Historical Jewels

by Jewel, Carolyn

  “I haven’t your talent, but I like to draw a scene when I can.” He sat up, knees drawn up under his blankets and his arms wrapped loosely around the outside. His hair curled willy-nilly over one side of his forehead, and the tilt of his head made the awkward angle of his cheek all the more apparent. “Draw something,” he said.

  She turned another page or two. He’d captured a view of the bazaar in Constantinople. On another page was the Great Mosque. Very competently done. She picked up his pencil “You?”

  His eyes stayed on her. “If you like. Or fix one of those things I tried to put down.”

  She chose a blank page and started to sketch as she spoke. She knew the lines of his face so much better now. “I began to hate him,” she said softly. “My uncle, not Crosshaven, for taking me away even though I’d done nothing wrong. And yet,” she said, “I was glad to be gone from London. From England. Word had reached even Oxford. Some of Godard’s friends cut us dead. Even after we left England, we sometimes went days without speaking to each other except for, ‘Please pass the sugar,’ or ‘Yes. That is a magnificent example of an Ionic column.’”

  “Are you drawing me?” he asked.

  She glanced at him, then returned her attention to her page. “Do you mind?”

  “I’m no Adonis, Sabine.”

  “You have a noble face.” His reply to that was a laugh, and she fixed him with a stare. His gaze met hers, one of those accidental exchanges that seemed to happen between them from time to time. Her stomach went shivery again. “Must I be stern with you, Foye? I warn you, you will not find that pleasant.”

  “No. Please no.” His mouth curved into a smile.

  “Then stay just as you are.” She worked on the line of his cheek and started on his eyes. “You have very pretty eyes,” she said.

  “You tread upon dangerous ground, Sabine,” Foye said. “You might turn my head with such talk.”

  She laughed. “I doubt that very much.”

  This time she was succeeding in capturing the strength in his face, but her pencil was losing its edge. “Have you a pen knife? Or a pencil that’s less dull?”

  He reached into his saddlebag again and pulled out a wooden case that held a supply of pencils. None were as sharp as she liked, but she found one that would do and began on the details of his mouth. His lower lip was fuller than his upper, and there was a tenderness there, lurking in the masculinity of his jaw and chin.

  “You are very busy there,” he said.

  She held out the book and showed him the page. “If I had my own materials I would have done better, but it’s a tolerable likeness, I think. Better than what I managed before.”

  Foye looked at it for quite a while before he said anything. “My God,” he whispered. “Me to the very hook in my nose. You are an artist, Sabine.” He touched the page. “Did Godard know this about you? I know he discouraged you, but did he understand the extent of your talent?”

  She reached over and took the sketchbook back. “He knew a great deal, Foye. But not everything. Now, since you will not let me draw you from life, I think we are done. Surely, now we may sleep.”

  But Foye stared at her, his eyes intent. “I’ve lost my soul to you,” he said. “My heart.”

  She stretched out a hand and pressed her fingertips to his chest until she felt the beating of his heart. “Your heart beats here, Foye. In your chest. You carry it with you wherever you go.”

  “And yet you are its owner.”

  She thought of Rosaline and how badly Foye had been hurt. She was glad Rosaline had jilted him. Sorry he’d been hurt yet glad that it had happened. “I’ll keep it safe for you,” she said. “Will you do the same with mine?”

  He reached up and over his shoulders to grab the back of his shirt and pull the linen over his head. While she watched, his hands disappeared underneath his blanket.

  “What you are doing?” she asked, though it was clear he was removing his breeches. In an instant, all the tension from before roared back. She was too aware of him. And aware of him not as Lord Foye but as a male animal to her female. Yes, she far was too aware of herself and her body’s reaction to him.

  He used his foot to pull away the blanket. “There,” he said. He lay back and threw one arm above his head. The other he left at his side, relaxed, his long fingers loose.

  The Marquess of Foye was naked.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  July 2, 1811

  About two thirty in the morning. The caravansary in Aleppo. Neither Foye nor Sabine were asleep. They should have been. But they weren’t.

  Just when, Foye wondered, had he gone utterly mad? What in God’s name had possessed him to strip naked in front of Sabine? Lust, he thought. Pure, roaring, boiling-his-blood lust. He had no intention of making love to her. He wanted to. He wanted his body over hers and inside her, but when they were married. When she was indisputably his. England was months away by ship, and the stark reality of that was if he made love to her now and she conceived, by the time they were home, she’d have quickened. He could hardly get her to St. Paul’s in time, and even if they managed to disguise her condition, they would be hard-pressed to explain a child born so early.

  At the moment, however, he had an even more pressing concern. Which was what Sabine would do. He kept his eyes on her and waited for a maidenly protest or even amused laughter. But none came. Which was really quite interesting.

  She was silent, but hers was not precisely a shocked silence. She sat cross-legged on her mattress, frozen, so yes, perhaps she was a bit shocked at what he’d done. So was he, actually. But he rather thought she was schooling her reaction, carefully hiding from him what she was thinking inside that clever head of hers. Eventually, however, her gaze moved downward from his face.

  Now, admittedly, his face was awkwardly put together. There was not much to admire there. But the rest? Enough women had expressed their delight with his person that he thought it likely he pleased Sabine. Though, true enough, he was imposing in a way some women enjoyed and others did not. His time among the Turks had stripped him down to the point where he was leaner than he’d ever been in London, and he had never been prone to fat. His skin fit closer to the muscle now.

  They were perhaps an arm’s length apart. One of his arms. All his flaws and assets were on display for her. She still wasn’t objecting. Her examination was slow, and yes, she lingered at his cock—he was erect, no helping that either—and if he was not mistaken, her cheeks turned pink before her attention traveled on. If she’d seen those Greek amphorae, she knew about a man’s before-and-after state, as it were.

  The sketchbook he’d given her was open on her lap, his face captured on the white sheet. She picked up her pencil, turned to a fresh page, and began to draw. As she worked, he heard her pencil moving over paper, and he relaxed in respect of her objections to his nudity. Perhaps she would decide she didn’t want him. She may have decided that already. Or perhaps she would decide she liked a man built on his scale.

  God help him.

  His body reacted predictably to that particular line of thought. He didn’t move or in any way try to hide the particular part of him that ached. There were certain realities of the male body of which, one way or another, she was not entirely ignorant and his present physical state happened to be one of them.

  He was mad for her, mad to have her, mad to be with her. That he was entertaining some rather coarse desires where she was concerned did not help matters much. He forced his thoughts to less titillating subjects than unsuitable places for her mouth and brought his physical reaction to a less rampant state. Foye wondered if he could, after all, manage to keep his honor, and hers, intact. Perhaps Sabine would spend all night drawing him and so save them from his base desires.

  She turned a page, and he watched her pencil moving again. When she concentrated on a part of her drawing, she had a habit of chewing on her lower lip. It occurred to him as well that she rarely resorted to the bit of gum rubber he used when one of h
is efforts went awry, which was often.

  She was a gifted artist. If she’d been a man she might already be working in oils and be a member of the Royal Academy, painting female nudes and taking commissions for formal portraits. What he’d seen of her work in mere pencil was breathtakingly good. What might she accomplish in oils?

  Presently, she put down her pencil and said, “I believe I’m done.” She sat with the sketchbook on her lap. Almost immediately, the earlier tension between them returned. In force.

  “May I see?”

  “If you like.” Her cheeks turned pink beneath the coloring on her skin, which made him wonder. Sabine was never coy, but what was this blush of hers? “There is another on the page before.”

  He was quite comfortable being nude in front of her and didn’t bother to cover himself with his blanket or stop to pull on his shirt. He pushed up on one elbow and took the bound sketchbook from her. In remarkably few strokes, she had captured his outsized body and transformed all his physical awkwardness into something heroic. And yet every line was as familiar to him as the face he saw in the mirror. That was his body there, big and muscled beyond the elegance of, say, someone like Crosshaven. And she’d formed him with a series of strokes that rendered him lithe and sensual, a desirable male whose partner was waiting somewhere not far away. Any moment, the man on this sheet of paper would have his lover in his arms.

  “They’re only studies,” she said. “For something more formal later, if I have the opportunity.”

  He glanced up. “When you have the opportunity.”

  Slowly, she inhaled, and damn, but he wanted to know what she was thinking. “Thank you for letting me draw you. I know how difficult it must have been.”

  “Not at all. You’re talented, Sabine.” He turned the page backward and didn’t know whether to laugh or shout or be deeply appalled at what he saw there. She’d drawn, in exquisite detail, his erect penis. There was only the barest suggestion of the body to which it was attached.

  “I suppose,” she said, “you think me wicked.”

  He pushed himself the rest of the way up. He was going to hell anyway, so he put down the book, looped his arm around the back of her neck to draw her to him, and kissed her. Nothing tender or sensitive, but an open-mouthed, deep kiss that started out electrifyingly arousing and stayed there, getting more intense by the second.

  Her mouth was soft against his, accepting. Welcoming. Her palm lightly touched his torso and then flattened on his chest, one finger sweeping over his nipple, and his arousal ramped up to a nearly unbearable pitch.

  He pulled away, not far, enough to say, “You understand this is fatal for us, don’t you?” he said in a gruff voice. “Nothing will be the same between us if we do this. It means there’s no wedding at St. Paul’s.” No more bloody waiting.

  “I don’t care what happens.” Her lids swept down, briefly hiding her eyes from him. “Not today, nor tomorrow. Or ever. So long as I have lived one day in my life. Just one. With you.”

  “Sabine.” He reached out to brush a finger along her cheek. “A day? Only one out of all the days you have left? Do stop frowning.” He pressed his thumb over her mouth. “That’s better. Surely you realize that I will have to marry you here, not in England.” He pressed his mouth to the side of her throat. “It’s for the best,” he said. He tightened his arm around her nape, bringing her closer. “I don’t think I could have held out much longer anyway.”

  “Kiss me again, Foye,” she said.

  He frowned and drew back a bit farther. “You do understand, Sabine, yes? We would have married anyway, but this means sooner, before it’s convenient for either of us. We merely anticipate our wedding night.”

  Her tongue darted out to touch her lower lip, and Foye was swamped with visions of what he’d like for her to do with him. “Are you certain, Foye?”

  “Hell, yes, Sabine.” He started working at her clothes, an occupation that got him farther away from her, not closer. She took a breath and relaxed. “Jesus,” he said in a low voice, “if anyone comes in, he’s going to think I’m about to bugger my dragoman.”

  She gave a soft laugh at that. He found the sound ravishing.

  He unraveled the sash around her waist then slid a hand underneath her outer cloak and pushed it off first one shoulder and then the other. She did the rest, and before long she was free of the garment. Their eyes connected when he pushed apart the two halves of her jacket. His state of arousal was nearly enough to make him forget this was to be her first sexual encounter.

  “You’ll tell me if I do anything to make you afraid?” he asked. She nodded, and he said, softly, “Do not lie to me, Sabine. There are ways for us to do this without me scaring you to death. If you need time, if you reconsider or want this to be slower, you have but to tell me.” He took her head between his two hands and kissed her forehead, her cheeks, her closed eyes. “I promise you that, my love. I will be as gentle as possible.”

  “I trust you, Foye.” She spoke so gravely, he thought his heart would break. She lifted a leg so that the inside of her thigh brushed his leg, and he went back to adoring her body inch by inch. He dropped lower to kiss her while he pushed her jacket off her shoulders, and she shifted her body to make it happen. He decided he loved her mouth.

  They worked at her shirwal next, and when the garment was loosened, he pulled me thing down her legs, touching skin that was soft and shockingly pale after her artificially brown face and arms. Her skin was warm and smooth beneath his palms. By the time he had her stripped down to that length of silk he’d been thinking about all bloody day and night, he was ready to scream with pure lust.

  “You’re right,” he said. He slid the tip of a finger between her skin and the silk and used that to pull her toward him. He’d tied the knot between her shoulder blades, which meant that she needed to sit up in order for him to get it off her. “This is far too tight. No wonder you couldn’t breathe. What benighted oaf did this to you, Sabine?”

  “I’m thinking of hiring him as my lady’s maid.” As she bent toward him, her shorn hair fell across her temples. “I wonder if I should.”

  He turned her around so he could unfasten the fabric and unwind it from her torso. The knot was stiff and tight, and he had to fight to get it loose. “Sack the fellow, I say. There are more interesting things he can do for you.” When he had it off, she stayed with her back to him, leaning down with one hand pressed to the mattress and the other on her upper torso while she took a deep, deep breath.

  Foye stared, transfixed, aroused beyond belief. The flickering light made her skin gleam like closely woven silk. Despite her being so small a woman, her curves were luscious. He drew a finger slowly down the line of her spine. Her skin was as soft as it looked, smooth everywhere and pale wherever it was free of the coloring. The slide of her ribs to her waist aroused him as much as the curve of her waist to her hips. He bent to kiss the nape of her neck and cup a hand over one of her breasts. She kept her torso bent.

  “Is this all right?” he asked, aware that his position was an aggressive one and that if the difference in their sizes bothered her, this particular arrangement of their bodies would only serve to emphasize that disparity. On the other hand, it was possible she liked it.

  “Yes,” she said on a breath.

  He shifted so he was behind her, using his other hand to bring her upright until her back was pressed against his front, and she was on her knees while his thighs spread on either side of her. He kept his hand moving upward until his fingers were in her now nut-brown hair, sliding over her skull from back to front. Golden blond sparkled from the uneven brown coloring. Her hair was thick and soft underneath, and he thought about what it would have been like to hold that once glorious mass of golden hair in his hands. He brought her head back to lean against his shoulder.

  “Sabine,” he whispered. “Oh, Sabine, you’re so lovely. Too lovely for a beast like me.” He put both his hands around her waist and reverently slid them downward, mold
ing his palms and fingers to the shape of her, pressing her against his erection. He returned to her breasts, looking at her from over her shoulder. Sabine sucked in a breath when he covered her. “Do you like when I do this?”

  “Mm.”

  “That is not an answer.” He brushed his palms over her nipples. “Do you like this?”

  “Yes, Foye.”

  She had a narrow rib cage—hell, she was smaller than him by a terrifying amount—but her breasts were magnificent. Not unduly large, but far more than he expected. She was quite pale. Even her nipples were a pale, pinkish brown. He felt a surge of disbelief that he should have gotten them to this point of aching desire and mutual nakedness. And here he was, holding her, cupping her breasts, and feeling the beat of her heart underneath his palm. He wasn’t considering anything like sedate intercourse with her. He was, in fact, in serious danger of losing his self-control.

  That could not happen. Not for her first time with him. Her first time ever. He would be gentle. Tender. Restrained.

  His hands, the backs browned by the sun, looked entirely, wonderfully masculine on her, large and bordering on coarse. He caressed her and dropped a line of kisses along her shoulder. “Such a lovely body, Sabine. Divine.”

  He laid her down on the mattress and knelt between her legs, looking at her. Another shiver of arousal shot through him. He drew a hand along one of her thighs, bringing his fingers around to the inside. He knew he could all too easily overwhelm her. The last thing he wanted was to see her looking at him with fear. He was trying his best, really he was.

  He cupped her sex, tangling his fingers in her pale, crisp nether hair. She might change her mind. She could. She might take a long, hard look at him and decide she would never accept him. This was not, after all, a true wedding night, where there was, in essential fact, no possibility of his wife denying him. He pressed his hand over her, between her legs, sliding a finger along the folds of her body, and Sabine, quite gratifyingly, bowed toward him. Her eyes fluttered open, and she raised her knees to give him access. He came up against her maidenhead. They locked gazes. “I’ll try not to hurt you, Sabine.”