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Here is the golden close of love,
All my wooing is done.
— Alfred, Lord Tennyson, "Marriage Morning" (from The Songs of the Wrens, 1871)
The room still held sweet traces of the night before, strewn about with a carelessness quite incongruent with either of its occupants: her wedding dress, still faintly scented of orange blossom, lay in a heap over the settee where it had been shed in haste rather than folded with the care her maid would certainly have insisted upon; and upon the chair beside it, untouched, a nightgown that had been pressed and laid out with great ceremony the evening before, yet not put to its purpose. His own coat and shirtsleeves, ordinarily hung with the same discipline he brought to everything else, were cast just as carelessly over the back of a second chair.
Below stairs, in the kitchen, the maids had already begun to whisper and giggle over the unusual stillness of the house — for the master of Marlborough Mills, who by long habit was first in the yard before the mill bell had properly rung, had not yet been seen.
John Thornton woke to sunlight already well established at the window, and lay for the briefest moment marveling at the novelty of it before remembering: Margaret. She was already awake beside him, absently twirling her gold bangle, and he lay there a moment simply looking at her, struck by a happiness so sudden and complete it startled him, that Margaret Hale, now his Margaret Thornton, should be here at all, doing something so sweetly simple as toying with a bracelet in his bed. He watched her, unwilling to disturb whatever quiet thought occupied her.
When she finally felt him stir next to her, a soft flush rose to her cheeks — for all that had passed between them in the night, shyness had not yet left her.
"You are staring," she whispered.
"I'm allowed to stare. You are my wife." He said it slowly, as if testing the word — and then, as though only just recollecting himself, "Good morning."
"Good morning," she echoed, the word oddly formal between them. She looked down, almost bashful, he reached for her hand instead, resisting the urge to reach for much more. The movement sent the bracelet sliding down her arm. He caught it before it fell further, fingering the warm metal, and pushed it gently back to her wrist.
"I suppose there was not the opportunity to remove this before we…retired," he said, clearing his throat. The implication made her cheeks flame, even as she lay beside him almost entirely unclothed. "Or this," he added, taking her other hand and toying with her wedding band.
"I am sure truly great ladies would say it is exceedingly slovenly to sleep in one's jewellery," said Margaret, moving her arm up and down to make the bangle slide, "but the truth is, I cannot."
"Because it is so precious to you," he supplied, as if finishing her sentence.
"No."
"No?"
Margaret sighed, and as she sat up she drew the counterpane with her, wrapping it modestly about herself before she readied herself to demonstrate. John watched her small performance of propriety with amusement as she settled the coverlet more securely beneath her arms.
There was no elegant way to explain the predicament of her bracelet, she realized, so she would simply have to show him. "I cannot remove it. I don't have large wrists, but I have a large hand. Even when I try—" she gathered her thumb and smallest finger together, closing her palm unnaturally, "—my palms are broad. Larger than Edith's, certainly."
"Your hands aren't big!"
"It will surprise you. See here," Margaret held her hand up and drew his, resting idly at his side, to meet it, palm to palm, so they might measure themselves against one another. His was larger, of course, but not by so much as he might have supposed; her long, thin fingers fell only a digit short of his, her palm scarcely narrower.
"Edith was so delighted to have twin bracelets, I could not bear to disappoint her."
With their hands still pressed together, John brought his other hand up to her wrist to satisfy himself of the truth of it — and there, just past the wrist, the bracelet met its limit, stopping fast by the narrow bones past her wrist. Carpals, he remembered suddenly, from some anatomy text he'd picked up years ago, one of the many books he had turned to when he finally had the time to fill the gaps of his education himself.
"You wear the bracelet constantly because... it's stuck?" he asked — the question needless, really, only his mind catching up to what his hands had already confirmed — and then he began to laugh, so heartily, with his whole body, that it startled her at first. She had heard him laugh so unguardedly only a handful of times, and his mirth was infectious enough that she found herself laughing too, helplessly, before she understood quite why. When at last he caught his breath, "You — the stubborn, unyielding, argumentative fine lady from the south — are imprisoned by this very ornament I so admired?"
"Yes," she answered, tilting her chin up slightly. She was laughing still, though a little abashed now under his delight.
"However did you get it on?"
"Oh." Margaret, catching her breath, brought her hands to her face as though she might hide behind them. "Perhaps the most humiliating part of it all — Edith dabbed olive oil on my hand and shoved it on."
He laughed harder still, picturing the scene unfolding in the genteel Harley Street drawing room.
"It left bruises!" she said, beginning to laugh again, "It was not the least bit funny at the time. But now, I suppose it is rather absurd. It would take tin shears to remove it. Which…I suppose I could. But now that I'm used to it, I do cherish it," she paused, something from just a moment ago catching in her memory. "What do you mean, you admired it?"
John looked faintly sheepish, a rare enough sight that she nearly forgot her question in studying it. "It caught my eye, that first time at tea in Crampton," he admitted, "you would push it up, and it would slip down again, and I confess I found the whole business far more absorbing than anything your father was saying at the time."
"The bracelet caught your eye," she repeated.
"The bracelet," he smiled.
"Only the bracelet," she said, arching a brow, "and nothing at all of the person it happened to be attached to?"
"I did not say that."
"You admired me even then?"
Their hands, still joined from the measuring, came to rest between them on the counterpane, and he tightened his hold on hers, drawing it slowly down until she was obliged to lean toward him to keep it. "Margaret," he said, low, "I have admired a great many things about you since that autumn."
"A poor show you made of it," she replied, her voice maintaining its teasing edge, "for I never once suspected it was my wrist you were staring at, and not simply disapproving of my manners."
"It was never your manners." His thumb moved once over her knuckles. "Come here."
She required no second invitation. Still wrapped in the counterpane, she bent to him, and he met her the rest of the way.
It was some time before either of them spoke again. There was nowhere they were required to be — no visitors to receive and John was not expected at the mill again for weeks. Tomorrow they would leave for the Continent, and Milton and all its clamour would fall away behind them; but today belonged to no one but themselves, and they meant to spend it accordingly, idle and unhurried, tangled together.
Margaret, her head against his shoulder now, found herself dwelling on how much she'd enjoyed recounting the story of the bracelet to him — a story she had never told anyone, not even her mother. Not because it was a secret, but simply because she had never thought to share it. She smiled to herself, realizing this was a small joy of marriage she had not considered before: how much else there might be between two people, things of no real consequence, shared for no purpose but the sharing itself. She turned onto her side to study him with the same frank curiosity, as if he were a matter she meant to get properly to the bottom of.
"Tell me something," she began, "that no one else knows. Not your mother. Not your banker or your fellow masters."
He raised an eyebrow at her, amused by the sudden gravity of the request. "Like what?"
"I don't know," she said back quickly, and looked, for a moment, almost shy — a little embarrassed, perhaps, that she'd asked at all, that she wanted so plainly to know him further than she already did. "Like…your favorite hymn! Or that you have a sweet tooth."
"Do you have a favorite hymn?" he asked.
"Of course."
"What is it?"
She hesitated, and he watched the hesitation with open interest, waiting her out. "No! I asked first!"
"My preference is whichever one is shortest," he quipped.
"John!"
"I've never thought to have a favorite," he admitted, relenting. "One that you're just…hopeful, during the service, was chosen to sing?"
"Well, that was a perk of being the parson's daughter in Helstone. I was able to suggest my preferences!"
He was quiet a moment, considering whether to say it at all, and when he spoke it was with the particular reluctance of a man unused to admitting to tenderness. "Rock of Ages. It was my father's favorite, actually. He was quite musical, in his way — more than anyone remembers him for now. He used to hum it about the house in the mornings." He said no more than that. Margaret went still, clinging to this detail that added colour to a childhood almost entirely unknown to her.
"It's my favorite too," she said quietly. "It's so hopeful. It brings me joy."
He had given her something he rarely let anyone near, and she had accepted it so gently that he felt a fresh rush of love for her rise up almost painfully in his chest. He drew her closer and let the old melody come to him unbidden. John hummed a few bars of it low in his throat and turned to press his lips against her cheek, and then lower, along her jaw, to the soft place at her neck. "I'm glad it's yours too," he murmured against her skin.
Whatever words might have followed were lost entirely, then, to other things — and the morning slipped further away from them still, unnoticed and unmourned.
Later, when at last they rose — for even the most determined idleness must yield eventually to hunger — John crossed the room and retrieved the nightgown from its chair, pressed with care and entirely unused, and brought it to her along with her dressing gown, laid over his arm with a solemnity quite at odds with the look on his face.
"Half past nine," he said, "and not yet dressed for bed. I wonder that either of us should recognize ourselves this morning."
"I shall remind you whose fault that is," she said, taking the nightgown from him with mock severity, though she could not quite keep the smile from her mouth.
There were a dozen more questions Margaret might still have asked him — favorite meals, half-forgotten childhood mischief, anything at all he might share. But there would be time enough for those, she thought, and this morning, perhaps, had given her enough to hold onto for now. John rang for breakfast to be brought up, and they shared it there, unhurried, the morning still entirely their own.