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which was now hers.
    It was all so incredible that she wanted to laugh, to exclaim, to talk, to genuinely communicate for the first time with William. During the whole of her courtship and then her wedding and the strange out-of-joint journey to France, she had been nervous, distrait, in a dream.
    But now, in this spectacularly lovely dawn, with the early sun stroking shadows over the lawn, the doves stirring in a flurry of white petticoats in the distant dovecotes, the little pointed cypress trees still as black as night, she was wide awake. She wanted to talk, to laugh, to coo and flutter starched petticoats, like the doves.
    But William was still asleep. She hung over him, thinking how peaceful but how lonely sleeping faces were. William’s was pale and remote, as if he had never belonged to anyone but himself. Who, looking at him now, could guess at his sensuality?
    Or hers, she thought, glancing furtively at the mirror, her cheeks growing warm with remembered pleasure.
    If William had expected a modest wife, his first touch on her bare skin had sent all chances of that to the winds. The astonishing thing was that she had never known she would have this lack of modesty, this sheer physical desire. William’s skilful hands on her breasts had done something extraordinary to her. Her wild trembling had communicated itself to him, and very shortly she had made the surprising but satisfactory discovery that the consummation of a marriage was far more exciting than the vows taken at the altar.
    No one had told her this would be so, not even her mother. But Mamma, with her obsession for clothes and household affairs, and Papa utterly absorbed in business—she was certain it could never have been like this for them. If it had been, some of their tenderness would have been obvious, even to a child. How would she and William be able to disguise their tenderness for each other today?
    The curtains, drawn back another six careful inches by her impatient fingers, showed blue sky, and the top of the Judas tree, and William was stirring at last, opening his eyes and looking at her.
    And in a mere second Beatrice’s euphoria had gone.
    But euphoria, she had always known, was not a lasting emotion. A good thing that it wasn’t for one couldn’t live permanently at that pitch of excitement.
    For William’s eyes rested on her with a look of surprise, first as if he had forgotten he had spent the night with a woman, and then as if he were disappointed the woman was her. Coming fully awake, however, the revealing moment had gone and he had assumed his usual pleasant amiable expression.
    She hadn’t realised how much she had hoped that that impersonal courtesy could not have survived the night. Didn’t she deserve something more now? A look of love, for instance? But he did put out his hand and take hers in a light caressing clasp.
    “Morning, dearest.” He began to cough. “Sorry. I usually have a hot drink early to stop this cough.”
    “I’ll ring for one,” Beatrice said at once. “What do you like? I’d suggest lemon and honey which is very soothing.”
    “Is it? Then I’ll try it.” He sat up, in pleasant anticipation. “Bless you, you’re so thoughtful.”
    “That’s a wife’s duty.”
    He looked boyish and young and charming against the pillows.
    “What a word to use. Duty.”
    Had it been a duty he had performed last night? Then how clever he was, to do it so well. She hoped he didn’t notice that she was trembling now, and hastily pulled on a robe over her nightgown. The one Hawkins had put out for her, white lawn threaded with blue ribbons to match her nightgown. Her honeymoon nightwear which was really only suited to candlelight.
    Surely she had always known that civilised people didn’t talk of what happened in the night. Such conversation belonged to the darkness.
    Looking at her husband’s boyish face, concerned only with the anticipated comfort of the hot drink, she found that she had plenty of