by Carla Kelly
They stood so close together that when her stomach growled, he wasn’t sure if it was her or him. ‘That is so unladylike,’ she said. ‘What a relief that I am not a lady.’
Hugh thought to himself that he would some day like to throttle this Miss Pym, who had been so careful to instruct this dear person in the reality of her illegitimate life, and what little she could possibly hope for. Suddenly, he wanted to consult Philemon Brittle, and meet Captain Worthy, and ask them how they managed their wives, these sisters who were unique in all the world.
‘You’re lady enough for me, Brandon,’ he said gruffly, and kissed her.
Her arms were soft around his neck, then her fingers were in his hair, pulling at it, which he savoured more than he would have thought possible, considering his typical fastidiousness. Neatness be damned, he thought, knowing he reeked and his hair was greasy and he hadn’t shaved in weeks. All he wanted to do was kiss Polly Brandon, like a brainless schoolboy.
‘And for all intents and purposes, we are married,’ he whispered to her, his lips still practically on hers.
She didn’t hesitate, but what she said had the power to turn him to jelly. Amazing creatures, women. ‘Don’t you forget that and leave me alone again, Hugh Junot.’
As she sat close to her beloved, warm by the fire and honestly full of wheat porridge that had nothing whatever to recommend it except that it was hot and filled her stomach, Polly felt something incredibly close to happiness. There was no reason she should feel that way, not with the rain starting again, and sitting across from Sergeant Cadotte, the Corporal, and nine troopers—no, eight now, after the fall this morning. Hugh’s arm was around her, and she felt safer than she knew she had any right to.
She looked down at her hands in her lap, wondering if the Frenchmen were sound sleepers, because she intended to give herself to Colonel Junot, that orderly, dignified, maybe a little vain, Marine who had become the man she needed now. For nearly two weeks now, they had lived every day as though it was their last on earth. Something burning deep in her body told her she would not willingly surrender her life in the middle of a war without knowing his love. If they only had one night together, it wouldn’t be enough, but it might have to do.
Jesting aside, they weren’t married and there was no way they could be right now. Maybe she was her mother’s daughter, after all, because she didn’t care about the niceties, the banns, the seals, the signatures. She wanted the man beside her. What made the matter so sweet was that she thought he wanted her, too. Outwardly, nothing had changed. He held her as close as he ever did, keeping up their subterfuge with the enemy. He called her ‘Polly, chère,’ as he always did around the Sergeant. Maybe it was the way he looked at her now.
She looked at Hugh and smiled, happy to see the relief in his eyes, and a little embarrassed she had frightened him so badly when she had called out and he had come running. So be it. She had been terrified to wake and find him gone. She would make it up to him. She could do no more right then except turn her face into his shoulder and kiss it, which made him swallow a few times and raise his face to the dark sky.
Maybe he knew what she was thinking. Hugh kissed the palm of her hand and tucked her fingers inside his tunic, which almost gave her the giggles, because it reminded her of a portrait of Napoleon she had seen once. When she patted his chest and withdrew her fingers, he got to his feet with a wince and a groan and tugged her up after him.
He released her and held out his hands, wrists together, to the Sergeant. ‘No more, Colonel,’ Cadotte said in a quiet voice, one that would not carry to his men, who were starting to bed down on the other side of the fire. ‘If I cannot trust you after what happened at the river crossing, then I know nothing about character.’
‘Merci,’ Hugh said, inclining his head in what Polly thought could pass for deference—they were, after all, prisoners. Not even a river rescue had changed that. He turned to her then, and put his hand against her back. ‘Come, my dear, let us go to bed.’
Sergeant Cadotte wasn’t quite through. He held another blanket. ‘The nights are getting colder,’ was all he said, as if daring them to thank him.
She knew what she was going to do that night, but was too inexperienced to even frame a declaration. Tomorrow they would probably be joining the main body of the French regiment, and all chance at either privacy or life would be over. When the Colonel handed her the extra blanket, then walked away—keeping himself in her sight—to finish his private preparations for sleep, she spread out the blanket close to the wall. There was little privacy there, but she felt a certain security in the embrace of old stones and rubble.
Hugh stood on the perimeter of their ruined chamber, his back still to her, just looking into the darkness. He must know what she was going to do; it wouldn’t have surprised her. By the time he turned around, she had removed her dress and was kneeling on the blanket, lifting off her chemise.
He watched her, a slight smile on his face. After a quick look around, he was kneeling on the blanket, too, removing his clothing. She could have sighed with relief. She was grateful he did not tell her what a supremely stupid idea this was, because giving away her virginity was a serious matter. She was only going to do it once, and thank God it was going to the man she trusted, to initiate her into an experience that might be brief.
When she was naked and unspeakably vulnerable, he helped her tuck the other blanket over her, his face more serious than she could remember, even after these weeks when little had been remotely amusing. Looking into that middle distance again, he removed his trousers and small-clothes and then lay down with her under the flimsy protection of the blanket.
Wordlessly, Polly moved into his embrace. For a long moment, he just held her close to him, running his hand along her arm, which was prickled with gooseflesh from the cool of early autumn in the mountains. With his other hand, he gently touched her body, seeming to find the most enjoyment in tracing the womanly swoop from her hip to her waist, and then to her breast, as she lay sideways, facing him.
The rhythmic motion of his hand relaxed her, then began to frustrate her as she began to grow almost too warm for the thin blanket. Working up her courage, she took his hand and placed it on her breast.
‘Touch me wherever you want,’ she told him. ‘May I do the same?’
When he removed her hand, and raised up on one elbow, she was struck dumb with mortification until he took the moment to remove her spectacles, reach over her body, and place them in the little niche. He put her hand around his still-peaceful member. ‘Share and share alike, sweetheart. It’s not that I don’t want you to see everything clearly, Brandon—oh, you know what a peacock I am! You wouldn’t be disappointed,’ he whispered. ‘I would hate for your spectacles to fall victim to passion, when they have survived everything else.’
She chuckled, disarmed and relaxed. Tentatively, she began to stroke him, enjoying the feeling, but equally amazed by what was happening to her own body, as she touched his. All the blood in her core seemed to be rushing towards her loins as she stroked Hugh Junot—not a Colonel, not a Marine, not a fellow prisoner, but a man with her best interest at heart—and felt him begin to grow under her delicate touch. It was a power she could never have imagined. For a tiny, delicious moment, as though the thought came from another galaxy, she remembered telling him how much she enjoyed making plants grow.
She realised her eyes were squeezed shut, so she opened them to see what he was doing. To her increasing warmth and utter gratification, his eyes were closed and he had a slack look on his face, in vast contradiction to his usual military demeanour. She was a total amateur, and this man of experience was putty in her hands.
She kept her touch gentle, exploring him, running her hand next across the junction where his hip and thigh met. Miss Pym had taken them once to a gallery, where she had admired the cool marble men with sculpted bones and muscle. There was something elegant about the way Hugh Junot worked. Why quibble? All bodies had the same hip-a
nd-thigh junction, but to feel another’s skin and bone under her probing fingers was a glory she had not anticipated, in her rush to lose her own virginity. Perhaps this was less about her, and more about them, an epiphany that took away her breath for a moment.
She began to breathe deeper then, because he was touching her now. His fingers were soft as he probed into her body, taking his time as though they had hours and privacy and endless freedom to examine the nature of men and women. She had thought his probing, which grew more insistent, might be painful, until she realised that she was turning into liquid.
‘Is this going right?’ she asked, wondering for a moment why her mouth didn’t work as well as usual.
‘Superbly well, Brandon,’ he said. She was glad to note she wasn’t the only one having a tussle with speech. He sounded less than sober, slurring his words in a way that smacked of brandy.
She had been lying on her side, with his leg thrown over hers. Suddenly it wasn’t comfortable; she turned on to her back and put her arms around him. His swollen member grazed her leg now as he gathered her closer, kissing her breasts, and then carefully taking her nipple into his mouth, which made her sigh.
He kissed her lips next, and then her neck. ‘Madame Junot, je t’aime,’ he whispered. ‘You’re the bonniest lass in the universe and I am happy to be your man.’
She pulled him closer, not sure what to do with her body. It seemed almost to be thinking independently, as she felt more heat gather around her loins. I wish you would enter me, she thought, then realised he was probably not telepathic. ‘I wish you would enter me,’ she whispered.
‘In a minute, Brandon. Let’s have all the fun we can for as long as we can,’ he told her.
In small circles, he began to massage her mound of Venus, sitting up so she saw his erect organ and she could watch what he did to her. She could not help thrusting up towards him then, which embarrassed her at first, but not for long. She decided enough was enough, and reached up to pull him down to her again. She clung to him, her fingers splayed out on his spine. She found herself pushing on his buttocks and starting to pant in his ear. She wasn’t sure about the protocol, but it seemed a good thing to run her tongue inside his ear and breathe a little harder.
The result amazed her. Who knew that ears were so useful to lovemaking? Not her. Now it was his turn to mutter something indistinct and raise himself directly over her, one hand under her back and the other on his member as he coaxed her legs a little wider apart and slid himself inside.
It wasn’t a totally uncontested passage. He positioned her more firmly under him and advised her to breathe deep breaths. It was good advice, because she relaxed after a momentary twinge, then decided on her own to wrap her legs around him, as he went deeper at a sedate pace: no hurry. He must have approved, because it was her turn to discover the delights of a tongue in the ear and reflect—as well as possible, anyway—on what that did to her mind.
And then it was all rhythm, which pleased her enormously. She had always been musical. The rhythm climaxed into a greater stiffening inside her, then a huge relaxation that filled her with peace, even as Hugh bowed over her body and try to stifle his groans into the hollow of her shoulder. She kissed his hair, sweaty now, and felt them turn into one being.
She would have liked the moment to have lasted longer, but as they lay together, she could almost feel the waves of exhaustion pouring off both of them. She opened her eyes to see his closed, his face a testament to fatigue. ‘Oh, my dear,’ she whispered, her hands on his hair. Eyes still closed, he smiled and kissed her forehead. Still inside her, he turned carefully on to his back, pulling her on top of him. In another moment he slept, and so did she.
He woke her before daylight, and made love to her again, moving slowly because he had little energy. As dawn came, they went through the entire ritual again, this time with more confidence. Their slow, deliberate pace this time aroused her beyond her ability to refrain from crying out in pleasure, as waves of rhythm seemed to spill from her body into his. He quickly put his hand over her mouth, and kept it there as he bowed his head over her, then put his face into her shoulder to silence himself, as he followed her in pleasure.
When they were more entirely satisfied than she ever would have thought humanly possible, he cuddled her close to his side. ‘Brandon, I think Cadotte’s Corporal will have to sling us over the horse today like meal sacks,’ he whispered, and covered her mouth again when she giggled. ‘Can you fathom our potential, if we ever get anything to eat?’
‘I wish you would not talk of meal sacks! Lord, I am hungry. Let me remind you we have been married since São Jobim.’
‘I feel that way, too,’ he agreed, feeling reflective. ‘Seriously, you know we have to have someone exhort us and counsel us and remind us that marriage is a remedy against fornication, and we have to sign papers and cry banns, and Lord, I have that all out of order. Maybe I should ask someone for your hand in marriage, but who that would be escapes me. Cadotte?’
She smothered her laugh in his bare chest, then grew serious. ‘Nothing’s happened in the right order. And please don’t think I am angling for a proposal. You have not compromised me because I asked for what you gave.’ There, she thought. I am honest.
Hugh reached over and handed her her spectacles, contemplating her. ‘Hold that thought, Brandon.’
He kissed her forehead. It was so chaste, so disarming, that she felt her heart turn over. Polly sat up and put on her spectacles. ‘I mean it, Hugh,’ she told him quietly.
Again he looked at her in that thoughtful way that she suddenly knew, with a real pang, that she could never tire of. ‘Perhaps I should get dressed now,’ she said, a little unnerved by his level gaze.
She dressed quietly, and then it was her turn to admire him in the low light. He had not an ounce of extra flesh anywhere, especially now that they were starving, courtesy of the enemy. She wanted to ask him how he managed to maintain such posture; maybe he would tell her that was a requirement of the service. When times were better, she would ask. She decided she had no commentary to make about his manly parts. Maybe Marines were just supposed to be impressive everywhere.
He laced up his smallclothes and put on his black-and-white checked shirt again, tucking the gorget inside, and then doing up the few buttons that remained. The shirt was ripped and well ventilated, and she smiled to herself when he frowned. You are a vain man, Colonel Junot, she thought. Let us hope your hair never dares to fall out.
She felt no need to look away when he strode to the edge of the ruin laughingly called a room and relieved himself. She felt a sudden breath of fear when he finished and stepped back in surprise. When he did not return to her immediately, she thought he must have trod upon something in his bare feet. He stood there a long while, then backed up a few paces before he turned around.
She wanted to ask him about that, but her eyes were closing again. When he knelt beside her and whispered for her to go back to sleep, she was happy to oblige. He put his lips close to her ear then.
‘If I am not here when you wake up, don’t worry, my love. I’ll just be around the corner, talking to our favourite jailer.’
She nodded, pleasantly aroused again when he ran his tongue around the inside of her ear and took a tentative nibble on her ear lobe.
‘Well, well, Brandon, you’re a tasty morsel. Let’s hope we find some more wheat today, or your succulent accessories might be in danger.’
‘You’re such a smooth talker,’ she said, as the little flame in her body tamped itself down and let her slumber again.
‘I am, indeed,’ he told her as he lay down beside her once more. ‘I’ll just rest here a moment.’
He returned to sleep even before she did, to her amusement. Her spectacles were off, so she got as close to him as she could, admiring his face in repose, hoping their children would look like him. She lay back herself then, nearly overcome with the tantalising thought that they might have a future.
And if we do
n’t, at least I have been loved, she told herself, upon reflection. Maybe it took the clear light of dawn to remind her of her place in life. She got up on one elbow to watch him again, knowing she would never tire of her private view, even as she weighed the probability of a real marriage, and not one engineered to fool the enemy into keeping them alive. The realist in her told her such a thing would never happen, no matter what he said when in the grasp of passion. The dreamer in her admonished her to be peaceful and contemplate what she had given away, and received in return.
It was the fairest trade of her life; of that, she had no doubt.
Chapter Sixteen
Hugh hadn’t meant to sleep again, not with the Dragoons moving about in the other room. Careful not to disturb Brandon, he raised up on one elbow to watch her lovely face. He lay back for another moment, thinking of his father’s letter last spring, admonishing him that it was high time to set up his own nursery.
He yearned to be a father. He had to give Da credit for starting him thinking along concrete lines. His thoughts had begun to solidify at Sacred Name, when he had watched Brandon playing with the little ones in the courtyard. He thought of Sister Maria Madelena and Brandon’s promise in the death house of São Jobim to raise João as her own. So be it. They would, and gladly. There was an old bee who lived in a barn, he thought, eager for his own father to teach that silly rhyme to a grandson or daughter. Or João. As Scots went, his father was a tolerant man. As Hugh considered it, his father also was dead right about what had ailed him. I hope I live to tell you, Da, he thought.