2He rarely smiled, if ever, and the stoicism of his face made her uncomfortable. He wasn't unpleasant or rude, that wasn't it, but she had grown among people who proudly displayed their emotions, whose faces were works of art in constant movement. The village in which she had been raised considered a day well spent if one had smiled at least twenty-four times, one for each hour, and frowned at least three, one for each meal. She herself had been considered quite expressive by her neighbours, as prone to laughter and tears as she was.
His eyes were hard, opaque. Where hers spit fire and sparkled and crinkled and shined, his remained reflective, guarded.
His eyebrows, slightly bushy yet well shaped, remained a flat line over his eyes. They wouldn't rise and fall, arch in contempt or disdain; wouldn't lower as his anger grew, and wouldn't both inch upwards in surprise.
His mouth, while would seem quite generous if he were a picture, remained as tight-lipped about his emotions as the rest of his face. There were no sorrow lines at the corners, no slight curving when something amused him, no quirk when he looked upon someone he despised.
It frustrated Anita to no end.
It wasn't until two months into their marriage, when her uneasiness had turned into restlessness, that she realized his body had managed to betray him after all. While his brows and his lips and his eyes had done as told and guarded his emotions behind a stone-wall fortress, his hands hadn't seem to obey, and his knuckles would betray his secrets to anyone who knew how to listen. For weeks she studied the way they'd grow white in anger, strained with the will to contain himself, lax as he relaxed among those he trusted, every single shade and nuance of those hands becoming known to her and unlocking his soul to her watching eyes.
It was fortunate then, that she was so madly in love with him, and thus, the betrayal of his emotions went unnoticed. Anita didn't think she would have been able to bear to have that tiny, unguarded part of her husband taken away.