Notes: This brief piece is based on the thunder storm scene from the TV adaptation.

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I am not afraid of thunder, though it served me to have her suppose I was. I had only wanted to embrace her; to feel her warmth come stealing upon me. I had only wanted it for a moment; to suffer something of her touch and that she might suffer mine. She had stirred me from nothing. She had lain, and slept, and in the lying and the sleeping had drawn my eye. My eye, being drawn, then drew my heart, which in turn drew something else, something deeper. Something that frightened me, not like thunder, but like the rolling of a great wave come to sweep me away. It settled over me, sucked me down and suffocated me. So I grasped and clung to the source of it and pushed myself to her. I clutched ar her shoulder and breathed the scent of her mingled with rain. Then for a moment I thought she inclined her head to me, resting; her hair smoothed against my cheek. And then I knew what had escaped me, what had been cultured and prised forth. So I siezed her still harder whilst she comforted me in my assumed fit of fright.

I should have kissed her then, but did not. I should have pushed her from me, met her gaze and touched her face, but did not. I should have seduced her as she had unknowingly seduced me. There were many things I should have done, but I was silent and unmoving, appearing to hold her as a fearful mistress might. It was only my mind that betrayed me; only my imaginings that put upon the embrace something I could not define. To call it desire would lessen it. I had wanted to creep inside, meld myself to the makings of her. Yet this was a folly from my uncle's books, a fantasy that could not be played out. I did know that. Perhaps that was why I said nothing; only I let my heart ache and bleed. At least I let it bleed until I could stand it no more.