Status Updates From Demelza: Poldark, Book 2

Poldark moved on and reached his own land and rode down into the valley; and from far off could hear Demelza playing the spinet. The sound came up to him in a sweet vibration plaintive and distant. The trees were green-tipped and the catkins were out and a few primroses bloomed in the wet grass. The music was a thread of silver woven into the spring.

This morning she was hatless, with her crisp curling black hair blowing in the wind, and she wore a brilliant scarlet dress of some cheap flimsy material she had filched from the property box. The wind blew it about the curves of her figure, and it was caught provocatively round her waist with a tight green girdle. It was the sort of dress which would make the men look and the women whisper.

They met, he grasped her hands, they danced round, her hair flying, she looked up once straight into his eyes; the look was blinding, dazzling; then they separated, he back to his place, she to hers. Her hands had been cool, but the palms of his were tingling as if they had met ice, met fire, been shocked by the touch.