He’d asked her flat-out where she went at night in Tunford, the way Brant had wanted him to, and she hadn’t answered. She hadn’t even tried, only asking him to trust her. Trust wasn’t an excuse, and didn’t come close to being an explanation, yet because it was Fan, trust her he would. If that made him a fool, then so be it. At least they’d be fools together, for however brief a time the Admiralty would allow them.
He slid his hands from her waist over her hips, feeling the richness of her curves even through the layers of petticoats. He loved that magical place where the unyielding whalebone in a woman’s stays gave way to her flesh alone, how the contrast made the flesh seem that much softer and more lush and so fascinatingly different from his own, and he slid his hands lower, relishing how her bottom filled his hands. He pulled her closer, against the hard, insistent proof of his desire, doubtless lifting her feet clear from floor in the process. But he needed her to feel exactly how much he wanted her: how much he wanted her now.
“George, ah, my own George,” she murmured, her words ragged and her lips damp as she pressed them against his throat. She was fumbling blindly with his clothes, impatience making her clumsy, or perhaps she was simply as befuddled by male fastenings as he was with stays and petticoats. Then, finally, she managed to find her way beneath his coat and waistcoat and tug his shirt free of his trousers. Her hands snaked up along his back, her touch warm, demanding, on his bare skin, making him gulp for air, just as he tugged down the front of her gown to free her breasts, making her gulp in exactly the same way.
They suited each other, all right, he thought with whatever part of his brain remained able to think as his hand cupped the sweet, heavy weight of her bared breast. How could she ever doubt it, even for an instant? She was the first woman he’d ever met who was every bit as damned independent as he was himself, and he wouldn’t have her any other way.
She was looking up at him now through her lashes, her gaze slightly, charmingly out of focus, her mouth red and swollen from his kisses and her breathing catching as he teased the taut crest of her nipple.
“You—you’re making me dizzy, George,” she whispered, clinging to him for support, her smile wobbling with wonder.
“You’re doing the same wicked business to me, lass,” he said hoarsely, surprised, really, that he could manage to say that much as he kissed her again. Over her head he had a fleeting glimpse of their shadowy selves reflected over and over in the tall windows and looking-glasses, and crazily he thought of how this was something Brant would do, not him. And then Fan shook her tangled hair back from her face and slid her hand around to the flat of his belly.
“Fan.” His voice was strained as he struggled for self-control. Though he wasn’t Brant, he wasn’t some green boy, either, and he’d had enough experience with enough women scattered around the world, that he shouldn’t be this close to being unmanned.
But this wasn’t all those other women in his past. This was Fan, his Fan, and this was now, and with a wordless groan he swept her backwards, onto the broad cushioned bench along the wall. She leaned up on her elbows, all creamy pale skin and black hair, dark skirts and white linen against the striped cushions.
As she watched him yank his arms from the sleeves of his coat, her eyes were enormous by the light of the lantern on the floor behind him, yet there was not a breath of shyness or reluctance as, finally, she linked her arms around his shoulders to welcome him and draw him down, over her, onto her.
They were past words now, past anything but the rawest sensation, their movements driven by urgency. Swiftly he shoved her skirts over her knees, above her garters and the tops of her stockings to discover the softest skin imaginable, there along the insides of her thighs. She was trembling, yet still she eagerly eased her legs farther apart for him, and as he slid his hand higher, he realized he was shaking, too. She was wet and hot, arching against his fingers, instinctively trying to draw him deeper.
With her little breathy gasps filling his ears, she couldn’t wait much longer, and neither could he. He tore at the fall of his trousers, heedless of the buttons he sent skittering across the floor, and settled himself over her. As gently as he could, he entered her, feeling her tightness gradually yield to him, groaning as he found the heaven that was her body. She stiffened beneath him, curling her legs around his waist and as he began to move, she gave a small cry that was halfway between a sob and a laugh.
Instantly he stopped, realizing now the truth he’d been too bullheaded to understand. “You are—were—a virgin, weren’t you, Fan?” he gasped, the blood still pounding. “Are you all right?”
“Oh, yes—yes,” she managed to whisper raggedly. “It’s not that it hurts. It is only—only different than what I expected.”
He grunted, not exactly sure what that meant, but deciding to take it for permission to continue. Slowly he moved again, and this time he was rewarded with a sigh that could only be one of pleasure. Tentatively she began to match his rhythm, finding her own pace as her confidence and pleasure built. Soon their movements grew more and more urgent, more demanding, as the tension spiraled higher and higher between them until, with one final thrust, he brought them to a release that left them both shuddering and spent.
Mindful of the width of the bench, he carefully lifted his weight from her, shifting to his side and bringing her with him, their arms and legs still intimately tangled together. He smoothed the dark tangle of her hair back from her face to kiss her, and saw the tears that streaked her face.
“Oh, lass, I’m sorry,” he said with gruff but genuine remorse. “I should have known you were—well, what you were. I never wanted to hurt you like this.”
“But you didn’t,” she said, trying to smile even as she sniffed back her tears, “and I’m not, not at all. I’m only crying because it was so—so much more.”
“Ah,” he said cautiously, not beginning to understand. He’d never experienced anything as bone-shatteringly amazing as what he’d just shared with her, but he didn’t think that was what she meant. “Yes.”
“Yes.” She sniffed again, but her smile seemed more steady as she shyly traced her finger along his jaw. “And I’m not sorry, either, not at all.”
“But you deserved more, Fan,” he said. Damnation, she meant so much to him, yet he couldn’t help but feel he was making another righteous mess of all of this. “Better, anyway. There should have been roses and champagne and a feather bed instead of this wretched bench in a drafty great room, and all the rest that ladies deserve in such, ah, circumstances.”
“But I’m not a lady, George,” she said with a wistfulness that tore at his conscience, and his heart. “You always forget that.”
“What you are, Fan, is the woman I love,” he said firmly. “That’s more than sufficient for me, and I’m not bloody likely to forget it, either.”
“Love?” she repeated, clearly too stunned to venture more.
“Yes, love, because I love you,” he said, surprising himself as much as her. Not because he didn’t mean it, of course, but because he did, more than any words he’d ever spoken. The surprising part was that he’d never before said those particular three words, in that significant combination, to anyone else in his life. “I love you.”
At once she pressed his fingers over his lips. “Don’t say such things, George!”
Gently he pulled her hand aside, turning it so he could kiss her moist little palm. “I told you before, Fan. I’m no liar, especially about this.”
But she shook her head, her eyes troubled and pleading as she drew her hand away from his. “Please, George. Don’t make promises you’ve no intention of keeping once we leave this room.”
“Then stay with me after we leave it,” he said, the idea immediately appealing. “Upstairs, to my rooms, to my bed, and we’ll watch the dawn come together.”
She sighed, and sat upright back on her heels and away from him, pulling her bodice back into place. “I do not know if that is such a wise plan, George, not for
either of us.”
“The devil take such wisdom.” He sat, too, impatiently rebuttoning whichever buttons still survived on his trousers. “Fan, listen to me. I could receive my sailing orders from the Admiralty tomorrow morning, even tonight, and then be shot to pieces by some French bastard a week after that.”
“For men it is war, for women childbirth,” she said softly, sadly. “Death is too much a part of life.”
“True enough,” he said. Tonight he’d put her at risk of bearing his child, a responsibility he’d also accept with the rest of her. “And knowing that makes me not give a damn what the world will say or think or do about me, Fan. I answer to my king and the Admiralty, but beyond that I’m only accountable to myself and my honor.”
“But Brant says you could become duke next because he has no children,” she said, her unhappiness palpable. “He says you must be mindful of that in every—every connection you make.”
“And I say my brother should be mindful of his own damned business.” He reached for her, drawing her forward and into his arms, where, as far as he was concerned, she absolutely belonged. “I love you, Fan Winslow, and only you have the right to tell me if I’m a bloody fool for doing so.”
“You know I won’t,” she said, dashing the heel of her hand against the tears that had again spilled down her cheeks. “I won’t because I love you, too. Blast you, George! So now we must be fools together? Is that how it shall be?”
He chuckled, much preferring to have her swear at him like this than weep. “We’ve made such a good start of our foolery that I’m not about to quit now.”
“Haven’t we just.” She narrowed her eyes at him, and while this time her sniff had less to do with tears, it was more than enough to make him laugh with happiness.
“Two fools together,” he said. “I told you, Fan. We just might suit each other after all.”
Chapter Thirteen
Fan woke slowly, hovering pleasantly in a drowsy haze. She opened her eyes just far enough to see that the room was still midnight-dark, time enough for drifting back to the blissful world of sleep. Dawn and her responsibilities would come soon enough, and with a contented sigh she pulled the coverlet up a little higher over her shoulder. The pillow beneath her cheek seemed as soft as a duckling’s down, the mattress like drifting upon a cloud, the warm weight of the man’s arm curled over her bare hip was both comforting and protective, and—
The man’s arm? At once the drowsy haze vanished, and she jerked upright, now pulling the coverlet higher over her thoroughly naked self. That male arm now resting on her thigh belonged to George, her George, and as the memory of every glorious, wanton thing she’d done with him this night came racing back to her, she let out a long, low sigh of amazement, even as she blushed there in the darkness. Being country-raised, she thought she’d known what to expect from her first time with a man, but the reality of the pleasure that George had drawn from her body was far, far beyond her innocent imaginings.
But what had been the price of that knowledge?
She was naked in the great curtained bed of Captain Lord George Claremont, and everything in her life had changed. She was most definitely no longer a virgin, neither respectable nor decent in the eyes of the world, at least not once the ears of the world heard of it.
She’d become yet one more sorry servant to be tumbled by her master, and she’d never be able to look at that broad cushioned bench near the window the same way again. Ending her family’s long if lawless connection with the Winslow Company would pale to nothingness beside her playing the whore to an aristocratic officer, making her a traitor to her own class and blood. The only way she could possibly compound such a disaster would be if she bore a Claremont bastard.
And yet none of that mattered because he loved her.
That was the greatest wonder of it all, and from any other man than George, she wouldn’t have believed it. But George—ah, George wasn’t like any other man under heaven. She could marvel or wonder at such a declaration, but she’d never, ever doubt the truth of it. She was the one who’d always lived with deception, not him. He loved her, Fan Winslow, without a care for his own position or rank, and she’d returned his pledge with one of her own, giving him her body along with her heart.
Carefully she slid back down against the pillows, curling her body around his. She was fascinated by the differences between them, the roughness of the dark hair on his chest and legs and the stubble on his jaw, the play of his muscles, the warmth of his skin against hers, his musky male scent so unlike her own. Instinctively in his sleep he shifted closer against her, as if there was no other place she could possibly belong than with him. She smiled, nestling against his chest, and as she did her foot brushed against the heavy bedcurtains.
Brilliant morning sunlight burst through the narrow parting that she’d created, slicing across her, across George. With a yelp of horror she flung back the coverlet and scrambled from the bed, snatching up her clothes from where they’d been discarded here and there around the room last night.
“What the devil,” muttered George, burying his face in the pillow to avoid the light. “Come back here, Fan, and close those infernal curtains.”
“I can’t—I can’t!” she wailed, fighting her arms through the sleeves of her shift as she pulled it over her head. “Oh, George, it must be half past nine already, and all the others will have been awake and working for hours!”
“What if they have?” With a grunt of resignation, he rolled onto his back, linking his hands comfortably behind his head. It also made him as tempting as sin itself, sprawled naked without a lick of self-consciousness against the rumpled sheets. “They’ll manage perfectly well without either one of us to interfere, lass.”
“I know,” she tried to explain as she struggled with a knot in the drawstring at the neckline of her shift. “But it’s all my responsibility as Feversham’s housekeeper. I have to be certain that everything is properly done for your guests.”
“It will be, sweetheart,” he said, his lordly conviction unshakable. “You’ve done nothing else for days. But a good officer must know when to step back and trust his followers to carry out his orders. You can’t do everything yourself.”
“I know, I know, I know,” she said, finally dropping on the edge of the bed with a sigh, the neckline of her shift still untied. “But I’ve never had so much to do, or such a chance to make you proud before the finest folk in the county, and—oh, George, we’re both of us usually awake before the roosters, and the whole house knows it. Leggett, Small, Danny, your brother and the others—they all could have guessed by now why we haven’t showed ourselves.”
“Doubtless they have,” agreed George easily. “They’re all clever enough. Except perhaps for Danny, though I imagine the others will have enlightened him by now.”
“Oh, bother.” She bowed her head, letting her tangled hair fall on either side of her face. He was right, of course, and she’d no reason to act surprised. Given the proprietary interest George’s men had in him and his actions, they’d be bound to uncover such a fascinating revelation about their captain and the housekeeper in no time at all.
George leaned forward, curling her hair behind her ear with a tenderness that made her shiver. “Regrets, Fan?”
“No regrets, no,” she said softly, and she meant it. In this single night, he’d taught her the joy to be found in love, a lesson she intended to remember always. “Not at all.”
“Well, then,” he said, his smile endearingly lopsided. “You must know I still do love you, even here in the full glare of the morning. That hasn’t changed.”
“And I love you,” she said, her own smile wistful, all too aware of how fleeting that love of his might be if he ever learned of her role with the Company. “But you forget what a humble little country lass I’ve always been before you came. I’m not like you, George, so noble and grand that people have to gawk, especially when you’re bedecked with gold lace and medals.”
He cocked
one skeptical eyebrow. “You underestimate yourself, sweetheart,” he said. “And overestimate me. You’re a proud, beautiful woman, Fan, nothing humble at all, and tonight in that new gown of yours you’ll rival every titled lady in the realm. There won’t be a single glance spared for me.”
She couldn’t help flushing with pleasure at the compliment, nor could she keep from running her fingers lightly along his whiskery jaw. Ah, how much she did love him!
“Not one, excepting one from every last woman in the room,” she said wryly. “Recall the way the Blackerby ladies fell upon you, and reckon that by a hundred.”
“How fortunate, then, that I shall have you there to defend me,” he said, taking her hand to press her fingers to his lips. “I’m proud of you, Fan, deuced proud. Side by side on the quarterdeck we’ll stand, and no prisoners taken, either.”
“More likely those two same fools together,” she warned as he kissed her fingers, and wished she could forget everything else except the deliciously teasing sensation. “Mind me, George. Kitchen gossip flies upstairs faster than a cinder on the wind, and your guests will hear of—of us before they’ve had time to leave off their cloaks.”
“They’ll know it sooner than that if they see us together, lass,” he said, nibbling gently on one finger to try to distract her. “Let them look their fill, I say.”
“They will do that.” She sighed, wishing she could be so brashly confident about the future. She knew the scandal would race among the well-bred guests tonight, but how long would it take before it reached the hearths of the cottages in Tunford? And how many days after that would she have before the other side of the same scandal, the part involving her role with the Winslow Company, swept from those same cottages back to Feversham? “I’ve lived alone here for so long that it’s not easy to now have so many others watching me—us—like players on a stage for their amusement.”
The Silver Lord Page 18