se two fine upstanding witnesses?”
43
Sabrina knew she should be embarrassed to the toes of her slippers that two people were watching this very strange confrontation between them, but oddly, she wasn’t. But she didn’t know what was in Phillip’s head. She’d never known. She looked at him helplessly, her hands splayed in front of her. “You know that I love you. I’ll promise that to anyone who wants to listen to me. But I’m not the one who wants mistresses, Phillip.”
“A lover for you, Sabrina? No, never. Forget it. Not in this lifetime.”
“But you know that was always only in your own mind. I told you that lovemaking was utterly miserable, that no woman could possible enjoy herself doing that. It was unpleasant, it was—” She stopped. Phillip was flushed, two spots of color high on his cheekbones.
Rohan choked on his apple Charlotte. Susannah thumped him on his back. He sucked in enough breath to blurt out, “Phillip, I don’t believe this. You? You left your wife unsatisfied? You were so rotten that she doesn’t want anything more to do with you? Good God, you never told me this! This may be insurmountable. I don’t know if I should encourage her to take you back if you can’t do things right. It’s a repellent thought. It’s unacceptable.”
“Now, just calm yourself and think back for a moment. I believed the same thing she did, Rohan,” Susannah said with alarming candor. “It was Charlotte—no, not the apple Charlotte—who kept talking about her precious Rohan, how he could make a toad sing with pleasure if he but put his mind to it, his mind and all the skills his dear papa saw to it he learned from his own mistresses beginning when Rohan was only fourteen years old.”
“That’s quite enough, Susannah. The fact is that you were quickly disabused of your silly beliefs. All I needed was a very short time in our bed to change your mind, don’t you remember? Not more than two minutes or so, very little so.”
Sabrina said, “And then it was all right? You truly enjoyed this, Susannah?”
“Yes, I truly did. I truly do.”
“But Phillip did this to me three times, all in one night, one after the other. It wasn’t very nice at all, but because I loved him, I endured. What else can a woman do when she loves a man but endure?”
“Exactly right,” Phillip said.
“Phillip, what the hell happened?”
He looked at his boyhood friend and said simply, “I was a blockhead. She wouldn’t accept my expertise, but I should have known that it would take more than simple expertise. But I won’t ever be a blockhead again.” He was no longer flushed. He took two steps toward his wife. “No, don’t retreat from me, Sabrina. Do you swear before these witnesses that you love me?”
“I swear.”
“Good. Now I swear that I love you as well. Actually I probably love you more. My love for you has been simmering, like a damned stew, for a very long time. It’s grown stronger and stronger, it just took me longer to realize what it was and to admit it. It’s still boiling over a steady flame. I daresay that flame won’t ever go out.”
“That makes no sense at all. You’ll just keep boiling? You won’t boil away?”
“Never. I also swear to you that tonight, just after we can politely leave our guests, you and I are going to enjoy ourselves, immensely. Will you trust me on this?”
She didn’t say a word, just stared at him.
“Trust him,” Susannah said. “Yes, you should trust him. A man and a woman together, it can be glorious, Sabrina. Life is so very uncertain, so unwieldy sometimes, that coming together with a man you truly love can make sense of everything, make everything very clear to you. It can make problems disappear. It can make annoyances, burdens, much lighter.”
Rohan said, “If you agree to trust him, Sabrina, to give him another chance, then I’ll give him the gift Susannah and I brought him from Mountvale Hall. Your trust would turn the tide, I should say. I would believe him worthy of the gift then. It would prove that commitment wasn’t abhorrent to him. It would prove that he’s become a steady man.”
“Do you know,” Sabrina said slowly, looking at each of them in turn, “this is quite the oddest thing that has ever happened to me. Phillip, you invited them here because you were afraid I wouldn’t listen to you?”
“I felt I needed character witnesses.”
“Will you tell him you trust him, Sabrina?” Susannah said, sitting forward.
Sabrina said slowly, “I believe that now I’m going to go find Charlotte beneath the Moorish arches. I want her to give me some lessons in how to make the best use of my eyes.”
Phillip groaned. “I will be undone by your mother, Rohan.”
“Think of my mother as another character witness, Phillip,” Rohan said, grabbed a delicate mulberry cream cake in the shape of a cat, gave his wife a beatific smile, and rolled his eyes.
His mouth was on her belly, nibbling as he would on one of Cook’s lemon spice cakes, then smoothing where he’d nipped with his tongue. It tickled and she giggled. Much of her nervousness fell away when he looked up at her, and smiled widely. “That’s a wonderful sound. It warms me to my, er, never mind what. Just relax, Sabrina. Remember now, you trust me.”
“Yes,” she said when his mouth was on hers. Since he’d kissed her until she was nearly out of her mind, it didn’t take long for her to scream, arch off the bed, and fling her hair into her eyes. “Phillip!”
He pushed her and pushed her, then drew back, calming her, slowing down his rhythm, until she was drawing heaving breaths, and again, he smiled. Her pleasure was beautiful to him. It warmed him to his toes. “Now,” he said and came over her, and very gently, very slowly, he came into her. She raised her hips, her hands stroking down his back. “Oh yes, I like that,” she said and bit his shoulder. “I’m glad Charlotte told me to trust you. Oh, goodness, Phillip, this is very strange. It feels like nothing any person could possibly imagine. Can we do it again after we finish it this time?”