“Hurt” was an understatement. It was muttered all about the village that Robert Shirlock would not recover.
Araminta sturdily refused to believe that.
Now she touched her fingers to her lover’s lips to shush him. “He will not die,” she insisted. “The sword cut you gave him was not that grievous! He will not die.”
“But if he does—”
“Then it will make no difference between us!”
He smiled down at her wistfully, but she could see she had not convinced him. Perhaps part of his pensiveness was do to the fact that his fingers had been deftly working the hooks that fastened her light blue bodice down the back. The bodice, stiffly boned, began to fall forward, sliding away to leave her firm young breasts—shielded only by a sheer chemise— exposed to his absorbed view. But Araminta seemed hardly to notice, so intent was she on convincing him.
“Other men have fought duels and been wounded and recovered,” she protested. “Why should Shirlock die?”
But he remembered the sword thrust—so much deeper than he had intended. He had meant only to teach the fool a lesson, not to run him through. But his foot had slipped at the wrong moment and he had delivered perhaps a lethal thrust. Shirlock was well born and had friends in high places. There would be hell to pay if he died.
“Oh, my darling, do not think of him!” Araminta entreated passionately. Even as she spoke, he was unfastening the last of the hooks that held her skirt in place. Though her entire dress was sliding down toward the sand, she had not chided him or demanded that he stop.
Still some last vestiges of honor held him off.
“If Shirlock dies, I must away, and quickly,” he warned her even as his fingers toyed with the riband that held her chemise.
“We will go away together!”
“We can’t. I have no money.”
Her dress had fallen away entirely now, beneath his urging. Araminta, caring not, pressed toward him, her arms around his neck, her eyes looking up into his, swearing silent allegiance. “I have a little money. And I can sell my pearls and the locket I was given my last birthday. They will fetch a bit.”
“Not enough.” It would not carry them out of reach of the vengeance of Shirlock’s wealthy family and friends. He spoke with decision—but still pulled the chemise riband, and the light cambric chemise floated down to join the dress upon the sand at her feet.
Only then did she seem to realize that she was standing naked before him, pale and slim in the dusk, and she gasped. He caught her by the shoulders and held her away from him, unmindful of her blushes, to drink in her beauty.
Araminta was not quite prepared for that, but she stood her ground while the flush that tinged her cheeks gradually spread down her entire young body, turning her milk-white flesh a rosy tint. She had no doubt what the next step would be and she was not quite prepared for that either, but she wanted so desperately for him to know she would stand staunch at his side whatever befell them that her voice was almost a wail.
“Then . . . then you must go away and come back for me!” she cried.
He scarce heard her words, so intoxicated was he by the sheer feminine loveliness of the sight before him. Araminta had held him off in the woods even though his importunings had made her blush, she had held him off at numerous gatherings, whenever they had met. But now in this lonely place with only the clean salt smell of the sea and the music of the waves breaking on the rocks, she was on the verge of giving herself to him.
He sensed her hesitation. And even though she was so warm and lustrous and desirable that he could scarce resist taking her without preamble, he made a last manful effort to withstand her charms.
“Araminta,” he said sternly—and his voice was husky, for it was himself he was fighting. “Are you sure? You have but to pick up that gown”—he nudged the fallen blue material with the toe of his boot—“and put it on again and walk back up the cliff walk. You can forget me.” He said it almost with a groan, for it was the hardest speech he had ever made, but he loved this reckless will-o’-the-wisp of a girl and he would make no move unless she was truly certain.
Araminta went into his arms like a child, trusting him completely.
His better nature—always faltering—abandoned him completely at her swift capitulation, at the sudden collision of her soft bare young breasts with his own hard chest.
“Araminta,” he murmured, deeply moved. “Araminta. . . .”
“I intend to follow my heart,” she whispered. She was trying to look very brave, trying to feel brave, although at the moment she did not. “I love you,” she murmured. “And I promise you that I will never, never change.”
His arms tightened about her. At once, he flung down his cloak, lowered her young body to rest upon it, and began tearing off his clothes. She watched him with blue eyes big and dark in her pale face, feeling a little frightened.
“The world will separate us,” he warned her somberly. And it was one of the few chivalrous gestures he had ever made, this man who had known and thrust aside so many women.
“No.” She shook her head and the slight motion disturbed her breasts, making them ripple deliciously, overpowering his senses. She moved her hips too, sliding them about to a more comfortable position on the folds of his cloak, and he swooped down toward her. Their bodies closed with a thrill that amounted to mutual shock. Her voice shook when she said tremulously, “I will never be separated from you in my heart. Never.”
Then his lips cut off further conversation and his questing lover’s hands brought to Araminta a sweeping intoxication of the senses as he caressed her hair, her shoulders, her pulsing breasts, let his hands trail down delightfully over the smooth cool skin of her stomach and sleek young hips, toyed with the curly golden hair at their base. He was in no hurry and, as she moved beneath him, gasping, half-laughing and half-protesting at his playful impudence, a kind of magic stole over her. He led her on and on until she was gasping with new and fiery feelings, her ardent body pressing upward to close with his. She was hardly aware that his knee had stolen between her own, her thighs were pressed tightly against his, until his strong masculinity had found her secret place. His grip on her tightened, and Araminta drew in her breath in a swift sharp gasp at the sudden stab of pain within her. Her body was trembling but she clung to him still, trusting him, determined not to cry out. Another, deeper thrust and she wilted against him, shaken.
“There,” he murmured caressingly. “It is done, Araminta—the rest will be pure pleasure.”
And pleasure it was. When the pain subsided, Araminta felt herself caught up in a strange wild rhythm unlike anything she had ever known. It lifted her, buoyed her up, brought her back to earth only to carry her upward again in reckless abandon. All her senses marched with that rhythm, every nerve end alive and tingling. Fantastically she felt herself to have become part of him, and a fierce joy rushed through her as his breathing harshened and the tension mounted. The inner drumbeats quickened and they hurtled along faster, ever faster, until at last the clamor in her own ears drowned out the sound of the booming surf. Sea and sky and the wheeling stars were one in beauty along with their straining bodies—and for those few brief wonderful moments they owned the world and nothing could touch them, nothing. . . .
She came drifting back to reality feeling somehow victorious, as if she had won a great battle. She looked over at her lover brightly to see if he felt the same.
He was lying beside her, staring up at the stars. She thought breathlessly: What a wonderful place to have made love—the first time! And knew that she would never regret missing that virginal marriage bed she had dreamt of—for her bridal bed this night had been the clean white sand, her wedding march the timeless roll of the surf, her cathedral the great blue vault of heaven.
“Should I pack?” she asked suddenly, and his hand that had been lightly stroking her stomach was suddenly stilled. “Have you decided where we should go?”
“No, do not pack.” His voice was m
oody. “If Shirlock lives, I will find a place for us here—somehow.”
Araminta shrugged and her soft breasts bounced with the slight motion—this time he paid no attention. “Anyway, why talk of fleeing?” she said lightly. “Who knows, my own parents may be fleeing before long! They say the lord protector is dying, and if he does die, we may have the king back again!”
“If so, God be praised!” he muttered.
Those were not quite the words Araminta would have used.
“Our coach was stoned in the village today,” she informed him. “Last week, no one would have dared!”
“Stoned?” He turned sharply toward her. “I had not heard about it.”
“My mother was terrified. She near ruined her hat trying to get the curtains pulled down!”
“I do not wonder, if stones were being hurled at her!”
“Oh, I do not think they meant to injure us,” said Araminta thoughtfully. “I think they just wanted us to know how they felt.”
"Would that I had been there!” he growled. “I’d have been glad to show them how I felt!”
Araminta sat up. She her her palms against his chest and pressed him back upon the sand. With both hands she then flung back her long hair, well aware that his eyes were watching her, looking up heatedly at the pale pink tips of her breasts agleam in the starlight. She leaned over him temptingly, the soft tips of her breasts lightly grazing his chest. “You cannot fight all the world for me, you know.” Her gentle fingers traced lovingly around his strong mouth, still taut with anger.
It was too much for him. He drew her back to him. "No, but I wish that I could, Araminta.”
Sincerity rang in his voice and Araminta knew that he had spoken the truth. She felt that their love was predestined, that from the first moment, she had known this would happen between them. That he would pursue her, that he would not lightly give up the chase, that he would not be denied.
All her instincts had warned her that he was dangerous. But the warnings had counted for naught against the reckless ecstasy of his kisses.
And now at last on this magical night when the Green Flash had illuminated the evening sky and shown her her destiny, she had surrendered herself to him. She would be his.
Forever.
She clung to him wordlessly and he took her once more, took her with a fierce loving abandon. Again she rose in splendor, leaving earth behind. Again floated luck, trailing stars through shimmering unreality, to find herself once more upon the sands of Cornwall. With her lover.
"Promise you will come back to me,” she said in sudden anxiety. “Whatever happens. Say it! Say, ‘I will come back to you, Araminta . . .’ ”
" Though hell should bar the way,” he finished for her in a thick voice. “But you know that my family will never accept you—nor will your family ever accept me! Oh God, Araminta, to what kind of future am I condemning you?”
She flung her arms around him as if to ward off the thought.
“To the only future I want or shall ever want!” Her voice held a ghost of a tremor, and perhaps that tremor was for that young foolish Araminta who had planned to be married in her father’s house amid great celebration but who must now look forward only to a hole-in-corner wedding somewhere far away. “We will run away together! We will go to some new land where nobody knows—or cares—that our people were on opposite sides!” Her head lifted, on inspiration. “We will go away to America!”
“It’s late,” he said abruptly. “You must get back.” He got to his feet, pulling on his clothes. “If I keep you out too long, they will miss you, there will be an alarm raised.”
Araminta scrambled to her feet, gasping from that strange new feeling within her. She felt dizzy, but he caught her at once, supporting her as tenderly as if she had been a child. Silently he cursed himself for not having held back, since God alone knew what the future might hold for them.
He helped her into her clothes and she was grateful for his assistance, for her fingers had suddenly turned all thumbs and she felt shy with him again, despite their new intimacy.
“Tomorrow,” Araminta whispered, flinging her arms around his neck.
“Tomorrow,” he echoed firmly, pushing her away.
Loath to go, turning often to wave back to him, Araminta walked slowly up the path and lingered in the dark garden sniffing maiden’s-blush roses.
No longer a maiden she. . . . Araminta blushed to think of how brazen she must have seemed in his arms. And yet . . . he had not minded, indeed had welcomed her fresh young ardor.
After a while she went inside through the garden door, and tiptoed up the stairs. As she passed her mother’s room, she could hear a light snoring.
All was well then. She had not been discovered.
And tomorrow? Araminta shivered deliciously. Tomorrow she would meet her lover on the beach again, and they would make their plans to run away together.
But the morrow was the thirtieth of August—a day that would be remembered forever as the day the Great Storm of 1658 struck England. It roared across the country, leaving destruction in its wake. It blew the chimneys down, tore off shutters, broke casements, burst asunder woven thatch roofs and sent them like so much blowing straw into the sky. It knocked down barns and killed livestock and sent frowning church steeples crashing down among the oaken pews. It uprooted trees and tore great sections from the hedges. It took off half the roof of the Dunnings’ house, sent sheets of water cascading over the furniture, drenched the valuable feather beds, made a shambles of their garden, and tore the maiden’s-blush rosebush almost to pieces.
When Araminta tried to look out the window toward the beach, her mother screamed at her to come back lest the casements suddenly crash inward and the glass cut her face. She couldn’t see the beach anyway—the beach was gone. In its place great rolling breakers dashed white-crested against the cliffs, exploding green against the gnarled jagged rocks, sending up plumes of spray some ten or twenty feet into the air.
When the storm was over, barns and cottages lay in ruins and the village had something more than politics to think about.
Araminta had received no word from her lover.
In midmorning, the day after the storm, she slipped away from the vast cleanup job that was going on at home, with servants scurrying about hanging everything out to dry and pulling furniture here and there. She donned high-patten boots, tucked up her skirts, and ventured down the muddy road to the village. All the way down, under a still gray sky, she shuddered at the devastation the storm had wrought: old trees lay supine, torn out by the roots, ruin everywhere.
The storm had altered the village skyline, too. Half the church steeple had been plunged into the churchyard, wreaking havoc among the moss-covered gravestones. Two cottages had been stove in by falling trees, and many others were unroofed. But the place was a beehive of activity. All up and down the single street, torn-off shutters were being nailed back, men were clambering over roofs trying to repair them, women were distractedly hanging out quilts and bedding to dry. Ordinarily Araminta might have been the recipient of frowning looks—but not today. Today she passed unnoticed through the village, picking her way over debris and broken tree limbs that littered the cobbles.
At the end of the street, Araminta could see that at least one village business was still operating—the local tavern. Although the swinging painted sign that read “Stag and Boar” had been entirely blown away and the tavern roof was mostly gone, the jovial owner, looking none the worse for wear, was smiling broadly in the doorway. He moved his rotund form aside to let a barmaid scuttle by with a tray of pewter tankards toward a little knot of men who had gathered outside. Araminta hurried forward, for she could see that the men were surrounding a mud-caked rider in a still-damp plumed hat. He had obviously come a distance, and by the rakish cut of his expensive though spattered coat she judged him rightly to be a Royalist.
Intent upon the stranger, no one noticed Araminta’s approach. She edged closer.
The
man on horseback eagerly drank the ale the barmaid had handed up to him. As Araminta watched, he drained the tankard.
“I’ve a thirst,” he admitted, handing it back to be refilled. “For I’ve come a long way and must go farther. ’Tis true, the rumor—Cromwell, the usurper, is dying. Lord, I had to fight my way here through the storm to tell you that!”
“The devil rode the storm across England so he could fetch back old Oliver’s soul!” observed someone in a dry voice, and there was general laughter.
“The devil got more than one soul,” remarked another wryly. “Robert Shirlock passed away at the height of the storm! And the man who fought him, another good Royalist, had to flee the country lest he hang for the deed!”
There was a general unhappy growl, but Araminta fell back as if she had been struck. Her lover had fled without telling her?
She turned and ran away, unobserved, panting back up the road that would lead her at last to the tall house on the cliff. And face-to-face with reality at last.
On the third of September—the anniversary of his triumphs at Dunbar and Worcester—the lord protector, Oliver Cromwell, died. Araminta’s father came home back from London with a strained face. She could hear him pacing at night in the library and she knew that even though he spoke cheerfully at dinner, saying that Cromwell’s son Richard would now succeed him and there was naught to worry about, the vacant look in his eyes said that there was everything to worry about. She guessed that Cavalier boots might soon be marching through the village.
Wistfully she wondered if his boots would be among them—for she still had had no word from her lover, and his family did not deign to speak to her.
To Love a Rogue Page 2