CHAPTER TWENTY-TWOAfterwards, I must have fallen into a brief sleep, for I remember waking to absolute silence and darkness. I was wrapped in my cloak and his coat, and held against his breast like a child. He was in his shirt-sleeves, sitting with his back against a tree, and I could feel his rhythmic, wakeful breathing and the warm, naked skin of his chest under my cheek. For a second, I let the memory of what we had just done engulf me. I knew I should be ashamed, but I wasn’t. Not in the slightest.
I knew too, because my mother had told me at the start of my brief, youthful engagement, that most women found their first experience of physical love a little shocking, if not downright distasteful. I had felt none of that, only pleasure and a delight that quite obliterated the pain. Of co
