He picked her up in his arms as easily as if she were but a small child.
“I will do my best.”
His lips found hers in a rapturous kiss that began the merciful process of numbing her senses as they ignited fires within her, fires that had never been completely banked from the first time.
Duncan pushed the back door open with his shoulder. Jacob was no longer in the kitchen. Duncan knew he was at his post before the front door. Balancing Beth in his arms, he paused now only to secure the lock on the back door. Duncan thought there was no eminent danger tonight, but he had not come to his present age by wantonly throwing caution to the winds.
She could have remained in his arms forever for the feeling being there spawned within her. She felt secure and on the brink of excitement at the same time. The man was a wonder.
“Jacob?” Beth looked around hesitantly as Duncan carried her up the stairs.
Duncan laughed softly to himself as he took another kiss from her lips.
“Will not save you tonight, my love. He is standing guard, and your grandmother and grandaunt are long asleep.” He carried her to her room, as if setting her feet down upon the long, faded carpet would break the spell that was being woven. “There is but the two of us.”
God help her, but she loved the sound of that. “For tonight, that is more than enough for me.”
For tonight, he thought.
And what of tomorrow, and all the days that would follow? He knew he was having thoughts that were foreign to a manly breast, but he could not shed them any for the knowing. She had cast a spell over him, one he would have to work hard at overcoming when the time came.
“I have but two hours,” he reminded her, as they came to her room. The door stood open, just as it had when he left it.
“Then we shall have to make the most of it.” Without waiting for Duncan to speak, Beth pressed her lips to his once more with an urgency that Duncan found overwhelmingly intoxicating.
His blood roaring through his veins, Duncan could hardly wait until they were within the privacy of her room. Her mouth, as it glided hot and questing along his throat and lips, was driving him to the very brink of no control. Beyond the perimeter were creatures he was not certain he could contain.
Yet she easily pushed him beyond all that he had ever known with her eager mouth and her grasping, slender fingers. Even the sound of her breath as it echoed in the room excited him.
Before he could successfully close the doors behind them, Beth’s hands were on his body, hot to touch, hot to assure herself that here at least there was something that had not been stripped away from her.
She sought the mindless ecstasy that only Duncan could give her.
Setting her down, Duncan caught Beth’s hands in his and looked into her face. The moon provided the only light within the room, and barely lit it.
“Beth,” he breathed, his heart pounding, “there is no race.”
She shook her head, her hair flying loose. “Oh, but there is. The world is spinning too fast for me to stop now.”
He pressed her to him, as if to absorb some of her pain. He felt her heart against his, blending, melding.
“Then we will slow it down,” he promised, against her lips.
Though the fires of desire drove them both, Duncan struggled not to allow her questing hands and mouth make him lose what last shreds of control he still retained.
Clothes left their bodies quickly, so quickly that he feared some were torn. How would they explain that on the morrow, when Cosette eyed them?
But matters of clothing and reproving great-aunts soon faded from his mind as flames licked his body. She was nude before him and cleaving her body to his. He could think only of her, of wanting her.
Of dying within her.
With a sigh of absolute surrender, Duncan fell into the inferno that was waiting for him. It consumed him and he went to it willingly.
Anything to have her.
He worshipped her with his hands, with his eyes, with his mouth. Like a man possessed, he placed his brand upon her at every point that was exposed to him. He could not get enough of her.
Like a starving man, he feasted and was still hungry, drank and was still thirsty.
His mouth and hands played upon her as if she was a rare instrument, to be strummed reverently in order to make her body sing.
As Beth arched and moved beneath him, he discovered secrets that he had only guessed at . . . secrets of her body that Beth had never known.
He created waves within her. Waves, and unspeakably wonderful sensations.
Beth’s eyes flew open as explosions rocked through her body, bombs discharging in her like precisioned musket fire, one after the other.
“Oh! Oh!” she gasped in surprise, immediately biting down on her lower lip to still the cries that continued to rise up within her. Her body rocked to and fro as if it did not belong to her, as if it was governed not by her mind, but only by Duncan and his wondrous touch.
“Shh,” he warned, “you’ll wake them all.”
But still his questing fingers did not stop. Nor could she have stood it if they had.
His tongue trailed along her quivering belly until he came to the very source of her heat, the very source of her passion. There was just a moment’s pause, and that only to tantalize her with.
And then he plunged onward.
Beth felt his mouth touch her and struggled to bring him up. She did not know whether to be offended, or overjoyed. This couldn’t be. This—
Was wondrous.
As she struggled to push him away, she succeeded only in driving him further in.
And then, as the heat of his mouth irrevocably claimed her, there was no strength in her body left to resist. He drove her upward, ever upward, and she found that she was thrown into the eye of the storm, tossed about from wave to wave until she was completely limp.
Her skin, damp with sweat, gleamed in the moonlight like that of a temptress. Duncan could resist her no longer.
She looked at him, dazed, as he raised himself up on his hands and slid his body along hers until their eyes met. Her body pulsed as rainbows crashed through her.
“What did you do?” she cried weakly.
He could still manage a smile, well pleased. “Made love to you, Beth. As I will do again and again.”
“I can’t—“ she began to murmur, her voice scarcely a whisper, even to her own ear.
In the next moment, she discovered, as he began to kiss her ear, that she could.
And did.
Stunned, with a need to bring him into the swirling chaos he had created for her, Beth reached for Duncan.
As her fingers dipped low and touched the hardened shaft, she heard him moan her name in helpless surprise. Satisfaction curved her mouth. She knew that she had caught up the essence of his pleasure in her hand.
With instincts that came from she knew not where, Beth feathered her fingers over him slowly. His groan told her that her instincts had been correct.
Duncan caught her wrist to stop her before it was too late. Breath came heavily to him.
“Where have you learned these skills, Beth, to drive me mad so?”
She moved and felt him against her, heated and ready. “You have taught me everything.”
“Then the teacher has become the student. And willingly so.” Twining his fingers through hers as he held both her hands above her head, Duncan covered her mouth with his and entered her.
And then they were bound for glory, leaving far behind them a world gone mad.
Chapter Twenty-nine
Beth rolled over onto her side in the large bed. Slowly she dislodged herself from the tight cocoon of sleep that was wrapped around her. In the distance there were birds singing, greeting the day, just as there might be back home. It seemed, she mused, still hazy, as if all should be peaceful, rather than in a state of turmoil.
Her eyes still closed, Beth reached out for him.
But the place beside
her was empty and cool. She opened her eyes to confirm what her fingertips had already ascertained.
A momentary pang of regret at being left alone drifted through her, to be nudged aside by the comforting warmth of memories.
She had fallen asleep in Duncan’s arms, fallen asleep exhausted and contented after a night she would never forget. Never had she dreamed that it could be this way between a man and a woman. Her mother had never even hinted at the subject, and while she knew the basic motions and what was required within a coupling, Beth had not even fantasized about the emotions involved.
She would have never believed the incredible sensations had someone attempted to tell her.
Beth arched, and her body stretched along the sheets. They lay, rumpled and bunched beneath her, a tribute to last night’s lovemaking. A tribute to Duncan and the power he could unleash within her.
Beth sighed and remembered, hugging herself.
Birds called to one another more urgently. It was past dawn, and time to be up. Time, she thought, to go about the business of why she was here to begin with.
Completely awake now, eager to be about, Beth rose and dressed quickly. It took her but a few minutes to arrange her hair and pin it up, out of the way. The clothes she donned were the same ones she had worn yesterday. Tommy’s baggy linen shirt and britches were far more to her liking now than the skirts she knew her great-aunt would have preferred to see on her.
She wanted to be able to move quickly, if need be. Duncan could have no reason for leaving her behind today. If he hadn’t already, she thought suddenly with a start.
Pulling her boots on, she made plans. She would greet her great-aunt and grandmother, then hurry to see about finding Duncan.
There was an unease in the air, and she knew not what it was, or why, only that she felt it.
The birds, she realized, had suddenly stopped singing.
Beth knocked on her great-aunt’s door, but there was no answer. She knocked once more, then slowly opened it, only to find that Cosette was not there.
Though there was no reason for it, the feeling of foreboding grew greater, like a dark shadow spreading upon her soul.
She pulled the doors shut, attempting to calm her fears. Her father had said that his aunt was an early riser, often leaving her bed just when the moon retreated to its lair.
Still, the feeling that something was wrong persisted, gripping her heart.
Beth turned toward her grandmother’s room as if she was being drawn there by some unforeseen hand. As she knocked, she heard a muffled sound from within. Beth took it to mean that she was allowed to enter. She pushed open the double doors and walked in.
Unlike yesterday, the draperies at the window were pulled back, admitting the dawn and the light. Denise had requested it.
Beth saw her great-aunt kneeling by the bed.
Her heart constricting within her breast, Beth immediately rushed to the other side of the four-poster. Anxiously, she looked from her great-aunt to the wan form in the bed.
Her grandmother’s eyes were closed.
“Is something—?”
Cosette raised her bowed head and Beth saw the tears that stained the shallow cheeks. Beth placed her hand upon the withered shoulder in silent comfort.
Cosette sighed heavily, desperately fighting for control.
“It is her time.”
Beth looked upon the face of her grandmother once more. It was so still, yet not devoid of life, though the eyes remained closed.
“Grandmere?”
The sightless eyes opened, and there seemed to be a lightness there, as if she could see what no one else was able to.
Her dried lips lifted in a smile. “Still here, little one. Waiting to say goodbye. I knew if I but tried, I would remain long enough for you to come.”
Beth looked at her great-aunt. “Why didn’t you send for me?”
But Cosette only shook her head, her eyes fixed upon the face of her sister. “I was afraid to leave, afraid that if I but turned my back—“
The shallow chest moved heavily with each breath. “I said I would wait.”
Denise Beaulieu groped for her granddaughter’s hand. Beth was quick to seal the fragile extremity within her own hands. The smile widened slightly, stretching skin across her cheeks until it looked as if it would tear.
“You said that you would find your father.”
“Yes,” Beth murmured, her voice thick with tears. “I shall. I promise, Grandmere. I won’t rest until I find him and bring him home.”
Denise nodded, though even the slightest action took much from her.
She sighed, relieved. “Then I can die happily, assured that you will.” Her fingers tightened slightly. It was all she was capable of managing. “I know he is still alive. I feel it in these cumbersome old bones of mine.”
The thin smile sagged into the corners of her mouth, unable to remain for long. The effort was too much.
“I will do what I can for you, once I have crossed to the other side.” She said the words wistfully. “I will be much lighter then. And there are many I know who are waiting for me.”
For a moment, she fell silent, gasping for air that would not come. A panic edged in Beth. She tightened her hold on her grandmother’s hand, as if that would tether the old woman to life a little longer, to her a little longer.
Denise turned her head toward the direction of her sister’s voice. There was not much time now. She knew it.
“Cosette?”
“Here.” Cosette grasped the dying woman’s other hand, her tears spilling freely and without pause. “I am right here, Denise.”
Denise’s lips moved once without sound. Cosette inclined her head nearer. This time, the words were aloud, a whisper in the wind. “Je t’aime.”
“Je t’aime, aussi.” Cosette replied, tears choking the words until they were almost unrecognizable.
But it was too late.
The old woman had slipped away from them as silently as smoke. Her hand slackened in her sister’s. With the last bit of strength Denise Beaulieu had possessed, she had strived for dignity and willed her eyes closed before she left them.
A flood of tears rose within Beth, hammering at her throat and chest. But she could not indulge herself by releasing them. This was not the time to allow herself to give vent to the grief she felt. Her great-aunt needed her strength, not her sorrow.
Cosette buried her head in her arms upon the bed. Her frail body shook with sobs as grief sliced her heart in two.
Slowly, Beth raised the woman from her knees and held her to her breast. Cosette’s grief was boundless, and Beth was at a loss as to what to do. She stroked the bowed gray head and murmured small words of comfort that she knew fell on deaf ears.
Perhaps it was more for herself that she said, “Grandmere will be better this way. Where she is now there is no more pain, no more suffering, no more sorrow or cause for it.”
The words were muffled against her shoulder. So distraught was she that Cosette could not even lift her head to speak. “I know, I know, but I shall miss her so. There is no one left for me who remembers anymore. Everyone is younger, and now I am a stranger in a land I once knew.”
She sobbed for a long time.
Duncan found them this way when he came to the bedroom to bid Denise good morning. He noticed it all in one sweeping glance, the draperies thrown open, as if to let a spirit free, the still woman within the bed, the sobbing old woman supported by Beth.
He crossed to them with no hesitation. He was no stranger to death, yet he could never meet with its handiwork easily.
Duncan placed a hand softly on Beth’s shoulder. “She is gone?”
Beth raised her head, the tears she could not shed shimmering in her eyes and on her lashes. She nodded mutely.
He touched the shallow cheeks and felt the old woman’s hands. They were still warm, but even now, they were cooling.
“When?”
Beth raised one shoulder and let it fall. “J
ust now. Within the half-hour.” She shook her head helplessly. “I do not know.” She looked down at the woman she held in her arms and pressed her lips together. “Time has slipped away from me.”
As if her words touched off something within her great-aunt, Cosette raised her head and pulled her shoulders back as far as she was able. Dignity returned as she wiped away the last of her tears, though her eyes were red-rimmed and deeply swollen.
She swallowed twice before she was able to speak. “We must bury her beneath the oak. It was her wish. And quickly.”
“But why—?” Beth began uncertainly. She didn’t understand why there was this sudden look of urgency in her great-aunt’s eyes.
There was no time to explain.
“Just do as I say,” she told them.
Cosette laid a hand to her breast. It was as if she felt a quake there. There was no time for sorrow now, only action. This, above all else, she owed to her dear sister.
“Quickly, quickly. There is no time to lose.” She looked at Duncan as thoughts frantically collided with one another. “There are shovels in the shed at the far end of the garden. We’ll have need of them.”
Turning on the point of her cane, Cosette shuffled toward the doorway as if something vicious was but a few steps behind her.
Beth was completely mystified. There was a dignity to death, a tradition to follow. Her great-aunt, of all people, should know this. Had her grief somehow caused her mind to come unhinged?
“But a coffin, a wake,” Beth began helplessly. “The priest—“
Cosette shook her head, cutting short the protest. “There is no time.” Her hand braced on the doorjamb, she leaned forward on her cane and peered toward her grandniece’s face. “Do you know what they do to members of our class when they find them dead?”
Beth slowly moved her head from side to side, unable to voice any of the thoughts that were suddenly sprouting in her mind. They were all unspeakable and macabre, though she had heard some hints of it.
But civilized people did not behave in the manner she had heard whispered. That was for savages who knew no better—Indians, heathens, not people in a country centuries old.
Moonlight Surrender (Moonlight Book 3) Page 22