Woodrow went to stand against a tall chest of drawers in the opposite corner from the door after he had invited Rose into the bedroom. He didn’t want her to feel crowded by his presence through his standing just inside the door.
She came in reluctantly, her cheeks as red as the inside of a watermelon. She held her bonnet in her hand, for which he was thankful. That glorious head of hair of hers was visible now, and even prettier than he had expected.
It did his heart good to finally to see her in here, the way he had anticipated while awaiting her arrival.
The reality was so much better than the dream. Even after her long day, she still looked beautiful standing there nervously wringing her hands together, as if she had forgotten what to do with them. A few curls had slipped from the intricate knot her hair had been twisted up into and fell uninhibited down her back past her waist in ribbons of shimmering auburn.
“This is the bedroom,” he said unnecessarily trying not to notice those tantalizing ribbons of hair. “I want you to feel at home in here.”
Woodrow pushed himself away from the dresser, and took a cautious step in her direction. He exercised the same care he would use to approach an unbroken horse. Not that he was comparing Rose to a horse, or anything, he thought. But the shyness of a wild horse and the nervousness of his wife had a lot in common at the moment.
“The dresser is for your things.” Woodrow pointed to a delicate-looking mirrored dresser standing against the opposite wall from the chest of drawers. “I use the highboy.”
Woodrow chanced a look at Rose and found her cheeks even redder than before at the mention of his clothes tucked away in that chest of drawers.
Rose made herself turn to look at the dresser to which Woodrow was pointing. The lamp sat right in the middle of the dresser, the mirror, reflecting its light back into the room, chasing away even the shadows from the corners.
“It’s nice,” Rose mumbled, glancing over to where Woodrow was standing.
“Well, I had plenty of time to get things ready for you.” It seemed he was seeking her approval.
“It looks like a lot of care into the making of this room.” Rose forced herself to look directly at her husband. She tried to think of something else to say. “The room is bigger than what I expected.”
And, it was. Besides the two dressers, there was the bed, of course. It sat against a third wall in solitary splendor. On each side of the bed, sat a nightstand that matched the intricate carvings on the head of the bed. Rose deliberately tried not even glance too long at the beautifully carved bed, but it was hard not to be in awe of her new surroundings. This was definitely better than Aunt Mary’s cabin.
“I added this room on after spending one winter here,” Woodrow confessed. “A cabin can get mighty small in the wintertime.”
“How cold does it get here, then?” Rose couldn’t help but ask.
“I won’t lie to you,” Woodrow answered truthfully, inching step by step closer to Rose as he saw her shoulders relax and her hands unclench. “The winters are bitter here. Having your aunt here will be a lot of company for you. We’ll have a room of her own added on before winter so she can be comfortable.”
Rose turned to study her husband then. “You won’t mind?”
“Mind what? Having your aunt here? Shoot no. Your aunt will always be welcome here. As long as we have a home, so will she.”
By now Woodrow stood within arm’s length of Rose. A tantalizing scent he already came to associate with her, taunted him by their close proximity. But, he knew better than to reach out and touch her like he yearned to do. He had to be satisfied with just being this close to her without her shrinking away from him.
The wall behind Rose was divided into two distinct areas by the doorway. To each side of the door sat two very different chairs, waiting for occupants. Woodrow called attention to the one he’d built for her to distract himself before he made a move too quickly and spooked her.
“Do you like the rocker I made for you?” Woodrow asked, studying Rose’s reaction from his height above her.
Rose glanced up at him, her eyes wide. “You made this rocker? For me?” She tore her surprised gaze away from Woodrow long enough to admire the rocker. There were delicate carvings of roses on the back slats of the chair. The seat was padded with some rose-patterned material. "Roses. They're beautiful."
“Pearl, Ennis’s wife, made the cushion, but I made the rest. Ennis and I both have always been handy at whittling.”
Rose didn’t know what to say. She gave Woodrow a questioning glance.
“Please, won’t you try it out?” Woodrow reached out and put a gentle hand to Rose’s back and guided her, unresisting, to the rocker.
She settled into the seat wordlessly, her skirt blossoming up around her like the petals of a flower. Her arms rested at the perfect height on the armrests. Her hands wrapped around the smooth, curved ends of the arms just right.
Rose looked up at Woodrow and gave him his first real smile. “It’s perfect. Thank you.”
Woodrow’s heart seemed to beat twice as fast at her approving smile. It was more than he had hoped for. Best not push anything further.
There was a railing about head-high running all around the room. The railing contained pegs along its length for clothes, etc. Various items of Woodrow’s decorated most of the pegs around half the room, the other half of the pegs being conspicuously intended for Rose’s things by their very emptiness.
Woodrow gave her a relaxed smile. He walked over to one of the pegs and lifted a denim jacket from it. He slipped it on and started out the door. He stopped in the doorway and looked back at his wife timidly beginning to rock in the chair.
“I’d best tend to the horses.” Then his next words flummoxed her. “I don’t want you to worry about me barging in on you unexpectedly or anything. I would never invade your privacy without your permission. So, have no fear of that. You are safe here. I want you to relax and just get used to everything.”
Rose stared up at her husband, her unspoken gratitude in her eyes; his assurances endearing him to her.
“Thank you Mr….uh, I mean, Woodrow. For everything.”
“I might be a while, so don’t get worried about me or anything.”
“All right.”
“There is water in the pitcher.”
Woodrow sort of nodded towards a wash stand with a porcelain bowl and pitcher in some kind of blue rose pattern in the corner on her side of the room.
“Thank you.”
“I’ll get the fires going. It always gets a tad chilly, even in the summer. I regret now that I didn’t put a fireplace in here. But we can put one in later on if you want one.”
Rose watched Woodrow hesitating in the doorway. She could tell there was something he wanted to say, but didn’t know how. Woodrow, she noticed, had an endearing way of tilting his head to the right when he talked. She waited for him to say whatever he was studying on, but finally, on a sigh, he left the room, his thoughts unspoken. He closed the door with a decided click, leaving Rose alone at last.
Rose practically ran for the bed and lifted the spread on her side. Thankful Woodrow had thought to put one there, Rose drug out the chamber pot and sat on it with a quiet sigh of relief. Suddenly she realized what it was he'd left unspoken. She was sittting on it.
***
Feeling secure that Woodrow would keep his word, Rose took her time unpacking some necessities from her trunk. The scented soap, she held up to her nose. She loved the scent. Lily of the Valley, Aunt Mary had called it when she had given it to Rose. Rose let the soap wash away the strain and tension of a too-long day.
Only then did she take out of the trunk a fine, lawn nightgown so delicate it felt like it had to have been woven by fairies. Woodrow's sister by marriage, Lillian, had given it to her for a wedding present. The gown modestly came up to her neck and flowed out around her ankles, but a lace inset in the front was delicate enough to show a lot more of Rose than she was comfortable with. Nervously, she slipped the gown over her head. It settled around her as lightly as a sprinkle of star dust, leaving her feeling way too exposed.
Rose blushed all over when she saw herself in the gown. The virginal white of the gown gave her pale skin a creamy glow. The gown kindly covered all of her freckles except those on her face. But by some miracle of a combination of the lamplight and the whiteness of her gown, even those on her face had melted into a creamy blur. Woodrow had already seen those anyway so she tried not to worry about them.
Her hair she could do nothing about. After being coiled all day, the springy curls hung down over her shoulders in a disordered array, even though she had spent a good half an hour brushing it, which only seemed to make it worse.
And then Rose waited. First she went to sit in the rocker and had time to regret why she had put that ad in the paper. Feeling restless, she got up from there and went to sit for a while on the edge of the bed, pondering Aunt Mary’s question about what an old man would want when the sun went down, and had time to regret her sassy answer to that question.
To save herself, though, she couldn’t think of Woodrow as old. He didn’t look old at all. He looked like a finely-honed, handsome specimen of a man. But the sun was long past downshe thought as she sank down into feathers and waited some more. A feather bed. Who would have thought, Rose said to herself. She wouldn't have figured Woodrow for a feather bed type of man. But, that was so frightening about this whole situation. She didn't know Woodrow at all--let alone what type of bedding he would prefer.
After that, it got entirely too intimate sitting there on the bed. His bed. She had to get up from there before he came back and took her sitting there as an invitation. She walked over and looked in the mirror. It had started kinking up again. Maybe she should braid it. While she stood brushing it, trying to decide whether to braid it or not, the choice was taken away from her by a soft knock on the door.
The time had arrived, Rose thought, feeling something like a lightning bolt zip downward through her stomach and out through her ankles. Not fear exactly. But, still she found her legs nearly too weak to hold her up. If she didn’t answer him now, she never would.
“Come…” she squeaked. She cleared her throat, then said again, more boldly this time: “Come in.”
Woodrow opened the door, his jacket in his hand, not knowing quite what to expect. But even in his imagination, he could never have anticipated the angelic vision standing there in his bedroom. He would never forget this sight of the lamplight pouring through Rose’s gown with only a shadowy resistance to hide her womanly charms from his view.
Woodrow vowed right then and there he would die a tortuous death before he would ever warn her about standing in front of a lit lamp. Her body was meant to be shown off thusly.
“Good God Almighty,” he breathed, stepping into the room. The jacket slipped silently to the floor, forgotten, as he moved towards Rose like a wave seeking a beach to crash upon.
Rose stood petrified; waiting. She understood the look in his eyes only too well. Lust. Pure and simple, and coming towards her like a runaway train.
Woodrow stopped when he saw the flair of her nostrils as she took rapid little breaths, trying vainly to hide her fear.
"Rose?" Woodrow asked, his husky voice breaking slightly.
Rose hung her head and studied her toes peeping out from under her gown. She could not make herself meet his eyes any longer. His dark gaze roamed over her like he had never seen a woman in a nightgown before.
"Do you have any idea how beautiful you are standing there in the lamplight?
"I am?" Rose's startled eyes lifted then. "You think I'm pretty?"
“Oh Rose," he groaned. "God has never made a more beautiful woman than you standing here, right now, in front of me,” Woodrow confessed humbly, meaning every word from the bottom of his heart. He reached out and slid the back of his hand down the side of her cheek in a soft caress and felt wetness on the back of his hand. A sharp intake of breath at his touch was her only reaction. Woodrow heard it, though.
He stepped one step closer to her, in spite of her fear. He could hardly help himself. Her very presence was sending all kinds of long-banked signals to body parts he wished those signals would forget all about for the moment.
He could take Rose now. It was his husbandly right, and the look in her eyes told him she knew it and was ready to surrender to him.
Twenty years ago, that look of surrender would have been all the indication he needed to justify throwing his wife on the bed and having his way with her. But he did have twenty years on that young buck he used to be. He couldn’t do that to her. Especially because that is what she seemed to be expecting of him. The worst. He could smell the fear on her.
“I’m afraid,” Rose strangled out at last when Woodrow just stood there looking at her.
“Of course you are. I am a perfect stranger to you.”
"I'm not afraid of you, exactly," Rose admitted truthfully. "But. about...you know..." Rose hung her head again, unable to go on.
“I don't want you ever afraid of me, Rose. Or, about the 'you know' you're afraid of." He reached over and lifted her chin. "That is not going to happen. Not tonight, at least.”
“What do you mean?”
What kind of a brute do you think I am? Do you honestly think I would force myself upon you like some kind of savage?”
“I didn’t think...I’m your wife ... It’s your husbandly right.”
“What about your rights?”
“My rights? I never knew I had any, I don’t guess. Most men wouldn’t see things the way you do.”
“Yes, but, you are not married to most men. You are married to me,” Woodrow stated with a sudden touch of possessiveness in his voice that surprised him.
“Yes. Thank goodness for that blessing,” Rose said, sighing an audible sigh of relief. She was being given a reprieve through the kindness of this man.
Woodrow smiled down at her then, with that little tilt to his head. “May I touch you?” he asked gently.
Rose stiffened. “It is your right,” she acknowledged, but she couldn’t quite stop the quaver in her voice, fearing he had changed his mind already.
“This isn’t about rights, Rose. I just want to hold my wife for a moment. That’s all. We can’t get to know one another--if we don’t get to know one another. Does that makes sense to you?”
“Yes, I suppose it does,” and gave a sharp intake of breath when Woodrow slipped his arms around her and pulled her to him.
God, she felt so good, he thought. He had to stop for a moment and take a few deep breaths. Being this near her was stretching his self-control to the limits.
Rose stood there in his arms, feeling too much of his body pressed up against her through the thin gown. In spite of her fears, the nearness of his body was doing all kinds of tingly things in the places where their bodies touched.
“Put your arms around me, Rose,” Woodrow whispered in her ear, and Rose felt herself complying. It actually felt good, and kind of warm and tingly as her hands slid around his shirt-covered waist. The rough cloth was a prickly friction against her palms.
“That a girl,” he whispered huskily against her ear, his breath fanning the sensitized skin. Some feeling like a small fist clinched low in her abdomen. Rose felt the back of her legs give way, and she threw her arms around Woodrow’s neck rather than sink to the floor, which was fine by him.
He scooped Rose up, and carried her to the bed, nearly tripping on the yards of nightgown material dragging the floor behind them. The last thing he wanted was something happening to that nightgown. He hoped to see Rose in that gown for many a night to come.
“Grab the covers and pull them back,” he grunted.
Rose let go with her right hand to do as he asked, and the lace inset slithered across her chest as if deliberately enticing him with a peek at the prettiest pair of breasts he had ever seen. Unable to help himself, Woodrow groaned.
“I’m sorry I’m so heavy,” Rose said over her shoulder, trying to tug the covers down one-handed. “I can’t seem to get them down. Maybe I should stand up.”
“Don’t you dare move,” Woodrow answered her tightly, unable to tear his eyes away from her breasts.
Whatever had snagged the covers came loose all at once, causing Woodrow to lose his balance. He and Rose toppled onto the bed in a heap of blankets, white fabric, and two faces inches apart on the bed.
For one breathless moment they stared at one another, then slowly, inch by inch, their faces drew closer together, until two pair of warm lips touched in a kiss that rapidly grew into a wildfire: out of control.
Woodrow was the first to come to his senses and end the kiss. Rose looked up at him, her hair fanned out all around her like a tangled halo. Her eyes were a smoky-green that shot more signals to his eager nether regions. Her lips were swollen from being kissed. Woodrow liked that, his mind still on that peek at her breasts. He wondered if she was freckled all over, and was suddenly impatient to find out. Their faces were only a few inches apart as he lay halfway across her, while his boots dangled against the floor.
Woodrow eased up away from Rose. She grabbed his hand as it slid away from him.
“W-Woodrow?"
Woodrow bent back down and kissed her on the forehead, inhaling that special scent that was so much a part of Rose. “It has been a long day, my darling Rose.”
“But, Woodrow. Don’t you want me?” Rose asked him in a bewildered voice.
“Rose, God as my witness. I want you more than I have ever wanted a woman in my life,” said Woodrow standing up, though he retained a grip on her hand. “But when I take my husbandly rights, it will be because you are begging for me to give you yours.”
He laughed when she blushed to the roots of her hair. It was a nice sound that Rose liked.
“Sleep well, my Rose.”
“Where are you going to sleep?”
“There’s another bed out in the front room.”
“I feel like I’m putting you out of your bed.”
“Rose, when I get in that bed with you, we won’t be doing much sleeping.”
He chuckled when he caused her to blush again. “Let well enough alone for the night, Rose.”
“Goodnight, then, Woodrow. I'm glad I married you. You're a good husband.”
Woodrow was smiling when he blew out the lamp.