"N&S: John Thornton, Love Lessons", by Gratiana Lovelace (2013-2014) (Done)

Ch. 77 (PG-15, S): Bedtime Stories

Then Audrey Grace remembered again that she needed the potty.  So Audrey Grace patted the comforter--finding and sqeezing her Papa's foot-- to alert her parents of her need, the potty.  John froze in a most delicate embrace lying on top of his wife  as Audrey Grace clambered over the end of the bed to lay on top of her Papa's comforter covered back.  John was mortified and Margaret was getting crushed--though John tried to lift himself up a bit from her, some things cannot be entirely accomplished with a toddler on one's back.   So after Margaret convinced their daughter to head to the bathing chamber--and that her mother would soon follow her, after Margaret put her nightgown back on--little Audrey Grace was pottied and returned to her cot bed at the foot of their bed with a kiss from her Mama.  And John and Margaret had realized from past experience that once their daughter ended up in their bed chamber at night, they could not get her to go back to her own bed chamber.   

Finally, Margaret slid into bed next to her very crimson husband and they whispered to each other.

Margaret:  "Are you alright, John?" Margaret looks at him as she blushes a bit, herself.

John looks at Margaret, opens his mouth, then he closes it.  Margaret looks at him pointedly. 

John:  "That depends."

Margaret: "On what?"  Margaret smiles cuddling close with him. Audrey Grace's potty need had interrupted their post lovemaking cuddles.

John:  John turns to his wife Margaret with an embarrassed frown on his face.  "How much do you think she saw of us?" John waves his hand in a circle in lieu of voicing the rest of  his thought.

Margaret:  Margaret winces.  "Maybe nothing.  Afterall, we were covered up by the sheets and the blanket comforter.  At most, she could have seen ..."  Margaret wisely stops and sheepishly shrugs her shoulders.  For John's movements raising and lowering the comforter as they joined their bodies together was what was on her mind.

John: "Oh God! How can I face Audrey Grace in the morning?"

Margaret: "John.  She does not know that we were making love.  She is a little girl.  Audrey Grace has no context within which to ascribe meaning to our actions."

John looks at Margaret askance.

John:  "Is that from a clinical perspective, my Love?" He wonders at her technical word choice.

Margaret: "It is from a parental perspective, John Dearest."  Margaret had attended a mothers' parenting seminar at the Ladies Tea Room the previous week and had found it most illuminating.

Happily, Audrey Grace had been too sleepy to remember the night before or ask about the moving comforter.  But thereafter, when little Audrey Grace slept in her parents' bed chamber, sleeping was all that anyone was doing in it.

***

And while the Thornton's were in Scotland meeting and getting to know baby Douglas and little two year old Catriona last week, no romance was happening then either.  So it is upon their fourth night back at home at Milton Manor--a Friday night--with Brigid seeing to the little one's baths before John and Margaret read them a bed time story, that John thinks that he and Margaret might get to have some private time together this evening.  But though their nights since returning home have not been interrupted by Audrey Grace wanting to sleep in their bed chamber--since Brigid was there to see to her night scares and calm her back to sleep--Margaret is feeling bereft  [(3) right] of having the close contact she previously enjoyed with her daughter's every waking moment.

So after John and Margaret change into their night clothes, he relents and they don their robes and creep back toward Audrey Grace's bed chamber that she shares with little Catriona.  John and Margaret peek into the room and see the two little girls slumbering peacefully in each other's arms. It is a precious sight and bespeaks the growing sisterly bond between the two girls.  Then John and Margaret lightly knock on the connecting door to  baby Douglas' nursery--where Nanny Brigid and her baby son Arthur also sleep.