off the boot with her knees.
Bless you, my little one, your Papa loves you. Between them they sat him up and dropped his nightshirt over his head, then let him collapse back on to the bolster. His decency preserved by the nightshirt, they removed his breeches and rolled him into the bed.
May angels guard your sleep, my pretty, the comte mumbled, as they spread an eiderdown over him and Anna blew out the candle.
Under cover of darkness, Anna reached out and caressed the tousled wiry brush of the comte's head. She was rewarded by a reverberating snore and followed Centaine from the room, softly closing the door behind her.
Centaine lay and listened to the old house groan and creak around her in the night.
Wisely, she had resisted the temptation to climb fully clothed beneath her bedclothes, for Anna made one of her unannounced visits just as Centaine was about to extinguish her candle. She sat on the edge of the bed, garrulous with wine, but not so befuddled that she would not have known if Centaine had not been in her nightclothes. By yawning and sighing Centaine tried telepathically to make her feel sleepy, but when that didn't work, and she heard the distant chimes of the church clock at Mort Homme strike ten o'clock, she herself feigned sleep.
It was agony to lie still and regulate her breathing, for she burned and itched with excitement.
At last Anna realized that she was talking to herself, and she moved around the tiny chamber, picking up and folding Centaine's discarded clothing, and finally stooping over her to kiss her cheek and then pinch out the wick of the lamp.
As soon as she was alone, Centaine sat up and hugged herself in a ferment of anticipation and trepidation.
Although it was very clear in her mind what the final outcome of this meeting with Michael must be, the precise mechanics were at this stage still tantalizingly obscure. A process of logic had suggested to her that the broad concept could not differ too widely from what she had witnessed countless times in field and barnyard.
She had received confirmation of this one drowsy summer afternoon, when a mild commotion in one of the disused stables had attracted her attention. She had climbed into the loft and through a chink watched Elsa, the kitchenmaid, and Jacques the undergroom with amazement, until gradually it had dawned upon her that they were playing rooster and hen, stallion and mare.
She had thought about it for days afterwards, and then eavesdropped with more attention upon the gossip of the female servants. Finally, she had taken her courage in both hands and gone to Anna with her questions.
All these researches had left her confused and puzzled by the contradictions. According to Anna, the procedure was extremely painful, accompanied by profuse bleeding and dire danger of pregnancy and disease. This conflicted with the unrestrained glee with which the other female servants discussed the subject, and with the giggles and muffled cries of delight that she had heard coming from Elsa as she lay beneath Jacques on the straw of the stable floor.
Centaine knew that she had a high threshold of pain, even the good doctor Le Brun had remarked upon it after he had reset her broken forearm without benefit of chloroform. Not a cheep out of her, he had marvelled. No, Centaine knew she could bear pain as well as any of the peasant girls on the estate, and apart from her monthly courses she had bled before. Often, when she was certain that she was unobserved, she would take the cumbersome side-saddle from Nuage's back, tuck up her skirts and ride him astride. The previous spring, riding bareback, she had put the stallion to the stone wall that bordered North Field, jumping him from the low side and dropping down seven feet to the deep side of the wall. As they landed, she had come down hard on Nuage's withers, and a pain like a knife blade had shot up through her body. She had bled so that Nuage's white shoulders were stained pink and she was so ashamed that despite the pain she had washed him off in the pond at the end of the field before limping home, leading Nuage behind her.
No, neither pain nor blood frightened her. Her trepidation had another source. She was deadly afraid that Michael might find her disappointing, Anna had also warned her of that.
Afterwards men always lose interest in a woman, les cochons. If Michael loses interest in me, I think I will die, she thought, and for a moment she hesitated. I will not go I will not take that chance.
Oh, but how can I not go? she whispered aloud, and felt her chest swelling with the strength of her love and her wanting. I must. I simply must. In an agony of impatience she listened to the sounds of Anna preparing for bed in the chamber next door. Even after there was silence, she waited on, heard the church clock strike the quarter and then the half hour before she slipped from under the eiderdown.
She found her petticoats and cami-knickers where Anna had folded them away, and then paused with one foot in the leg of the knickers.
What for? she asked herself and smothered a giggle with her hand as she kicked them off again.
She buttoned on the thick woollen riding skirts and jacket, then spread a dark shawl over her head and shoulders. Carrying her boots in her hand, she slipped into the passage and listened outside Anna's door.
Anna's snores were low and regular and Centaine crept down into the kitchen. Sitting on the stool before the fire she buckled on her boots and then lit the bull's-eye lantern with a taper from the stove. She unlocked the kitchen door and let herself out. The moon was in its last quarter, sailing sharp-prowed through wisps of flying cloud.
Centaine kept to the grassy verge, so that the gravel would not crunch under her boots, and she did not open the shutter of the lantern, but hurried down the lane by the moon's faint silvery light. In the north, up on the ridges, there was a sudden brilliance, a dawn of orange light, that subsided slowly, and then came the rumble of the explosion muted by the wind.
A mine! Centaine paused for a moment, wondering how many had died in that monstrous upheaval of earth and fire. The thought spurred her resolve. There was so much death and hatred, and so little love. She had to grasp at every last grain of it.
She saw the barn ahead of her at last, and started to run. There was no light showing within, no sign of the motor-cycle.
He has not come. The thought left her desperate with desire. She wanted to scream his name. She tripped at the threshold of the barn, and almost fell.
Michel! She could restrain herself no longer, she heard the panic in her own voice as she called again,
