Freedom to Love

by Susanna Fraser

  “What’s in it for me?” He laughed wickedly. “I get to touch you. I get to feel you come apart under my hands and mouth.”

  His words and his voice and his laugh were too much to bear. “Please,” she repeated.

  While they talked, she’d been sitting up, half-astride him while he lay on his back. Now he pushed himself up and wrapped his arms around her before kissing her again. His hands stole beneath her shift, and she twisted to free the fabric where it had gotten pinned under her legs. The touch of his long-fingered, callused hands where no one else had ever touched her, on the soft skin of her thighs and her belly, amazed her, and she whimpered. He tugged the shift up and up, baring her wholly, and she helped, raising her arms so he could pull it over her head and toss it to the floor. With her hairpins.

  Neither of them moved for a moment. Thérèse couldn’t feel embarrassed or afraid he didn’t like what he saw, not with that avid, heavy-lidded look in his eyes. Her right side, nearer to the fire, was warm, and her whole body burned with inward heat, but the room held a wintry chill and she shivered.

  Deftly he pulled the quilt around them both, creating a little cave of warmth. As they kissed again, she ran her hands through his hair, the crisp dark blond curls, and down onto his shoulders, broad and strong and lean beneath his thin shirt. She wanted to take it off, to feel his bare skin against hers, but maybe that was too dangerous, too much of a hazard to his promise to spare her virginity.

  And then his lips trailed down her neck and across her breast to settle on her nipple. He swirled the hardened peak with his tongue, and as she gasped and rocked against him, digging her fingernails into his shoulders, he sucked it.

  Every time she thought she’d reached the peak of desire, the most delicious sensation possible, he proved her wrong. When he’d paid such attention to both her breasts that she felt wound tight and ready to go mad, he shifted until she lay on her back and he on one elbow, leaning over her.

  She rested a hand on his face, watching him anxiously. What would he do next? She was entirely within his power.

  “Trust me,” he murmured. He ran his free hand down her belly, pausing a moment to play at her navel, then coming to rest atop the curls at the juncture of her thighs. He did no more than that, but she tensed. Just that simple touch felt delicious, but rawly intimate, even more so than when he’d first stared at her naked body.

  He rained soft kisses on her forehead, her nose, her cheeks, while his touch at the top of her thighs grew deeper and bolder, his fingers tangling into the hairs, finding a spot at the top of her slit that made her gasp and jerk her hips.

  “Good?” he murmured.

  She nodded, unable to speak.

  “Open your legs. It will feel even better, I promise.” When she laughed nervously, he said, “It’s just my fingers. Fingers are small. They won’t hurt you.”

  “You do not have small fingers,” she pointed out. She’d been admiring his big, strong hands since the first day she’d seen him.

  “But compare.” He set his first finger in her hand, and she instinctively curled her fist around it. He tugged it free with a delicate caress across her palm that sent yet another tremor through her body. “Much smaller than this.” And he drew her hand down and under his shirt to touch him.

  Yes, a finger was small compared to this long, thick thing that lay so heavy in her hand, the skin so silken-smooth. She curled her fingers around it, too. It twitched and he gasped. She didn’t want to let go.

  “You see?” he whispered, giving her earlobe a soft nip. “You’re safe. Keep that in your hand, if you like. You’ll stay a virgin tonight, and as long as you’re with me. But let me touch you. I want to show you pleasure.”

  His hand stole back down, and this time she opened her legs to him and let him explore all her most private places, those clever long fingers stroking and probing. When she began to thrash and lift her hips off the bed in a rhythm her body seemed to know without teaching, he slid one finger inside her and settled his thumb over that most sensitive spot he’d found and rubbed and thrust in firm unison with her body’s drumbeat.

  And finally her body burst in a peak of heat and sensation as she gasped and called out his name, her grip on his member tightening. He clutched at her, and when the wave had passed over her at last, his big hand settled over her smaller one and together they stroked and squeezed until it was his turn to gasp and go rigid, and she felt his seed against her hand, spurting hot and sticky.

  She was almost afraid to meet his eyes at first, but when she did there was so much warmth and affection there, and he was still the same Captain Farlow, the same Henry. So she smiled, and he smiled back and kissed her.

  “Oh,” she said. A great deal about men and women, and all the storms of love and passion she’d witnessed all her life, suddenly made sense.

  “I hope you enjoyed that as much as I did,” he said.

  “I did,” she assured him. She was enjoying this moment, too, warm and oh so relaxed under the quilt, breathing the mingled scents of their bodies, essences heightened by the pleasures they’d shared. “We smell good together,” she said, then wondered if it was odd to say so when he blinked in surprise.

  But all he said was, “Yes, we do.” He drew her into a closer embrace, her head pillowed on his shoulder.

  Thérèse yawned. Her legs and back still ached from a day spent in the saddle, but the rest of her felt pleasantly relaxed, and she knew she’d sleep better than she had since the day Bertrand had died.

  But Henry shifted restlessly. “I want to apologize,” he said, “for that other night. The first night on the Enterprize.”

  Why was he bringing that up now? “You’ve already apologized again and again. I’ve forgiven you. Surely that’s obvious.”

  His arm tightened around her, and he stroked her hair. “I hoped so. But I hope you’ll believe that I don’t think I’m above you in any way because I’m white.”

  “You’d be above me whatever color I was,” she pointed out. “You’re the son of a baron and the grandson of a duc. My mother was a seamstress, my father was a failed planter who dabbled in receiving pirated goods and my parents weren’t married. You outrank me by every conceivable measure.”

  “But—what good is all that to me?”

  “A great deal, I daresay. Don’t try to tell me your life would’ve been better without the wealth and position.”

  He sighed. “I won’t. You’re right. But—it doesn’t make me a more worthy man. I—you see, I’ve had a good amount of practice at just the sort of pleasure we just shared. I swore long ago that I’d never marry, nor take the chance of fathering children. I don’t want to risk siring children who are like me.”

  He was so wrong. Reading and arithmetic mattered—and in his family they clearly mattered more than for most—but he needed to stop placing all his sense of his own value in the one thing he was dreadful at. “What?” she said. “You wouldn’t want to bring children into the world who’d be kind and good-humored, not to mention brave and quick-thinking in a crisis? Would it be so dreadful to people the world with more handsome men with fine blue eyes?”

  “You know what I mean. I don’t want to bring children into the world to suffer as I have.”

  She ground her teeth. All children suffered, one way or another. Why did he think his was so much worse than any other? Why did he place so low a value on all his virtues? “I think you make too much of it.”

  “That’s easy for you to say.” He stiffened, and his low voice burned with anger. “You have no idea what it’s like to every day feel yourself a fool, and live in fear of being caught out and ridiculed for it.”

  “Did we ridicule you?”

  “The circumstances were hardly normal. Believe me, Thérèse, you don’t want children like me. You want sons and daughters who’ll be bright and clever, who
can learn everything they need to know to make their way in the world.”

  She sighed. How could he tell her what she wanted? If the world was different, and they were in a position to marry, she’d be glad to bear his children. Surely there was at least an equal chance they’d inherit her abilities when it came to letters and numbers. And if they didn’t, why, there were any number of trades they could follow that didn’t require much book learning. Soldier and seamstress, to name just two. But she couldn’t marry him, and it was just as well he was so practiced in pleasuring a woman without getting her with child. She wanted more of him on this journey. But for now above all she wanted to sleep.

  “If you mean to keep attacking yourself in this fashion,” she said, “I’ll be obliged to kiss you again. We know where that will lead, and even though we’ll both enjoy it very much, we need to rest at some point. We’ve another long day tomorrow, after all.”

  He pressed his lips to her forehead. “So we do. You’re a remarkable woman, Thérèse Bondurant.”

  Chapter Ten

  When Thérèse awoke, faint predawn light was peeking through the window, and the bed was empty. She patted the mattress anxiously—Where had he gone? Why was she alone?—and sat up, clutching the quilt to her bare bosom. Then she giggled to see Henry on the floor between the beds, half-dressed in undershirt and trousers, squinting at the floorboards and running his hands over them.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I believe I promised you hairpins.”

  “But you can’t possibly see.”

  “Not very well, but I can feel. I’ve found three already.” He rose to his knees. “Hold out your hand.”

  She obeyed, though first she smoothed his sleep-rumpled hair and caressed his face, feeling the rasp of his beard stubble. He kissed her palm, then deposited the hairpins in her hand. “There,” he said. “I wanted to find them as soon as I could. We need to be back on the trail as soon as it’s light enough to ride.”

  “Oh, yes,” she agreed. She slid out of bed, pulling the quilt with her to wrap about her body. It was too cold for nudity. She carefully set the hairpins on the hearth, then fumbled in her saddlebag for a clean shift. She hoped they’d have a chance to stop long enough to wash soon, but she knew they needed to put more distance between themselves and Natchez and those dreadful handbills as quickly as they could.

  “Here’s the one from last night,” Henry said, gathering her discarded shift into a ball and tossing it to her. She supposed she ought to be offended that he was treating her garments, and what they’d done together, with such levity, but she couldn’t be. She grinned at him and felt her desire build again within her as he smiled back. But then he sobered. “You’re not sorry?” he asked.

  “Not in the least.” She smiled, feeling brash and reckless and wild. “I’m looking forward to tonight.”

  “So am I. Though our host informs me to expect the accommodations to get worse and worse the farther from civilization we go. We may not have this much privacy again even if there aren’t many travelers on the trail. I understand in some stands we’ll be lucky to get more than a deerskin on the floor in a common room, and that we may prefer to sleep outside no matter how cold it is if we don’t want to be eaten alive by bedbugs.”

  “Ugh.” But then she laughed helplessly as she tugged on her shift and began lacing herself into her corset.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “My parents raised me so carefully to be a lady, or at least as ladylike as a woman of my birth could hope to be. I was brought up for elegance, for nice manners and to look beautiful in the dresses Mama made. She made sure I knew my business with a needle, in case I ever needed to support myself, but I was intended to be an ornamental creature of New Orleans. If they could see me now, riding astride into Indian country and contemplating the perils of bedbugs...” And she’d wanted to be that ornamental creature. She’d never questioned her dreams or her world before. Now...who was she? Where did she belong? She shook her head, setting the uncomfortable thoughts aside. There would be time enough to settle her future when they reached safety. If they reached it.

  Henry smiled, but it was a serious, thoughtful expression. He swung gracefully to his feet and crossed to meet her, placing several more hairpins into her hand. “I’m not sure that’s all of them. I wasn’t in any condition to count last night.”

  She leaned toward him. If only they didn’t have to ride out so soon. “It’s enough to pin up my hair.”

  “I’m glad you can laugh about it,” he said. “All this.” He waved a hand in a sweeping gesture that seemed to indicate everything that had happened since they’d met. “It makes it easier.”

  “Yes, it does, doesn’t it? Though I can’t imagine you were brought up for this, either. I doubt your grandfather the duc could’ve imagined his grandson crossing the wilds of America dressed as a Tennessee frontiersman.”

  “True, though aside from the costume, this isn’t so unfamiliar. It’s no harder than some of our marches on the Peninsula. It’s a sight more comfortable than the retreat from Burgos, for example. There’s always been a dispensation for noblemen’s younger sons to meet with a certain amount of danger and privation, and all the more so should they find themselves in the army or navy.”

  He sighed, and she knew he must be worrying again over being taken for a deserter. “Don’t worry, please.” She rested a hand on his arm. “We’ll speak for you. We’ll make them understand.”

  “Thank you.” He kissed her, gentle but lingering, and she wanted to melt into him again.

  They broke apart at the sound of a throat being cleared, loudly. Thérèse whirled to find Jeannette standing in the doorway, a jug of water balanced on her hip. “Mrs. Nixon sent me to tell you breakfast will be ready in ten minutes.” She favored both of them with an accusing stare. “I thought you’d be dressed by now. You said you wanted to leave early.”

  “And we will,” Henry said smoothly, though his color heightened. He pulled his heavy fringed shirt over his undershirt and reached for his boots. “I’ll see about the horses.”

  “Jeannette, will you help me with my dress and hair?” Thérèse asked meekly.

  “I guess we’ll leave sooner that way.” But the girl’s hands were ungentle as she fastened the hooks at the back of Thérèse’s dress and began to comb and braid her hair. As soon as Henry left, she pinched Thérèse’s shoulder. “What were you thinking? I thought you said nothing like this was going to happen again, and I come in to find you standing in your shift and kissing him!”

  Thérèse sighed. “I didn’t think you’d mind. You were the one back on the Enterprize acting so wise and experienced about how we clearly wanted each other, because you’d seen the signs before.”

  “That was before I understood how long this journey was going to take. Don’t be a fool. You don’t want to travel while you’re pregnant, I promise.”

  “You don’t get pregnant by kissing.” Jeannette needed to mind her own business. She was just a child, and she had no right to tell her what to do.

  Jeannette gave the hank of hair in her right hand an extra tug. “Don’t treat me like a child. You can’t tell me all you did last night was kiss.”

  “You’re almost a child, still. You’re barely thirteen.”

  “You might have been a child when you were thirteen, but I’m not. I know what happens. I know what people look like after they’ve been doing it, and I know how it smells. Don’t tell me you’re still pure and innocent.”

  “But that’s not your life anymore, to have to witness all that.”

  “Oh? It surely smells like it now.”

  Thérèse ground her teeth. “No matter how much you know, you’re too young to—to advise me. And it isn’t your business, but I’ll have you know I am still a virgin. Yes, we did more than kiss last night, but nothing th
at will get me pregnant. Henry doesn’t want that any more than I do. Less, even.”

  “Oh, it’s Henry now, is it?”

  “If I’m going to pretend he’s my husband from now to Canada, I might as well use his name.”

  “I suppose, only mind that you remember it’s Henri before others.”

  “I haven’t forgotten yet.”

  “See that you don’t. I want to live to be free. And that’s why all this is my business. Have you been around a woman when she’s first pregnant? Because I have. You’d be sick every morning, unless you’re one of the ones who gets sick all day! You’d fall asleep in the saddle and have an even shorter temper than you already do when you’re awake.”

  “I am not short-tempered.”

  Jeannette sniffed.

  “If I am, it’s a family trait.”

  Now her sister laughed. “Oh, have it your way. I suppose it’s too much to expect that the two of you can travel together calling each other husband and wife and sharing a bed and not touch each other. But don’t get pregnant. You don’t want that.”

  “You don’t have to tell me twice.”

  * * *

  After a hasty breakfast of biscuits—at least, that was what the innkeeper’s wife called what Henry would’ve described as a sort of flaky roll—bacon and bitter coffee, they rode out before the sun was high in the sky. Henry noticed that Thérèse and Jeannette winced as they swung into their saddles, but it wasn’t to be helped. Soon they’d grow accustomed to long days of riding.

  This time there was a mounting block handy, so all he had to do was hold Thérèse’s mare still and instruct her in the art of clambering into the saddle on her own. He’d be happy for another excuse to touch her, but that would come tonight. Surely they would have at least another day of spacious stands with private quarters for a “husband and wife” before they reached the poorer accommodations they’d been warned about.

  Last night had been...unexpected. But welcome, very welcome. He’d thought he’d earned Thérèse’s everlasting contempt that first night aboard the Enterprize, and that she was only tolerating him for the length of their escape. Instead, he’d been given the chance to light fires he’d only suspected existed. He’d tried to be tender and careful, knowing her inexperience, but she’d had a certain passion that had driven him wild.