THE CAVERN OF DEEP HARMONY

PART FORTY-NINE:

He was in bed. He didn't remember how he'd gotten there. Hadn't they been singing Christmas songs in the parlor? He lay quietly, trying to sort things out. Wadsworth, aware of Marshall's waking, nuzzled at his hand and got his ears scratched in response. His left hand explored to the side across the bed. Eden wasn't there. Hadn't she come to bed yet? He'd lost all track of time.

Sliding his feet into his slippers, he went to the window, resting his palm against the glass. Cold and moist. He listened. The world seemed...padded. Snow. But the inside of the inn was quiet, too.  Where was Eden? Where was...anybody?

Going to the closet, he located his robe, ran his hands through his hair and went out the door, trailing his fingers along the wall till he came to the head of the stairs. He listened again. Ah, someone was in the kitchen. The distant clink of a pot, the burble of the coffee machine. It smelled suspiciously like breakfast. How could it be time for breakfast, though?

Slowly, Wadsworth at his side, he made his way down the stairs. "Martha?" he called.

"It's me," Eden replied, coming to the kitchen door. "You have great timing. The eggs are just now done."

So, it was breakfast.  "Did...did I sleep all night?"

"You got a wonderful rest.  Hardly moved."

"Where is everybody? Since it's Christmas morning, I thought there would be a lot of noise."

"Stuart's.  That's what the Malone's do on Christmas morning. All of the ones at the inn truck over to Harold's brother's house for Christmas Day."

"And Connie?"

"Today I think if you find Ryan, you'll find Connie."

"And Edith is over there, too?"

"Yep. Just you and me, Babe, and, well, Waddy, of course."  She let Wadsworth out the kitchen door. "Now it's just you and me and no one will come and save you when you holler for help."

"And why would I holler for help?"

She came close, pressing against him, holding a warm cinnamon bun under his nose. When he tipped his head forward, she pulled the bun away and kissed him. He chuckled and she kissed his throat.

"All alone?" he asked.

"Umm hmm."

"Absolutely no one within saving distance?"

"No one at all."

He pushed a wave back from her ear and with his lips against it, whispered faintly, "Help."  Then he kissed her mouth, full and long and deep and with his lips still touching hers said, "Merry Christmas."

They ate breakfast together in the kitchen, a wet Wadsworth lying near the stove. "I like eating in the kitchen," he said. "Much better than a dining room. You're right here, right in the center of the source of things."

Suddenly he realized he was eating for the first time a meal she'd entirely cooked for him. There was something just so...right...about being together like they were. Being at the inn was wonderful and he'd grown really attached to both Martha and Harold, but this, this was right... him and Eden.

"Is it all right with everybody that we didn't go to Stuart's?" he asked.

"Did you want to go? I can still drive us over later."

"They'll be gone all day?"

"I think so. Most of it, anyway."

"And it's ok, though, with them if we stay here?"

"Martha thought it would be best for you. A bit of quiet, you know. But it's up to you."

He smiled, finding her hand. "You and me. I like that."

So they lingered over the rest of breakfast and while she cleaned up, he sat there at the table enjoying the sounds she made. Wadsworth had eaten, too, had been outside a second time, and followed them into the parlor.  Harold had laid a fire for them and put plenty of extra wood in the bin, enough to get them through the day. She got the fire going and came to sit beside him

on the couch.

His hand curved around her hip. "Satin," he murmured as the material slipped away under his fingers. He played with it a while, letting it slide and flow as he moved his hand. Finding her hip bone, he explored inward, laying his palm across the flat of her belly, feeling her rapid suck of breath in response. He was still not recovered physically, but it was Christmas morning and they were alone and she was draped in satin. He'd told Luke she was his Christmas present. It was time for unwrapping.

He took his time, enjoying every second, every touch, making sure she did, too. The satin cooperated beautifully, sliding down, moving where he guided it over her curves, along the lines of her body. His lips followed where the satin slid away and, there on the couch where his fingers had first traced the outlines of her hand, he now sought and found the outlines, the shape of all of her.

Then they lay together, faces still so close they breathed the air together. And that was right, too.

He hadn't known how the day would go, he'd hoped somehow there would be a moment when he and she would be alone together in the parlor. The whole day was a joyous surprise. She lay atop him on the couch, the soft curves of her fitted against the hardness of his own body.  He
wondered vaguely if what he was about to do had ever been done before in quite this way. It was not what he'd planned, but with her there, now, it was so right. Making love, for him, was such

a tactile thing. He could only be aware of the way her breast sloped up towards her collar bone
by touching it. And now his body was touching all of her body and he felt entirely joined with her, felt he was 'seeing' all of her at once and not just part by part. So he reached up over his head, feeling for the covered candy dish Martha kept there. Carefully, he set the lid to one side. Ah, it was there.

Eden had her face buried in his neck and wasn't aware of what he was doing. But when he said her name so softly, so seriously, she looked up.

"Eden," he began, "when I was a boy, I learned much of what love means because so much of it was so freely given to me. And I came, early, to know the flow of it, and how the giving of it opens some vast source where there is always, ever, only more to give. And I have loved, have
loved my mother and my father, have loved my brother. I have known the love of close friendship and the love of things beautiful to the soul. But I have never loved a woman as I love you. I think I've longed for it but never walked the path that would lead me to it...not until I followed the one through the woods to a crumbling gully. My heart has been entirely surprised by finding you, has been amazed that you found me."

She was hardly breathing, listening to him.

"When someone, someone who has surprised you by their being, by their sudden presence in your life, flows into your life like liquid into some oddly-shaped container and fills it up, fills in all the caverns and even all the little spaces you didn't know were there...when someone
simply...fits...I don't think measurements of time really matter. Sometimes we simply...know...

the rightness of a thing and have no need for the passing of years to affirm what we knew from the beginning. And it's in my hope that I fill you as you fill me, Eden, my darling, that I ask if you will marry me."

His right arm had been dangling off the couch while he spoke and now he lifted it, a small white velvet box in his cupped hand. The way they were lying, he couldn't use his left hand to open it, so he simply set the little container on his chest near her face, waiting quietly.

Her eyes focused on the box then moved to his face. His eyes were open and he was looking at her so directly she felt somehow he was seeing her. But, then, he WAS seeing her. She swallowed hard, blinking back tears. With 'broken' eyes, he saw her better than anyone ever had. "I love you," she managed, raggedly. Her arms slid around him. "I get...you...for Christmas?"

"If you want me."

"If I...oh, Marshall, I cannot begin to put in words how much I want you!"

"Is that a...?"

"Yes! It's such a yes as the world has never seen!"

He smiled. "See if you like it."

She cracked open the hinged lid and there in a slot framed by white satin sat a ring, its central diamond surrounded by smaller ones set in such a way that it looked like a star. He touched it with a fingertip. "I was four before someone thought to tell me about stars. It was just a simple thing, something everybody takes for granted, nothing anybody would go out of their way to think of telling somebody else about. Of course there are stars. The night sky is full of them.
But I'll always remember that moment when I first learned they existed. There was something

so amazing about it to me. I know I'll never see what the night sky actually looks like, but I have this concept of it that's just wonderful to me."

He smiled. "And you, you're like that. Finding out you exist was like my finding out the stars did. And that's why I wanted your ring to be shaped like this...so when you look at it or touch it, you'll always know how amazing, how wonderful you are to me."

She was crying now, her tears dropping on his chest. He wiped them away with his thumb, murmuring little endearments. "It's just overflow," she sniffed. "There isn't room inside me for all the joy you've made and it's leaking out."

"Merry Christmas, my love," he murmured.

She lay there a while longer, just wanting to be as near him as possible. Then finally she sat up. He did, too, and taking the ring from the box, slipped it on her finger. They sat there, thigh to thigh, hip to hip, and her ring was the only article of clothing or adornment either wore. There was something delightfully primal about it and both were aware of that. He took her hand between his and said softly, "God planted a garden eastward in Eden."

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