“Furthermore I am going to tell you what you are going to do in your guise of useless, lecherous nobleman. You are going to pretend to get drunk at my club tonight, late as it is the place will be packed, and with loosened lips reveal what you think I am hiding in my safe. The ladies of London have nothing on the gossip loving men of our gentlemen’s clubs. The story will be around town in less than a day. That way if that crown is what they are after they will know where to come and find it. Maybe then they will leave our girl alone. I don’t know that’s all there is to it considering Sean has had that damn thing for years now, but it’s a place to start.”
Sebastian looked at David with renewed respect, “When did you get so devious? I like that plan, it’s almost worthy of Bishop. We use you and your safe as bait and see what kind of fish we catch.”
They caught a hackney to Brook’s. Sebastian had theatrically sprinkled a tad of brandy hither and yon about his person, once he was dressed for the club. He surprised his friend by the complete change in demeanor. Not reeling, but with the sort of bonhomie that men not quite sober often effected, he stepped into the club with David and slapped him on the back. Throckwell, it appeared, had produced another fine actor.
“Now where is a game of cards or cup of dice?” and he hailed a passing waiter to demand a bottle of the best French brandy.
“Lead on! I’ve missed England and intend tonight to enjoy everything it has to offer,” and in a loud whisper, the drunk often having no sense of volume, “You simply must find me a nunnery, the best mind you. You have no idea what it’s been like all the years on that island with not a good English brothel to be had,” and he laughed lecherously. He moved with long limbed grace through the rooms, looking for the man David had already decided would be their target for the evening, the biggest male gossip in London and brother to a leading minister. They’re mark for the evening was that fastidious and dull man Lord Augustus Oxley.
It didn’t take long to find the florid, fat little man. David had said the fellow had a taste for outrageous cravats and an insistence on combing over the balding spot on the top of his head. What he hadn’t mentioned was his abysmal taste in waistcoats. This one appeared to be embroidered all over with birds of every type and color and was enough to make one dizzy if not smart enough not to look too closely.
“Ah! Auggie old man!” David smiled slightly with a bare hint of aristocratic condescension. Lord Augustus looked up from his game of whist startled and pleased to be addressed by a Corinthian like Lord Carvell and his eyes nearly popped with glee when he saw that none other than the Earl of
Redsayle was there too. Men of this cut did not often seek out a non-sporting gentleman such as himself. He did his best in his own small way to make his mark on the ton, through fashion and harmless charm, but these type of men flew far above him. He was so thrilled he had to remind himself to keep calm. He could not control the pleased flush that suffused his cheeks however at such attention.
“Game of whist I see. I don’t suppose you’d have a seat for my dear
Redsayle would you? He’s rusty at all our English pursuits and needs to get his hand back in the game,” David could almost cringe at himself knowing the sacrifice he was making. Auggie would very likely never leave him alone at Brook’s or anywhere else ever again.
“I would be honored of course Redsayle,” Auggie nearly popped a waistcoat button leaping from his seat, “Please join me,” and as the waiter from whom Sebastian had ordered the brandy arrived, he smiled even more broadly. “We were just beginning another round and would be happy to have you join us. You can regale us with your adventures on Celtica while we pit our wits against one another. One hears such strange tales of the place. You can help us part truth from fiction,” and he laughed jovially even as his heart warmed. Sebastian suggested they play for a sum a point that should have made him shake, but it was clear the Earl was in his cups. With that fresh bottle of prime brandy he was about to be deeper. Auggie could only imagine what new apparel he would soon be fitted for as all the lovely winnings would be coming his way.
Three hours, two more bottles of brandy passed about, and a heaping sum in Lord Augustus Oxley’s pockets, Sebastian and David pretended to carefully help each other to the door. They vocally commiserated with each other over the fiendish whist playing of Oxley. A hackney was called to carry them back to David’s lodgings and once the door closed the two men simply looked at each other.
“You are indeed a man of many talents my friend,” David eyed Sebastian with new respect.
“Acting is a large part of spying. You can’t spend all your time creeping about in hedgerows hoping to hear something useful,” Sebastian leaned back and stretched out his legs. “We accomplished what we came for I would say.’
“Exactly.”
Both men smiled in a way that would have raised the hair on the head of anyone who could have seen them. Oxley’s comb over certainly would never have survived the experience.
Sebastian waited until David had gone off to bed before quietly letting himself out. He had quickly changed his shirt and buttoned his coat’s collar across his throat to hide any sign of white. He made himself nothing but a denser shadow in the darkness before dawn. He had one last item to accomplish before getting some rest. He needed to check on Jessy’s house.
No one followed, he sensed nothing in the night and after a thorough circuit about the grounds silent as a padding cat, he found himself staring up at the window he knew to be hers. One of the most important aspects of spy craft, as Bishop had trained him, was good reconnoitering. A good sized tree inhabited the small, pretty garden here at the back of the house. A trellis, not unlike the one that had been outside her window at Pemberly, gave him ideas he probably shouldn’t have. He could, he supposed, excuse it to himself with Bishop’s orders. He had been told to get close to Jessy again, and oh he definitely wanted to be close.
With just the thought of her sleep warmed body beyond that window, while he stood in the damp and chill, he was climbing the trellis. All the physical training of the past years made the climb easier but he was also heavier, and at one point he feared he might bring the whole thing down. He made it to her window and clung to the ledge, hoping it would hold.
Jessy had not been sleeping well and when she heard the light scratching at her window she thought Murphy, Mick’s cat, might have been shut out and wanted in. She made her way to window and threw it open. She had to squelch a scream. It was not a cat. A dark tousled head and amber bright eyes stared back at her; it was Sebastian.
‘What,” she said in a furious whisper, “are you doing here? You can climb right back down again!”
“Actually I think it might break if I try,” he smiled and couldn’t help it. With her hair in its night braid and her simple, white cotton night rail it was déjà vu. How many times had he seen her just like this in their past? Only she hadn’t frowned then. He had been far more likely to charm her with a bit of his bad poetry and be received with smiles and delicious kisses.
“Well if you fall and break your neck it will be your own fault,” she hissed.
“It’s after midnight so it’s your birthday. Let me in. I have your present.”
She simply eyed him surprised he had remembered, but also more than suspicious of his motives.
“I believe you will want it,” he realized that sounded rather suggestive and worried how she would take that. He knew she had read his face as her lips curved in a grin against their own will.
“Oh come in,” she offered reluctantly, “I’m not sure how I would explain to anyone the Earl of Redsayle was found with a broken neck in my garden and still preserve my reputation.” She watched him gracefully pull himself over the sill into the room and then they were standing there, in her room, alone. The air went completely still and she had to remind herself to breath. The last vestiges of night settled still and quiet around them.
She took a step back and broke the loaded silence, “What did you
bring me exactly?”
“This,” and he reached into his pocket for the small unwrapped item that he never been without in all the years since she had given it to him. In his palm gleamed a small gold and ivory hair comb.
She couldn’t help it, after the daffodils today, the hair comb tonight, the lateness of the hour, she had no defenses left. She had given him that comb the night he had first taken it from her hair, the first night they had made love. “You-you still have it,” she said wonderingly reaching out with the slowest motion, as if moving underwater, to take the comb from his palm.
“I could never let it go,” he said simply. His palm burned from the slight touch of her fingers. He moved forward and she didn’t step back. He took that as a good sign and took one more step closer. He was close enough to feel the heat from her body and smell the scent of her skin and hair.
“I know I can give you no reason to trust me Jess, there are things I can’t tell you, yet. There are things not mine to share, secrets I suppose,” And he shrugged unhappily, “But I swear I will not hurt you again and-and,” he probably shouldn’t say it but his heart wouldn’t let him stop the words, “I never stopped loving you. I still love you, I will always love you,” and the words where a nearly unspeakable relief and an agony as he waited for her reaction.
Jessy stood silent for a moment simply staring blindly at the comb in her hand. He had said the one word she could truly understand and knew, with the secret she had yet to share with him, she had no leg to stand on, no excuse to hold against him.
“You asked me to be your mistress, I’m not good enough to be your countess anymore according to your thinking. I won’t be your mistress
Sebastian.”
“I did write I was an idiot didn’t I?” he said ruefully.
She didn’t speak but simply stepped into him and laid her head against his damp chilly jacket.
“You should take that off before you catch cold,” she said softly into his lapel and his heart sang as it had never before in his life.
It was not what either planned, for the moment the decision was joined it was a frantic hunger that overtook them both like starving people set before a buffet. He knew a button on his coat popped and flew somewhere into her room and her night rail would never be the same. His impatient hands had pulled apart that long braid to run his fingers through the glorious copper hair she had inherited from her mother.
They were older, their bodies had changed, but they came together as if no time had passed. Each remembered the places the other loved to be touched, the slide of her fingers down the back of his neck raising a shiver of expectation. She followed with a swift bite to his shoulder. Pleasure, provocation and those delightful little surprises that, hurt little but aroused much, were welcome and a familiar dance. He explored again the delicate place behind her knee and the soft skin that ran up from the back of her thigh to more secret places. He remembered that a dab of scent would always be behind those delicate and sensitive ears. She shuddered with pleasure as teeth and tongue and breathe explored the curve and lobe. He bit her ear lightly and she gasped. It was the most seductive sound he had ever heard.
Her hair was a thick twist of silk in his hand as he bent her head back to ravage the mouth that gave back in full force, tongues warring, sparring, dancing and sliding. She bit his lip rather hard and he looked down into those hot green eyes burning with a fire within, burning with the challenge he remembered.
She had never been a docile lover, but full of passion that had often left him with nail and bite marks he had to hide back home. Making love with his copper haired wild cat was the most intoxicating experience of his life. It was war and it was peace and it was the meeting of two equals. Here he knew was the other half of his soul and he was even more ashamed of how he had treated her at the theater. It wouldn’t have mattered if she had become what he had mistakenly thought. She was meant to be his. He was bloody grateful she hadn’t as the idea of other men’s hands on her made him feel murderous. He would have had to hunt each man down and kill him.
Greedy hands explored every inch of each other’s skin, and sweat began to slick them with the force of their want. He picked her up never letting his lips leave her body. He lay her on the bed and realized he had literally torn her gown in half down the front and had no memory of that happening, just his frantic desire to have her breasts exposed to his lips and hands. His shirt too had been ripped and at some point she’d got his trousers off but not over his shoes. He kicked off the shoes, pulled off the trousers and remnants of shirt impatiently. Magnificently naked he stood in the banked firelight before her.
His Jess had never been shy when it came to sex. Modest as a nun in public and anything but in private. She eyed him up and down with slow and lascivious pleasure. He was bigger, more heavily muscled than in his youth. To her eyes, he was more beautiful than then. He had scars that were new to her, one down his thigh and another crossing his left side. The size of his sex was the same of course and rigid with want of her. The size and eagerness of it made her own sex throb powerfully. She raised herself onto her knees never taking her eyes off his and slowly removed the torn gown. She tossed it carelessly into a corner and beckoned him to come to her.
Her body in the flickering light was cream, gold, cleft shadows and a torrent of hair like dawn light spilling across the expanse of dewy skin. Her nipples were large, tight rose buds begging to be touched. He was entranced by the steep, yet gentle, curve of her from waist to hip. He walked to stand at the edge of the bed trying to control the urge to throw himself on her and into her. She took the choice away by reaching up, grabbing him around the neck and pulling him on top of her. She made a sound suspiciously like a hungry growl and he laughed with the joy of it.
Her skin was hot as a furnace against his. The silky swell of breast and belly and long legs met his own male hardness in all the right places. She arched against him and he half lifted her from the bed to bring her breasts to his starving mouth. Her long clever fingers had found him and stroked him lightly before grasping him so tight he almost exploded. She chuckled sexily as she nipped his ear. His strangled gasp sounded when she lightly raked her nails across his hips and pressed herself suggestively against him. He could feel the unbelievable heat and wetness of her against his erection and he knew he couldn’t wait any longer to be in the core of her.
She had other ideas though and, before he knew it, she had twisted in his arms to throw him on his back. He nearly stopped breathing when that red gold hair trailed its way down his chest, as her mouth intently licked and nipped its way down his tense body. A hot tongue lathed its way up the length of his erection and nearly stopped his heart when her mouth abruptly, shockingly, pulled him in deeply. He made an inarticulate sound of both pleasure and protest.
“God! Jess,” he groaned, “I won’t make it inside you if you do that and I want, I need sweetheart to be in you.” He was panting, nearly out of control.
She raised herself up, creamy breasts peeking through that cascade of shimmering hair. Smiling into his eyes with erotic promise she slowly straddled him, rubbing her scorching wet cleft up and down his shaft slowly, teasingly. He grabbed his gorgeous temptress and tossed her forcefully on her back, pinning her hands over her head. Her eyes, heavy with desire and excitement, glinted emerald green as she purred and writhed seductively under him.
He had no idea he was smiling as he slid powerfully home and heard her first jubilant cry of pleasure. Now that he had her under him, he had every plan to keep her there where he could torture her at leisure. He set a long, slow, hard rhythm and his finger sought out the sensitive bud above her entrance. With a few light, circular touches she was erupting under him, racked with the force of her orgasm, her cries caught by his mouth. The forceful clench of her slick, tight channel nearly undid him. He sat back and turning her around, his chest to her back, settled her again slowly down his cock and he felt her shudder.
“Now my girl, my delicious, luscious,
love it’s my turn,” the erotic timbre of his voice and feel of his breathe against her skin drove her to reaches of pleasure they had never attained in their youth. He filled his hands with her breasts, stroking from her waist up to her nipples, teasing them between his strong fingers. He listened to her uncontrolled gasps and little moans as he slowly, deeply drove up into her over and over and the rhythm grew faster. Her legs had wantonly sprawled across his thighs and her head fell back against his shoulder in total abandon.
He could feel another orgasm about to peak and suddenly stopped, deep inside her, holding her tight on his lap, extending the moment. The view was perfect as he slowed his breathing and felt her own ease. He looked down the out thrust curve of her breasts to rounded thigh, taking satisfaction in knowing he was buried hilt deep in this woman, his woman. He took one last deep breath before whispering to her to turn around. Her tight sheath twisted around with agonizing sweetness as she turned to face him and wrapped her legs about his hips.
Their mouths could not lick, slide and mate with any greater intimacy or intent to pleasure and drown in each other. He grabbed her buttocks and pulled her ever so slightly apart and slid even deeper into her, tasting her sigh against his lips. He was going to die in the drenched heat of their joined bodies. He pushed her over on her back and drove into her using the headboard to brace himself. It was only as they both convulsed in explosive oblivion he realized they had forgotten to be quiet. Some dreams ended up even better than fantasy could conjure and as they collapsed together, still coupled, into the softness of her bed, he knew he had just been blessed with one of those times.
Jessamy smiled over his broad shoulder thinking Juliet could not have been pleasured half so well when Romeo had climbed into her window. There was something to be said for experience. Henriette, with her French practicality, may have indeed been right. Sebastian now was an even better lover than he was years ago. A draft of chilly air assailed her hot breasts when he lifted himself off her and she knew he wasn’t done with her yet. A dark, very tousled head was leisurely working its way down her body. By the time strong hands pulled her thighs further apart and a clever, wet tongue found its way to her swollen clitoris, she was biting her pillow to muffle the screams of pleasure.
ROOK AND RAVEN: The Celtic Kingdom Trilogy Book One Page 21