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The Flood of the Tide	By : LadyOfTheSouthernIsles Category: M through R > Poldark Views: 2809 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Poldark or the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story. No copyright infringement is intended.

Chapter List
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Chapter 3

As had become the pattern in these early weeks of marriage, Ross was the first to move.
First to move, first to go to sleep, thought Demelza drowsily as he gave her a gentle shake and pushed the hair back from her face. She would have liked to lie here with him for a little longer, maybe talk for a bit.
"'Tis time to go, sweetheart," he said. "As pleasant as this interlude has been, we both have work to tend to now."
Sweetheart! Demelza went still; he had never called her that before. It was a casual endearment, she knew, borne of the intimacy they'd just shared, and likely unnoticed by him. Silly to read any deeper meaning into it. But even so... She buried her face in his chest to hide her absurd delight.
"Did you hear what I said, woman? Do I have to beat you to make you move?" The husky tone of his voice and his sleepy, half-lidded look were entirely at odds with his words.
Demelza made no effort to hide her grin as she stared up at him; she was well-used to his dry sense of humour and didn't take him seriously for one moment. "Mebbe y' do, Ross, but it don't look to me like 'ee has the energy fur such an undertakin'."
A lazy swot to her rear proved he still had energy enough for something at least. She yelped and sat up, laughing.
Ross quickly followed suit. Keep the momentum going, he told himself; his wife wasn't the only one who was reluctant to move. He pushed up on his arms, lifted her off his lap and scrambled to his feet. After carelessly fastening his breeches, he snatched up his shirt, seized hold of Demelza's hands, pulled her to her feet too, and then headed back down the beach with her in tow. It was all accomplished in a mere matter of minutes.
"I'm right sorry I said 'ee had no energy, Ross!" she gasped as she jogged along behind him.
With a short laugh, he swept her into the curve of his arm and slowed his pace a little. When they reached the rocks where she had left her dress before going swimming, he came to a halt. To her surprise, he threw down his shirt and began straightening her shift, brushing out the sea-salt and sand.
He caught sight of the unspoken question in her eyes. "You can't return home looking as you do now." He picked up her dress and helped her into it. After tying the laces and twitching out the skirt, he thrust his hands into the tangle of her hair and retrieved what was left of her hairpins.
Whilst he tried to restore some semblance of order to her unruly curls, she stood patiently in front of him, watching the pulse beat at the base of his neck… breathing in the scent of sea-spray and sweat – the scent of him.
When he had done what he could, he stepped back and cast a critical eye over his ramshackle efforts. "It will have to do, Demelza. I clearly have little skill in the art."
"Thank 'ee Ross. I'm sure you've made a grand job of it anyway." She couldn't help but wish he'd step closer again.
He reached down to pick up his shirt but she quickly stayed his hand. "Let me do it," she said softly. "'Tis only fair I return the favour."
He looked at her small, work-roughened hand lying on top of his darker, much larger one. His own was even more calloused than hers but then he had lived and worked for ten years longer than her so it was hardly surprising. He was not used to thinking of her as delicate but the contrast between them suddenly made her seem so. "Very well then, wife." He straightened up and submitted to her ministrations.
As she slipped his shirt over his head and guided his arms into the sleeves, Ross was struck by the oddly domestic nature of what they were doing. Although as his wife she obviously had a great deal of physical freedom with his body, he had not previously allowed her such small, private intimacies as this. He preferred to see to such things for himself when he left their bed each morning. It was unsettling to find himself reconsidering that preference now. Unsettling too to realise that he had taken a certain amount of pleasure in tending to her personal needs. He glanced at her hair and frowned; he'd only succeeded in making it look like a bird's nest. At least he'd rescued some of her hairpins for her.
"Lift your arms please, Ross."
Startled by the sound of her voice, he looked down. She had finished tying the fastenings on his shirt and was waiting to tuck the ends into his breeches. He dutifully did as she asked and forced himself to keep his arms up as she went about her work. The temptation to hug her surprised him, especially when her own arms wrapped around his waist and she started pushing his shirttails into his breeches. He thought he'd done with all that, just now over by the cliff. But it wasn't a precisely carnal urge, he realised.
"You can put your arms down now," she said, breaking in on his thoughts once more. Her nimble fingers were on the fastenings of his breeches. "Seems a shame to be doin' these up again."
Her tone was so matter-of-fact that he wanted to laugh. Biting down on his amusement, and the ready rejoinder which sprang to mind, he clasped his hands behind his back and turned his head to look at the waves whilst she finished making him presentable again. However, he found his eyes returning to her time and time again.
"There! You're as respectable as you ever were." She flashed him a satisfied look as she straightened up to inspect her handiwork.
The unintended irony of her words was not lost on Ross; few of his peers considered him in any way 'respectable' and that he'd taken his kitchen maid for his wife was only the latest affront to lay at the feet of his wild, reckless nature. Still, he didn't want to ruin her obvious pride in her efforts – her somewhat peculiar pride in him – with a cynical observation on respectability. In the three or four weeks since their marriage, he had learnt that she set great store by it, and by his in particular. Strange in one who could be so free-spirited and irreverent in other matters.
"Ross?"
She recalled him to his surroundings again.
"You can ride with me as far as the wasteland," he said as he looked over to where his horse was standing. "I'm going in that direction anyway."
He offered her his hand this time and they set off down the beach. She was pleased not to have to run to keep up with him.
They reached the horse and after he'd helped her into the saddle, he took the reins and swung up behind her. With one arm anchored firmly around her waist, he guided the mare towards the cliff path. They exchanged few words during the ride back. Demelza, enjoying the sun on her face and the solid warmth of her husband at her back, quickly fell into humming a merry tune whilst Ross tried to concentrate more on what had to be done at the mine and less on the charming bundle in his arms. She was more distracting than she should be.
They found Garrick rummaging around in the grass at the top of the path, and, with no more gulls or rabbits to be found, he gambolled along behind them. Once at the wasteland, Ross reined in his horse and waited for Demelza to slip down but she made no effort to. Instead, she twisted round and stared up at him, waiting for something herself it seemed – some parting words perhaps.
"Good day to you, Demelza. I'll be back for supper." He removed his arm from her waist and leaned back, clearly meaning for her to dismount now. A strange look flitted across her face. Disappointment? At what, he wondered.
"I'll see you then, Ross," she said, and she slipped down from the saddle. She turned away and made to leave.
Her voice seemed a little flat. Something more was required, he realised with a burst of insight. "I'll look forward to it," he called out after her. " And Demelza?"
She stopped and looked back. "Yes, Ross?"
"It was a pleasure to meet up with you on the beach just now."
His words had the effect he was hoping for; her eyes lit up with laughter and she broke into a wide, appreciative smile. She had taken the double meaning as he'd intended, and she was radiant again.
Stepping back up to him, she laid her hand on his thigh in an unconscious gesture of intimacy. "'Twas a very great pleasure indeed, Ross, an' not only fur you."
He looked down at her hand resting lightly on his leg, and then up into her laughing eyes again. The smile he gave her in return held its own edge of intimacy… and promise. "Until tonight, wife." And with that, he nudged his horse forward, forcing Demelza to drop her hand and move away.
"Until t' night, husband," she whispered as he turned and started back for Wheal Leisure.
… …
Demelza's smile faded as she watched him disappear from view. A parting kiss would have been nice. It wasn't that she was asking for his heart – though she wouldn't have refused it had he offered it – but he could surely spare her something to show that he valued her as more than just a capable housemaid and willing bedmate…
Of course, there had been other small gestures today, treasures to hoard to her heart. She knew what meaning she would like to attach to them but just what meaning she could attach to them, what meaning he attached to them, she didn't know. Still, his parting words and look were all she could have wanted them to be, and they did have that between them: a spark of passion which blazed into fierce, stunning life in the darkness of night. And now under the bright light of the sun too, she realised a moment later. Her smile returned in full force. Calling Garrick to heel, she headed for Nampara and her waiting chores.
… …
Ross was in an unusually light-hearted frame of mind as he started out on the final leg of the journey back to Wheal Leisure. His thoughts kept returning to the encounter he had just enjoyed with his wife and he didn't try overmuch to rein them in. Though he'd be behind in his work at the mine, there was not a shred of regret in him for his earlier, spur-of-the-moment decision to seek her out. He was only surprised that it was a decision so easily made. The image of her as she had first appeared to him – a living siren – rose up in his mind...
And that was when his mood took a turn for the worse. For hard on the heels of the siren, there arose another image – an angel, and one whose presence had been with him for so long now that it was impossible to imagine a time when it wouldn't be. He felt a strange sense of… he didn't know what.
During the years spent fighting abroad he had been loyal to Elizabeth, body, mind and heart, and apart from one single lapse – an empty, chance encounter with a woman named Margaret at one of the many low points in the months following Elizabeth's marriage to his cousin, Francis – he had continued to remain loyal to her after he'd returned home from America, though that was due more to inclination than intention. On the night he and Demelza had become lovers, some seven or eight weeks ago, he had set that inclination aside; he owed Elizabeth nothing, he'd told himself. He had repeated those words many times since but his heart still whispered otherwise sometimes. How far such whisperings were due to habit, again, he didn't know. And now he had a wife of his own, Demelza. He in no way regretted the carnal pleasure he found with her. She was his to take and his to own. And he was hers too, he was coming to realise. In some indefinable way he didn't yet understand, he was hers too… and it troubled him.
The day after he and Demelza had become lovers, Elizabeth, with a tragically or perhaps ironically flawed sense of timing, had finally picked her moment to visit him at Nampara. Ross was realist enough to know that her marriage to Francis would probably not have stood in their way but what might have happened that day did not happen – because Demelza had already stolen a march on his first love albeit it unwittingly. He had observed the two women side-by-side then, and compared them. Earthenware and porcelain, he'd thought. Out of consideration for the one he had taken as wife shortly afterwards – because of what he owed her as wife – he hadn't made the comparison again since his wedding. But now, today, after what had just happened, he could not help but compare the two once more... and it disturbed him.
For how could an angel, a creature of the spheres – how could she compare to a living, breathing siren, risen from the sea, warm with laughter and the sun, who begrudged him nothing and offered him everything? How could an angel ever compare to one such as that? It seemed that in the flood of the tide, old memories had been swamped, first loyalties swept aside, and Ross – a Poldark, and one of brooding temperament to boot – was not at all sure what to make of it.
… …
She had already grown into his life. That was what he thought. What he meant was that she had grown into the life of the house… a good servant and an agreeable companion. Under the new arrangement this didn’t much alter… And now she was growing into his life in a different way. There was no going back for him, even if he had wished it, which he found he did not… But he was not yet at all sure how far it was she personally who was desirable to him, how far it was the natural needs of a man that she as a woman met. He wished he could separate the two Demelzas who had become a part of him… He felt he would be happier if he could separate them entirely. But… it seemed that the reverse of what he wanted was taking place. The two entities were becoming less distinct. It was not until the first week of August that a fusion of the two occurred.

- Winston Graham, Ross Poldark (Novel 1), Book 3, Chapter 1.
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The Flood of the Tide