Page 229 of Modern Romance Collection February 2025, 1-4

‘When my gran came to get me from the commune, Mum walked away,’ Maude said slowly. ‘And she never looked back. Not even for one last glimpse of me. She just walked away as if I meant nothing to her.’

There was pain in her eyes as she spoke and he could see how deeply this had hurt her.

He stroked his thumb over the back of her hand. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, which was pitifully inadequate, but it was all he could think of to say. ‘That’s a terrible thing for a mother to do.’

‘We should have swapped places.’ A faint smile turned her mouth. ‘I would have loved to sleep in the forest. Instead, all I got was my grandparents’ concrete garden, with no trees, or flowers or grass.’

‘Poor nymph,’ he murmured, and he meant it. ‘That must have been hell on earth for you.’

‘It was,’ she said simply. ‘Leaving that place was the best thing I ever did.’

There was a silence then, of mutual acknowledgement of the hurts they’d both suffered.

Then he said, to break the moment, ‘So where did you go after that?’

The conversation turned to less painful subjects, though no less interesting to him, as she told him about her life after she’d left her grandparents’ house.

Then they talked about casual subjects, mundane things such as their favourite foods and their favourite books. The music they liked and the movies they’d enjoyed. He told her how he’d hiked to Everest base camp once when he’d been younger, and she told him that she’d always wanted to see the Amazon rainforest.

Then he asked her what it was that she actually did in his forest, and that was enough to make her grab his hand and lead him into the trees, talking all the while. She named trees and plants as she went, and what their niche in the forest ecology was, and how everything worked in concert with each other. And he saw it all with new eyes. Saw her anew too. Glowing with passion, bright with interest and curiosity. Nature was fiercely important to her, he could see, and she knew so much about it. Everything was connected, she told him, everything on this planet was connected.

Perhaps it was. When she talked like that, perhaps he even believed her. He certainly felt connected to her in a way he’d never experienced with another person.

They were in a little clearing with bracken on the ground when he stopped and reached for her. She’d been talking about ferns, but he was impatient now, because she was golden and glowing, and she was his wife. He wanted her and he was tired of waiting.

She didn’t protest as he laid her down on the bracken, taking off her gown and veil, but leaving on her crown. As he left on his. Because they were both rulers of this little piece of land, king and queen of the forest, and this would be their marriage bed.

This time, though, he lay on his back, with her astride him, her hair a golden mane down her back, her hands braced on his chest. And he thought he’d died and gone to heaven. Because surely heaven was this, making love to a wood nymph who was his wife, on a bed of bracken, in a forest clearing.

And he realised, as she rose and fell above him, the pleasure twining around both of them, that this had gone beyond mere sex. Sex he knew very well, because he’d had a lot of it in his life. But this, what they were doing right now, right here, wasn’t sex. It was more, it was deeper. It was reverent and sacred. It was worship.

It wasn’t just about bodies. It was about souls.

He had no idea why he was thinking this, because he wasn’t a man much given to poetry. But there was poetry in this. In her.

In her stubbornness and wild temper. In the joy she took in the things that were important to her. In the way her hand would rest on her bump every so often as if soothing the tiny baby inside her. In her touching his hair, warmth in her eyes, and calling him badger.

And in this, her gasps of pleasure, her eyes gone molten as he worshipped her, in the perfection of them moving together, slowly. Building this little castle of pleasure and wonder between them.

He’d never felt anything like it and he knew in that moment that he never would again. That for him it would always be this woman. That any other partner wouldn’t be able to give him what she could. And he was at peace with that.

She was his wife and she would never leave him.

He’d make sure of it.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

MAUDESATINthe sitting room of the manor, sipping the hot chocolate Dominic had made for her. The fire crackled softly in the grate, warming the room.

It had been a week since the wedding and though she’d hoped the new ache in her heart would fade, it hadn’t.

She should have left him in the walled garden the day she’d married him. She should have turned and walked out, but she hadn’t. She’d tried to provoke an argument instead, wanting to use it to poison those roots growing around her heart, but he hadn’t given her one.

He’d told her about his awful childhood and his terrible father and what his father had done to him and listening to his history had somehow made those roots stronger, not weaker.

No child should have had to live through that, and yet he had. He’d survived, even thrived, and in his own stubborn endurance, she’d seen herself.

They were the same. And while their childhoods had left their scars, they’d both come through the fire strong, and if not completely whole, then at least near enough to make no difference.

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