Hope - Lesley Pearse [181]
They had drunk brandy on the way to keep warm, and by the time they’d drunk a bottle of wine with supper Hope was very tipsy. She remembered how Bennett had undressed her, fumbling hopelessly with the laces on her stays, and how she’d been every bit as eager as him to make love.
He kissed the red marks on her body from her tight stays and murmured that they weren’t to be put on again for the whole of their honeymoon. He told her too that while he was in South Africa he used to dream about her naked, but that she was a hundred times more beautiful then he’d expected.
She had thought she’d be frightened and embarrassed, and she was convinced it was going to hurt, but from the moment he lifted her up in his arms and laid her on the bed, eagerly jumping in beside her, all those thoughts vanished. He was too tender and gentle to hurt her, and he explored her with such obvious delight that she found it thrilling rather than embarrassing. She was rather surprised at herself for being so wanton, arching herself against him, begging for more, but as this appeared to increase his passion she didn’t attempt to curb her own and became completely abandoned.
She recalled how she woke before Bennett in the morning, and for a moment didn’t know where she was. Later, she was to tell Bennett it was like dying and waking up in heaven: the soft warm bed, the peace of the house, and the sound of waves crashing on to the shore below the windows.
What she didn’t tell him though was how she lay watching him sleep. She had never seen him asleep before, and his features which often looked so stern had become so much softer and boyish.
The hot sun in South Africa had given him little crow’s feet around his eyes, which gave the impression he was smiling. He had shaved off his moustache for the wedding, and his lips, which had been partially concealed before, were full, beautifully shaped, and so very kissable.
Until that moment she’d had nothing but hatred for Albert, but it suddenly struck her that but for his cruelty, she would never have met Bennett.
Time had not erased the hideousness of that period of her life. The hunger, squalor and desperation she felt then would never leave her. She could still picture Gussie and Betsy in the throes of that terrible disease, and the relief she’d felt when Bennett had arrived to help her.
She had been so naive then that she hadn’t realized just how remarkable it was that a doctor had turned up. It was of course Mary Carpenter’s intervention that had brought it about, but even so, once at St Peter’s she soon discovered that even that particular benefactor of the poor could not have induced any other doctor to go into Lewins Mead. Later, she’d been told that only a handful of doctors in Bristol had used their skills to help victims of the cholera epidemic. Many were so frightened of catching it themselves that they’d shamelessly left the city with their wives and children, and did not return until it was all over.
Bennett didn’t look like a hero, in truth his mild manner and slender build would suggest that he was a clerk or an assistant in a bookshop. But he had hidden depths; his was the quiet kind of courage, doing what he knew to be right, using his medical skills not to advance himself, but for the good of mankind. He was also so loving, kind and fun to be with, and, now she had discovered, such a good lover. She thought that if she was ever to see Albert again she would tell him she was grateful to him for packing her off to meet such a wonderful man.
That morning as she lay there admiring her brand-new husband, she was also excited and curious about the life they would have together. After a week’s honeymoon they would be going to live at the barracks in Winchester and she’d be an army wife.
Alice had overseen her wardrobe, and to Hope it seemed ridiculously extravagant. Four new day dresses, two evening gowns, shoes, heaps of petticoats and other underwear, bonnets and a thick winter cloak, all packed into a