Chiara noticed. “Are you well, Madonna?” she asked softly. “Are you ready?”
Again I nodded but could not speak.
A soft knock came at the door, and I started, but relaxed slightly when the door opened and my mother came in. “Ah, Simonetta,” she said. “Ready for the marriage bed, I see.” Her face glowed with pride.
I tried to smile back, but my face seemed frozen.
“Do not worry, my daughter,” she said. She crossed the room to me and patted my cheek. “All will be well. Remember, all you need do is please your husband, and you shall have a happy and blessed life together.”
“I shall try,” I said.
She embraced me briefly. “All will be well. I promise,” she whispered into my ear again. Then she withdrew, closing the door behind her.
There was no further way to delay. But did I want to, truly? Was it not better to have it over with?
Chiara followed me through the door into the adjoining bedchamber and drew back the covers for me. I obediently got into the bed and lay back, fanning my long hair about me.
“Is there anything else you need, Madonna?” Chiara asked me.
“No,” I managed, past my dry throat. “You are dismissed, Chiara.”
She curtsied again and left me without a word.
I lay alone in the semidarkness—Chiara had left a small branch of candles burning on the bedside table—and stared up at the canopy of the bed. I took several deep breaths, trying to calm my furiously beating heart.
Yet Marco’s soft knock on the door just moments later, from his own adjoining dressing room, made all such efforts moot. My breathing quickened again as he stepped inside, closing the door behind him. “Simonetta,” he said, my name half spoken, half sighed.
“Si,” I said, finding my voice. “It is I, your wife.”
He slowly approached the bed, dressed only in a nightshirt. I could see the dark hair on his chest where the neckline dipped down into a V; could see the outline of his body beneath the thin linen.
“You are not afraid, are you, Simonetta?” he asked.
I opened my mouth to say no, that I was well, but I did not want to begin our time together as husband and wife with a lie. “Not afraid,” I said, “but perhaps a bit nervous.”
He smiled. “I can understand that, I think. But, as I told you before, my dearest, darling Simonetta, I will be gentle, and I will try to bring you joy.”
He got into the bed, sliding beneath the covers beside me. I willed myself not to shrink away as he took me in his arms. He kissed me, his lips parting mine as they had before, and I did my best to lose myself in the kiss. My breathing came quicker now, but for different reasons.
Marco began to kiss his way down my neck, and I gasped aloud. The heat within me rose to my skin, and I could feel beads of sweat beginning to form.
He groaned as we drew apart. “I cannot wait any longer, Simonetta,” he murmured. “You are too beautiful.” He shifted himself so that he was atop me, pulling up my shift, one hand insistently reaching between my legs to gently push them apart.
I tightened the muscles of my legs instinctively, then forced myself to yield to him and relaxed them. He lowered his hips onto mine, and I felt something large and hard pushing between my legs now. I forced myself to relax as he found the entry to my body and thrust himself inside me.
There was a sharp pain, as though something had torn within me, and I cried out, though my mother had told me to expect this.
“I am sorry,” Marco murmured. Then he began to move within me, and I clenched my teeth against the pain that still radiated up from that space within me, the space that he now occupied. He pushed farther and farther into me, and I bit down on my lip to stop myself from crying out—from the pain, from the weight of him, from the feeling of certainty that there must be something more I should be doing.
His breathing began to come faster, and as the pain faded he gave one last sharp thrust and cried out, a sound halfway between agony and ecstasy, his eyes closed. I felt him shudder within me, then he lay his head against my shoulder, spent.
We remained like that for a moment, Marco still inside me, and it felt almost pleasant to have him there, so close. As if he were a part of me. Then he lifted himself up, withdrew, and rolled over onto his back. “Oh, Simonetta,” he murmured, eyes still closed.
Tentatively I reached between my legs, and my fingers came away sticky with blood. This, too, my mother had prepared me for. I glanced back at Marco to see him watching me. “You are bleeding, yes?” he asked.
“Si.”
He smiled. “Ah, Simonetta.” He reached over and drew me into his arms. “You are mine,” he whispered into my ear. “Mine and only mine.”
After a few moments, I asked, “And did I … did I please you, husband?”
He chuckled. “Dio mio,” he said. “You have pleased me, indeed.” He studied my face, suddenly concerned. “I did not hurt you too much, did I?”
I cast my eyes down so he would not see the tears forming in them—though why I should cry, I did not know. “There was pain,” I confessed, “but I was prepared for it.”
“Oh, my Simonetta,” he said, kissing the top of my head. “I am sorry. But it is necessary. And soon it will not hurt.”
“I hope you are right,” I said. Almost immediately, he drifted off to sleep.
12
I was awoken at dawn by Marco stirring beside me. I wondered that he had not woken me sooner, unused as I was to having someone else in my bed. I opened my eyes to find him smiling at me. “Good morning, moglie,” he said.
I returned the smile, feeling warmth blossom in me anew at the word. “Good morning, marito.”
He took my face between his hands and kissed me, deeply. “We will not be expected downstairs for some time yet,” he said when he drew away. “Shall we make the most of our time?” His hand moved beneath my shift to caress my breast.
I wanted to refuse due to the very present soreness between my legs, as well as the punishing headache that had developed overnight—too much wine, perhaps? But my mother’s words about duty and pleasing my husband and God’s will chased themselves around my head. “I suppose we may as well,” I said, trying to make my voice light, flirtatious.
This time the act was less foreign to me. I had to bite my lip to stop from crying out in pain again when he entered me, but the pain was less sharp this time, just a lingering dull ache from the loss of my maidenhead. The pain subsided as he moved within me, and though I did not experience whatever pleasure it was that made him moan and sigh, nor was the experience entirely unpleasant.
Afterward, Marco dozed off again, but I found that I could not. My mind was busy with all of the things I had learned, and with beginning to accept all of the changes that were imminent in my life.