He smiled and his eyes filled with tears, saying, “I’ve kissed you before. Will you not kiss me now, my trothed wife? I do fear I shall die for want of it.”
I thrilled at his words. “If this be life or death, perhaps a single chaste kiss to keep you alive.” Our kiss was not chaste, nor was it singular. I fell into his arms as rapt as ever I could imagine love to be. While I concentrated on the soft warmth of his lips, my mind raced ahead to what marriage might bring. Passion filled me that seemed only assuaged by forcing my entire body against his, and I did it, his arms encouraging me, until I had to pull away, weak and shuddering.
His wide shoulders seemed like the very frame for which I had traveled all the steps of my life up to this moment, to lean upon, to depend upon. This man was no boy and no narrow-shouldered gentleman of the realm. Everything about him was strength and work, his hands callused as my pa’s had been, his eyes merry with the joy of hard work and the satisfaction of producing beautiful goods. The very smell of him was pleasing.
He whispered against my head, “We could make a public announcement at Lady Spencer’s winter ball.”
“What ball?” I asked.
“Mid-December. You are invited.”
“And are you?”
“I will be there. It would be right for your family to announce it. Since you have none, I will ask Lady Spencer to do your honors.”
“Cullah, that would be wonderful.”
I wore the lavender dress to the ball, and this time decked it with Patey’s string of pearls, putting the sapphire brooch at my décolletage, the ruby ring upon my finger. I topped it with the hat trimmed in the velvet ribbon, to which I had added embroidered edges. Cullah and Jacob both seemed to take a glance at me and turn their heads as if in shame or embarrassment. I asked, “Is something amiss?”
Jacob stopped the horses before the mansion. Cullah pursed his lips, asking, “Will you be ashamed to be seen with me?” He looked down at his secondhand boots, polished with beeswax so heavily that he smelled of honey.
I pulled up my skirt and stuck out my feet in their old leather shoes, cleaned, but not so much as a wisp of wax on them. “Are you shamed to be seen with me with these shoes? The slippers I had counted on split apart. I hoped you brought some of that wax to use on the way.”
He shook his head. Looked into the woods then down at his rough hands. Felt his chin, as if the beard betrayed him, too. “No one will see your feet. No one will take their eyes off your form and face. Dancing lessons are not enough. I see it now. I am but a carpenter, Miss Talbot. I shall wait for you outside with Pa.”
I closed my eyes for a moment, feeling such a part of his heart already linked to mine, that pain seemed to come from him to me. “Our Lord was a carpenter. If you will not go, then I shall not go in. I shall wait with you. There could be no reason to go in without you, for I would dance with no other, and I will be seen by no other.”
Cullah lifted my hand and pressed his lips to my fingers in their fragile gloves. A bit of rough skin on his thumb caught in the lace glove and pulled a loop of fiber. He gave a sigh. “My hands are too rough to touch you at all.”
I said, “The gloves, my love, are to hide my own calluses. Say you will go in with me or we may as well stay here.”
Jacob whistled at the horses and said, “You will go in, son, or I’ll box your ears.”
“Well and aye,” Cullah said, “well and aye,” though he did not appear satisfied.
The Spencer home, fitted out for a ball, was grand beyond any that the most fanciful story could have drawn. All the ladies were decked in perfection, and I counted myself among them. The only thing missing for me were more stylish slippers, but still, I had a serviceable pair of shoes in which to dance, and my feet would feel none the worse on the morrow. The men tried to equal the ladies in their prim wigs and gilt shoe buckles. A few, I saw, wore no wigs, and so Cullah did not seem out of the ordinary.