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It had taken many years and much planning, but at last Margaret had made it to Spain, and her brother and his family, who embraced her and her own with the closeness and affection of relatives but lately missed yet dearly longed for.
The pace of life in Cadiz was slower than in the cold and agitated North, slower even than the golden afternoons of Helstone in the little worn down vicarage tucked away in the forest from the busy-ness of Southampton Port. She would walk past pastel coloured houses in the cooler mornings, helping Dolores with her marketing, and see the sea breaking out bluer than even the bluest of skies. And there was the heat.
Her husband was bowed down by it, as never a union or business rival might, and retreated to their bed chamber as soon as politeness might decree after their midday meal, to collapse in a room draped in white muslin, with the windows ajar to let in what dreams might come.
Margaret would help Dolores with the children at this time, enjoying the moments of tenderness the two women could share as they wrangled the little Thorntons and Dickinsons into their beds beneath more white muslin, and sang to them until the infants became heavy lidded against the heat of the day and at last the house was silent. She touched her sister-in-law’s hand and smiled, and went at last to her own bed chamber to rest.
Here at last was Margaret’s difficulty. She was never tired in the afternoon, and the warm muggy heat served only to remind her how pleasant it was to have the comfortably massaged feeling of a wife whose husband attended to her needs. She gazed at John affectionately—he had stripped down to shirt and drawers, and was spread eagled on the bed, his eyes open barely to slits. She doffed her own gown and corsetry, until she was in a chemise of the lightest cotton sticking slightly to her skin.
She sat on the bed and smiled sympathetically. “Poor John,” she said.
There was a rumble, low down in his chest, and a flicker of hand. She lay down and nestled her head into the crook of his shoulder. She could hear the breeze against the curtains. Outside, a pedlar late to his siesta was calling. “Are you awake?” she whispered.
“Mmm.”
She brushed her fingers softly over his lips, and read his smile with her touch. She snuggled in a little closer, and with the lightest of touches reexplored her possession: the wiry black hairs emerging from the neckline of his shirt, the hard muscle of his shoulder… points south where there were some optimistic stirrings.
“I’m sure it’s impious,” John rumbled, still sleepy.
“Hmm?”
His head nodded at the wooden cross on the white plastered wall. “Catholics. They’re very serious about their religion.” A staunchly raised Protestant, John Thornton had never lost his superstitions of the mysterious and luxurious Papists.
“Nonsense. Dolores is sure it’s why her children are so beautiful.”
With a sudden movement, her husband rolled over, his weight covered her body, his large hand wrapped tenderly around her tapered wrist, his eyes intent, his mouth warm and urgent.
From without their room, there was a muffled thump and the loud wail of their youngest child Peter: “Mama!”
Margaret froze. Dixon had refused to cross the Bay of Biscay and gone on holiday with her brother in Kent. Their hired nurse, Sarah, was not yet up to a full blown Thornton tantrum—nor was the nurse of the Dickinsons. She sighed, and shifted to get up.
John was full across her, and growled deeply before he let her rise. “You’ll be sharp to your time, woman.”