He wanted her for ever, he told her, not just for today, for tonight, but for ever, and he hoped that she wanted him in the same way.
She did, Hazel assured him shakily.
‘Enough to marry me?’ he asked her gravely.
And it was only then, when she looked at him and saw the uncertainty, the need in his eyes, that she actually did realise that in his love for her he was just as vulnerable as she was herself.
‘Yes,’ she told him equally gravely. ‘Enough for that, and to spare.’
* * *
THEY WERE MARRIED just before Christmas, the quiet church ceremony they had planned somehow becoming a large joint family celebration.
All Silas’s family were there, and on an impulse she couldn’t really name Hazel had invited Jimmy’s mother, all his brothers and sisters, and their children as well.
As Katie happily told anyone who would listen to her, she was the one who was responsible for this marriage. She had known from the moment she set eyes on Silas that he was exactly right for her mother, and as she had already fondly told Hazel, when Hazel had broken the news of their marriage to her, ‘Only the best is good enough for you, Ma, and Silas is the best.’
Hazel hadn’t been able to disagree with that. Even now she could hardly believe she had found such happiness, been blessed with such love.
As she glanced at her new husband now and he looked back at her, she blushed at the promise she could read so clearly in his eyes, hoping that no one else could read it equally clearly.
There had been such a rush to arrange things, to put the house on the market and look for somewhere they could start their lives together, and to make all the other arrangements, that they had barely had any time at all together, alone. They had been lovers on less than a dozen occasions and each time Silas made love to her it increased her physical desire for him to such a pitch that now merely to look at him was enough to make her body positively hum with anticipatory delight.
She told herself sternly that it was a ridiculous way to feel at her age, but then Silas smiled at her, and she forgot all about her age, and remembered only that she was a woman and very much in love… very, very much in love.
‘Time for us to leave, I think,’ Silas whispered to her, adding, under his breath, ‘Have I told you recently how much I’m aching to be alone with you?’
‘Not for the last hour,’ Hazel responded mischievously.
‘You just wait,’ he threatened her. ‘You just wait until tonight…’
They were standing together, so wrapped up in one another that Hazel didn’t even hear Katie approach until her daughter whispered in her ear, ‘The way you two are looking at one another is almost making me blush.’
‘We’re just leaving,’ Silas grinned at her, and then, looking tenderly at Hazel, added, ‘That’s if you’re ready to leave, my love.’
‘I’m ready,’ Hazel told him huskily, while Katie laughed again and then hustled them both towards the door, claiming that now they really were embarrassing her.
* * * * *