Margaret did not remember crossing the room, how the cold planks must have felt under her feet. One moment she was still standing, her heart pressed to his. The next, the room was tilting as he eased her down upon the mattress.

Her breath hitched as he reached down where her nightdress pooled, parting her thighs gently just above the knee. She nestled into his shoulder, into the scents of rich wood and cotton that were his. Her body did not yet know how to respond to this feeling of a man firm against her. The need to rub against him licked at her like a quivering flame.

Through it all, he was intent on devouring her. Whenever Margaret thought he might take air, his lips would coax hers open again, the strokes of his tongue desperate. At last she dared a few timid, darting motions of her own. He stole a ragged breath of surprise before kissing her even deeper, his hoarse groan of appreciation humming through every fiber of her.

His hand idled above her waist, as though he did not know where first to touch. John drew a breathy sigh from her as he decided, his thumb tracing the crescent shadow beneath her breast. They both shuddered with pleasure as his hand curved, cupping and molding her to the rough of his palm.

A frisson of panic shot through Margaret as his fingers inched lower on her abdomen, the pristine blue of his eyes darkening with need. He needed only to pull aside her hem to discover the curious wetness that had quietly formed between her legs. She exhaled slowly when he rounded over her hip instead, trailing slow, hot lines up and down her outer thighs.

Margaret's silent discontent as his lips parted from her own broke into a gasp. The faintest tip of his tongue grazed the delicate flesh of her neck, her nerves thrilling at the wet heat of his mouth and the stark cold left behind. She stilled as his fingertips brushed the tie of her nightdress, tantalizing the upper swells of her breasts. The idea of him seeing her naked was still unthinkable.

Their eyes met long enough for her to see the question in his eyes; for him to see the doubt in hers before he looked away. Margaret flushed everywhere when she saw what held his fascination. Her nipples, pink and thoroughly teased by the cold and his attentions, were peaking up through the fabric. So startled was she that she did not consider how the nightdress might shift as she moved. The neckline drooped perilously, revealing the valley between her breasts. With a groan of approval, he kissed this place with as much ardor as he had the others. Margaret arched upward, his stubble scraping her as she clenched her thighs around his.

John's arms wavered as he lowered his head. Her breath stalled, her neck tilting and curving as he laved her nipple over the cloth. His taut lips circled as he sucked her straight through the nearly transparent fabric. Margaret's gasps had settled to breathy sighs by the time he again willed himself to part from her shaking body.

"I need to see all of you," he rasped.

Through her haze she smiled, his words driving her to boldness.

"You first, Mr. Thornton."

His surprise only empowered Margaret to more hastily divest him of his shirt. Her grip was damp as she fumbled for his hem, her knuckles skimming over the muscled angle cutting from his hip to inner thigh. She had almost succeeded in her mission when the fabric bunched at his neck. Doubt rippled deeper through Margaret's confidence, her embarrassment deepening with every second he scrutinized her. At last and with a knowing smirk, he yanked the cotton over his head before tossing it to the floor in a careless heap.

Until this moment, she had been grateful for the concealment of waning firelight. Now it taunted her, teasing at the shadowed ridges of his biceps and abdomen. Margaret's trembling hands braced his chest, the uncertainty of where to touch now a feeling she understood. A smile almost sprang to her lips as her fingertip traced the central line of dark hair matted with sweat. It was somehow coarse yet soft.

Her fingertips dug deep into his shoulder blades, savoring the flexion as he shifted. She could only speculate whether the skin she'd not yet touched was the same as it was here, somewhere between silk and sun-warmed marble.

Her hands traversed ribs and spine until she reached curious indentations above his backside. Her fingertips danced over them, her mind toying with the urge to clutch the the swell of pure muscle below, bringing him closer to those places that throbbed to be stroked and filled.

John's eyes glinted with unabashed amusement.

"It seems you have me at a disadvantage, madam."

Margaret paled and flushed in succession, willing her traitorous hands to her sides. John sobered for a moment before his mouth drew to a determined line. He shifted pressure to his knees, his hands wrapping around both her wrists, gently pulling them to where they'd been.

"You can touch me." His eyes flitted down to her neckline, surveying the undisturbed bow of her nightdress with regret. "Please let me feel."

She did not protest as he unwound the knot, his fingers slipping more than once. The only sound in the room was her stilted exhalation as the fabric slid over her hips, sending a shock of cold against the wetness of his kisses and her desire.

Her eyelids momentarily fluttered closed as the lace hem dusted past her ankles. Never in her life, save for her bath, had she been so exposed.

The scarlet flush on her chest spread in all directions as John's neck inclined. John drank her in with agonizing scrutiny, his eyes lingering where that slow, crawling heat was becoming a beating pulse.

He traced encouragingly up her inner thigh, his inhalations audible as he began kissing his way down her abdomen. When he stopped to reposition his arm, her hips pivoted with instinctive frustration, grinding against his trousers until they lowered on his hips.

John retaliated with a desperate thrust into the cradle of her hips, the cloth against Margaret's bare skin triggering a whole new avalanche of sensation. She was still marveling at the delicious friction when he stopped abruptly. Opening her eyes, she immediately saw the color that had risen on his cheekbones. A rich scarlet bloomed on her own face as she realized what she was feeling. The length of him was hard beneath his trousers, against her arousal already slickening the cloth.

Margaret's mind raged between embarrassment and possibility. He could take her now as she imagined a gentleman would, patient and tender as she submitted to him. He could also possess her with a reckless abandon as she, in her own way, could him. It shamed her to not know which she wanted.

All she knew was that it was her body that had made him respond in such a way. It was suddenly all that mattered.

John's mouth bowed into a crooked smile at what she presumed was her expectant expression. He wasted no time unfastening his buttons, the metal popping through loops before he tossed his trousers to the foot of the bed. He draped a sheet closer over their lower halves, though Margaret could still see the enticing contours of him through the cotton. Summoning her bravery, she ran her hands over his back, her fingers flexed up against the sheet, until her palms curved around his backside.

Her senses were too inundated to remember what he would find when he reached down to guide himself between her folds. He bit back a sound as the tip of him pressed into her wetness. Part of her wanted to leap from the bed with humiliation, her wantonness exposed. The other part, with her hands warm against him, needed him more deeply, for whatever pain it brought.

Just before the last tether to her willpower snapped, he finally spoke.

"I cannot know your pain myself." He swallowed, a hint of remorse thickening the timber of his voice. "But I swear to you I will stop if you ask it. Promise that you will not be silent."

Margaret said nothing, his words echoing far away. Everything before this moment had been quite the opposite of painful. She wanted to respond with more than polite assent, to assure him that every touch, no matter how impassioned, would be wanted. The bold admission caught in her throat.

"I promise," she whispered instead.

Guided by his shaking arm, she secured her fingers around his sweat-dampened hairline. He looked at her, his gaze black and bottomless, before entering her with a hiss of pleasure.

She almost lost her hold on him. It was an indescribable invasion—a perfect, stinging fullness. The promise she'd just made to him was not worth keeping.

John groaned before silencing himself with a labored kiss. Her nails rented the back of his neck where she still clung as he glided out and in again. She sighed with each sharp entry and again as he withdrew. His kisses, which she attempted to reciprocate in vain, were becoming clumsier despite his steadying rhythm. Margaret's discomfort faded for a moment as he rolled her nipple between his finger and thumb.

With his hand there, with each insistent thrust, pleasure wound its golden tendrils deeper within her. She cried out as he shifted her beneath him. The new angle ignited a place just above where they were joined. When he bucked inside her again, a white-hot shock radiated from it.

Her hips jutted up and out, the force of John's replying thrust scraping the headboard against the wall. His teeth bared with arousal as he raised a distracted arm to still it. He was panting, repeating the same refrain of syllables as his controlled pace began to stutter.

It was only when he plunged impossibly deep that she felt herself begin to clench tighter around him. He was touching something so perfect, now, she needed to scream. Just as she tried to repeat it, John's arms buckled beside her. Her hair muffled his cry as he pinned her hips under his, a flow of warmth rushing into her. It was a minute before his thrusts slowed, the last of them marked by lazy moans of bliss.

He said nothing after kissing her forehead tenderly and rolling away. The torturous silence only made Margaret more aware of the the dull throbbing and the cooling dampness where she had just become his. Twisting her neck a bit uncomfortably, she saw that his hands were now clasped behind his head.

"John...have I done something wrong?"

He pushed himself upward against the headboard, laughing with a profuse shake of his head. "No, no…" She had never heard him so breathless.

"I believe I underestimated you while overestimating myself." He reached out to cradle her face in his palm.

"Then I do not understand," she replied with an edge of vexation. "You look as though I have displeased you."

"You have given me the greatest pleasure, Margaret." He met her gaze partly before staring up at the ceiling. "I had hoped I could bring you such pleasure as well."

She eyed him with all the perplexity his words had wrought. From all she had heard about such things, she presumed she had already experienced it. Her heart sank, sure she was either defective or wretched for wanting more.

"I do not understand, John," Margaret contested. "I believe I have felt it."

His lips opened with the ghost of a laugh only to stop himself. "There is only one way to find out."

Margaret was still searching for a chaste reply as John crawled atop her, whipping away the rumpled sheet she was now clutching. A boyish look—one she was sure no one ever seen on the master of Marlborough Mills—was plastered on his face.

With newfound intention, he kissed and licked her from jaw to hip until she was spread wide before him. Margaret again blushed at him, staring straight at that sensitive place between her legs that had seemingly bewitched him. She was torn between panic and lust as the pad of his finger rubbed against her entrance and over the slick folds around it. His finger dipped again, its direction obvious.

"My Margaret," she thought she heard him say.

Her head melted into the pillow, her mouth forming a soundless cry as his finger eased inside her. She waited through the residual soreness, holding onto that unmistakable feeling of pleasure. It was duller, but absent the pain she felt as her body had accommodated his. This. More. was all she could think.

Margaret's fist balled the already wrinkled sheet as John's finger pumped in and out of her sex. Without thinking, she pulled at his raven hair, pressing his overworked mouth to her breast. She felt that familiar gibbous smile curling against her before he obliged her fully. His tongue flicked in tandem with his other ministrations, ensuring that she was never for a second without pleasure where most she craved it.

Her hips rolled with each burst of sensation, lost to the heat of his mouth and the way her muscles were beginning to clench again. Her mind willed her body to climb higher, though somehow she knew it would not.

She stilled at the thought of being trapped in this state forever. Though it was not her intent, John sensed it, looking up immediately. His mouth opened ever so slightly, leaving her unsure what he'd read in her expression.

His eyes were still on hers as his thumb glossed over a bud of flesh below her mound. The last thing she saw before closing her eyes with a cry was the glitter of satisfaction in his. She reveled in it and in this feeling, indescribable as it was. It was as if she was being pulled tight just there and that every feeling he had stirred with his body and hands and mouth was magnified in this tiny place. Her throat squeaked out a noise when he repeated the motion.

When she opened her eyes, the planes of his face had become hidden in semi-darkness. She could only wonder at the look on his face as he curled a second finger inside her.

His thumb pressed and teased as Margaret keened, thrusting against his hand. Streams of color undulated behind her eyes as she became weightless. It took only one final press on that tiny peaking center, everything clenched and burst at once. She rode through each delicious spasm, the depth of his kiss sealing over her cry. He rocked her against him through every wave of pleasure until the lightest pressure became too much.

A tear she did not realize she'd shed trailed down her cheek as she slumped from his arms onto the mattress. When her senses fully returned, so did the awareness of her sounds before he had so pleasurably kissed it silent. They seemed to have rung against the very rafters.

"Oh, John..."

He stroked the skin of her shoulder, lovingly preoccupied with every inch. "If you are intent on apologizing, do not." He brought her chin sideways to face him, ensuring she read the honesty in his expression.

"You should never be ashamed of what happens in our bed."

He kissed her again, softer this time against the bruised fullness of her lips. As though he knew his words were insufficient, he covered their bodies with the sheet again, layering a respectable barrier between them.

As Margaret huddled into the blankets, secretly elated, she felt John's mouth curl against her ear.

"There is some good to come out of the postponement of our trip, you know."

She turned her head, the events of the day still muddled by bliss.

"And what is that, husband?"

"We do not have to get up early tomorrow."

Margaret playfully swatted his arm, ensuring he saw her small smile in kind before nestling into the pillows. Sleep finally tugged at her eyes just as the last of the wicks were dying.

It was not yet afternoon, the light shining on the dark cherry desk at which Margaret sat. She was grateful for the break in the chill.

Brushing the tip of the feather above her lip, she recalled everything of last night and this morning. They had awoken from their rapturous sleep to the daylight, which seemed an altogether different and harsher world. John was the first to detect the small spot of blood on the sheets well obscured in the dark. A fretful Margaret had summoned one of the servants—not Jane—to whisk away the linens. Even after breakfast, John again asked if she was well, kissing her worriedly before he rushed off to the mill. It was, to her disappointment, an hour sooner than he'd planned on leaving.

Hannah was almost as silent at breakfast as she had been the night before. Despite a rather dubious look or two, she had spared Margaret the usual jabs. Having no wish to discuss the state of the sheets, Margaret had adjourned to her room with the truthful, but convenient, excuse of writing a letter to Edith informing her of Frederick's predicament.

For some time she had been staring at her mostly written note. At present, she could still think of one thing only.

The rhythmic clacking of the machines in the mill, which layers of brick did little to muffle, broke her from her thoughts. With only one sentence left to write, she scribbled out the last of her thoughts to her cousin.

3 October, 1852

Dear Edith,

First, I am so sorry that I did not get to bid you a proper goodbye after our wedding, even though you knew well of my plight. Now that a few days have passed, I can see how it should have been terribly amusing to see your "sensible" cousin brought to her knees by a corset.

There has been some terrible news about Cadiz, though I am sure you will have already heard by the time you receive this letter. I do not know what to say other than I shan't give in to fear until we receive further news. Please pray for my dear brother and his wife that yellow fever spares them and that we may visit them at last.

There is so much else that I wish to tell you, yet I cannot bring myself to write the words. I do not yet know what to make of this new feeling of being a wife. My dearest husband regards me with a depth of affection that continues to surprise and humble me. I know you have thought him harsh and unfeeling in the past, as I once did myself. But I now tell you, with the most honest happiness, that there is a side to him more tender than any interaction might convey. I can only hope that I meet his expectations, which I fear are fewer than those I have already placed upon myself.

I admit my trepidation, only in the domestic sphere, to become the mistress of Marlborough Mills. (As for the expectations of certain others—and I think you will know without explication of whom I speak—I doubt that I shall ever measure up.)

I will safe keep the rest of the conversation for when we next visit you in London.

All my love,
Margaret