The way she learns to love him is, at first, blindly. Long before he ever touches her ben linen she loves him body and soul but, at first, it's-…oh, just the goodness of people, the goodness of a man, this man, to her; well beyond what she has allowed herself to believe in for a long time. When she catches the way he looks at her in the servants' hall when they finally, finally become lovers she can return them entirely. But she loved him from the inside first. To be honest, she doesn't care how old he looks, she'd never really given it much thought.
He is good, and he is strong. He is strong in more ways than she'd given him credit for, even when she was there on that beach, singing his praises. She has been lifted in his arms, carried to her own bed, spun around and draped on the sheets as if she weighed nothing more than a feather- he insists in a whisper that she doesn't when she tells him as much.
Being in love with the person who has come to infatuate your body is such an unbelievable blessed thing. She cannot believe it. She hankers for the nights that they spend together as much for a need for assurance that he will return to her, that he will remain hers, as out of physical need for him. It is so rare, she cannot understand, someone as good as he is wanting her, there must have been some colossal mistake-…
But he returns, again and again, dependably and eagerly. The relief she feels, when she is lying in her bed, when she sees the crack of light as her bedroom opens. He is back, they haven't been caught out, the door has closed behind them. But most importantly of all, he still wants to be with her, still wants her. And this is the purest, unquestionably the strongest love she has ever felt.
She hadn't gone into this expecting the love affair of a lifetime, of several lifetimes, but, she struggles to remind herself, that is what it transpires she's going to get. The stuff young girls go mad over. If she wasn't so entirely convinced of his honesty, she would truly struggle to believe that he'd never had a lover before. He was so gentle with her, as the thought of hurting her inhibited him. Gods, she almost had to persuade him that it was alight to take from her too-…
She clutches his face in her hands, in the dark, holding him to her, kissing his lips desperately. She knows he hates how quiet they have to be, and she couldn't agree more; she longs to moan against his mouth, out loud, to let him know, in the moment, that it feels so good, like nothing has ever felt before. They love each other in the dark, almost without sight and it seems so unfair that they must also be deprived of sound.
Until, one night, he asks her a certain question, to which she finds herself gasping;
"Yes, of course. Oh, yes."
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