The days she could occupy with reading and walking and writing descriptions of the things she saw, carefully avoiding the subject of the people she had met for fear that she might lapse again into that diarist’s style that had nearly caused such a disaster. But Fiona had assured her that Niall had not read the shameful things she had written, and so great was Alice’s wish that that be true that she refused to let herself wonder in the slightest whether it was.But the nights—every one of them, no matter how far she walked in the day and no matter whether she begged for a share of the chores that Fiona finally and reluctantly granted her—lay out before her each evening as kind of ordeal for which nothing in her life, she thought, could have prepared her. When at last she pretended to sleep, desperate to reassure Fiona that all was well with her, most nights the ordeal became even worse. For Fergus, it seemed, had an extremely uxorious side to his character, and he would frequently whisper to Fiona around midnight, sure that Alice had fallen asleep, “I will have a little fuck now, my dearling, if you don’t mind.”Then Alice would always try to keep her eyes tightly closed as she heard the giggles, then the muffled soft, wet sounds, and then the sighs and the little moans and whimpers of Fiona, as her wedded husband took his pleasure.
