by Lara Blunte
"Minha linda!" he exclaimed upon seeing her. My beautiful girl. His eyes had tears in them and Clara opened hers wide and looked up to avoid crying and spoiling her face.
Pedro kissed her, then brought his hands forward with a box in them.
"Pai, what is it?" Clara could tell the box contained a jewel. "Don't tell me you spent your money?"
"I didn't; your future husband did!"
Pedro opened the box to reveal a tiara worthy of an empress, set with the most beautiful rubies and diamonds Clara had ever seen. The tiara sparkled in its case as if it had a life of its own.
"Oh!" Juliana exclaimed, advancing to get it, but Clara took it first. There was a note with it, and she turned it around to read it.
"Meu amor, I suspect that, as many women about to be married, you shall wear white. You ought to have a spot of color, and during all the years I longed to kiss your red lips, I thought that rubies should be your stone. I shall be waiting to see you. G."
An hour later Clara drew gasps of admiration as she entered the old Baroque church with scintillating rubies holding her mantilla in place. She could not help showing all her happiness as Gabriel took her hand and they turned to the priest. She believed in every word that united them, because she knew beyond a doubt that they both meant them. She would be his wife and love him, through happiness and sorrow.
They walked out to a very beautiful winter day, to a balmy breeze coming from the blue sea in front of them, to flowers being thrown on their wake and bells ringing. It was ten in the morning, and they were husband and wife.
There was a reception at Gabriel's rented house, with much of the court present because of who the groom still was, though he had never sought reconciliation with his father. The prince, who had not been at the wedding, came to congratulate them.
Clara stepped seamlessly into her role of married woman, and went around the different rooms greeting people. Gabriel, however, had disappeared, and she found him in the terrace.
"Hiding from everyone?" she asked with a smile.
"From everyone but you!" he said, and put his hands around her waist.
"Look at it," she said laying her head on his shoulder and motioning toward the deep green forest and the sea. "A new life for us, in a new world!"
He looked inside at all the people talking, drinking, moving, "At the moment it looks very much like the old one!"
She laughed. "My burden starts early, then, I have to make sure no one leaves here wishing us ill!”
“What do we care?” he asked, holding her close. “Let them think what they will, we don’t need them!”
He pulled her out of sight and kissed her again.
"We will be rid of them soon enough," she whispered, trying to quell a sudden anxiety. She wanted everyone to leave and feared what was to happen at the same time.
The guests left by late afternoon, and she was finally alone with her husband, except for the servants. Teresa undressed her in a bedroom she had never seen before, and she slipped into her nightgown.
Clara's heart was by then beating so hard she thought it might leap out of her chest. Teresa was unmarried, or she would have grasped her by the arm and asked how much whatever was about to happen would hurt.
Gabriel knocked on the door and came in, telling Teresa to go. He was wearing breeches and a white shirt with his cravat still on. She suddenly saw him as a stranger, as someone she didn't know at all. He was approaching her with a quiet but intense look.
His hand moved toward her hair and she gasped. "Will you allow me?" he asked.
Clara only nodded, unable to speak. Only that morning it had not been possible for her to be alone with him, and now he could touch her. He took the pins out of her hair, and her heavy tresses started coming down, until her hair was loose, falling to her waist. Gabriel pulled her to him by the wrist, and put his arms around her.
He will kiss me, she thought. He has kissed me before, maybe that is all that will happen.
She closed her eyes as his lips covered hers. Oh, it felt nice, like before. But suddenly he parted her lips and his tongue invaded her mouth. She stepped back and shrieked, "Gabriel!"
Her eyes were almost jumping out of their sockets. What was he doing?
There was a second of surprise from him, and then amusement settled on his face. "That is how married people kiss, you know."
"O quê? I have never heard such a thing!"
He was looking down at his shoes to hide his smile. "I don't think you have heard much."
"I... I... My mother tried to..."
He looked back at her from under his brows now, still smiling. "Your mother! I can only imagine…"
"But Gabriel, why would people kiss like that?" she asked.
"Because it feels nice," he replied.
Clara had begun to tremble and her hand went to her robe, which she gathered around her neck. He took a step forward and she took one back.
He stopped, then he motioned politely towards the bed. "Why don't we sit down for a moment?"
She avoided the bed and walked to the sofa, perching there. He followed, and sat next to her.
"My darling, I don't want you in this state of anguish," he told her. "It will be terrible for both of us. What if I promise not to do anything at all that you don't want?"
"Ever?"
"Ever," he confirmed.
"Then how will we have children?" she asked in agony.
There was a secret smile on his face now. "I still promise you that I shall do nothing that you don't like."
She breathed, thinking that she would never like anything. If a kiss could be so terrible, then what was in store next? Perhaps she could pretend to accept his offer so they would at least get used to each other ─ or, rather, so that she could get used to him ─ and then, after a few days, or maybe a month, they could do whatever it was they needed to do.
It would not be so unnerving then, though she almost felt that it was better to just do everything now and know the worst.
Still clutching her robe she said, "All right, perhaps if we can go slowly." She tried to smile at him. "I'm an old maid, you know!"
He laughed, "So you are! The most beautiful old maid in the world." He reached out and took a lock of her hair between his fingers. "For now I have managed to see you with your hair down, and I shall count it as a victory!"
Standing up, he offered his hand to her. "Let's go to bed. We can sleep on the same bed, can we not? I am afraid I don't have a sword here to separate us, but you have my word."
Clara put her hand in his and stood up, then she ran to the bed, still in her robe, jumped in, and covered herself. She could hear him laughing. In the mirror she saw that he was taking off his cravat, then unbuttoning his shirt. She shut her eyes very tightly, frightened of opening them and seeing him naked. But she heard him moving to another room and coming back a few minutes later, and felt his weight on the mattress as he got in next to her.
When she opened her eyes, she saw that he was only wearing light cotton trousers, and that his chest was naked. She would have shut her eyes again, if it weren't for the scar across his neck, which had always been hidden by the cravat.
She gasped and sat up, "Gabriel, what is that?"
He caught her hand before she could touch it. "Nothing," he said. "An accident."
"What sort of accident?"
"The only sort that exists," he shrugged. "Something happened that wasn't supposed to happen. But it's healed, there were no consequences."
There was one good one, that she was now almost in his arms, although he was not wearing a shirt. As he had made no move to pull her closer, she started to feel safe and asked, "What are you wearing?"
"They seem to be trousers," he said.
"Do you sleep in them?"
"Yes. A custom I acquired in the wilderness. One needs to avoid things crawling up one's nightgown."
She leaned against him, her head on his shoulder. She thought she could do that. She thought she could
turn up her face to his.
"Do you think you can kiss me as before, not as you did just now?"
He nodded and his lips touched hers again for a moment, then for a longer moment. It was nice.
Finding no resistance he kept kissing her, lifting his lips so that they would touch one corner of her mouth, then the other, then all of his lips were over hers. His hand was caressing her hair, so her hand went up to touch his.
"You have such lovely hair," she said.
He took a pillow and put it between them
"Why are you doing that?" she asked
"It’s just best if I do," he said.
She looked puzzled and a little alarmed, but he just smiled again.
"Kiss me," she asked.
He did. It felt as if the heat in the room were increasing, though it was a winter night and the window was open. There was certainly a lot of heat coming from him, and she felt flushed.
After a while his hand moved to her waist and she started, but he was only placing it there. By dint of kissing so much her lips had opened a little. It suddenly didn't seem like such a horrible thing that their tongues should touch, so she ventured the tip of hers beyond her teeth and touched his.
She thought the feeling was not displeasing. The tip of her tongue touched his lips, his hand moved over her waist to bring her closer, though the pillow still divided them, and his tongue pressed its advantage.
Clara closed her eyes and let him do what he wanted. Was he not her husband? Maybe he knew how things were meant to be, better than she did. He had said he wouldn't do anything that she didn't like.
And when he began to kiss her in earnest she did like it. There was a muffled sound from her as his tongue mingled with hers and a strange ache took over her stomach. Her skin seemed to tingle and her hand brought his head closer to hers.
But when his hand moved up to her breast she jumped up like a coiled spring let loose. "Gabriel!"
He lay back holding his hands up, and started to laugh. "I think I will need to be as good a general as Napoleon to conquer you!"
She was again clutching her robe to her as if it were a shield.
"I think we should go to sleep," her husband said.
"Oh?"
Why did she sound a little disappointed? She would not have minded kissing a little longer, though now she felt strange, as if something were unfinished or missing.
But how was one expected to go from never being alone with a man to being in bed with one, and he able to roam all over a body that had never been touched?
Clara put her head on the pillow and frowned, and found her husband's eyes on her. They were still amused. "Good night," he said
"Good night," she whispered.
He blew out the candles.
Fourteen. Experience
The day after her wedding, Clara dearly wanted to ask someone other than Gabriel about what was supposed to happen next in their marriage, but she had no idea whom to approach.
Juliana had told her no decent woman could like what had to take place, and yet Clara had enjoyed kissing. She even thought, as she and her husband had breakfast, that she wouldn't mind if he kissed her again.
He buttered her bread, poured her coffee and cut her fruit, then he started feeding her. Was this his strategy, to get her to feel cozy and then... And then what?
She had her bath and got dressed. Gabriel also had a bath, another consequence of living in the wilderness, he said: he had grown fond of water.
They walked together in the garden and talked.
“We will never go back to Portugal, will we?” she asked.
He leaned against a tree and looked at her. “Will it be very hard for you?”
Clara thought about it for a moment, “Not if I am with you, and our children. I don’t know what it’s like where we will live, but I think I love this country. It feels so vast and new…”
Gabriel gave a half smile at this, “It is a place so much richer than Portugal, yet it has been strangled by thoughtless policies. The British, the French, the Dutch have wanted to take bites out of it and I wonder if that would have been a bad thing…”
“Do you? Why?”
“I imagine these other nations would have been as greedy as we are, taking all the riches out, and I know for certain they would have treated the Indians and the slaves much worse ─but I also think they would have left something behind. Our prince is frightened of a revolution like France’s, so he keeps the provinces unconnected by having no roads built; he hasn’t allowed a printing press so that people don’t get ideas; he has closed the ports to any country but ours, and allowed few people to come; he has filled Brazil with slaves, creating a large class of people who are bound to one day rebel. It is a place with an almost dizzying wealth of resources, and yet it is run like a medieval fiefdom.”
“He is making changes now…” Clara said. “But I suppose not enough?”
“And not fast enough. Still, I am sorry for our country, but it’s at present a bone of contention between the English and the French, and not a place of its own.”
“But someone must put a stop to Napoleon!” Clara cried, feeling more sentimental and patriotic than Gabriel about their native land.
She wondered if he felt the same about Portugal as he did about his father. He seemed to have a highly pragmatic spirit, or he would not have become rich so quickly, but he had a tendency to be uncompromising in his ideas; these facets of his mind might lead him to dismiss both father and country as things to be left behind, when no one ever truly stopped being a son, or the native of a place.
His accent had changed and he sounded a little more like a Brazilian, probably because he had had to make an effort to be understood by a people unused to their emphasis on consonants; yet he had strong roots in Portugal, and it would be impossible for him to ignore them completely.
“Someone will stop Napoleon,” he was saying. “He is a greedy man, he will bite off more than he can chew, eventually. But in any case I feel that now this is my country, perhaps because at home everything seemed to be already decided, whereas there is still so much to do here, and I have the energy to do it…”
Clara smiled as she put her head on his shoulder, “Yes, I have it too!”
Finally, he started to kiss her, and she liked it so much that she forgot that they were in the garden, and that one of the servants might see them. He took her hand and led her to the bedroom, though it was only five o'clock.
He won't do anything I don't like, he promised, she told herself.
They lay in bed again, kissing. Then he started to kiss her neck and after the initial shock it began to feel good, then better than good. There seemed to be a connection between the places where his lips rested and her belly again, and again she felt almost restless, as if something else were missing.
So when he unbuttoned her dress and took it off she let him, after all her chemise was still covering her. But as he kept kissing her neck and shoulder and the wonderful feeling became more urgent, he slipped his hand inside her chemise and over her naked breast.
Her shock was immense, but he had closed his lips over hers by that time, and the double sensation of his lips and hands were something she had never felt before, and now it was as if she were burning between her legs.
No decent woman liked this!
She sat bolt upright again and cried, "No, no, no!"
He propped his head up on his elbow. The pillow was back between them."All right."
"I am sure that it isn't necessary to do that," she said, blushing to the roots of her hair and feeling all sorts of things she would never have been able to describe.
"Necessary for what?” He was smiling again, as if he knew things she did not know, but was bound to find out.
"For...for a husband and wife...For, you know, a marriage.'
He moved a lock of hair away from her cheek. "You seem to think that marriage has to be a very dull thing," he remarked. "But I am famished, aren't you? Let's have
supper!"
There was no more kissing that night, and Clara, after having begged God, His Son and the Virgin to not let her feel anything wrong, went to bed a little disappointed that Gabriel should be sleeping like a child instead of trying to make her do bad things.
The next morning was Sunday, and she asked to be taken to mass. She wanted to attend it in the same place where they had become husband and wife. Gabriel left her at the door of Nossa Senhora da Gloria and said he would be waiting outside.
"Will you not attend mass?' she asked.
"I have lost the custom," he told her.
She was disturbed by this, but thought she would ask him about it later. Now she went in, covered her head and prayed. Then she entered the line to the confessional. She could not see the priest inside, there was only the wooden grid where she should speak as he sat on the other side of the partition.
"Father I have sinned," she said.
"Sim, minha filha?"
By his accent, he was a countryman of hers. Maybe he would understand. She spoke in a low voice, cupping her hands over her lips near the grid. "Father I am recently married. I don't know how I should feel in relation to my husband."
There was a silence, and then he asked. "Do you not love the man you married?"
"Oh, I love him so much! Oh, Father, you can’t imagine!”
"Then what is it that you don't understand?"
"Some...things that, being married, I must do."
The priest sighed. "Ah, a woman is seldom prepared for the facts of life and marriage. You must understand that your union has been blessed by God. What takes place between you and your husband is ordained by Him..."
Clara started to smile.
"...to ensure fruitfulness and the happiness that children bring." She stopped smiling, as the priest droned on, "You must obey your husband, unless what he asks is unnatural, and you must accept it with as much forbearance as you can. You will, God willing, have a long life together, and it's a sacrifice that you must make."
