Harlequin Historical May 2014 - Bundle 2 of 2: Unwed and UnrepentantReturn of the Prodigal GilvryA Traitor's Touch

by Marguerite Kaye

  ‘Are you not afraid?’ he asked.

  Thoughtful for a moment, in the soft light Henrietta considered the question. She saw the desire gleam darkly in his eyes—she shivered. It was her first time. Never before had she wanted to do this, to make love to a man. She was so ignorant—she did not want him to despise her timidity. It was the rivulets of excitement that pulsed through her body as she stared at him that brought a soft, challenging glow to her eyes. ‘Not afraid. Curious, perhaps.’

  ‘I will be gentle,’ he said, drawing her close.

  With a beguiling smile she placed her lips softly on his, sliding both hands slowly over the wide chest, marvelling as she caressed the rugged firmness of the muscular expanse.

  Since the moment her deception had been uncovered Simon had never ceased to be amazed and fascinated by the enticing blend of innocence and boldness he had seen in the woman he now held in his arms. Each trait was wonderfully intriguing and he was never more aware of his infatuation than at this present moment, when they were about to enter the world of intimacy. Warmed and intrigued by her and accepting her touch and the warming heat in her eyes, enjoying the moment he leisurely caressed her lips with his own, eventually abandoning them for the tantalising fullness of her breasts. He caressed them with his mouth, pressing wanton kisses over their warmth.

  Henrietta’s head fell back as fires raged in the depths of her body. His hands, powerful and devilish, ran down her sides, down her legs, inciting fires in her. She moaned aloud as his hands caressed her firm breasts, tweaking the proudly jutting nipples, then proceeded with agonising slowness, to explore her body. Down past her flat stomach his hands roamed, down to the juncture of her slender legs. A pulsing heat began to throb in her loins, spreading upwards and outwards as his deft hands sought the centre of her passion.

  Fires that she had never known existed, had never before felt, flamed within her body. She thrust out her breasts to luxuriate in the hot, flicking strokes of his tongue. Her breath was wont to catch in ecstatic gasps, interrupting the quickening, shallow rhythm. She felt consumed by a pleasure that threatened to melt every fibre of her body. Never in her wildest imaginings had she guessed the height to which a lover’s touch could send her.

  Simon rolled her onto her back, leaning over her, at the same time settling her beneath him. His mouth blended with hers as his hands continued to move leisurely over her body. The sensations aroused with his kisses and the touch of his hands on her body, combined with the subtle pressure of his maleness, set Henrietta’s heart beating to a new, frantic rhythm that suffused her with an expanding warmth. A strange frenzy seized her and she cried out in fear and surprise as his manhood made its first foray against her virginity. But the pain of penetration was but a brief discomfort that she forced back as she became aware of a driving need to appease an insatiable hunger.

  Simon touched her lips, drinking in the glory of her, his hands cupping her buttocks, bringing her closer as he began to move. Amazement etched her flushed face as he met her stroke for stroke with vigour and the budding, blossoming pleasure in Henrietta’s loins intensified and swept her on with the promise of still greater heights to reach.

  More passion erupted within Henrietta and she arched her back to meet Simon. Their bodies, slick with sweat, adhered one to the other, and for a lingering moment, a perfect moment, she thought, a moment without end, they were one. Flinging her head back, she let him love her with all her heart, mind and body. Nothing existed for her outside this man and their love. Then he growled deep in his throat as his large surge of ardour was released.

  For a moment Henrietta seemed to glide and then her world reeled out of control as a ravishing, rapturous splendour burst upon her as a myriad of scintillating flashes of ecstasy rippled over her. For ever joined as one, they remained fused by the heat of their loins, joined by the love in their hearts.

  Limp and exhausted, a long, ragged sigh slipped from Simon’s lips as he slowly withdrew and relaxed his body against her. He kissed her soft shoulder as he felt her fingers play in his hair. He was so breathless he waited a long moment before he could speak. His head rested on her breast, and he could hear her heart beating.

  ‘Henrietta—’ he began.

  Her fingers pressed against his lips and he kissed them. ‘No,’ she said softly. ‘Don’t speak.’

  He nodded, feeling the smoothness of her ivory breast under his cheek. Rolling to the side of her, he gathered her to him, holding her close, kissing her and stroking her body as if he would never let her go. As he released her lips, his eyes gleamed into hers. Though recently sated, he could feel again an awakening deep within his loins.

  ‘Is your curiosity appeased, my love?’ he murmured at length.

  Feeling the returning heat, Henrietta moved against him, deliberately arousing him as she slid her arms around his waist and breathed softly. What they had done had been so beautiful, she wanted to cry. Never had she felt so alive, so aware of the world around her. Her entire body felt charged, as though she had been struck by lightning. And when she thought of what they had done, her face flushed with pleasure. It had been glorious, this making love. So wonderful with this man.

  ‘Not quite. I think you’ve much more to teach me.’

  ‘And you feel no pain?’ he whispered with a brow raised questioningly.

  Henrietta smiled up at him with sweet seduction. ‘Pain? What pain?’ Her smile widened as she breathed deeply with the sheer luxuriousness of the moment. ‘I feel almost wanton.’ She shivered, repeating the word once more. ‘Wanton.’

  ‘You are not wanton, my love,’ Simon murmured, nuzzling her hair. ‘A wanton is a loose woman, a woman who will bed with many men, as often as not for payment. You have not. You are beautiful, Henrietta,’ he whispered, his breath catching at her incredible loveliness. No woman had ever made him feel this way.

  ‘Then I am completely at your mercy, my lord.’

  ‘In which case prepare yourself, my love,’ he murmured as he covered her once more, and for a time, as they again shared a rapturous journey to the stars that seemed to last for an eternity, they did not care at that moment what transpired in the world beyond.

  But as the night drew on, Henrietta crept close to him and her eyes looked at him. They bespoke a sadness—no doubt afraid for what was to come. Simon saw in her eyes, in the red-gold hair, in the delicate shape of her chin and the soft expressive lips, a hint of the woman she was, the woman he could have. He swept her into his arms and held her close, breathing deeply to quell the fear in his heart. He kissed the soft curls. Again their eyes met, and in that long moment was born between them a bond that nothing could sever.

  * * *

  When dawn came, sending a glimmer of grey light into the room, Simon considered his slumbering companion. Her tousled head rested against his shoulder, and she was curled into his side as if she sought his warmth. A soft breast seemed to brand his flesh and it was all he could do to keep his hand from encompassing its fullness lest he wake her. Her nearness filled his senses with the delicate essence of her. It was pleasurable to watch her sleeping in the gentle light of dawn, to scrutinise every detail about her and to fix her image in his mind.

  A sigh escaped her parted lips, caressing his face as he leaned down and gently placed a kiss on the soft fullness, careful not to wake her. For the first time since taking her to bed, he was overcome with a feeling of remorse. He should not have bedded her, ignoring the consequences she might reap if some fatal blow struck him down and she was found to be with child.

  * * *

  When Henrietta awoke with a pleasant feeling of well-being and contentment, she was disappointed to discover that Simon gad gone. The last dregs of sleep vanished abruptly. Only the familiar scent of his body lingered on the sheets, drugging her senses.

  Memories of the night that had held a thousand unexceptionable and unexpec
ted pleasures came rushing back and a rosy hue mantled her cheeks when she remembered the incredibly wanton things they had done. Her body still tingled with their lovemaking. There wasn’t an inch of her that he hadn’t touched or tasted as he had aroused her body with such skilful tenderness and shattered every barrier of her reserve.

  Quickly she slipped out of bed and stood at the window, hoping for a last glimpse of him before he rode off to join Prince Charles with the men from Barradine. Looking down into the alleyway which was already thronged with Highlanders heading out of town for Prestonpans, she dissected each moment they had shared with meticulous deliberation in an attempt to put some semblance of order to her emotions.

  Simon had the infuriating ability to pluck at the worst of her nature, to see what no man had ever seen before and drive her to passionate fury. But, she thought, on a warm tide of feelings, he also had the ability to tease, to cajole, to delight her senses in a way no other man had succeeded in doing before. He had created yearnings inside her she was a stranger to, yearnings she wanted to satisfy, and only Simon could do that. He had been gentle with her, tender, considerate. Her experience with him had been so unlike those she had heard of from other women, who had whispered of pain and little pleasure.

  So how could she even think of breaking away from him now, for go she must. She closed her eyes. Why, why had she said she would wait for him here in these rooms? She could not. It was impossible. Tears formed in her eyes, blurring her vision. Their love had no future. She could not marry him and she could not stay and pursue their present course. But after what they had done, she would be unworthy of any other man, since she had sinned both in the flesh and in the mind. For even as she felt guilt seize her, she knew she would go to Simon again and again, that no warning voice in the back of her mind could stop her overwhelming need for Simon Tremain.

  After a while she turned away from the window, her eyes dry and her face set in determined lines. Now was not the time for senseless reflections. Conscious of a growing, insidious fear, she did her best to thrust it away. She must not think about the increasing danger to Simon if there was to be a battle. She had to keep a clear head and a cool brain if she was to leave Edinburgh and continue on her journey north.

  * * *

  Later that day when Simon returned to the rooms, expecting to find Henrietta waiting for him, she had been on the road for some hours. At first he was surprised to find her gone, then his surprise quickly disappeared. He was enraged. His face blanched and a muscle leapt in his clenched jaw. Something shattered inside him, splintering his emotions from all rational control. A million thoughts and feelings spun in a chaotic turbulence and he was scarcely able to contemplate this enormous debacle.

  Eventually he flayed his thoughts into obedience. He had known and made love to countless women, but he had never wanted any of them as he wanted Henrietta. What was it about her that he found so appealing? Her innocence? Her sincerity? Her smile that set his heart pounding like that of an inexperienced youth in the first throes of love?

  He frowned. No, not love. Love had always passed him by and he had assumed it was for others, not for him. And yet Henrietta affected him deeply. He remembered when he had kissed her and wondered if he would ever go back to Barradine without remembering the time he’d spent when she had been there. He could still hear her musical laughter, see her glowing eyes and jaunty, heartrending smile. He closed his eyes to shut out her image, but he could still smell the scent of her in the air. He told himself that what he felt was the ache of frustrated desire, but he could not deny that whenever he thought of her his mind was beginning to dwell more and more often on love.

  If circumstances had been different, if she had simply gone riding in the park for pleasure, he would not have worried. But these were troubled times with all manner of desperate and brutal humanity roaming the hills. He was overwhelmed by the impulse to go after her, but he couldn’t abandon his duty on the eve of battle.

  And so he lived from day to day in a silent, barely controlled rage, rage at himself for having emotions he could not control. He cursed Henrietta and yet he missed her, and wondered at the cruel removal from his life. But what was done was done. It was better this way. Hopefully she would soon be with her uncle—back where she belonged. He would take care of her.

  * * *

  From Edinburgh Henrietta headed north to Queensferry and crossed the Firth of Forth. She took the back roads rather than the main route, thinking she would meet fewer people that way. She’d had the presence of mind to purchase bannocks and cheese before leaving Edinburgh so she didn’t have to stop until nightfall, when she acquired rooms at hostelries along the way. It was September and the weather was warm, but she covered herself with her cloak and kept her hat pulled well down. It was a relief that the Highlanders she encountered going south paid her scant attention. Their minds were set on joining the Bonnie Prince, but she did her best to evade and hide from them whenever possible.

  Pushing herself hard, the last part of the journey was the most trying of all. With her head down against the buffeting wind, her cloak tight about her, mud-spattered, stiff with fatigue, she rode on into the emptiness, following a track made by generations of Highland sheep and shepherds on their migration to and from the summer pastures. She drank from streams, the water clear, cold and pure. At one point when she was quite alone except for the rabbits and deer that inhabited the heath and woodlands, the circumstances and the injustices that had driven her from London swept through her mind in bitter recall, sparking her resentment anew until she longed to shout her rancour to the sky. But experience had been a harsh taskmaster on her journey north, brutally convincing her that cool-headed compliance was the only way she could ever hope to survive this last leg of her journey.

  Closing her eyes, she let the horse take her. Against the dark screen of her eyelids, an image of Simon appeared. He was as she had seen him in the garden the night before they left Barradine. In her imagination, she felt the warmth of his breath and daydreamed that he was only a few yards away, waiting for her. Remembering the moments they had spent together in Edinburgh, of the fierce pleasure, halfway between ecstasy and pain, which she had felt in his arms and he in hers, the sweetness of their kisses when their first desire was slaked, only to return again with renewed fervour, the temptation to step into the dream began to seduce her. But she knew that with each passing hour she was going further away from the man she had come to love beyond measure.

  Would she ever see him again? The thought that she might not tore at her heart. Never again would they be so intimate. They could not be and she was engulfed by a deep sadness for what she had gained, for what she had lost. For the first time in her life she had fallen for a man—a man she could not be with. Her unhappiness folded around her like a cloak and she wished with all her heart she had not laid eyes on Simon Tremain. Then she would have come straight to Scotland and her uncle.

  But as her mind continued to wander, she wondered what Simon was doing now, this minute. Did he think of her, as she thought of him? And Jeremy, she thought with a slight shudder, did he also think of her? That, too, she did not doubt, and the thought provided little comfort to her.

  Opening her eyes, she urged her mount to a faster pace. All of a sudden, the scudding breezes strengthened and swept across the moor, snatching her from a morass of morbid uncertainty as her eyes lighted on a building crouched low to the land. It dawned on her that she had much to be grateful for, for she had proven herself capable of existing under the most intolerable conditions Jeremy had created. It was strange, but the memory of the terrible circumstances that had driven her from her home seemed strangely detached from the reality of the present. Yet for all the injustice she still endured, she knew without a doubt that she was still wonderfully, desperately alive. Please God Simon was, too.

  The cottage—a long single-storey building of stone and thatch—stood amongst the
whins and large outcrops of glowering rocks. It was remote, in as savage a situation as can be imagined. No other house or haunt of man crouched within sight of it.

  She hadn’t known what to expect on arriving at the cottage. Her mind was braced on her meeting with her uncle. Would he be happy to see her, or would he be angry with her?

  A small Highland pony with its head poking over the half-door of the stable whickered softly as she made for the house. After knocking lightly on the door, when there was no answer she pushed it open and went inside. She was pleasantly surprised. Facing south, the house was sun filled, polished and scented. It was larger than she had expected and well furnished. Everywhere she looked there were books carefully arranged on shelves or strewn on tabletops. She looked around, wondering where her uncle could be when a voice spoke behind her from the doorway.

  ‘My dear Henrietta—for it is you, is it not? Well, here is a delight. On my soul, it is good to see you! But have I taken leave of my senses? Henrietta? Here? What are you doing in Scotland? I hope all is well—but alone and far from home, I suspect it is not.’

  Henrietta swung round. She had been prepared for and anticipated the impact of her uncle, remembering so well the quality of the man. Yet even so, she was somehow taken by surprise. It was partly the complete contrast of the man with his surroundings, the so-obvious unsuitability of everything about this remarkable place as a background for him. She could see his face was weathered with the elements and age, but even so it bore a strong resemblance to her father’s. His eyes were still sharp and intelligent and showing no film of age. The feelings that welled up in Henrietta drew her towards him.

  Smiling, hands out, he stepped forward to embrace his niece, to kiss her on both cheeks French-fashion, for as a youth and then as a young man he had spent a good deal of his time in France. ‘I am not dreaming! It is really you! Good heavens, child, how lovely you have grown! Over ten years it has been, Henrietta. Too long. Too long to be separated from family.’