was Meridee and modest. He smiled at her, stretched and took off his shoes first. When he started on his trouser buttons, she thought this might be the moment to stand up and let her nightgown fall to the floor.
He watched her, his eyes appreciative. His smile grew, but he came no closer.
She stepped out of the silky pile around her feet. There were always going to be stretch marks, thanks to Ben. Her breasts had suffered some loss of firmness and her waist certainly couldn’t be spanned by her husband’s hands yet or even again, but did it matter? The light in Able’s eyes suggested that the answer was an emphatic no.
“My love, we need some solace, you and I,” she said and held out her arms.
“How did I ever manage without you?” she asked later, when the room stopped twirling about. “Granted, life was simpler as a spinster. Also deadly dull.”
He laughed his nighttime laugh, the one she only heard in bed, two parts edgy and one part sleepy. “I’ve wondered how I ever managed without you.”
“Come now, Able, I am no fool,” she said, settling in, preparing for sleep. “I know you were a man of experience before we married.”
“It’s not the same,” he assured her. “Those were for need and lust, after far too long at sea. You’re different.”
“Oh, you don’t need me and lust a little bit?” she teased. “Have I been misinterpreting those looks of yours?”
“Not at all,” he assured her. “My word, woman. There are times I have lusted so intensely in the… the kitchen, that I am surprised I didn’t back you into the pantry and have my way with you next to the flour bin.”
“Oh.” She couldn’t think of anything profound to say to that artless statement.
“’Oh?’ That’s the best you can do?” he teased in turn, this man of hers.
“Oh my,” she teased back.
This was probably her best opportunity, before they both relaxed further into slumber. “If you know me so well, Master Six, then you must know that I am well aware you are holding something back from me.”
He was silent a while, and she almost second-guessed herself. But no, she knew that look of uncertainty, that look of wondering how to tell her bad news. “I hope this is not something I will hear soon enough from someone else,” she said, then rubbed his chest.
He put his hand over hers. “You know me. I cannot hide anything from you.”
“Tell me straight up with no bark,” she said. There was enough light in their room to see that he smiled at her slang.
“Blame Captain Ogilvie and his sources!” he began. “Very well: he has word that I will be recalled to the fleet at any moment, because we have reached that moment of grave national crisis.”
“There is never a right time, is there?” she asked. “I need you here.” Too bad that armies and navies care not a whit about men who fight and women who wait.
“I have been wondering when this would happen,” she said. “Haven’t you?”
He pulled her on top of his body as he would a coverlet. This bore an odd similarity to their recent lovemaking, but she could tell he was deadly serious in a different way. “I have no choice, my love.”
“I know.”
She rested her head on his chest. I must savor every moment with this dear genius of mine, she thought, as she drifted to sleep.
When she slept – God, how he loved it when she blew bubbles on his chest – Able moved her off him carefully, unwilling to wake her. He watched her face, noting the fine lines around her eyes. He saw all the strength in her, as well as her vulnerability. If something happened to him, where would she go? What would she do?
Euclid, if you have any suggestions, don’t hang back please, he thought.
He waited for a response, and it came, sounding reluctant, even surly. She banished me from your bedchamber, he heard, from that first voice inside his head, years ago. He smiled at the petulance.
The others began to stir inside, van Leuwenhoek with a sigh and shake of his head. Newton appeared detached, which was no surprise. He had never enjoyed the delight, pleasure and care of a wife. He didn’t expect any advice from Antoine Lavoisier, the French chemist who had lost his head to the recent revolution, and whose wife had been his lab partner. Able wondered if Lavoisier was aware that his wife