The Piratical Miss Ravenhurst
Page 25
‘Kiss it better.’ She looked up at him, awed and a little anxious. He was very close and very big and all hers. All hers. ‘I love you, too.’
She had thought, when she had dreamt of this moment, that his kiss would be familiar. But it was not like the times before when their lips had met. It was not the sudden flare of physical attraction, the heat of temper or the deliberate incitement that those kisses had been.
Nathan’s mouth on hers was sure, firm, very gentle. And it was quite evident that this was a beginning, a claiming, that she was now his and he would take what she could offer him, lead her, teach her until what she could offer and ask went far beyond her imagination and experience now.
Her lips parted for him and he took possession of the heat and the soft intimacy of her mouth with lips and teeth and tongue until she was moaning and writhing against him, her fingers tight on his shoulders, her body arching, seeking. His hands stayed still, cupping her shoulders, his body held away from hers, his control absolute until he finally broke the kiss, leaving her gasping. And she saw the heat and the desire in his face.
‘Clemence,’ he said huskily, running his hand down the curve of her cheek. ‘My beautiful Clemence.’ As he sat up and looked down at the bed, his expression changed to one of rueful amusement.
Clemence sat up, too. ‘Oh, my goodness. This bed looks as though we’ve been making love on it for hours. Did I really do that in my nightmare?’
Nathan nodded. ‘I’ll help you straighten it. You can’t sleep on such rumpled sheets.’
‘I don’t want to sleep at all,’ she murmured, sliding her hand into the front of his robe.
‘Clemence, I am trying to be a gentleman.’ His breath caught as her exploring fingertips slid over his nipple.
‘No one is going to believe that who sees this bed,’ she pointed out, fascinated by the effect on his breathing of running her nails down his ribs and towards his stomach. She found his navel and twirled a finger into it and he groaned.
‘Clemence! Will you make an honest man of me very soon if I let you seduce me?’
‘Just as soon as it can be arranged,’ Clemence promised, attacking the sash. It was not very tightly tied and he did not appear to be wearing anything under it. Suddenly diffident, she drew her hand back.
‘Sure?’ She nodded. ‘Scared?’
‘No. Shy.’ She could feel her smile wobbling, just a little.
‘There is no need. Just trust me. We have been naked together before—remember the forest pool.’ Nathan shrugged out of the robe and it fell on to the sheets behind him like shimmering water. ‘Remember the green of the trees and the cool of the water.’ His hands were on her crumpled nightgown. She shifted to help him and then it was over her head and thrown to the floor and his hands were skimming down over her breasts, the curve of her waist, to come to rest on her hip.
‘Remember how the water felt, Clemence,’ he murmured, bending his head to her as his hands stroked. With a shiver she curled against him, partly to hide herself from his hot blue eyes, partly to touch as much of him as she could. He was aroused; she could feel him pressed hot and hard against her belly. Instinctively she moved against him and was rewarded by the way his hands stilled, tightening around her.
Nathan eased her on to her back, firmly moving her hands away when she tried to cover herself, smiling at her until she smiled back, reassured. She began to relax. This was not frightening at all, this was—‘Nathan!’ she gasped as his fingers slid into the hidden folds her hands had been shielding just a moment ago, folds that she was startled to realise were wet, hot and, ‘Oh, oh, Nathan…’
‘Are you sure?’ he murmured, shifting his body over hers.
‘Sure?’ His hand was still there, making it almost impossible to think and then he slid one finger inside and she arched up against his palm, gasping.
‘Yes, yes, I’m sure. Oh, Nathan, please….’ Her body seemed to know what to do, her legs opening to cradle him. Then she felt the pressure and was not so certain.
‘Look at me,’ he said softly as she tensed. ‘Look into my eyes, Clemence. We are going on this journey together. I have you safe.’
‘Safe?’ She found she could smile, her eyes widening as he rocked against her, filled her, and, just when she thought this was impossible, completed her with a thrust that took her through a flash of pain into the blissful realisation that they were one.
His face went out of focus and then came back. He was watching her, his eyes dark, his face taut with strain. ‘Sweetheart? Did I hurt you?’
‘Mmm.’ She nodded. ‘It didn’t matter. Oh, I do love you.’ She wriggled, trying to get used to the feeling and fascinated to discover the effect that had on Nathan. She had muscles inside as well, she realised, experimenting, and watching his jaw clench and his eyelids become heavy.
‘Clemence, my love. If you do that I am going to have to move.’ She did it again and he smiled and moved and she forgot everything, lost everything, in this new power driving through her.
She shifted and found she could match the rhythm, watched his face with a kind of awe as he took them deeper and deeper into whirlpool of sensation and then realised that her body was straining towards something, tightening around him, and she was gasping, desperate for something she didn’t know, couldn’t name and his hand slid between them again and touched her, perfectly, and there should have been rockets and cannons and fireworks to go with the stars and the swirling blackness, but there was Nathan’s voice, joined with hers and a slow, slow tumble into peace.
‘I love you.’
‘I love you, too.’ Clemence, wrapped in Nathan’s silk robe, snuggled closer against his body, letting her fingers explore up and down his ribs.
‘What a good thing you had that nightmare.’ He was playing with her curls, the brush of his fingers sending delicious shivers down her spine. ‘But I thought you said you had it when I wasn’t around.’
‘It was Street, I think. I had to speak to him and Eliza just before I went to bed and for some reason he wouldn’t stop talking about the incident.’
‘Last night? Why did you have to talk to them then?’
‘Aunt Amelia had spoken to Street about marrying Eliza and—’
‘Urgh!’ Nathan sat up abruptly and clutched for his ankle. ‘That damned dog has just licked me.’ Clemence sat up, too. There was One-Eye, tongue lolling, watching them from beside the bed. ‘How did that get in here?’
‘He must have been with Eliza.’
‘No.’ Nathan shook his head. ‘He sleeps in Street’s room. Which means that either she heard you crying out from there, which is impossible, or both she and Street were down here. Which means they knew you were going to dream.’
‘And she fetched you, which is a scandalous thing to do.’
‘And it is very odd,’ Nathan added grimly, ‘but those loud cries did not attract the attention of a single one of the ladies sleeping nearby. The Ravenhursts, my love, have been plotting.’
‘Dinner last night—Jessica deliberately made it informal. And Theo and Elinor and Sebastian made sure you knew I was going back to Jamaica. Aunt Amelia stopped me talking to Street about his intentions and said she would do it—she must have told him to remind me so vividly that I dreamed!’
Clemence stared at him, appalled. ‘Nathan, I am so sorry—my dreadful family.’ His mouth was twitching. ‘You aren’t angry?’
‘Angry? Tomorrow I am going to kiss every one of your damned Ravenhursts, Lord Sebastian and the duchess included. They nearly tore us apart, simply by existing, now they’ve brought us together. And now, my love, I intend to kiss you and spend the next hour making sure you forget which continent you are on, let alone that you have a legion of interfering cousins.’
‘Again?’ Clemence gasped, as his hands on her body became deliciously wicked.
‘And again and again and again for the rest of our lives, my love. One thing you learn as a naval officer is to take every opportunity when on leave.’
His voice became muffled as he slid down, trailing kisses over the curve of her hip bone.
‘Oh, yes, my love. Please, every opportunity…’ And Clemence closed her eyes and surrendered to Nathan and to love.
Afterword
In 1817, when this book is set, the heyday of the Caribbean buccaneers was long since over. But there still remained a dangerous number of pirates, freebooters and the maritime equivalent of footpads to harass the rich trade of the islands, and the government invested considerable resources on suppressing their activities. Red Matthew McTiernan and his crew are a composite of some of these unromantic and dangerous characters.
The book I found most useful in researching THE PIRATICAL MISS RAVENHURST was Lady Nugent’s Journal of Her Residence in Jamaica from 1801 to 1805 (Institute of Jamaica 4th ed. 1966), and I have followed Lady Nugent’s return voyage on HMS Theseus for Orion’s route and timings almost exactly.
The fan that Nathan finds in Weymouth and gives to Clemence is real, and I found it in a country auction when I was already writing the book. It seemed such a spooky coincidence that not only was I writing about a heroine called Clemence, but that the virtues of the man destined for her on the fan so exactly matched Nathan’s, that I could not resist including it.
I am indebted to Historical Romance author Joanna Maitland for the translation of the difficult eighteenth-century French verses.
The dance La Pistole—speed-dating for the ton as it struck me at the time—I learned at the Victoria & Albert Museum’s wonderful Regency Evening in June 2007.
LOUISE ALLEN
has been immersing herself in history, real and fictional, for as long as she can remember, and she finds that landscapes and places evoke powerful images of the past. Louise lives in Bedfordshire, England, and works as a property manager, but spends as much time as possible with her husband at the cottage they are renovating on the north Norfolk coast, or traveling abroad. Venice, Burgundy and the Greek islands are favorite atmospheric destinations.
ISBN: 978-1-4268-3931-3
THE PIRATICAL MISS RAVENHURST
Copyright © 2009 by Melanie Hilton
First North American Publication 2009
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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*Those Scandalous Ravenhursts
*Those Scandalous Ravenhursts
*Those Scandalous Ravenhursts
*Those Scandalous Ravenhursts
*Those Scandalous Ravenhursts
*Those Scandalous Ravenhursts
*Those Scandalous Ravenhursts