The Least Likely Bride

by Jane Feather

  Anthony’s crooked smile flashed.

  Twelve

  ANTHONY TURNED THE BOAT in the narrow passage. “Can you swim?”

  Olivia shook her head. “No. I grew up in Yorkshire. No one swims in Yorkshire. I’d never even seen the sea until we came here.”

  “Then it’s time you learned.”

  “I thought we were going to play chess.”

  “That too.”

  Then Olivia saw the gap in the cliff. It was a very narrow arch. The boat shot through it with one pull on the oars, and suddenly they were in a small sandy cove, open to the sea, but protected on three sides by the overhang of the undercliff.

  Olivia gazed at the great red ball of the setting sun dipping into the sea just beyond the jagged rocks of the Needles. After the confines of the chine it was like being on open sea once more.

  Anthony smiled at her rapt pleasure and pulled into the beach. “In those clothes, you can manage to scramble ashore unaided,” he commented.

  “Do you like them?” She stood up and the boat rocked alarmingly.

  “They have their advantages,” he said judiciously. “But on the whole I prefer you naked. As you know, in general I like to use nude models.”

  Olivia began to feel as if things were slipping away from her again. She had thought she had been so much in control of this encounter, but now she wasn’t so sure. “I have no intention of sitting for you,” she stated. “Nude or otherwise.”

  “Take your shoes and stockings off before you paddle ashore,” he instructed as if he hadn’t heard her.

  Olivia did as he said but found that her fingers were clumsy.

  “You should roll up the britches too.”

  Sucking in her lower lip, Olivia rolled the britches to her knees. The pirate gave her his hand and she jumped into the shallow water. It was delightfully warm and the ridged sand was both hard and soft against her unaccustomed soles. She paddled to shore while Anthony hauled the boat up onto the sand.

  “What is all this?” Olivia gestured in amazement to the collection of objects on the beach.

  “A chessboard,” he pointed out. “Then supper. I trust you like roast chicken. And blankets and pillows for a night under the stars.”

  The chicken looked utterly inedible by anything other than a fox, although it did seem to be plucked. “You’re going to c-cook that?”

  “I’m an expert,” he assured her. “You’ll find driftwood along the tideline. Pick smaller pieces as well for kindling.”

  Olivia hesitated. She looked across at the setting sun; she felt its rays on her face, the sand beneath her feet. And slowly, inexorably, the skeins of the dream wrapped themselves around her once more.

  She set off up the small beach in her rolled-up britches, scrunching her toes into the sand. She gathered pieces of wood with all the care another woman might have given to the selection of embroidery silks, and returned triumphant.

  “See, I have little pieces here and bigger ones for later.” She dropped her armful onto the sand.

  Anthony had constructed a fireplace of flat stones and had threaded the chicken on a long stick that would serve as a spit. He laid the fire, struck flint on tinder, and within minutes the fire glowed and the chicken was in place across the stones.

  “So, now we play chess.” He set the board on another flat stone and sat cross-legged in front of white’s pieces. “You, I believe, have the disadvantage this game.”

  “Hah!” Olivia said, dropping to the sand. “I never lose, even when I play black.”

  “This time you will,” he said with confidence. “And then I shall teach you to swim. In exchange, you will sit for me. I shall draw you, sitting just as you are on the sand, with your hair up like that … but without the clothes.”

  Olivia glanced at him, her face touched by the fire’s light. “If I win, I shall say whether you may or may not.”

  “You always have that right,” he said quietly, his eyes now grave as they met hers. “Always, Olivia.”

  And she knew that she did. With this man, she had the rights to her body, to her responses. It was for her to decide.

  “Make your move,” she said.

  Anthony moved pawn to king four.

  “Oh, how conventional,” Olivia crowed as she made the standard response.

  “I save my surprises for later,” he murmured.

  And then an hour later, as the sun sank into the sea, he said almost to himself, “You are the very devil, Olivia. I could have sworn I had you two moves back.”

  “I’ll offer you a draw,” she said, grinning. “Take it while you can.”

  “You have no choice but to agree to a draw,” he pointed out with perfect truth. “There’s no way you can win any more than I can.”

  “Oh, I was hoping you wouldn’t realize that.”

  “Don’t add insult to injury,” Anthony said, leaning sideways to turn the chicken. “And don’t forget we have one more game to play.”

  “Why would you want to endure another crushing defeat?” Olivia asked in mock astonishment.

  “You are so cocky!” he exclaimed. “I think it’s time for some cold water.” He bent and took her hands, pulling her to her feet. “Get your clothes off, I’m going to teach you to swim.” He began to discard his clothes.

  Olivia watched him for a second, then slowly she shrugged out of her doublet and unbuttoned her chemise.

  “Let me help you.” Naked he came over to her and slipped the chemise from her shoulders. The cool air brushed her breasts and her nipples peaked. He looked down at her, a question in his eyes. His hands went to the buttons of her britches, but slowly, giving her time.

  Olivia touched his mouth with her thumb.

  He pushed the britches over her hips and down, his hands lightly brushing her skin. She stepped out of them and stood naked on the sand, every inch of her skin exquisitely sensitized, anticipation trembling in her belly, tightening her thighs.

  Anthony drew her against him. His hands moved down her back without urgency, again giving her time to draw back.

  But Olivia no longer needed time. She slipped a hand down his belly. The muscles of his abdomen contracted and his sex sprang alive under her touch. She leaned into him, loving the warmth of his skin, the hardness of his body, the little breeze that came off the water to make her even more conscious of her own nakedness.

  “Perhaps swimming should wait,” she murmured, licking the little hollow of his throat, tasting the salt and the sea.

  “There is a way to combine both,” he whispered against her cheek, as he moved his lips to the corner of her mouth. Then his tongue darted into her ear, making her squirm with delight.

  “Come.” He took her hand and led her into the water. He led her out until the little waves broke against her calves, and then he drew her into a hard embrace, holding her immobile against his length as his tongue drove deep within her mouth and she moaned softly against his lips. Now there was an urgency to his hands on her body, a fierceness to his caresses.

  Olivia shivered as the coolness of the evening air bathed her heated skin. Her toes scrunched into the soft wet sand, and her nipples rose against his chest. He held her buttocks and they tightened against his palms as he pressed her to him so that his penis moved against her thigh.

  She shifted, parting her legs to give him entrance, her guiding hand leading him within.

  “Put your arms around my neck.”

  Olivia obeyed eagerly and he caught her behind the knees, lifting her off the sand as he slid within her. His hold moved to her bottom, supporting her on the shelf of his palms. Fleetingly Olivia wondered if anyone could see them, two naked lovers in the surf, joined in flagrant lust, then she couldn’t have cared if they were exposed on the public stage. She sucked on his lower lip as if it were a ripe plum, then nibbled, little teasing tugs of her teeth as she rode his hips. He kept very still, unmoving inside her, filling her, becoming part of her.

  And long long before she was ready, he loos
ened his hold and she slid down his length with a little sigh of disappointment.

  He laughed gently at her expression as she looked up at him in startled discontent. “Don’t worry, my flower. The best is yet to come.”

  Taking her hand again, he led her deeper into the water. When the water reached the top of her thighs, he drew her close against him again, an arm encircling her waist as he pushed up her chin with his free hand and for a long minute gazed down into her face. Her tongue lightly touched her lips, her dark eyes held his gaze, and he read his own passion reflected in their velvet depths.

  Was this passion what his father had felt for Elizabeth of Bohemia?

  His father had thrown consequences to the devil when he’d pursued that passion. And the innocent had suffered those consequences.

  Anthony closed his mind to a reflection that only ever brought bitterness. He had Olivia here. She was no part of his past, bore no blame for his father’s impulses. And whatever devils had been pursuing her after their last loving, it was clear from the desire in her eyes, the hunger of her responses, that they were, for this moment at least, vanquished.

  He kissed her and her eyes closed. His hand moved from her chin to trace the outline of her breasts rising clear of the water that cooled and stroked her lower body. Gently, he rolled her hardening nipples between thumb and forefinger, increasing the pressure until she moaned and shivered, the throbbing heat of her body in sharp contrast to the cool, lapping sea.

  He bent her backwards over his encircling arm as his free hand slid downward over her smooth white belly. His fingers twined in the soft dark triangle at the apex of her thighs. His knee nudged her legs apart to receive the cold caress of the sea even as his fingers followed the water, probing deeply, insistently, until her moans became little sobbing cries of delight. The sea became as much an instrument of her pleasure as his hand, and he used it, drawing her backwards into deeper water still, where she floated against his arm, her body opened, abandoned to the dual caresses.

  She drifted, her eyes closed, now only a mindless sen-sate being at one with the water that held her and explored her with intimate searching fingers indivisible from her lover’s.

  She was barely aware as Anthony cradled her against him, carrying her back to the water’s edge. He laid her down in the shallow, creaming surf. The sand shifted beneath her under the rhythmic progression and retreat of the little waves. She reached up for him, lifting her hips as he drove fiercely within her, to possess her so utterly that she had no sense of her self existing outside the body that filled and took her as she lay caught between it and the shifting sand and sea, helplessly abandoned to the wild coursing joy of completion.

  And slowly the waves of delight receded, leaving only the sucking sounds of the surf, and Olivia shivered in Anthony’s arms as he gathered her against him. “That was a most unusual swimming lesson,” she murmured.

  He laughed softly and stood up, pulling her up with him. “Come, quickly now.” She stood, disoriented, still caught in the half-world of her dissolution. Anthony grabbed her hand and pulled her back into the water, swiftly washing the sand off her back, intimately but without lingering, cleansing the nooks and crannies of her body.

  “Run in,” he instructed. “There are towels beside the fire. I’m going to swim.” He turned her to the beach, giving her a playful smack of encouragement, and Olivia returned to her self.

  She ran for the beach, leaping over the little waves, her teeth chattering, her skin prickled with goose bumps. The wonderful rich smell of roasting chicken rising on the air, the crackle of crisping flesh, the hiss as fat dripped into the fire, made her hungrier than she would have thought possible. A magnificent hunger, a glorious feeling, as the lethargy of afterglow fought with the physical stimulation of cold water and the evening air on her bare wet skin.

  There were towels, as Anthony had said. She grabbed one and rubbed herself dry, watching the sea, watching the swimmer cleaving the water with powerful strokes.

  She waited for the black cloud of revulsion to envelop her. But the residual glories of loving were untarnished.

  She stepped closer to the fire, warming the backs of her legs as Anthony rose from the waves and came running up the beach, water streaming from his hair.

  Olivia gazed at him, loving every line of his body, the little buttons of his nipples, the hard, flat planes of his belly, the soft, quiescent sex in its nest of gold curls, dark now with water, the long, muscular length of his thighs.

  “Stop that!” he said, laughing as he reached for a towel and rubbed himself dry briskly if somewhat perfunctorily. “It’s enough to embarrass a man.”

  “Oh, pah!” Olivia scoffed. “I thought you were the one who adored the human body, fat, thin, stooped, straight. All the most wondrous creations. Isn’t that what you said?”

  “And it’s true enough,” he said, snatching the wet towel from her. His eyes touched her body, lingering over every inch.

  Olivia shivered and he bent to pick up another towel.

  “You’ll catch your death!” Roughly now he rubbed her all over, turning and twisting her as if she were a rag doll, bending her over his forearm to dry her back and buttocks and down the length of her thighs.

  When he was satisfied, he tossed aside the towel and picked up a blanket, wrapping it securely around her. “There now. You’re all ready for bed.”

  “I thought you were going to draw me.” Olivia huddled closer into the rough wool of the blanket.

  “In the morning, when the sun will warm you.” He threw more wood on the fire. The chicken skin hissed and crackled. “This’ll be ready soon.”

  “Oh, good. I’m famished.” She sat down beside the fire, wrapped in the blanket.

  Anthony opened a basket and took out a loaf of bread, cheese, a flagon of wine, and two pewter goblets. He poured the wine, a pale creamy canary, and broke bread. “We eat with our fingers tonight.”

  “How else.” Olivia took the goblet and the crusty hunk of bread. It smelled as if it had just come out of the oven. “Aren’t you going to wear a blanket too?”

  “I don’t find it cold,” he returned with one of his secret little smiles.

  “Then you c-can’t object if I feast my eyes upon you,” she mumbled through a mouthful of bread and cheese.

  Anthony merely laughed and squatted beside the fire, using the tip of his dagger to test the chicken. The firelight danced over his deeply tanned skin, illuminated the knobbly curve of his spine, sent a finger of light into the dark secret shadows of his loins.

  Olivia, curled up in her blanket, drank wine and gazed at him with unabashed lust. She thought suddenly of Godfrey Channing, of what he would think if he could see her thus. And she thought of Brian, probing the thought as if it were an aching tooth, waiting for the nerve to blossom with pain.

  Anthony levered a leg away from the body of the bird, watching the color of the juices. “Are you cold?” He didn’t look up as he spoke and yet somehow he’d felt the change in her, and he dreaded looking at her, seeing the revulsion, the withdrawal once again in her eyes.

  “No,” she said, resting her chin on her drawn-up knees. “No, not in the least.” Her voice was firm.

  Only as he felt the relief seep into him did Anthony realize how much he had been afraid. He began to pull the roasted chicken apart with his fingers, slicing the breast with his dagger, piling the richly fragrant meat on two large flat pebbles.

  They ate and drank in the firelight as the moon rose high, sending a silver river of light across the sea.

  Later, Olivia lay in the circle of his arm between the blankets. She was sleepy and yet her eyes refused to close. The star-filled night was too beautiful. After their loving, she was filled with such peace and contentment that not even the certainty of its ephemeral quality could spoil her languid joy. It was as if her wounds had been closed. This was the memory she would carry with her. Many years from now she would still remember how it felt to lie here under this rough bla
nket in the glow of the fire, listening to the lullaby of the waves breaking on the shore, with Anthony’s body against hers, her head in the hollow of his shoulder, his legs twined around hers. Many women … most women … never knew such piercing joy, however long they lived.

  This one intense passion would last her lifetime, and it must be better than years of the bland and ordinary unenlivened by even a glimpse of the glory that could be between a man and a woman.

  Olivia closed her eyes at last and was surprised to find that tears squeezed from beneath the lids. She hadn’t realized she was crying soundlessly as she talked herself into acceptance of a future reality where this passion could not possibly exist. Lord Granville’s daughter and Anthony Caxton could not enjoy each other in the real world, only in the dream that they had spun for themselves.

  It was just before dawn when she awoke, and she was alone under the blanket. She sat up in the gray light, holding the blanket to her. There was a definite chill in the early morning air. Off to the east, the as yet invisible sun drew a thin red line on the horizon. As she watched, the line spread and the sky glowed red and orange, and then the great ball of the sun peeped above the horizon. It rose rapidly until it was all there, casting a brilliant red light upon the flat surface of the sea.

  “Beautiful, isn’t it?”

  She turned at Anthony’s voice behind her. He was dressed now and held two fish dangling from their hooks. “Breakfast,” he said, bending to kiss her upturned face.

  “I have to …”

  “There are rocks behind you and the sea in front,” he said, tossing the fish to the sand and squatting to rekindle the fire from the faint glow of the embers.

  Olivia stood up, dropping the blanket. She stretched luxuriously, watching his deft, competent hands at their task. The fire flared and he took up the fish again and carried them to the water to clean them.

  Olivia watched him for a minute, then, remembering her need, made her way to the seclusion of an outcrop of rocks. When she came back, he already had the fish on flat stones cooking over the fire.

  She dressed and it felt strange to be clothed once more.