A Matter of Indiscretion

by Jackie Barbosa

  He withdrew his fingers and straightened, kneeling between her thighs. Her knees were bent and her legs spread so widely that she could feel a rush of cold air from the room across her wet flesh.

  Her heart squeezed almost painfully at the sight of him, the beautiful lines and arcs of his face and body illuminated in the flickering glow of the single bedside lamp. Naked, both emotionally and physically, and unashamed of it. She was so lucky that he was willing to lay himself bare to her, to trust her with his most forbidden desires.

  He reached across to the bedside table and picked up the base of the lamp, which he’d blown out and taken apart earlier. After pouring a generous dollop of the oil on his palm, he applied the slick liquid to his cock with smooth, even strokes. The sight was intensely erotic, and new wave of heat slithered through Sabine’s core as she watched him.

  When he was finished, he caught her knees beneath his arms and angled her hips upward, and then pressed the head of his shaft against the tightly puckered entrance. She shivered with anticipation. And a little apprehension.

  “I know this does not make sense,” he told her, his voice gravelly with restraint, “but bear down against me. It will make this easier.”

  He was right; it did not make sense, but when he pushed past the first ring of muscles, she did what he suggested and although there was still a hot, burning sensation as her body stretched to accommodate him, it did make the pain merely unpleasant rather than intolerable. Even so, she could not keep herself from wincing and biting her lip. She was not sure she could get accustomed to this, no matter how much pleasure it gave him.

  Thomas must have noticed her expression, because he immediately went still. “Should I stop?”

  Her first impulse was to say yes, but even as she thought of doing so, the discomfort seemed to lessen a little more. She shook her head. “No, it is better now.” And she found, somewhat to her surprise, that it was true. Not only was the pain fading, but she was beginning to feel as though she wanted him deeper, wanted him to move. “And I want more.”

  With a groan of relief, he gave her what she asked for, but with a tenderness and patience that had her whimpering with eagerness by the time he was fully seated inside her. And then, finally, he began to move, and the pleasure of it made her sex throb with need. Without conscious thought, she reached down between her legs and pressed her fingers against the taut bundle of nerves, though whether she intended to quell or heighten the sensation, she wasn’t certain until Thomas growled, “God, yes. Make yourself come, Sabine. Come with me.”

  As he increased the speed and depth of his thrusts, she circled and teased and rubbed the aching spot between her legs while he watched her, his eyes like embers, a sheen of sweat beading on his forehead. Her breath caught in her lungs as she reached the crest, and she prolonged the peak as long as she could, but then she toppled over, too hard, too fast, too soon but so, so good. A few seconds later, Thomas stiffened and stilled and climaxed with her, his cock jerking rhythmically as he emptied himself inside her. Watching the almost pained expression on his face as he came, she marveled at how much paradise could look and feel like torment. It certainly did to her.

  It was also the most shocking, stunning, beautifully wicked thing she had ever done, ever experienced.

  “When can we do that again?” she asked dreamily as he withdrew.

  With a huff of amusement, he dropped onto the bed beside her and drew her into his arms. “God, I adore you.”

  They did do it again some hours later, after falling asleep and then awakening in one another’s arms. This time, Thomas spooned his body against hers and entered her from behind, using his fingers to bring her to completion twice before taking his own release. After that, they slept again, awakening to the opalescent light of an overcast spring morning seeping in through the gap in the curtains.

  “Do we have time, do you think, before they come for us?” she asked hopefully.

  Thomas sat up, ran his fingers through his hair, and shook his head with a frown. “I am surprised they have not already. It must be past seven, if not eight.”

  He started to roll off the bed, but Sabine grabbed him by the arm to forestall him. “If it is that late and they have not come for us yet, it is because they are trying to give us enough time together.”

  “A lifetime would not be enough, sweetheart,” he said, and the bleakness in his tone nearly broke her heart.

  Sitting up behind him, she wrapped her arms around his waist and snuggled up against his back. “Then we had best make use of all the time we have.” She flattened one hand against the ridged muscles of his abdomen and began tracing a path down from his navel. When her palm reached his cock, she found him hard and ready. “Fuck me one more time, Thomas.” She stroked the velvety length of him and pressed a kiss to the junction between his neck and his shoulder. “Please.”

  He moved so quickly, flipping her onto her back and positioning himself between her legs in a single motion, she squealed with surprise. “I’m afraid I cannot do that.” He sounded almost angry.

  She blinked up at him in confusion. Nothing about the heated look in his eyes or the rock-solid pressure of his erection against her thigh suggested he was not about to fuck her senseless. “Why not?”

  “Because with you, I’m always making love.”

  And then he spent the next twenty minutes doing exactly that.

  25

  The ship that awaited them in the harbor at Le Havre sailed under the Portuguese flag, but Sabine soon discovered that most of the crew—save the captain, first mate, and bosun—were not Portuguese, but English or Scottish, with two Spaniards and one Italian, the cook, thrown in for leavening. Fortunately for her, the one language shared by every member of the entire crew was French.

  La Sereia, which she learned meant “The Mermaid” in Portuguese, was a three-masted barque that had been built in Lisbon some twenty years past. According to Captain Souza, a spry man with a fluffy white beard and hair, keen brown eyes, and a scar that extended from just below his right earlobe to the corner of his eye, the ship was one of the finest examples of her kind in existence, not only in beauty, but also in speed and seaworthiness. Since Souza had acquired her just over three years earlier, she—and the ship was most definitely a she, not an it—had made multiple Atlantic crossings, some in heavy weather, and each in less than two months when it was not unusual for the trip to take three months or more.

  As he guided Sabine on an extensive tour of the ship, from top deck to the berth decks where the passengers and crew would eat and sleep to the hold, which had been fitted with two generously sized stalls for her horses, the captain waxed eloquent on the high quality of the materials and craftsmanship that had gone into La Sereia’s construction, and Sabine could find no reason to contradict him. Of course, since she had never even seen a sailing ship, much less embarked on one, she had little basis for comparison, but with her shiny woodwork, gleaming brass fittings, and sturdy masts so tall they seemed to scrape the sky, La Sereia certainly impressed her.

  After completing the tour, Souza guided her back to the chamber near the ship’s bow that would be hers during the crossing to Brighton, which he told her would likely take a day and a half. The chamber was small, but finely appointed with a desk and chair, a privy, and a bed that took up an entire wall. Above the desk, two rectangular windows looked out over the dock, which bustled with activity. Moving closer, she peered out to see that Gaston and Copine had already been unhitched from the coach, which meant they might already be aboard. From her vantage, she also easily identified Thomas, who stood a few feet from the coach, talking animatedly to a man she recognized as George Brunell, the spy who had posed as Thomas’s valet. If she was any judge of body language, they were arguing.

  “How soon will we leave port?” she asked the captain, who had stopped politely at the entrance to her chamber.

  “As soon as I see you are settled, mademoiselle. The winds are favorable, so we do not want to lin
ger any longer than necessary.”

  Sabine glanced back out the window to where Thomas still stood, gesticulating angrily toward the ship. Brunell grabbed his arm and shook. Strange.

  “But Monsieur Pearce is not yet aboard.”

  “Why should he be?” Souza asked blankly.

  She whirled to face the grizzled but kindly seaman. “He is not coming to England with us?”

  “Not so far as I know. I was told I would have four passengers—you, your two horses, and some whippersnapper name of Jenkins who is your escort. He’s already aboard.” The captain frowned. “If Pearce is coming, he will have to sleep in the hammocks with the crew.”

  Sabine’s stomach lurched, and her heart knocked painfully against her ribs. She glanced back out the window. Brunell was blocking Thomas’s path, and Montague had joined them, his body language indicating that he was pleading with Thomas to listen to reason.

  Fury burned the back of her throat. They were trying to keep him from coming to say good-bye to her. She did not know why they would do such a thing—especially Montague, who had been sympathetic enough to facilitate their last night together—but the first possibility that came to her mind was that they thought she would react badly and refuse to leave if she knew Thomas was not coming.

  Just how stupid did they think she was? She had not endured nearly two weeks of grueling travel simply to change her mind at the last minute because Thomas would not be joining her for the remainder of the journey. Yes, she loved him, but that did not make her dependent on him. She could—and would—survive without him. Thomas understood that, but perhaps his colleagues did not.

  She had to act quickly. “Pardon me, captain,” she snapped and pushed by him out into the narrow hall. “There is a matter that requires my attention.”

  After taking a second to get her bearings, she rushed to the steep stairs that led up to the main deck and began to climb. Despite catching her foot once in the hem of her skirt and nearly tripping, she made good time and discovered, to her irritation, that the crew was hoisting the ramp that connected the ship to the dock.

  “Put that back,” she shouted. “I need to get off this ship.”

  The crewmen—a short, bowlegged and barefooted man with a remarkably handsome young face, and an older, leaner man clad in a fine coat that marked him as one of the ship’s officers—gawped at her in surprise.

  “Now, mademoiselle,” the officer—probably the first mate—said, “we cannot—”

  “Lower the damned thing,” she said, “or I will jump off and hope for the best.” She would not, not really, but the sailors did not need to know that. If she was going to be thought of as an overemotional, unstable female, then she might as well use it to her advantage.

  The officer blanched, and he and his crewmate hastened to oblige. When the ramp was back in place again, Sabine gave him a pleasant smile and finger-wave of gratitude before floating regally down to the dock.

  Because Thomas was facing the ship, he caught sight of her before either of the other men, and a combination of joy and relief flared across his features. She was right, then. He had been trying to get onto the ship to bid her farewell, and Montague and Brunell had prevented him. Anger swelled again in her breast, but she managed to keep it off her face, because Thomas was not the person she was angry with.

  Unaware of what was happening behind him, Brunell caught Thomas by the arm as he surged forward, but this time, Thomas wrenched his arm free with a curse and plowed ahead to meet her. She gave up trying to appear regal and flung herself into his arms. He wrapped her in a tight embrace, burying his face in her hair and inhaling as if the scent of her were as vital to him as air itself.

  She leaned back so she could look up at him, committing his face to memory one last time: the chiseled bones of his cheeks and jaw; the full, sensual curve of his lips; the warm, earthy brown of his eyes framed by those ridiculously thick lashes. Her heart twisted with longing. “You are not coming to England with me.” She did not phrase it as a question. She knew the answer.

  “My orders are to stay in France and straighten out the mess with Joubert and Duval. When that is done, I will return to London and get my orders for my post.”

  “Will I see you before you leave?”

  The sorrow on his face was almost too much to bear. He leaned his forehead against hers and sighed. “I do not think that would be a good idea. Do you?”

  Tears collected in the corners of her eyes, and she blinked desperately to clear them. He was right. Planning to see him again before he left for good would only prolong the agony and feed the vain hope that they could find a way to be together. “No, I suppose not.” She choked back a sob and straightened her shoulders, determined not to come across as the weak-willed female Montague and Brunell undoubtedly thought her to be. “Which means this is farewell.”

  Thomas raised his hands and cradled her face between his palms. “I love you.”

  She gave him a cheeky smile. “I know.”

  A low chuckle rumbled in his chest. “Cheeky wench.” He brushed a thumb over her lips. “I should very much like to kiss you, but everyone is watching.”

  Threading her fingers into his silky hair, she raised up on her toes and whispered, “Do it anyway.”

  With a groan, he leaned in and took her mouth with his own. He began softly, slowly, almost chastely, but that did not last long and soon, he was devouring her lips and tongue with hot, urgent abandon. The kiss was like a book, a retelling of their love story from its tentative beginnings to its passionate conclusion, and she didn’t want to finish it, didn’t want to read the last words and close the cover. Instead, she savored every page, memorized the firm pressure of his lips, the teasing thrust and retreat of his tongue, and the hard-muscled line of his body molded against hers. Every emotion was written in excruciating clarity: lust, love, longing, lamentation. She didn’t even realize she was crying until the salt of her tears mingled with the mint-and-spice flavor she recognized as Thomas.

  When he finally broke the contact, the world snapped abruptly back into focus, and she heard the cat-calls, wolf-whistles, and applause of their audience, which had expanded to include not only Brunell and Montague, but half the crew of La Sereia, who had gathered at her rail to watch, and dozens of bystanders on the dock.

  And she still didn’t care.

  “You’re needed aboard, mademoiselle,” Captain Souza shouted from above.

  Sabine waved her hand to indicate she had heard him and would be coming soon. Steeling herself, she wiped away the last of her tears and looked up into Thomas’s beloved face one last time. “Good-bye, Thomas Chadwick Pearce, and Godspeed.”

  Then she turned on her heel and ran for the ship before she could make a fool of herself by bursting into heartbroken tears.

  26

  London, England – February 22, 1806

  “Oh, do stop pacing, Sabine,” Winifred Langston Pearce chided. “You’ll wear a groove in my father-in-law’s favorite carpet, and I shall never hear the end of it.”

  Sabine stopped, looked down at the Aubusson rug in the sitting room of the Pearce family’s London townhouse, and frowned. The tan-and-blue pattern might once have been pretty and even vibrant, but the colors had faded with age to a dull, dishwatery hue. “This is his favorite carpet?” she asked dubiously.

  Freddie threw up her hands in mock exasperation. “Anything I have a hand in damaging is his favorite thing, starting from the day I married his son.”

  Despite her current unhappiness, Sabine laughed at her best friend’s irreverence. Within two weeks of Sabine’s arrival in London, a footman had delivered Freddie Pearce’s calling card, and the two had met for the first time the following day. As Thomas had predicted when he had first mentioned his childhood friend and sister-in-law to Sabine, the women had found much in common and quickly became boon companions. For Sabine, who had never had a truly close female friend before, their camaraderie had been both a revelation and balm for the pain of los
ing Thomas. The fact that Freddie also knew Thomas and loved him—albeit purely platonically—only strengthened their bond.

  And now she had another loss to mourn. Privately.

  It had been just under a month since the untimely death of William Pitt. Sabine still had a hard time thinking of him as her father, though as soon as she had laid eyes on him some eleven months previous, the fact that he was her father had been an unmistakable truth. The shape of their eyes, the height of their foreheads, the color of their hair—though his had grayed considerably in comparison to hers—and their shared facial expressions and mannerisms were testament to the blood connection between them.

  A connection Pitt had been unwilling to reveal publicly, given the current climate, a decision Sabine had understood and even supported. Admitting he had a half-French daughter, given Britain’s current hostilities with Bonaparte, would be political suicide. There would be time later, once he had retired from public life, which he had sworn he would do as soon as he felt the safety of the commonwealth was assured. He had managed to make arrangements to ensure her financial security for the foreseeable future, settling the sum of eight thousand pounds on her. With these funds, she had purchased a property near Swindon for herself and her horses while having plenty left over to cover her living expenses until her business became profitable, although she had already earned stud fees from several nearby farmers who owned Shire or Suffolk Punch draft horses and wanted to experiment with crossing them with a Percheron.

  For the most part, she was happy in England, certainly happier than she had been in France after Maman’s death. The food was a trifle bland, the language was a bothersome barrier at times, the weather was damper and chillier than she was accustomed to, and her relationship with the man who had sired her was neither as close nor as uncomplicated as she might have wished, but one could not have everything.