Deborah Hale

by The Bride Ship

  His foot struck something solid. He bent and ran his free hand over the object before him.

  “Here we are.” He tugged Jocelyn toward it.

  “Where are we?” She edged forward with tiny, cautious steps. “I can scarcely see a thing. Oh!”

  His hand still clasping hers, he felt Jocelyn lower herself onto the chaise. He sank to the floor beside her. “There, is that not a better trysting spot?”

  “Perfect!” She reclined with a voluptuous sigh. “I vow, if I did not know better, I might fancy you a practiced seducer.”

  For an instant, her bewitching banter robbed the night of its magic. “But you do know better. I am anything but practiced in the amorous arts. I hope I will not disappoint you.”

  She disengaged her hand from his then ran it up his arm to hook around his neck and pull him toward her. “The only way you could possibly disappoint me is if you were to go away. Now, enough talking or we will waste the whole night with it and be no closer to…what we came here for.”

  The eagerness of her tone allayed his misgivings and rekindled his desire. “For a passionate enchantress, you do talk remarkably good sense.”

  He eased her back onto the chaise and for quite some time thereafter did not waste a single moment in talk—his lips and tongue being much more agreeably occupied.

  Disappoint her? Not if he kept up as he had begun!

  Jocelyn settled back onto the gently sloping arm of the chaise lounge, surrendering to the delightful depths of a late summer night and Robert Kerr’s kisses. He cradled and stroked her face as he drank her in. Now and then, his large hands blundered, driven by urgent need, but always tempered with unexpected gentleness that touched her. Clearly his aim was not only to take his pleasure, but to share it with her.

  The lush heat of his kisses roused her, wakening the familiar, delicious ache in her breasts and between her thighs. When at last he trailed one hand down her throat toward her bosom, she arched her body to meet it, expelling a soft sigh of anticipation.

  For a time she was satisfied to have him pet her through the light fabric of her chemise and gown. But soon it was no longer enough and she yearned for the touch of his fingertips on her bare breasts. Perhaps he sensed what she wanted, or perhaps he was driven to make a more intimate acquaintance with her body. The reasons did not matter to Jocelyn, only the result.

  He eased the small, gauzy sleeves of her gown off her shoulders then tugged down the low-cut bodice until her breasts tumbled free. His first touches were tentative, a mixture of uncertainty…and wonder? But her movements and soft sounds of pleasure soon emboldened him. Giving each breast its due, he nestled his warm, smooth palm over them, teasing her sensitive nipples between his thumb and forefinger.

  It made Jocelyn eager to explore his bare chest with her hands and feel the thrilling friction of taut, muscular flesh rubbing against the soft fullness of her bosom.

  “You must be hot in that tunic.” She fumbled with the buttons.

  “On fire!”

  She did not begrudge the few moments his hand parted from her breasts to throw off his sash and tunic.

  “And is that cravat not strangling you?” She pulled his neck linen loose and freed his shirt from where it tucked into his breeches.

  When those had joined his other garments on the floor, she twined her arms around his neck and pressed herself against him, reveling in the provocative sensation. He found her lips again and kissed her as if they had been parted for months rather than minutes. Then he lowered her back onto the chaise and set out to claim with his lips the territory his hands had explored.

  Her breath caught in her throat when his mouth closed around her outthrust nipple and his tongue swiped over it. That imprisoned breath gushed out again when he reached down and slid his hand beneath the hem of her gown to caress her legs. His fingers climbed from her calves to her thighs igniting a raging fever of need within her. Accompanied by the tantalizing suction of his mouth upon her breasts, it was almost more than she could bear.

  His hand crested the top of her stocking to caress the hot, bare skin above. Thank heaven he did not stop there, or he might have driven her mad with desire. Loose folds of muslin bunched over his forearm as he roved higher. Until at last he grazed the nest of fine springy hair between her legs.

  The soft sigh that wafted from his mouth sent a cool tickle over her moist breast, which rippled through her whole body. He turned his head, rubbing his clean-shaven cheek against her bosom as he gave a gentle tug on her lower hair, then stroked her with the backs of his fingers. When he burrowed deeper into the sultry cleft between her thighs, she whimpered and writhed at his softest touch.

  “Please,” she begged in a hoarse whisper as she reached for the buttons of his breeches, “I must have you. Now!”

  His answer was a velvety rasp. “I was just thinking the same thing.”

  He bestowed a parting kiss on her breast and anointed the tips of his fingers with the slick moisture of her arousal. When he broke contact with her to wrestle down his breeches, her body ached for his touch. In a frenzy of impatience, she sat up and reached toward him.

  Her fingers brushed against his taut, straining shaft, freed at last from its tight prison of buckskin. Ignoring the almost painful urgency of her own desire for a moment, she wrapped her hand around him in an admiring caress. Just then she would have given anything for a flicker of light by which to see him.

  He responded to her touch with a deep, ravenous growl. “Do not tax my restraint any further, I beg you! Not tonight.”

  His urgent plea roused her almost as much as his touch had, for she’d believed him a man of infinite restraint. It thrilled her to discover his strict self-control had limits after all—and that she had the power to push him beyond them.

  “I suppose I can oblige you,” she purred. As if her own need would have permitted otherwise! “If you will oblige me?”

  “So I shall…with the greatest of pleasure.”

  That promise eased Jocelyn’s reluctance to let go of him. But she swore to herself if the occasion should ever arise, she would truly challenge the boundary of Robert Kerr’s self-control.

  As he hovered over her, she hiked her skirts higher and parted her legs to receive him.

  “Oh, yes!” she whispered as he mounted her, sating one need while rousing others.

  She had never expected to feel this blissful sensation again. Something in her sensed that Ned would not have wanted that. Dearly as she’d loved him, she knew better than to imagine he would have denied himself as she had intended to.

  Sir Robert froze, then, and a peculiar tension gripped him, unlike the tautness of escalating desire.

  “What is it?” Jocelyn whispered. “Do you hear someone coming?”

  She had been too deeply immersed in their foreplay to notice anything quieter than an artillery barrage.

  “It’s not that.”

  She heaved a sigh of relief that was almost a sob. “Thank heaven!” If they were discovered and he should suffer disgrace on her account, she would repent it always. “What is wrong then?”

  Part of her did not want to know. At least not until they had finished taking their pleasure. But some bewildering compulsion mastered her passion and made her lift a hand to his cheek. “Tell me.”

  He flinched from her touch. “We must stop.”

  “Now you are mad!” She clenched around him. He couldn’t do this to her! To both of them!

  “Perhaps I was, but I have come to my senses, for a moment at least. I cannot take the chance of getting you with child. Why did I not think of it until now?”

  “Is that all?” Jocelyn felt as if her heart had begun to beat again after an alarming lapse. “Put it from your mind. I would never have come here tonight if I’d had any fear on that account.”

  “You are barren?” Why did he sound so sorrowful? It would mean they could indulge their desire without consequences. Besides, she had no husband and no intention to remarry. What coul
d her ability to conceive possibly matter?

  “I believe so. I wanted desperately to have a child with Ned, but it never happened.”

  Turning his head into the hand with which she’d caressed his cheek, Sir Robert pressed a kiss to her palm. “I’m sorry.”

  What kind of talk was this for a man and woman to have in the midst of lovemaking? Jocelyn could not decide whether to laugh or cry or shriek with frustration!

  “Perhaps this is a bad idea.” She tried to pull away from him, but the movement sent a shudder of pleasure through her.

  “Perhaps it is.” He began to withdraw, then plunged in again, as if he could not help himself.

  “We should stop while we still can,” murmured Jocelyn, but her hands groped for the taut flesh of his backside. When he tried to retreat, she gripped him tight and thrust her hips up to hold him.

  His lips sought hers as he buried himself deep inside her again.

  “I think…” he gasped out the words between frenzied kisses, “it may be…too late.”

  His movements grew faster and the force of his kiss more intense.

  “Mmm.” Jocelyn’s senses took fire again. After the brief lull, her pleasure felt even more potent. “Too…late.”

  They spoke no more, communicating instead in a primal language of touch, movement, instinct and urgent wordless sounds. Their kisses grew more erratic and reckless as they gasped for breath, racing together into a tempest. It smashed them into each other with increasing force until it tore them rapturously apart. Then, for a wondrous, fleeting instant, it melded the two into one.

  Afterward they did not have the luxury of lingering in each other’s arms, trading tender kisses and murmured endearments. While the time lasted, Jocelyn savored it almost as much as what had gone before. To her delight, she had discovered that beneath Sir Robert Kerr’s facade of grave diligence lurked a lover of great passion and tenderness.

  Rather than sating her desire for him, as she had hoped, their starlit tryst made her long for him more than ever.

  Chapter Seventeen

  In the better part of twenty years spent soldiering, Robert Kerr had undertaken a good many difficult tasks. But he had seldom done anything more difficult than parting from Jocelyn after their tryst in the music pavilion and riding back to his empty bed in Government House as if his whole life had not been irrevocably altered.

  “Your Excellency?” The sonorous voice of Horace Chapman intruded on the governor’s private thoughts during a Privy Council meeting. “About the matter of the supplementary funds requested by King’s College?”

  Sir Robert scowled, hoping his countenance had not betrayed his scandalous musings. “Give them half what they’ve asked for. But only on condition they enter into talks with Dalhousie about merging.”

  There stood that fine new building across the Grand Parade from Saint Paul’s, empty for want of funds to obtain a royal charter of incorporation. Meanwhile King’s was falling into decay, its administration riven by a bitter feud between the president and vice president.

  “They’ll never do it,” muttered Barnabas Power.

  “Never do what?” asked Sir Robert, less than half his thoughts given to the matter. “Merge or talk?”

  “Oh, they’ll talk themselves blue in the face. Not that it will avail them…or us.”

  Was it his imagination, or had Power become even more antagonistic toward him? “It will be a start at least. That is why I suggest giving them only half the sum they request. If they dig themselves deep enough in debt, it might make them more amenable to do what must be done, no matter how distasteful.”

  “You may be on to something, sir.” Lewis Brenton sounded surprised to hear himself admit such a thing.

  “Rubbish!” growled Chapman. “I say give the governors of King’s what they ask for straightaway so they’ll leave off pestering us with their endless petitions.”

  “Grease the squeaky wheel, you mean?” Brenton shook his head. “Do that and you’ll only convince all the other wheels to squeak louder.”

  “You talk as if the college governors were a raft of beggars!” Chapman huffed.

  A lengthy debate ensued, which Sir Robert knew would resolve nothing. He endeavored to stem the waste of time, but he might as well have been trying to hold back the powerful Fundy tides. Defeated in his efforts, he lapsed back into his own thoughts, only to find no more accord among them than among the members of the council.

  A lifetime of prudence reproached him for last night’s folly. How could he have put his whole career in jeopardy for the sake of an hour’s passing pleasure?

  But what pleasure! His pulse pounded faster just recalling it, and his flesh smoldered at the memory of Jocelyn’s touch.

  “May I ask, Your Excellency,” demanded Chapman in a tone of outrage, “what you find so blasted amusing about this issue?”

  Realizing his mouth had relaxed into a befuddled grin, Sir Robert hurriedly assumed his usual grave expression. Meanwhile, he plundered his mind for a half way believable excuse.

  “Not the…er…issue itself. But Mr. Brenton’s remark about the squeaky wheel.” He forced a chuckle that he doubted would convince anyone.

  The members of the council all stared at him as if he had taken leave of his senses. Sir Robert wondered if he had. He’d jested with Jocelyn about going mad, but it was no laughing matter. From the day the Hestia had first dropped anchor in Halifax Harbor, Mrs. Finch had distracted him from his duties. Lately she’d driven him to a state of distraction that might become permanent if he did not take steps to remedy it.

  “I reckon we have worried the bone of this college question far longer than it merits.” He exploited the council’s watchful silence to get a word in. “Let us move to the next matter on our agenda. Funds to erect a lighthouse on Seal Island.”

  He spoke at some length and with surprising power about his visit to the island during his summer tour. To his dismay, he sensed the council members were paying no more attention to his words than he to theirs.

  “The good people who chose to settle that lonely island have saved several lives that might otherwise have been lost. But they have witnessed and mourned a greater number of lives lost to the sea.”

  He exerted all his resolve to keep his thoughts from straying off this worthy subject to Jocelyn and his blinding infatuation with her. “Gentlemen, if they are willing to undertake this solitary and dangerous work, how can we deny them our support?”

  Barnabas Power smothered a yawn. “No one here will argue it is a worthwhile project, Kerr. But the end of the war has brought lean times for the colony. Lighthouses are not to be had two-a-penny—especially off in the middle of nowhere. Where would we get laborers? Not to speak of materials.”

  “Three-quarters of the ships sailing around the southern tip of the colony are not even bound for Nova Scotia,” added Chapman. “Most are headed for New England or New Brunswick. Why should we bear the cost of protecting their shipping?”

  “What are you proposing?” asked Brenton, who loved to egg the others on by playing devil’s advocate. “That we cede Seal Island to New Brunswick…or to the Americans?”

  Chapman’s jowly face turned the color of a ripe plum. As a young Loyalist, he had lost all his property, his first wife and his infant son when the family had been forced to flee their home in Pennsylvania. Thirty years later, he still harbored bitter resentment toward his former countrymen. “Not while there is breath in my body!”

  He commenced to voice his objections, which were as numerous as they were vehement. Sir Robert glared at Brenton for getting him started, but he knew better than to interrupt. If Chapman decided a lighthouse on Seal Island would benefit his old enemies at Nova Scotia’s expense, his influence was such that the funds might never be voted. At the very least, they could be delayed until the governor’s term expired, after which the whole project would quietly die of neglect.

  Sir Robert barely stifled a curse. The Seal Island lighthouse promised to s
ave a great many lives. Whether those lives were Nova Scotian, British or American mattered little to him.

  During his days as a soldier, he had never questioned the need to fight his country’s enemies and often to kill them. Yet every life he’d taken weighed on his soul. Now he had the opportunity to help save lives and to make his colonists’ lives better. He must not risk it in a fleeting quest to gratify his desires.

  Once the council meeting adjourned, he returned to his study and took up his pen.

  “Most esteemed lady,” he wrote. It would not do to name her in case his letter fell into the wrong hands. “Allow me to express my gratitude for the great honor you have shown me in our recent dealings.”

  Would she be amused to read his stilted, formal description of their very passionate encounter? Would her eyes sparkle with impish delight? Would her dark curls dance when she threw back her head to laugh at his excessive propriety?

  “I shall not soon forget your kindness.” Nor the sweet torment of her touch! “And will always count myself fortunate in the pleasure of our acquaintance.”

  After a moment’s careful consideration, he dipped his pen in the inkwell again and underscored the word pleasure with a bold stroke.

  He wrote a few more tepid expressions of regard then came to the true point of his missive. “For many reasons of which you are well aware, I deem it best that we…”

  That they…what? Not see one another again?

  While that might be what he meant, he hated how callous it sounded—as if, having made use of her, he was ashamed of the incident and wanted nothing more to do with her.

  He was racking his brain for a more gallant turn of phrase when Will Carmont strode into his study followed by Mrs. Carmont and Jocelyn Finch.