There will be gradual advancement to the large heights beyond, and there will be good fortune—a gradual advance, like the soaking in water—when one is sincere and treads his path accordingly, there will be progress and attainment. She smiled faintly in the darkness and flung off her coverlet, and went, like wraith, into the adjoining chamber.
He was sleeping; he had flung out an arm as if to encircle her, and without disturbing him she shed her nightdress in the dark and very quietly climbed into bed beside him, and tucked herself under the covers.
“Claire?” came a sleepy voice. Indeed, there was nothing more satisfying than Varian’s voice murmuring her name even on the edge of sleep.
“Yes?”
“Another nightmare, darling?”
“No,” she said quietly. She smiled. “Just a dream.”
“Here, come here; I shan’t— ” His hand, which had encountered the bare flesh of her arm, was taken away instantly, and his voice was abruptly awake. “Claire— ”
“You shan’t mind if I sleep with you, Varian?” she asked, smiling up at the canopy overhead in the darkness.
In a sudden rustle of the bedclothes, a golden head propped up itself on a crooked elbow and two very blue eyes gazed at her in the darkness. “Are you seducing me, my delightful wife?”
“You shan’t mind, just from time to time?” Claire inquired innocently.
“Come here, Claire,” he said, his eyes fixed on her face, and when she had moved into that warm heaven beside him, without touching him, he gazed down at her for a moment with that curious light in his eyes, and then bent his head and kissed her behind her ear, lingering along the line of her neck, recalling her softness from that first night so long ago.
The sensuous shiver of delight that he felt in her set him on fire; he kissed her again, in the hollow of her shoulder, and then gathered her to him in wonderment. This familiar, delightful woman, this exquisite body that had slept next to for the past weeks without once betraying himself, was his. All these weeks past he had felt the gentle roundness of her breasts beneath her nightdress, that small intangible spot around her waist that made such a pleasant place for his hand when he embraced her; he had felt how her slender legs fit so well against him when he lay here asleep next to her. In spite of having known all these things so very well about her, he was still overcome in that first moment of feeling her completely against him, of feeling her hands like magic over his skin, and of recalling that he had seen secrets in her eyes long ago, and that she was his.
“Varian!” Claire raised her head and regarded him suspiciously in the dark, especially as she saw the glint of his teeth behind his teasing mouth. “You don’t sleep like this! You haven’t— ”
“I haven’t what?” he inquired innocently.
Claire had been shocked to discover her husband naked beneath the sheets, and very, very pleased with her arrival. “You knew I would come,” she said suddenly.
“I knew that if you wished to, darling Claire, you would come,” Varian said, chuckling, his laughter rumbling deep in his chest beneath her. “And I shall be perfectly truthful; I am very happy you did, for it has saved me a week of missing you here next to me,” he said quietly. He pulled her head down to his and kissed her slowly, and then kissed her again, and again, and again.
With delight, they built a private garden of pleasure in that small oasis of warmth in the center of his bed, gently, gradually, like the soaking in of water, as all good things are arranged, to be approached with restraint and enjoyed at leisure, in the fullness of its accumulation.
There will be great good fortune; it will be advantageous to cross the great stream, and then they will go up as in command of the firmament of heaven. There will be progress.
“Varian?”
It was sometime in the darkness before dawn; she lay in his arms, sleepy, reveling in that sweetness that comes past desire in the arms of a lover. “Um?”
“You don’t suppose that we might have a daughter or two, somewhere in there, thrown in amongst the four sons?”
He chuckled drowsily. “Go to sleep, darling.”
She was silent for a moment. “But I particularly like girls,” she said after some consideration.
“I suppose that must be the scratches the old devil gave me on my back,” came a slow voice in her ear, tinged with laughter.
“Balaghat?”
“Yes; you can count them in the morning, but I believe there are— ” a wide yawn— “a dozen good-sized scratches there— ”
“Varian!” she said, dissolving into laughter, which he silenced very effectively indeed and required of her that she go to sleep, and then changed his mind abruptly when she smiled up at him in the first light of dawn through the windows, putting him distinctly in mind of Sully regarding his sirloin from the terrace wall.
“Oh, very well,” he said, laughing at her, “but you shan’t go to Ely today!”
“I shan’t go out of this room today, I shouldn’t imagine, for I intend to send Claudia down a note saying I am— engaged!” she said frankly.
“My dear, you are quite, quite married, in fact,” he said, “and I am certain she will understand perfectly, for I have always considered her to be a woman of exceptional reason!”
“You could have had her, you know,” she pointed out, allowing him to lift her from beside him to a very pleasant spot all stretched out on top of him. As he arranged the bedcovers over them again, she rested her square chin on her hands laid flat along his chest, and regarded him teasingly, her velvet face rosy in the first light of dawn. “In fact, she was the one you were supposed to have!”
“Yes, and I imagine you intend to cast it up to me constantly!” he said, smiling at her in the most languid and delightful fashion, while one brown hand tucked a dark curl behind her ear and continued its delicious and subtle progress across her shoulder and down her back.
“Oh, no, not if you promise never to mention that you met me while I was stealing Tony’s flowers!” she said amiably.
The brown hand was suddenly still; a slight pause that hovered dangerously over the edge of laughter. “Susie, wasn’t it?” he inquired innocently, the blue eyes alight with mischief, and laughed at her.
In fact neither of them were seen by anyone in the household until well after lunch, which did not escape the notice of any of the servants, nor of a placid and large gentleman who lingered rather until ten, nor of his calm and logical wife, who found herself being soundly kissed in the courtyard as they were leaving, “Just for it all being over! I have never exerted myself half so much over anything!”
epilogue
There were indeed four sons presented, pretty much in order, to the first earl by his very lovely and elegant wife, and several daughters, although not, it should be pointed out, more than two or three. They built not only a gazebo but also a summerhouse just across the ornamental lake at Banningwood, with a small secluded bathing beach, which, it ought to be said, contributed directly to the subsequent birth of at least two of their several progeny, and very likely more. They lived long and happily between London and Banningwood, with Varian Drew taking up several duties in the Foreign Office and holding an ambassadorship to the Muscovites after Leveson-Gower completed his tour there in 1820. Needless to say, Lady Banning took up Russian, and taught a very popular class in English to many of the noblewomen there, thoroughly charmed the Muscovites, and handled the rather unexpected revolution in 1825 with a great deal of good sense.
In 1818, Rajat Drew— for he took Varian’s surname upon his citizenship— became a Fellow at Christ Church, Cambridge in the philosophies and in 1822 assumed a teaching post in Eastern mystic religion. His lectures were so well received that he conducted a two-year tour of India and southern China during the last of the decade. He was knighted in 1843 for his service to the British Crown and appointed a dean in 1849.
Clytie and Cleo lived rather simply in Finchingfield with their husbands and several children, comfortable in the
modest wealth that their father had provided for them in the last year of his life. Chloe and Timothy had eight of their own, and, after opening up the large manor house at Finchingfield to homeless children, thrived wonderfully in precisely the sort of household that would have driven Claudia to an early grave.
For Claudia and Tony had just two; a girl with large blue eyes and lovely dark hair, and a boy, tall and broad-shouldered, who eventually became a notable Shakespearean scholar, and who, at around the age of five-and-thirty, married one of Clytie’s adopted daughters, after knowing her for quite all of his life; but of course, that is another story completely.
Oh, and Sully; Sully grew fat and lazy, and everyone thought it was the sirloin. But Sully was never one to give up the last laugh; dear old Sully produced six kittens, all of them white with blue eyes and full of mischief, causing a great deal of consternation in the Banning household that anything so important could have been mistaken in such a fashion, and then they all fell into laughter. They came to treat Sully and Balaghat rather as members of the family, and they all lived, as Rajat would have said, advantageously and full of good fortune, in great progress and success.
Claire Page 31
