He pressed his lips to her throat, unable to trust himself to kiss her again. One of his hands came to her breast, almost against his will. He cupped the round fullness of it in his palm, weighing it, smoothing one calloused thumb over it. Though encased in silk and lace, her nipple rose against his palm, and he slid his hand over to caress the other.
“Perhaps I will pick one of those flowers and bring it home,” James said.
She was breathless, but she still had her wits about her. She gave as good as she got.
“Ah, but if you pick a blossom, it dies. Better to enjoy its scent, then leave it to grow where you found it.”
She pressed herself against him finally, taking on a more active role. She seemed to relinquish the need to retain her self-control and rubbed her body against his, as if his erection was her plaything, something that would bring her pleasure with or without his consent.
He felt her move, and he froze, the pleasure overwhelming him so that he forgot everything else. It took him a moment to find his voice. When he did, it was hoarse with longing. If he didn’t take her under him soon, he was going to die.
James did not drop her gaze. “I find I desire to take up gardening myself, my lady. Perhaps you will allow me to take a flower from your garden as a token, so that I will have that beauty with me wherever I go.”
“Let us not be hasty, Captain. You have not seen the garden yet. You may not find it to your liking.”
“Trust me, Angelique. Everything about you is to my liking.”
He kissed her again, but this time she pushed him away. “Come with me then,” she said. “We can take a walk outside. My sitting room leads out into this mythic garden you are so fascinated by.”
He let her pull away from him, adjusting his coat to cover his throbbing loins. “Lead on.”
Angelique turned to the door, but before she made it out of the breakfast room, he put his hand on her well-rounded derriere, stealing one last caress before they walked into the hallway.
Twenty-three
Once they left the house, he did not drag her to the ground behind the first rosebush as she almost hoped he might. Instead, he kept his wicked, calloused hands to himself, only offering his arm as they strolled through her gardens. She wanted him with a fierceness she had never experienced before. She was in uncharted territory, and she liked it.
Angelique and James took the overgrown path that led down by the river. The flow was slow and stately there, a wide expanse beyond which were myrtle and hawthorn and oak, more of Geoffrey’s lands that now were hers.
Willows grew in clumps down by the river’s edge. The summerhouse was not nestled among them but sat on a bluff edged in Queen Anne’s lace and buttercups. Wild roses grew there, bluebells and irises, flowers that added blue and deep red to the riverbank.
Holding James’s arm, Angelique came to her favorite point of her property, the willow gate that enclosed the summerhouse. Faded with age, its paint worn away, the gate was entwined with rose vines and clementine. Angelique placed her hand on the gate and turned to look up at James before pushing it open.
“Aeronwynn’s Gate takes its name from this place,” she said. “In Welsh, aeronwynn means ‘blessed river of white.’” She opened the gate, and he held it for her. As they stepped through the fence that enclosed the summerhouse, she felt as if they had stepped into another world. The Queen Anne’s lace was blooming all the way to the Severn, surrounding the tiny house in a blanket of white.
She felt nothing of her daughter’s presence that day. It was just a beautiful spot that one day soon would lose its flowers as time moved on, and the river with it.
“I can see how it earned its name,” James said, his arm slipping around her waist. His touch was a welcome distraction from her sorrowful thoughts. “There was a Welshman on my last command named Davies,” he said. “He was a fierce fighter as well as a poet.”
Angelique smiled at him. “The Welsh are still renowned here for their fearlessness.”
“And their madness, like as not.”
“Madness can be a good thing,” she answered.
“Many a Scot would agree with you.”
A faint echo of Aberdeen came into his voice, sending a shiver down her spine. Angelique leaned closer to him, taking in the scent of his skin: leather and cedar. He held her close as they looked over the field of grass and flowers to the river below.
A strange feeling of intimacy seemed to rise between them, nurtured by the sunshine and the warm wind. She found herself longing to speak of her dead: her daughter, her mother. In an attempt to stop herself, she asked about his family. “You spoke of your sisters. Does your mother still live?”
“Yes,” James said. “And my father. Sir James Montgomery, the king of Aberdeen.”
“So your father is a lord,” she said.
“A minor baronet only,” James answered. “The circles you dance in London would be far too rich for his blood, as they are for mine.”
“Sometimes I think they are too rich for my own.” In spite of her resolution to hold her tongue, she found herself speaking of her family. “My mother was a lady from Marseilles. She ran off with my father and went to sea with him. The war drove them here, and they backed the British and their allies.”
“Why?”
“My father’s trade depended on the British need for cotton. After his death, and the death of my husband, I took up the cotton trade again.”
“And it has treated you well.”
She took in the way the sunlight hit his auburn hair, drawing out the gold hidden in it. His blue eyes looked not at her but across the river, as if to see what lay beyond the trees ahead and beyond those hills to the horizon. Even on land, his gaze was long-sighted. He looked beyond where he was to where he might be going. She pushed aside her misgivings and raised his hand to her lips.
That brought his attention back to her. His eyes heated with the same fire she had seen in the breakfast room half an hour before.
But this time, James did not move to touch her. He waited instead, to see what she might do next. He was a man used to command, but so sure of his own power that he did not feel the need to encroach upon hers. It was a heady combination.
“My daughter is buried there,” she said, raising one hand toward the spot several feet beyond the wooden fence.
Her stark words rose between them, a wall she feared would stand. But James did not bolt, as she had thought he might. She saw no judgment in his face, only sorrow. He relaxed beneath her hands, drawing her even closer. His voice was soft as his arms came around her, not to offer sex, but comfort. A strength she could lean on.
“I did not know you had a daughter. I am sorry for your loss.”
Angelique felt tears rising, but they came too fast for her to blink them away. Instead, she pressed her cheek against his shoulder, letting the wool of his coat absorb her sorrow.
“She was Geoffrey’s. I lost her a week after he died.”
“I am sorry,” he said again. “No words are adequate. Those are the only words I know.”
She leaned back, wiping her tears away with her fingertips. “They are the right ones.”
He kissed her then, gently, without a hint of lust hidden in it. When their lips parted, she leaned against him once more, and as she matched her breathing to his, she felt his hand in her hair.
“Why is your ship called the Diane?” he asked.
Angelique clung to his question as to a life raft. She forced her mind away from her sorrow and focused on him.
“It was named for my mother.”
“It is beautiful.”
“Not one man in a thousand is worthy of her.”
“The same could be said of her mistress.”
James’s embrace changed then, as he pressed the length of his hard body against her, inexorably, like a tide. He was offe
ring the only comfort he knew, and she took it.
Her daughter was long dead, but she was alive. It was summer, and the sun was high above her head, shining down on her like a blessing. She would savor this day and the man who stood with her.
Her senses filled at once with the scent and taste of him. His coat of brown wool felt rough beneath her hands, for he only wore superfine to dinner and in town. On the land as on the sea, James dressed as a working man might, if that man had taken prize money in the West Indies. There was something delicious about the feel of rough wool beneath her fingertips. She ran her hands over his chest, past his jacket, across his linen shirt.
He groaned at her touch, opening his mouth over hers, changing the angle of his head to give him better access to her as if he might devour her in one bite. She shivered with the strength of his need, feeling her own desire rise to match it.
She drew back from him but could not catch her breath as she stood enthralled by the hot light of his eyes. “Come inside,” she said. “There is a young girl in my house, and I am trying to be discreet.”
James laughed, sweeping his hair back where it had come loose from its ribbon. Angelique could not resist slipping her fingers into his straight auburn hair, taking the brown velvet ribbon between her fingers and drawing it out. His hair fell around them both like a curtain as he leaned down to kiss her again. This time his lips did not linger, but she felt his smile against her own before she even opened her eyes.
“Discretion is wise,” James said, all traces of his Scottish heritage banished from his voice, his tone dripping with false propriety. “I am never wise.”
He drew her closer to him, his fingers unbuttoning her spencer so that he had access to her thin silk gown. His questing fingers dove past the lace fichu she wore in an effort to cover her breasts above the low-cut bodice. The lace fluttered to the ground at their feet, lying across the lacelike flowers in a second veil of white.
“James, the house,” she murmured, her eyes closed, lost in the way his hands felt on her body as he drew her bodice down.
“I want to see you naked in the sunlight,” he answered. “No one will see. And if they do, no doubt they have seen something like it before.”
She laughed and drew back from him, her hands catching her gown before it could slip down to her waist. His hands caressed her hair, and her long dark curls fell from the combs that held them.
She knew not to wear diamonds when she was with him in case they might be lost, the way she seemed to lose her mind every time he touched her. With her enameled combs in one hand and her gown held closed in the other, she backed into the summerhouse, her smile teasing him.
He did not move at once, but his eyes watched every move she made. He followed her slowly, like a stalking cat, a man who knew what he wanted and how to get it.
The interior of the house was shaded, filled with a watery green light. Ivy grew along the open windows, almost blocking out the sun and the view of the river completely. The effect was somewhat like a fairy bower, and as she stepped inside, Angelique felt as if her cares had fallen away.
He stood in the doorway, casting a long shadow into the soft light of the room. He leaned one shoulder against the door frame, watching as she let her gown fall.
His blue eyes were hot on her skin as she untied the fastenings of her skirt and petticoats, letting them settle to the floor in a foam of silk and lace. She carefully stepped out of them and left them where they lay. She unlaced her stays with a few deft motions, drawing her shift over her head. She slipped off her ankle boots and stood naked except for her hose and garters.
He made no move to enter the house. James watched as she set her foot on the chaise that was the small room’s only furniture.
Dust rose from the cushions but she ignored it, unrolling the silk of her stocking down until she cast it and its garter onto the foam of her skirts. She bent to draw off the second garter and stocking, but suddenly he was there, kneeling beside her, one hand caressing her instep, the other, the smooth skin of her inner thigh.
Angelique felt her core begin to heat, and she almost shook with longing. James raised his eyes to hers, his hand stroking the soft nubbin of flesh between her thighs. He caressed her, all the while watching her face as he drew the second stocking down. He was not as careful or as neat as she had been, but tossed it over his shoulder in the general direction of the rest of her clothes.
His eyes ran over her breasts as the peaks tightened in the warm, perfumed air. All the while, his hand kept up its work between her thighs. When she tried to lower her leg and draw him with her onto the chaise, James only smiled at her and held her where she was.
“You started this,” he said. “And now I’ll finish it.”
His fingers caressed her hard one last time and she felt the spark of her desire catch fire, burning her in a firestorm of pleasure. She shook with the tremors his fingers had begun in her. She would have fallen had he not caught her in his other arm and pulled her against him.
The rough wool of his jacket and the smooth buckskin of his breeches were intoxicating against her naked body. She shuddered with her release, the feel of him against her, completely clothed, his hand still on her flesh. He sent her over the edge of pleasure again until she was quaking against him a second time, so sated that she barely remembered her own name.
James ran his hands over her naked body, caressing her breasts as he laid her down on the chaise. He did not take off his own clothes but pressed her into the softness of the feather cushions. Dust rose to cover them both, but neither noticed or cared.
He kissed her deeply, drawing her tongue into his mouth to tangle with his own as his large, calloused hands slid from her breasts to her hips, raising them as he finished unfastening his breeches.
He moved inside her in one long thrust, and she cried out beneath him as she clutched at his back. James kissed her throat and her breasts before drawing her hips up to take the onslaught of his rhythm. She moaned beneath him as he thrust relentlessly into her body, driving her closer to overwhelming pleasure until she fell over that edge again.
She shook beneath him, crying out his name as he came inside her. He answered, murmuring her name into the softness of her hair, and for a moment Angelique was so overcome that she could not tell if the dampness on her face was tears or simply perspiration.
James lay on top of her, still clothed, his breath warm in her hair. He drew away from her slowly, as if reluctant to leave her body. He adjusted himself, then lay down with her again, bringing her close against him until she lay across his chest. Neither of them spoke.
Angelique’s head was nestled on his shoulder. She stretched in languorous pleasure, the aftershocks of her ecstasy still moving through her. If she had ever been this content in her life before, she could not remember it.
The silence stretched between them, and neither seemed to feel the need to break it. All Angelique could hear was the sound of birdsong and the music of the river as it flowed past them, beyond the walls of their haven.
“My lady?”
Jerrod called for her from outside the open door of the house. It seemed their brief idyll was over.
Twenty-four
“Forgive the intrusion, my lady. But there is news from London. Mr. Smythe instructed the courier that it is of the utmost importance that you read his missive at once.”
James came back to earth with a thump. The bliss he had just found with Angelique was not meant to last, but he wished the moment after had lasted just a little longer.
She leaned up on one elbow and caught his eye. The absurdity of her proper English butler coming to the door of their love nest struck them both. He laughed, deep from his belly. His laughter shook her body, where her soft curves were still sprawled out over him. Her warmth trembled against him, but this time, it wasn’t out of longing or fulfillment. She was laughing, too.
&n
bsp; “One moment, Jerrod,” she said. “I…”
James lips were on hers then, silencing her with his kiss. He rose from their makeshift bed, closing his breeches as he moved to the door. He stepped outside and met Jerrod’s eye. The older man did not look embarrassed, and James was impressed with his coolness in the face of his mistress’s lover. Then he wondered what else this man might have seen, how many other lovers Angelique might have brought there.
She said she had brought none. James reminded himself that he had no reason to doubt her.
He accepted the letter and nodded to the man, thinking Jerrod would leave then, but he should have known better. Angelique’s people only took orders from her.
James stepped back into their haven to find Angelique sitting up on their divan. She had not tried to cover herself, but lay naked against the dusty pillows. James wanted to toss the paper aside and fall on her again. But he was a man in control of himself. He handed the letter to her.
Angelique frowned as she read it. “Smythe is having some trouble with our business contacts,” she said. “I’ll need to go into town to clear it up.”
“What trouble?” James asked.
She smiled at him and stood, closing the distance between them to offer her lips. “Nothing that can’t be handled by a well-placed bribe,” she answered.
There was a shadow in her eyes that belied her easy words. James thought to run the truth to ground, but she pressed her body against him, and he kissed her in spite of himself. He lost himself in her for a long, lingering moment, and it took what was left of his self-possession to let her go when she pulled away.
“Is our idyll over so soon?”
“I’m sorry,” Angelique said.
He stared down at her body, the curves of her breasts, her narrow, tapered waist, and the generous curve of her hips. He wanted her again, and he had just had her. He did not know when he would be satisfied. He had the sinking feeling that by making love to Angelique Beauchamp, he had jumped off a burning ship into the drink.
Much Ado About Jack Page 14