Daughter of Light (Kindred 2)

After we settled in at our hotel, we went for a swim in the pool and then, finally, crawled into bed beside each other to consummate our marriage.

The first time you make love with the man you love has to be something extra special. Julia’s warnings about building up your husband or him building you up so high that you can never truly be satisfied rang in my ears. But my lovemaking was much more involved and much more complicated than a traditional newly married woman’s lovemaking. Of course, I recalled the first time I had been with Buddy, how my body had reacted, hardening to the point where he had noticed, and then how I suddenly was filled with an overwhelming hunger and passion that turned me into the aggressor. He joked about it afterward, but I knew I had crossed a line, stirring his curiosity. We were careful, of course. It was protected sex, but that didn’t diminish the intensity of our lovemaking, or, more correctly, mine. I had practically ravished him.

I didn’t want it to be like that with Liam. I called on all of my strength to hold back, to move slowly.

“You’re so tense,” he said. “Relax. I love you. I really love you, Lorelei.”

Yes, you do, I thought. And I really love you, but I could lose you so quickly. All of this could become some distant memory in seconds. And he would never know why.

My hesitation might have looked like the hesitation of someone who wasn’t confident in her sexuality or someone who wasn’t experienced enough, but I knew it came from a different fear, the fear that I would become pregnant and that my child, a girl, would be taken from us. Liam would suffer so much. I would, too, but I would suffer withou

t hope. He would pray that she would be found and be returned. I would still have to pretend, pray along with him, hope along with him, and, just like him, refuse to be disappointed or pessimistic, at least on the surface.

But what could I do now? Daddy knew more about me than I knew about myself, and he had told me that I was more fertile than any other young woman my age from the world Liam knew. He seemed confident that my first child would be a girl, the girl he demanded. I considered holding off on having children when Liam had brought it up. He wanted a family as quickly as possible. He believed that having our children young meant we would still be relatively young when they were our age, and we would enjoy them and our grandchildren to come far more.

What reason could I offer for us to wait? Unlike other young couples, we did not have to worry about income, housing, providing for them in any way. I could easily have a nanny if I wanted. For that matter, Mrs. Wakefield could help for a while, at least. I wasn’t pursuing a career, and I wasn’t one of those narcissistic women who worried about losing their figures. Liam would never marry such a woman.

No, I had no choice, and rather than fight whatever fate awaited, I decided in those first passionate moments to let myself go, to be the lover Liam wanted and the lover I wanted to be with him. Every day of our honeymoon, we made love the first thing in the morning and the last thing at night.

Even though Daddy had said good-bye, I couldn’t help but think that he or one of his surrogates was there with us, watching. Maybe he thought I might back out of it all, my marriage, and therefore our agreement. One night, while we were making love, I saw what looked like Daddy silhouetted in the window. The curtains were drawn, but there was a full moon, and for those moments, I felt as if he were looking over our lovemaking, blessing it to result in what he wanted. The shadow left, but the feeling never did. I was just good at putting it aside.

There were days when we did nothing more than get up late, make love, have breakfast through room service, take our time getting dressed, and walk to the shopping areas. Almost anything I looked at twice was a purchase for Liam. Some days we had pizza and talked for hours at a restaurant, and some days we went to fancier restaurants.

One day, we hired a boat with a local man who took us to swim in the Blue Grotto, a sea cave on the coast of Capri. The sunlight shining through the seawater created a blue reflection that illuminated the cavern. It was fun swimming in it, and afterward, we were taken to a wonderful lunch on the side of the palisades. Our boat was too big, so a small boat had to come get us, a sea taxi run by a man who looked close to a hundred. He was delightful and as full of predictions as a gypsy fortune teller about our wonderful lives together. Everyone who met us seemed to know immediately that we were newlyweds.

The nights were the best, walking to a restaurant, stopping to talk to other people, going to art galleries, or just sitting on a bench holding hands and watching other couples. No one seemed as happy as we were. Liam told me a great deal about his boyhood, now being even more revealing about just how different he always felt, not having his mother.

“Mrs. Wakefield was as concerned and considerate as could be. I never doubted that she came to love us both, but . . .”

“She wasn’t your mother. I know how that is.”

“Yes. We have so much in common, and yet there is so much different about us. I think,” he quickly added, “that the differences are good. Who wants to marry a clone?”

He didn’t mind that I didn’t talk very much about my own youth. I didn’t want to keep inventing a life, but I certainly didn’t want to talk about what mine was really like.

“Let’s both just look to the future,” I said. “Let’s think only of who we are now and what we will have together.”

He liked that. We talked again about building a house and having a family. Then he revealed a surprise, his father’s wedding present to us.

“Dad’s signed over a good portion of our property to me and given us the down payment to build our own home.”

“I thought he wanted us to live in the mansion.”

“He wants us to have something that’s ours from the start. He came to that decision just before the wedding.”

“And you didn’t tell me?”

“I wanted it to be a surprise. We also talked about you still working for him. Until you are pregnant, that is. He’s used to that. Remember, that’s how you got the job . . . Michele Levy.”

“Yes. That’s fine with me. I enjoy the work and want to keep busy.”

“Good. It’s a family business, and you’re part of it now, Lorelei. You’re part of it all.”

We made all sorts of pledges and predictions for ourselves that week. When it came time to leave, we felt as if we were stepping out of a fantasy storybook and reentering the real world. We sat together at the rear of the hydrofoil, holding hands and watching Capri drift back and onto the shelf holding our most precious lifelong memories. Both of us were almost in tears.

When we returned to Quincy, Julia wanted to hear about every moment, demanding details. I did enjoy telling her, because it was like being there again. Although Liam and I were younger than Clifford and Julia, it was as if we had become the ones they should measure themselves and their love against. They even decided that they, too, would go to Capri for their honeymoon. It made me nervous to see how much of herself she was molding in my image. In fact, every loving thing she or Clifford, my father-in-law, and now my great-aunt Amelia said or did for us made me feel sicker and weaker inside. This can’t come to any good, I feared. There’ll be a day when they will hate me.

I lost myself in work to avoid thinking too much about any of it. Liam brought home some plans for our own home, and he, his father, and I began going over them. With dinners, social affairs, boating trips, and our work, the days and weeks passed quickly into months.