Her agitation had eased and steadied by the time they reached the top of the climb, a silly story Patrick told her about Timothy breaking the landing window leaving them merry-hearted. However as Patrick opened the door and switched on the light, she had a sudden image of what the room might once have been. It was an invented one; her two consultations with Elizabeth Turner had been in the sitting room, after which Sister Julienne took over the case, and all she recalled clearly was the pinched look on Elizabeth's face. Nonetheless what she imagined was as vivid as a photograph: the shape of the room, the same as the sitting room downstairs, pieces of furniture and where they might be positioned, nick-knacks, pictures, the histories she could not know. She steeled herself to enter.

It was entirely different from what she had anticipated. With the little pile of furniture, much smaller than she had thought it would be, huddled in the middle of the room, the room seemed far larger, a different shape even. Great blank expanses of wall and carpet rolled in front of her, worn yet seemingly untouched and waiting, and there was nothing to haunt her. Where she had expected a dappling of resentment, the fresh, bright sunshine of the paint glittered like spring as she stepped inside.

Patrick released her as they entered, but he hovered, tapping his knuckles against his chin. She shone at him. "It's lovely, Patrick."

"You're sure?"

"Yes, I'm sure. It's so big."

His mouth twitched. It was not a large room, although in comparison with the hutches of Nonnatus House, he saw how it might appear so. "The colour's alright?"

"Perfect."

"Timothy'll be pleased," he said. "And what about what's in the window?"

There was a trace of amusement in his face and Shelagh knew he realised she had not noticed what was there. Sheepishly, she looked and stopped, astonished.

Sitting unobtrusively in the bay window was an old-fashioned lady's dressing table. Dainty and elegant, it sat on slim, curving legs, its varnish a rich honey gold. Below the table top on either side were three narrow drawers, in the middle a stool, while on the surface was a small mirror, tipping an oval of light towards them. It was a delicate piece of work, some scratches and marks on the side and legs which could not be remedied hinting at rough treatment in the past, but it was beautiful and, the most extraordinary thing to her, unquestionably, unequivocally feminine. The dress which Chummy had presented her with, now fitted and finished and hanging in her wardrobe, had stunned her in the same way, but that was for one instance when ordinary life would be dispensed with. This thing of beauty was for every day, not one brief escape from that unadorned and plain asexual life she had known.

There was a quip Patrick had intended to make; it died on his lips as he saw her face.

Incredulous, she walked towards it, almost expecting it to fade as she drew close, pulling out the stool to sit down and touching the burnished surface. As she reached for one of the drawers and started to pull it out, in the mirror Patrick appeared behind her, his face wary. "I know it's very functional and there's not much space in it. We'll have to share the wardrobe and chest of drawers for a while. There should be room. I've cleared out a lot of my old rubbish. I thought a dressing table like this one was a bit more 'you' than a modern one, though, even though it might have more room."

He was prattling and she interrupted him, smiling in the reflection which guided her as she reached behind her to touch his side. "It's perfect, my love. It's absolutely beautiful."

Bashfully he looked away from the glass and down at her, resting his hands on her shoulders. "I wanted you to have something that was completely yours for your things, here in our room."

"You must have lots of bits and pieces you need to put somewhere. We can share it," she offered.

Patrick snorted. "I think I'd break the stool, sweetheart, even if I could squeeze myself into that gap, which I doubt. Top of the chest of drawers is more than fine for me. This is just for you." He bent down and dropped a kiss on the top of her head. "Thank you for agreeing to marry me." Reflecting back at him was a couple blessed with tranquillity, the woman's hand creeping up around the head which the man had nestled on her shoulder and stealing into his hair.

Suddenly her face changed. "Wait here a jiffy," she said, getting up from the stool. She offered no explanation, except a tiny chuckle, and left the room. He watched while she left and heard her pattering down the stairs, vaguely intrigued by what she was doing, content to wait, viewing the room through her eyes in its bloom and novelty, his hands in his pocket.

The pattering back up the stairs was slower and although her eyes still shone when she entered, in their depths was something profounder. Raising an enquiring eyebrow, Patrick said nothing and waited to be illuminated.

She held something small and white out towards him and crossed the room to the dressing table. It was a little pocket handkerchief. Opening the top drawer, she put the handkerchief in it. "There. I'm marking it as mine."

Her teasing pride was so absurd, Patrick could not help bursting out laughing and taking the two or three strides towards her to kiss her, in passion and amusement, enjoyment and tenderness. He revelled in each changing shade, those he had known before and had glutted his memory upon while she was in Scotland, those merely hinted or only now emerging, until he felt her hands moving to his chest to push him away. For a moment he thought he had gone too far, although there had been none of the rawness he had shown downstairs. But she did not step back and it was intentness, not distress, which greeted him.

"This is for you," she said earnestly, pressing a small, square parcel into his hand. "The bride's present to the groom."

At first he stared, not at the parcel, but at her. He had expected nothing, knowing how limited her resources were, how much she had had to buy to join the world as it was now and how deep her pride was that she should not come a pauper to their marriage. Had he been asked, Patrick would have said, sentimentally perhaps although truthfully, that she herself was present enough, her rapidly improving health greater than any possession which he could be given. Met by her sincere, eager gaze however, he started to unwrap it.

It was a gold gentleman's cigarette case, made in a style which had been fashionable before the war. He already owned one, a workaday chrome-plated case, bought to replace another, equally serviceable, which he had mislaid. Beside this, that case appeared like worthless trash. Baffled at how she had possibly afforded it, a familiar tug of guilt jabbing at him that she had felt forced to, he opened it. A neatly ordered line up of Henleys confronted him and touched him more than he could say. "And I thought you wanted me to cut down," he started, the dry wit with which he so often tried to camouflage what he felt fooling neither Shelagh nor himself. Then, on the other side of the inside of the case he saw three initials inscribed, none of them his own, and he realised how much greater even than money the value of the gift was.

"Your father's." It was not a question.

"Yes," she nodded. "My mother gave it to him for his birthday the year that she died."

"Elspeth doesn't mind?"

She shook her head. "No. Rob doesn't smoke, he loathes it, and I think he'd disown Jamie if he took it up! They agreed you should have it."

"So my habits are already endearing me to the in-laws," he said wryly, before continuing, quietly and seriously, taking her hand in his. "I will treasure this, Shelagh. I really will. And, as I couldn't ask your father for his permission, if you don't mind, I will take this as the nearest thing to having his blessing."

"You should," she responded, her eyes as clear as they had been when she gave her ecstatic silent answer to the question Timothy had asked. In the preciousness of the hush which followed they simply looked at each other, too moved to break the stillness, and found themselves framed within the other's eyes, a part of the other, within and surrounded by them.

Eventually he quickly squeezed the hand and spoke, looking down at the dressing table beside them, the tone of his voice consciously lightened. "So, where do you want to put it? This," he added, laughing. "I think I'm fairly comfortable with keeping my cigarettes in my jacket!"

Shelagh twinkled at the joke, but his question left her disconcerted. Searching the room, she tried to guess where such a piece of furniture would have belonged in the past, stepping away from him to look from different angles. She could not envisage where it would have been. "I don't really mind," she said dismissively, wrinkling her nose and looking quickly around. "Wherever you think would be best."

Patrick gave a mild shrug of his shoulders. "Choose," he said. He was kind, but it was a command, albeit one which placed ownership of the room within her hands. "Where would you like it?"

Indecisively, she looked at each of the walls. She was tempted just to suggest leaving it in the window, yet knew that that was trying to avoid the decision and made no sense.

Patrick spoke again, hesitantly, trying to open up the way to make it easier for her but uncertain how. "Probably it would be best to have it on your side? I don't know whether you'd prefer to decide where you want to put the dressing table and then we can sort out everything else around that, or sort out where you want the bed first." While he watched her, the thumb of his right hand fidgeted.

"I can see that." Small indentations were appearing above her glasses at the top of her nose. "I think sorting out the bed first makes more sense, doesn't it? It's bigger. Where does it normally go?"

"It's been in different places at different times." He was not lying, although as he said it, he knew it sounded like he was. "Genuinely, Shelagh, I don't mind. I know all of this must be strange for you," he said gently. "Whatever, wherever you'd like."

It was not quite a sigh she gave, nor was it a laugh, but he could hear parts of both. Her look was assessment, however, rather than avoidance. "Opposite the window, then."

"It's south facing. You won't get any attractive dawns or dusks."

"We'll still get a view though."

He smiled. "Alright, sweetheart. Opposite the window."

"Do you want to move it now?" she asked, wondering if he realised how much her offer was a search for a task behind which she could hide. Even now she started, wandering to the middle of the room and examining the pile of furniture, trying to work out the easiest way to turn the frame and whether it would be better first to remove the mattress.

Patrick scowled. "You are not lugging things around like some dockside labourer. And I don't trust you to sit there and let me do it by myself. Don't worry. I'll get it done some time next week. Maybe I'll make your nephew help me as payment for letting him come on my rounds. From what you've said, he could pretty much shift it all single-handed."

She thought about protesting, retorting that she was probably a more fit and proper person to be moving heavy things around than he was, given the state of his shoulders, until the joke about Jamie made her laugh; and in that moment to reflect that he had his pride as much as any other man, his shoulder possibly as much the reason for dismissing her suggestion as gallantry was. Remembering the happy ache of knowing she was seen by him as a woman, she smiled to herself and said nothing, rather than wound his manliness's little vanity.

Patrick moistened his lips, preparing to speak again. What he was about to ask went further still. "Is there a particular side you would prefer?" he said shyly. "It would make sense to have the dressing table on your side and the chest of drawers on mine."

"I don't know," she replied mildly. "I think you're much more likely to have a preference than I do, Patrick." As she raised her eyes to him, he acknowledged with a slight movement of his head that she was right. "Which side?"

"It's not a side as such. Nearer to the door."

"So you can get to the telephone faster if there's a call in the middle of the night?"

"Yes." He knew she went through the same routine of disrupted sleep and dragging senses dizzy with tiredness from oblivion to alertness in moments. Even so he marvelled at how instinctively she knew.

"There, then. You'll go on the right and I'll be on the left," she said. It was cheerful and matter of fact, but her eyes were sliding away from him, peering at the sharp, impassive angles of the corner of the headrest, while the fingers of one hand tapped awkwardly against the edge of the mattress, jerking away from it as though it stung.

With many other subjects he would have put his arms around her as he asked what it was which troubled her. But Patrick suspected he knew already; and that topic was the one above all where he was afraid even to take the steps to where she was let alone to touch her, instead standing inert, watching, his bed separating them. "Shelagh," he began, swallowing awkwardly, "it doesn't have to be like this if you aren't comfortable." Although she did not react, the fingers stopped their tapping. "There are no obligations or expectations, not for where we sleep or – " he faltered, seeing her look up again with the same intent and open gaze, but was determined to finish, "anything else. Anything. Nothing more than you want to do, my darling. My darling," he echoed. "I'll wait, I don't mind how long, until you're certain."

"I know you would. It's because you would that I do want to. I am certain, Patrick. It's not that I don't want to. I do." Was it shameful, to say that? She did not believe in her heart or her conscience that it was and ever since the night in Aberlour when she had puzzled in such agonised confusion, she had longed for this conversation, knowing it was only him to whom she could open herself entirely. Yet it sounded brazen, stumbling in the opposite direction of the fear she wanted him to assuage. They were standing as if in the kitchen again, all they wished to admit naked on their faces, talking of fragile spirit lamps and wicks which would not burn.

"What then? Is this what you were worrying about when you said you were out of sorts in your letter?"

"You remember? Yes."

"I remember everything from your letters," he said very quietly.

"So do I."

He gave a brief, derisory exhalation. "I don't think my moans and groans are worth remembering."

"Not just the ones you sent to me in Scotland. All of them."

It had taken courage to write those letters, writing and re-writing them with his head in his hands, even more to post them. Summoning that same courage, he slowly took the same route she had taken around the collection of furniture, until he was by her again. "Are you," he did not want to tempt the use of the word 'afraid'; that that might be her answer was what frightened him. The substitute he fished from the air seemed pathetic. "Are you nervous?"

"No, not nervous. Not exactly."

"I am," he said.

To begin with she did not reply, surprise playing around her mouth. "Why?"

"It's been a long time," he started, the remark too honest to be droll. "And I don't want to unnerve you, Shelagh. Or worse to hurt you."

By the time he ended the sentence, her own anxiety was briefly forgotten in the simple wish to remedy his. Slowly she reached up and gently stoked his cheek. "You won't. I trust you. I love you."

"What is it then?" he whispered.

She faltered on the edge, her lack of confidence in herself, not him, what held her back. She had had the words when she planned what she might say; now they were trapped in a stammerer's shivering mouth and while she hesitated, he still stood beside her, waiting to listen, the anxious frown hardly kept at bay. Twisting her hand around the headrest, she took the last step.

"I'm not nervous, Patrick. I'm really not. Not about where we sleep or," she mimicked his intonation and cadence, "'anything else'." He always looked boyish when she teased him; it still surprised her how much that particular smile, of which he was so unconscious, beguiled her. He continued to listen, the space and silence she required freely given and gradually she found her ease. Loosening her hand on the headrest, she turned fully to him, then sat down, perching on the edge of the mattress, her action mirrored by him. "I want to. I want you," she said, with such winsome sweetness the statement of her own desire seemed more like a gift she gave. "It's just I don't know how I should be then."

"In what sense? What do you mean?"

Although she did not answer immediately, it was no longer because she was muted, only because she sought the exact words. "I want to be able to be properly like a wife then. But I don't know what I should be like to do that."

Her hands were clasped on her knee and tentatively Patrick reached out to place one of his over them. There was so much riding on how he answered her now; he wondered if this, a week before it started, was the first great test of their marriage, his capacity genuinely to cherish her weighed now by how he could reassure her. He felt one of her hands slide from underneath his and then the inexpressible comfort of her placing it on top of his, stretched across it.

"Like yourself. That's all, Shelagh. You don't have to 'be' anything," he said. "It's not one thing, it's lots of things, different things. Sometimes it's passionate and sometimes very quiet and other times natural and easy, like coming home at the end of difficult day. And later on maybe it will be because we're trying for children." He paused, wondering if the next remark would sound too frivolous. She had been so starkly honest, however; it called for the same, even at the risk of sounding ridiculous. "And sometimes it's just, well, fun. And funny." A small, detached part of his mind seemed to be listening from far away, telling him how much his voice sounded as though he was explaining a particularly complex word to Timothy and how ironic it was that they were sat on the edge of a mattress while having so chaste a discussion of the subject. Then he sensed it: the movement of her thumb softly stroking the back of his hand, running from the crease at his wrist just above his watch up to just below his knuckles where her fingers lay, then back again to the start. She was not looking at him, though. He waited until she did. "But whatever it is, Shelagh, it will be us, just as we are. We won't suddenly be different and we'll work things out. You don't need to 'be' anything except yourself, my darling. It's you that I want. My wife." She blinked at the words and the thumb stopped, while he started to smile, as he always did at that last thought. "That's the extraordinary thing for me. It will be you and you'll be my wife.

"Does that make sense?" he added, although he did not think he needed to ask, the certainty he felt so complete. Shelagh nodded and leaned forward to kiss him. She still held his hands and their lips scarcely parted, but what they offered one another was peace; and while she was not ready yet, when the time came, she knew now she would be.