by Jane Feather
Even as he struggled with his suddenly reeling senses that had driven all clarity of purpose from his mind, Chloe twisted onto her back, so he now held her by crossed ankles. Her eyes were dark liquid pools of sensuality, her lips were slightly parted, her cheeks flushed, golden wisps of hair escaping from her braids in a lustrous mist around her exquisite countenance. The sweet swell of her bosom rose and fell with her swift breath. Her skirt was hiked to her waist, and the legs of her drawers were pushed up on her thighs. His eye ran over the flat stomach, the sharp points of her hipbones pressing against the linen undergarment, the long, creamy length of exposed thigh.
“Sweet heaven,” he whispered in the despairing recognition of imminent surrender. He opened his hands.
Chloe sat up in a deceptively lethargic movement, her eyes never leaving his face, triumphant certainty lurking in the cornflower depths as she sensed his capitulation. Leaning forward, her eyes narrowing with deliberation, she plucked the towel from his loins. His body sprang free in hard readiness, and with the same deliberation she touched him, kneeling up on the bed, holding him with one hand, her fingers exploring in the wiry tangle of hair as she learned the feel of him while her other hand moved upward over his chest, brushing his nipples. Her head was bent, watching the effect of her hands’ intimacies, her eyes intent on his body as if seeing it for the first time. And indeed, that night in the library, she had seen little of him, had been too lost in her own sensations to be aware of much outside herself.
Hugo threw back his head with a soft, almost helpless groan of pleasure. His hands caressed her bent head, palming the delicate shape of her skull beneath the untidily braided hair. She slipped her hands around his hips, her fingers digging into the firm muscles of his buttocks, increasing the scope of her voluptuous exploration.
He turned her face up and bent his head to kiss her mouth. Her lips parted eagerly and her tongue joined with his in a mischievous dance before his hands gripped her face more firmly and he drove deep into her mouth, possessing its sweetness in rough and delightful plunder, and Chloe finally yielded the initiative. Her hands fell from his body, and she arched backward on her knees, her thighs opening in involuntary response, her body’s cleft moistening and throbbing as he ravaged the softness of her mouth.
Hugo drew back and looked at her face, one finger delicately tracing the line of her jaw, her reddened lips, the small, tip-tilted nose. His gaze held no humor, but a hunger and single-minded determination that sent answering thrills of anticipation over her skin, lifting her scalp, rippling in her belly.
Bending over her as she still knelt on the bed, he laid his flat palms on the insides of her opened thighs and exerted firm pressure, pushing them wider. She let her palms rest on the bed beside her knees as her body was slowly, inexorably opened and she could feel the aching vulnerability of her core begging for his touch. With the same slow deliberation he laid his hand over the throbbing furrow and she jumped as if touched with a burning brand.
“Be still,” he said quietly. “Be still and let your body speak.” His fingers worked through the dampening linen of her drawers until she moaned, biting her lip as the pleasure built in a tight spiral in the pit of her stomach. She felt she was being split asunder, leaning backward on her hands, her body pressing urgently against the magic of his fingers. And then the coil burst and she was flooded with a sensation that rocked her entire body, that curled her toes and brought tears of startled joy to her eyes.
He took her face again and kissed her with the hard, possessive demand of before. She clutched at him, her arms circling him, her hands stroking his back, feeling the turgid shaft of his flesh pressing against her stomach as she reached against him.
He released her mouth and took a step away from her. “Take your clothes off … all of them … quickly.” The green eyes were narrow slits of passion as his voice rasped the command.
With fumbling fingers she pulled loose the sash at her waist and tore at the hooks at the back of her gown. She dragged it over her head while she still knelt on the bed, transfixed by the green-eyed gaze, afraid she wasn’t being fast enough to please him, wanting only to pleasure him as he had pleasured her. The tiny buttons of her sleeveless chemise were resistant, and one broke off as she struggled with it, but finally she pulled the garment over her head and tossed it to the floor. Kneeling upright, she unfastened the tie of her drawers and pushed them off her hips, sitting down hastily to kick them free of her feet.
“Now your hair,” he said.
She pulled the already loosened braids out of their ribbons and ran her fingers through her hair, flicking it over her shoulders.
“Stand up.”
She rose slowly, vaguely aware that her knees were weak, her body in ferment; all-consuming desire thrummed in her veins. She stood still, her hands at her sides, gazing into his face as he looked at her in a long, lingering appraisal that sent a violent jolt through her loins.
“Turn around.”
She turned as if in a dream, looking down at the bed, her back and buttocks prickling with the knowledge of his eyes roaming over their damask curves. She felt him come up behind her, and his body pressed warm against her back, his hands moving around to caress her breasts, holding their roundness in the palms of his hands, circling her erect nipples with the pad of his thumbs. His lips brushed her ear, his breath warm on her neck.
“Please.” The whispered plea for she knew not what was the first word she’d spoken since it had begun, and it reached Hugo through the mists of his own consuming arousal … an arousal that had arisen out of his anger with such suddenness, he hadn’t attempted to take ahold of it but had allowed it to take them both where it would.
“What would you like?” he murmured now against her ear. “You have only to tell me.”
She shook her head, unable to find words for what she didn’t understand. Her hands moved behind her to clasp him more tightly against her body, her feet shifting on the bare floorboards.
“Let me see if I can guess” There was the faintest hint of understanding humor in his voice now. He took a step forward, half lifting her, and they tumbled together onto the bed.
Hugo rolled sideways, keeping her flat on her belly with a warm palm in the small of her back. Propping himself on one elbow, he kissed each pointed shoulder blade before nipping and nuzzling down her back, his lips brushing across the flare of her hips, blazing a trail down her thighs, his tongue dipping into those silky hollows behind her knees. She squirmed and moaned in soft delight as he revealed her to herself, showing her what pleasure her body could afford her. And when he’d finished with her back, he flipped her over and began his downward journey from the pulsing hollow at the base of her throat.
“Did I guess correctly?” he murmured with a tiny smile of satisfaction as he moved up her body again, feeling how alive she was, every square inch of her skin sensitized. Her head moved in inarticulate answer and her eyes met his with such a richly sensual glow of demand as her hips moved with urgent expression that the reins on his own tightly harnessed passion finally snapped. Using every skill garnered from experience, he’d held himself in check while he taught the tender novice an educated response to match her impulsive, unlearned eagerness, but he could wait no longer.
Slipping his hands beneath her arching buttocks, he lifted her higher as he eased into the moist, welcoming sheath of her body. She shuddered around him, instinctively tightening her inner muscles so that he drew breath with sharp pleasure. Holding her on the shelf of his palms, he moved within her until she picked up his rhythm and the warm-muscled roundness he held clenched and released in harmony with his movements. He drew her legs onto his shoulders, and her eyes widened in surprise as the sensation changed and she felt his flesh deep within her own.
He held her gaze, watching her face change, reveling in the candid openness as expressions chased themselves across her features, registering every shift in sensation. He knew she was capable of no artifice; she could no more feign
pleasure than she could disguise it, and the knowledge deepened his own pleasure in a way he wouldn’t have believed possible, releasing him in some way from the dark, furtive games of his sexual past.
“No, don’t close your eyes,” he whispered as the thin, blue-veined lids veiled them for a moment. The long-lashed lids swept up immediately, and she smiled at him with such radiance, he thought he was going to drown in her beauty.
He knew the moment she was almost at the pinnacle. Deliberately, he moved his hand to touch the exquisitely sensitive bud at the point of their fusion. Chloe cried out, her body convulsing around him, her spine arched, and tears again filled her eyes that still locked with his, drawing him into her moment of bliss, submerging him in the midnight-blue depths.
With a wrenching gasp he withdrew from her body the instant before his own climax rushed upon him. He gathered her to him as the tide took him on its tumbling ride of ecstasy and held her until he was tossed to shore. He fell backward, still holding the slight body against him, until his heart slowed and his head cleared.
“Oh, Chloe,” he whispered. “What wicked magic did you brew?” He rolled sideways, still holding her, and smudged the tearstains on her cheeks with his thumb. He’d had many women, but never had he seen a woman cry at the climactic moment. This diminutive bundle of passion had twice wept with joy.
Chloe blinked, smiled, and stretched out along the length of his body. “No magic.”
“Yes, magic,” he disagreed with a rueful headshake. “That was not the lesson I intended teaching you.”
“But it was the lesson I intended to learn,” she said with more than a hint of smugness.
He laughed and lay on his back, pulling her with him so she lay atop him. He pushed the tumbling hair back from her face and examined her countenance. “It would seem I’ve been boarded and taken for a prize.”
“Is that what they do with ships?”
“In wartime.”
She lowered her head and kissed the corner of his mouth, a delicate butterfly kiss that barely brushed his lips. “But this isn’t war.”
“No,” he agreed. “You’re a piratical minx, but you’re not built for warfare.”
“A pirate?” She gave a little gurgle of laughter that entranced him anew. “I think I shall make an expert pirate.”
“Heaven help us both, but I think you will too,” he murmured. There was a power here too strong for one man to resist on the grounds of scruple. Somehow, he’d steer a path through it.
“But I don’t like it when you withdraw at the end in that fashion,” she said suddenly, a crease appearing between her brows. “If it was so that I won’t conceive, I would prefer to take the potion.”
Hugo stiffened and abruptly rolled her onto the bed beside him. Leaning over her, he spoke with soft vehemence. “You will not ever again take that filthy stuff, Chloe.”
“Why not?”
The crypt rose in its dank evil, its smell filling his nostrils. Stephen Gresham’s voice rang in his ears. The man’s vicious hungers spread themselves on the carpet of memory. This girl was his daughter. A creature with all the appetites, vital and glowing with a devouring lust for life’s pleasures,
“What is it?” She saw him go from her, back to the world of his painted devils, and in fear she touched his face. “I’m sorry, Hugo. Please. Whatever I did, I didn’t mean it.”
He pulled himself back to the sunlit room and the reality of the woman he’d just loved with such shared joy. He spoke evenly. “There are many things you don’t understand, lass. You will have to trust me to know what’s best in these matters.”
“I do … I will,” she said hastily. The bright morning seemed to have dimmed somewhat. “But you’re not sorry, are you? You don’t regret what happened?”
How could he regret such pleasure, or deny the spur of unstoppable passion? He was not harming Chloe, he knew that now. She was an equal partner for all the disparity in their ages. And maybe he was the best person to guide the vast appetite she had for life in all its earthly facets. Perhaps Elizabeth had sensed that too. Even in her laudanum trance she would have had a mother’s recognition of her daughter’s nature. Had she been afraid that once free of the restraints of her girlhood, her daughter would follow where her appetites and her stellar beauty led? Unguided, they would lead her to ruin. Had Elizabeth recognized Stephen in their daughter?
She was still regarding; him with anxiety, and he saw the ingenuous girl again. He remembered the openness of her responses. Appetites as such were not wrong if they were not governed by evil. The sins of the father should not be visited upon the child.
“No,” he said. “I don’t regret it, lass.”
Chapter 15
“I’M SURE THERE’S a simple answer to this, lass, but just why do you never wear shoes these days?” Hugo regarded his ward’s bare feet as she came into the kitchen from the orchard. The memory of her grass-stained soles of the previous day was still vivid.
“Because I don’t have any,” she responded simply, taking an apple from the basket and rubbing it against her skirt.
“What do you mean, you don’t have any? Of course you have shoes.”
“Only brown serge kind of shoes,” she explained, scrunching into the apple. “Clumpy half boots that look silly with this dress.”
“The dress looks as if it could do with a wash,” he observed. “It looks as if you’ve been mucking out the stables in it.”
“Oh, it’s just from Rosinante and the dust from the stillroom,” she said, flicking carelessly at a smudge on her muslin skirt. “I was trying to encourage Plato to eat one of Beatrice’s mice, but I think he’s too young. I’ll have to dig up worms for him.”
“That will certainly improve the condition of your gown,” Hugo said dryly. “However, I think we’d better have another shopping trip to see about shoes.”
“And a riding hat,” Chloe reminded him. “I lost the other one at St. Peter’s Fields. I’ve a mind to purchase a shako. I saw a woman wearing one in Bolton once. It looked very dashing.”
“A shako!” Hugo groaned. “You’re far too small for such a style, lass.”
“Stuff,” Chloe declared. “It’ll make me look taller. Are we to go this morning?”
“We might as well get it over with,” Hugo said.
“Then I’ll change into my habit.”
“Give me strength,” Hugo muttered as the door closed on her energetic departure. “A shako! What the hell’s she’s going to come up with next?”
“Reckon as ’ow ye’ll be able to steer ’er right,” Samuel observed, biting off a length of thread. He held up the shirt he’d been mending and shook his head. “Ye’d do as well to buy yerself a new shirt. This one’s more patches than anythin’.”
“Not with the farrier to pay,” Hugo said, getting to his feet. He sighed. “Ah, well, into the breach, I suppose. Wish me luck, Samuel.”
Samuel gave him a dry smile. “If’n ye think ye needs it.”
Hugo’s answering smile was rueful. “Oh, make no mistake, Samuel, I’m going to need all the luck in the world to steer a safe path through this maze.”
Neither of them was referring to the shopping expedition. Hugo rarely had to tell the old sailor anything directly. His friend missed little of what went on around him.
“Tell the lass to bring down that gown and I’ll wash it while yer gone.”
“I hardly think it’s your place to do her laundry,” Hugo said, frowning.
“Right ’andy she is wi’ the animals,” Samuel said, “but I don’t reckon they taught ’er much about washin’ an’ flat irons in that seminary. She ’ad enough trouble washin’ the curtains from ’er room … and she didn’t know one end of the iron from t’other, as I recall.”
“No, I don’t imagine an heiress with eighty thousand pounds would have been expected to learn the finer arts of domesticity,” Hugo said. “But then, I don’t imagine such an heiress would expect to be living in quite such spartan surroundin
gs either.”
“She’s ’appy enough,” Samuel said gruffly.
“Are you talking about me?” Chloe’s clear voice came from the doorway and both men turned toward her.
“Yes, we were,” Hugo said calmly. “Samuel is offering to wash your gown.”
“Oh, no, I couldn’t let you do that.” She crossed the kitchen.
She danced rather than walked, Hugo thought, watching as she bent and kissed Samuel’s cheek. And what an amazing capacity for love and friendship, a capacity until now starved of recipients except the lonely, injured, and unloved of the animal kingdom.
“Nonsense,” Samuel said, his ruddy cheek glowing. “Just fetch It down ’ere and then get along wi’ ye. I’ve enough to do wi’out all this argumentation.”
“Do as he says, lass,” Hugo said. “And then let’s get moving.”
”Purple shoes with gold rosettes and three-inch heels, Samuel!” Hugo flung himself into a chair at the kitchen table. “And the hats … you would not believe how many milliners we had to visit before we found a hat that the lass liked and I was prepared to tolerate.”
He shook his head, massaging his temples. “There was a cartwheel of straw and tulle … you have never seen its like … but the shako … Dear God, I thought we were going to come to blows over that. Can you imagine what such a minute creature would look like in purple shoes and a foot-high shako with a monstrous dyed scarlet plume?”
“The shoes were lovely,” Chloe said indignantly. “Don’t take any notice of him, Samuel. They were the most beautiful shoes I’ve ever seen, and Hugo is the stuffiest, primmest, most … most old-fashioned stick-in-the-mud!”
Perched on the table, she extended one dainty foot and examined with a grimace of disgust the bronze kid slipper enclosing it. “Look at this, it’s so boring.”