don't know. Perhaps she was a bit jealous of Mam. Da was considered a sort of prize, you might say, and he never hid the fact that he fancied both the elder and the younger sister. Da always did have a bit of a puffed chest about him. Liked to feel important and Mam had no patience for being teased. I think he just threw it up to Mam, threw it up to her that she was no longer young and blooming, not that children and a farm and a gadabout husband are much good for preserving complexions." She stops abruptly. "I don't know why I brought all that up. I don't generally care to wander about through the past. And," she says, in a mock stern voice, "it was your dream we were to be talking about. Not old ballads and old arguments." She can feel him smile against her chest. He's begun to relax now, shouldn't be long before he drifts back to sleep. She smooths his hair and face. He plays with the cuff of her nightgown.

"You don't mention your sister often."

"No, I don't suppose I do. No great secret in that. I've just gotten used to keeping myself to myself. I forget now that I don't have to. You don't mention much of your family, either."

"No, it's much the same, I suppose. I was something else for such a long time, I'd almost forgotten I'd ever been a boy. Of course no one else would believe it. They all think I sprang forth fully formed in my livery."

Elsie laughs, a deep rich laugh that quickens his heart. "Aye, they might, but I know better. I'll wager you were a lovely little lad with only a bit of mischief in him for spice."

"Oh I got into my fair share of scrapes, I'll grant you." He's drowsier now, won't be able to stay awake for much longer.

"Well," she says softly as she settles them both down a little further in the bed, "you'll have to tell me all about them another time. We should sleep now."

"Mmmhhh." He nods sleepily. "Sing to me Elsie?"

So she sings to him as she rubs his back, sings to him not of dark jealous murderous love, but of blue and sky and green and open. Sings him snatches of lullabies in the old tongue and wonders for a moment, only a moment, what it might have been like to cradle their child at her breast.