THE CAVERN OF DEEP HARMONY

PART SIXTY-TWO:

"Why?" she asked softly, her fingers playing gently in his hair as his head still lay in her lap.

"Why are you medievally-minded?"

"Not that," she smiled, her fingers now tracing down his brow and around to his cheekbone. "Why the book?"

He didn't answer, just lay there silently for a while. She waited, knowing she didn't need to repeat her question.

"I don't think I can...," he began, then stopped, pressing his lips together.

"You can't what?"

"I don't think I can write Morgan any more. I don't think I could ever write him."

"Because he's sighted?"

He nodded his head. She closed her own eyes a moment, not sure what to say. The sleigh accident had affected him profoundly, even more profoundly than she'd realized at first. This was too important, she knew, for her to spout something stupidly affirmative. He deserved better
than that.  So she sat there, thinking, massaging his temples again, pleased when the new tension in his brow began to relax again. She'd been there with him as he'd written every word since late October, offering her opinions, her advice, her insight. But...still.

"Something is lacking."  She said it in a tone that was neither statement nor question, but somehow in between the two.

He nodded again and she moved her hands away, but he reached up, found them, and guided them back. "Head still hurts?" she asked.

"It's getting better. You make everything better."

"How can we make the book better?"  She didn't try to say it was wonderful the way it was, even though she truly thought it was quite splendid. That it wasn't right in his opinion was what mattered, was what needed to be addressed.

Again he was silent a while, just letting her fingers do their circular motion on both temples. After several minutes, she leaned forward a bit, wondering if he had gone back to sleep, but

she saw his tongue lick his lips just then and knew he was thinking. 

"You're good, you know, with words," he said softly. "What if...?"

"If...?"

"What if you become a real writing partner and not just an advisor?  What if," he paused again, "we change the whole thing around and write it together, really together?"

"In what way, darling?"

"We could keep the setting. I think I'd like to do that. But we could make it...different, angle it differently."

"I'm not following you."

He took her right hand in his, moving it to his mouth where he began kissing her fingertips. "What if we make it more of a love story and one of them is blind?"

"You mean...?"

"Umm hmm. You write the sighted one. Completely. You can do it."

"The Scribbling Sinclairs?" she chuckled.

"Or the Sinclair Scribes," he said, rolling onto his belly and wriggling back to nestle his face in her lap.

She leaned down, kissing the back of his head. "You intend to make Morgan blind?"

"It doesn't have to be him, you know," he said, his voice muffled in her slacks. "We could have Susannah be the blind one."

"Susannah?"  Her eyes widened a bit. In what had been written already, Susannah, the daughter of a prominent Williamsburg attorney, was planning a trip to England over the vehement objections of her father. "But...but...then...you'd have to write her and that would leave me writing....."

"It would, indeed," he said, lifting his head a bit.

"Wouldn't that be...odd?"

"Why?"

"Well...."

"Don't women write male characters all the time?"

"I suppose so."

"You know so. And the book would just list us both as authors, which is rather appealing as no one would even know who wrote what."

He pushed himself up on one elbow. "You can keep McLaughlin if you like."

She pinched his nose lightly. "I don't like. I fully intend to be sincerely Sinclair."

He laughed, batting at her hand. "Sincerely Sinclair. I like that. 'Hello. I'm Marshall Sinclair and this is my wife, Sincerely.'"

"You are bad," she announced firmly, pushing his shoulder so he rolled over again on his back. "Bad bad bad. And you definitely deserve this."  She grabbed his ear lobe between her teeth

just enough so he couldn't easily pull it free.

He wrapped his arms around her neck. "Who knew you were so violent, Sincerely?"

She let go. "Full disclosure before the wedding."  She moved then and took his lower lip between her lips, pressing tight.

He tried to laugh but couldn't manage it with what she was doing. "Brumftt."

Releasing her hold, she asked, "What?"

"I said, 'brutal.' You are a brutal, medieval woman." Then he did laugh.

"And you want me, don't you?"  She nipped at the end of his nose.

His hands slid up to either side of her head, his expression suddenly serious. "I want you more than I've ever wanted anything." He held her face there a moment, directly over his, almost touching, then pulled her down, her mouth atop his own.

Some time later they lay cuddled together beneath the sheet, her head on his shoulder. "I want so much...," she sighed.

"To...?"

"I want to understand everything about you, to know as much as I can, as I possibly can, of what it's like for you. I want to get into the very 'innerness' of it, darling. I want to...to...follow sight beyond all seeing to some meeting place with you."

He tipped his head to kiss her hair. "That's what's been bothering me, Eden, what I've been yearning to do with you, to know what it's like for you. And I've been working at it so hard,

just trying and trying to know something I can't know until I'd begun to lose sight...." He stopped and smiled. "So to speak. To lose sight of the fact that happiness has very little to do with outward circumstances." His hand moved down her body, lingering over the curve of breast and hip. "I know I've erred in my concepts of light, of color, but I also know that this is you, my Eden, and most important of all," he touched her forehead, then her heart, "I know

that this is you and I have not erred in that."  Arms around her, he lifted her so she lay atop him. "I know that we fit together...." His sudden hardness slid inside her. "...like this."  He used
one hand gently to press her forehead to his. "And like this. Mind to mind. Heart to heart. And like this...." His mouth found hers.

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