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    “You take the tent,” he tells her. “I will sleep on the ground here. You must not worry. I will keep you quite safe.”
    But she opens her eyes and gazes at him in the moonlight. “Did you really want to?” she asks him. “Did you really want to marry me?”
    “Yes.” He wishes he could retrieve his hand. He is not made of stone.
    “You asked me what my dream was,” she tells him. “How could I tell you then? But I can tell you now. It was this. Just this. My dream.”
    He touches his mouth to hers and wonders while he still can if they have an audience.
    “Lily,” he says against her mouth. “Lily.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “Neville,” he tells her. “Say it. Say my name. I want to hear you saying it.”
    “Neville,” she says, and it sounds like the most tender, the most erotic of endearments. “Neville. Neville.”
    “Will I share the tent with you, then?” he asks her.
    “Yes.” There can be no mistaking that she means it, that she wants him. “Neville. My beloved.”
    Surely only Lily could utter such a word without sounding theatrical.
    It seems strange to him that they are about to consummate a marriage when they buried his comrade, her father, a mere few hours ago. But he has had enough experience with death to know that life must reaffirm itself immediately after in the survivors, that living on is an integral part of the grieving process.
    “Come then,” he says, stooping to open the flap of the small tent. “Come, Lily. Come, my love.”

    They make love in near silence since there undoubtedly are listeners enough eager to hear grunts of pleasure, cries of pain. And they make love slowly so as not to cause any undue shaking of the tent’s flimsy structure. And they make love fully clothed except in essential places, and covered by their two cloaks so that they will not be chilled by the December night.
    She is innocent and ignorant.
    He is eager and experienced and desperate to give her pleasure, terrified of giving her pain.
    He kisses her, touches her with gentle, exploring, worshipful hands, first through her clothing, then beneath it, feathering touches over her warm, silken flesh, cupping her small, firm breasts, teasing his thumb across their stiffening crests, sliding gentle, caressing fingers down into the moist heat between her thighs, touching, parting, arousing.
    She holds him. She does no caressing of her own. She makes no sound except for quickened breathing. But he knows that she is one with his desire. He knows that even in this she is finding beauty.
    “Lily …”
    She opens to him at the prodding of his knees and wraps herself about him at the bidding of her own instincts. She croons soft endearments to him—mostly his own name—as he mounts her, surprising himself with his own sobs as he does so. She is small and tight and very virgin. The barrier seems unbreakable and he knows he is hurting her. And then it is gone and he eases inward to his full length. Into soft, wet heat and the involuntary contraction of her muscles.
    She speaks to him in a soft whisper against his ear.
    “I always knew,” she tells him, “that this would be the most beautiful moment of my life. This. With you. But I never expected it to happen.”
    Ah, Lily. I never knew
.
    “My sweet life,” he tells her. “Ah, my dear love.”
    But he can no longer think only of not hurting his bride. His desire, his need, pulses like a drumbeat through every blood vessel in his body and focuses as exquisite pain in his groin and the part of himself that is sheathed in her. He withdraws to the brink of her and presses deep again, hears her gasp of surprise and surely of pleasure too, and withdraws and presses deep.
    He holds the rhythm steady for as long as he is able both for her sake and his own, resisting the urge to release into pleasure too soon, before she can learn that intimacy consists of more than simple penetration.
    She lies relaxed beneath him. Not out of distaste or shock or