Chapter 34

There is no single term available to describe the following week. Bliss, heaven, freedom. Each night Edmund delivered me to that room and Fitz devoured me.

Once the three nights were up I could not stand to go back to ignorance. I wanted to be impregnated this month, so I snuck into Fitz's room three more nights.

I was shown a world of pleasures that I had not even dared imagine. He could be tenderness personified, whispering adoration into my ear as he made my sex quiver with need.

I appeared to develop a separate personality. I sit as placid as a porcelain doll in my parlour all day long. Pliable, quiet and obedient. I take tea, needlepoint and meet with a local group of church women. We discuss the leaves on the road, the change in seasons, the latest fashions. Edmund has encouraged this, since Lady Cawley’s downfall there is a renewed focus on morality.

I sit listening to impromptu sermons from the grey-haired zealots about the joys of marriage. The purity of the households