Forty-Nine

EARLY the next morning, Fabian and Adalene were loaded inside one of the carriages and they went their way to the cabin near her family. It took most of the day and it was almost dark when they arrived.
Since her family had the cabin stocked with food and whatever else they needed to stay there for a week, they started right away with cooking dinner.
Someone, probably one of her brothers, left fire and wood in the fireplace that might have been alight the whole day, and though there were only embers when they arrived, the inside was comfortably warm. Fabian added more wood and it was crisply hot when they sat down to eat that they stripped down to slips and undergarments.
“You can cook!” Fabian said happily as he got his second filling of the beef stew.
Adalene shook her head. “I’m afraid that’s my mother’s cooking. She left it in a big pot for me to heat up when we arrived. I can cook, but I haven’t done much for a long time… since I arrived in the manor, practically, so I am not sure if I can satisfy you with what I can actually remember. I did try to cook again in the kitchen, but your servants shoo me off their territory pretty adamantly,” she said with a scowl. “As if I have insulted them for even thinking to do such a wifely task.”
He was grinning. “Well, judging by how well you’ve displayed skills your own mother has taught you, I wouldn’t worry about our meals in the coming days.”
She stared at him quite worriedly. “Now, you’ve got me all nervous. I hope I don’t disappoint.”
His look from across the table told her that if he’d been closer to her, she would have received a loving caress. “You will never disappoint me, ma bichette. Take that out of your head.”
She couldn’t help but smile with confidence because she knew him long enough to know it was true.
That she could be anything she really was with him.
That she could be her weakest, and he would be the strong one for her.
That she could be her ugliest, and he still would sing her praise and would make love with all parts of her body, and would call all of them parts the loveliest he’d ever kissed and held.
And that she could be the most depressed, and he would do anything to make her laugh.
And although she had done more than enough to acquire skills to defend herself and her loved ones, he was still the first one she would think of when she needed rescuing because he stood up to be her hero so many times.
He was her husband… in the truest and most passionate meaning of the word.
He shooed her away to the bath after dinner and washed the dishes himself.
She filled a wooded tub with water and added the hot water to a kettle that was hooked up to the fireplace. It was a big tub and he was done with the dishes when she was halfway through the task. He took over.
She hid a smile when she checked the kitchen and found plates and pots haphazardly laid on a thick rug on the table, but they were clean.
They played around and flirted a little bit while in the water until it got almost cold, and dried each other before donning clean slips to bed. And then held each other close in the soft light coming from the embers in the smaller fireplace in the room.
“It’s so quiet… not that it’s really quiet.” She could hear the sound of the wind and the woods in the back of the cabin outside. “But it’s so quiet.”
She felt his kiss on her temple. “You mean you don’t feel the sound made by activities in the manor by the servants.”
She nodded. “Yes. Not that I actually hear them, you see. It just… feels different.”
“Hmm. Does it bother you?”
She tried to sense how she really felt about it. “Not really. It’s just… I grew up in a household surrounded by other houses and there were tiny rooms filled with my family. Then, the manor is almost filled with people. But this… this is peaceful.” She raised her face to look at his and found that he was looking sleepy and… seemed contented. “How about you?”
“If you think I will be uncomfortable, I’ve slept in a pallet in the middle of the woods with my men, and sometimes alone when I travel in commoners clothes when I still worked for the Duke regarding… matters. This is much better. Besides that, I have you here with me. That’s about everything I need.”
Adalene smiled at her husband. “It feels domestic, actually. If you aren’t the Baron, this is how I pictured ourselves to live.”
He smiled, too. “If I happen to be a commoner, what kind of work would you picture me to have?”
“Ahh, that’s easy. You’ll be a merchantman trading pearls and expensive silk, gems and metals, herbs and spices, and exotic fruits and seeds.”
He laughed softly at that. “I think you have me pegged.”
“And I would be traveling with you everywhere you go, defending your back.”
He laughed again, longer now, as he pulled her tighter into his embrace. “I like imagining that. What else can you think of?”
“We’ll be traveling not just to Rome, but to this country they call India, and I also hope to spend time on a beach on a Greek island. And can you imagine talking to the Chinese? Oh, if we can only draw those moments as fast as we can so we capture them for posterity!”
“You want to lead a dangerous life, *ma bichette*?”
“Traders can go everywhere. I would like to witness the work of miners in a gold mine. Can you imagine that?”
“Oh *ma chérie*, you are making me nervous now. Seems like I will need the knights of a Baron to make sure you are safe everywhere we go.”
She crinkled her nose up at him. “You’re no fun. I’m just imagining them. It is more likely that in the coming years, I will have to stay at home to take care of our kids. And there is nothing more important than that.”
His eyes had turned soft upon hearing that. “As I will stay with you, my wife. Eventually, I will teach our children to travel with us. I would like to think they will inherit our good looks and their mother’s lively spirit.”
“I would love to have a son who looks like you,” she said, her thumb and forefinger holding his strong chin.
“And I would love to see a daughter grow up into your beauty,” he seconded, caressing her cheek.
His body shifted under the blanket against her body. “I’m inspired to grant you your wish tonight.”
She giggled. “You’ve been trying to do so in the past nights, don’t you think?”
“Aha! Have my wife just issued a challenge?” he mocked with a quiet laugh.
“Oh no, *mon mari*. Challenge or not, you always deliver.”
She laughed like tickled at his growl, and then was silenced by his passionate kiss that went on as their hands began to roam.
After a moment, with his arms encircling her waist and her legs entangled deliciously with his, he whispered.
“Let’s try and make a baby tonight.”
“Hmmm. You don’t have to ask.”
And they lost their clothes on the floor.
She rode him while his hands kneaded heavy, enticing breasts.
Her rhythmic rocking above him was a delicious sampling of how willing bodies connect, their murmured compliments and moans of pleasure filling the warm room with their adoration for each other… until their groans—much like a harmonious melody— marked their release…