A Scandal to Remember (32 page)

No doubt from all the seawater she had swallowed and regurgitated. “Of course.”

But she only took a few sips—clearly she already understood the necessity of rationing the drinking water—before she passed it to him. He didn’t know why he shouldn’t have expected such self-disciplined practicality from her, but it moved him—made him think and admire and ache for her all at the same time. “No. Take as much as you need. But let us collect more.”

Dance helped her set up more of her ingenious collapsable canvas pails to collect more fresh water, but in the process they were both exposed to more rain. Within moments Jane began to shiver so violently, and her movements became so uncoordinated, she nearly spilled the entire contents of the canvas pail.

“Let me. Come here.” He wasted no time on explanation, but set up the pail, ducked under the cover, set his back to the low bench seat to one side of the cockpit well, and gathered her to him. He ensconced her on his lap, with her back to his chest, so she would be in the lee of his body, sheltered and protected as best he could.

She was stiff with cold and trembling, and he held her tight against him, with his hand wrapped around her middle, doing everything to keep them both warm.

“You’re hard,” she said, and Dance immediately felt like a guilty schoolboy caught out ogling a young lady, and only when he turned his mind to stripping off his wool uniform coat to wrap around her to keep warm, did he understand what she meant.

“It’s my logbook.” He had held her pressed against his chest, and therefore the solid bulk of his logbook, stowed securely inside his uniform coat. He had grown accustomed to it.

She looked at the beat-up and now slightly bent book for a long moment before she turned again to crawl forward under the low bow decking to fish out an oilskin pouch with some loose papers in it. “Drawing paper,” she explained in her thin, raspy voice, as she drew them out. “But put your book in there, so it will be safe from the wet.”

Always thinking, she was, always arranging things for other people’s benefit.

He shoved the logbook into the pouch, and sealed it over, but said, “I’d rather keep you safe from the wet.”

She nodded mutely, but instead of crawling back into his arms where he wanted her, she began to methodically and neatly stuff the wide sheets of thick rag drawing paper under her clothes as insulation.

It was a remedial, but brilliantly effective idea. Dance followed suit, taking some pages from her, and laying them flat between the still-damp layers of his clothing so the paper might absorb some of the chilling moisture. And when she became too tired and weak to finish smoothing the pages between her bodice and her stays, he took on the job. Only to help her. Not at all because he got an illicit thrill that heated his skin like a warming pan from smoothing his palms along the sweet, luscious curves of her body. Not at all.

But now that his own blood was pumping more enthusiastically through his veins, he got back to the business of warming her up, wrapping her in their cloaks to try and capture the combined heat of their bodies.

But perhaps instead of putting more layers of paper between them, perhaps he ought to take a few away. Perhaps he ought to shuck off his wet waistcoat, and damp linen shirt as well, so the heat of his body could warm her directly? And having her against his skin would assuredly warm him as well, would it not? Which would make it easier to warm and take care of her?

While Dance was talking himself into disrobing for her benefit, another idea that ought to have blistered his cheeks with shame, had not their situation been so desperate, insinuated itself into his lust-filled brain—he could warm her, damn him if he could not. He could warm her through and through.

He set his lips against the soft skin at the side of her pale, white neck, and whispered, “It will be all right, Jane. I promise.” He kissed along the cool slide of her soft skin, nosing aside the damp curtain of her hair, while below, beneath the cloak, he set his left hand to making lazy, enticing circles low across her belly.

When she made no protest, he slid the fingers of his right hand through her soft blond hair where it streamed loose over her shoulder. He lifted it away, and indulged his need to taste her by kissing the vulnerable spot at the back of her neck that made her shoulders hunch, and her head roll back over his shoulder.

She was delicious. She tasted of salt and white flowers, still. Of sweet, vulnerable woman.

And with her head turned to the side, he could nuzzle his roughened cheek along the tight, sensitive tendons at the base of her neck, and slide his lips along the soft underside of her jaw. “I’m going to take care of you.” He kissed the end of her nose, and tasted the musk-rose-scented warm spot beneath her ear. “Let me take care of you.”

He set his teeth gently to the lobe of her ear. “And you’ll tell me if you’re still cold. You’ll tell me if it isn’t working.”

She lay passively against him, with her eyes closed, but from his vantage point he could see down the front of her bodice, to the sweet valley between her breasts. And he knew he was going to touch them. Knew that even in the middle of the sea—especially in the middle of the sea—she was as close to heaven as he would ever get.

And he meant to take advantage of each and every moment he had with her.

Dance assuaged his guilt by reminding himself that she was cold, and he knew of no better means of warming her in the present circumstances than by arousal. And just the thought of doing so aroused him—his lungs felt tight and full all at the same time, and his skin began to tingle with familiar, anticipatory heat. “Jane.”

He said her name like an incantation, a prayer that might save them both.

He ran the backs of his fingers down the exquisite curve of her neck to the hollow at the base where her pulse was gaining strength. “Yes. You’ll like this,” he promised. “It will make you warm. And sated. And happy.”

She nodded against his neck. “Please.”

He let his fingers explore farther south along the line of her bodice, barely brushing the ripe swell of her breasts until she shifted in his arms, and it was impossible not to cup the firm roundness in his hand. God, she was exquisite—full and sweet.

“Dance.” Her voice held both question and plea.

“Yes,” he assured her. He kneaded the plump flesh until a soft flush shaded her neck. And suddenly it wasn’t enough to touch her over the barrier of her clothing—he wanted to feel her skin beneath his fingers, and know that his ministrations were doing their job, and heating from the inside out.

His hands went to the practical buttons at the top of her bodice, and undid them one by one until he could peel the edges of the fabric back, and see the thin white lawn of her shift peeking out from under her practical front-lacing stays. He loosed the tie of her shift, and tugged the edges down to expose the tops of her perfectly white breasts.

The sight of the creamy swells alone brought him to full and aching erection. But when he peeled back the fabric to reveal the delicate pink tips, his own breath grew hot and unruly within his chest, and he had to shift beneath her to ease his arousal. She was so beautiful, pale and fragile, like a porcelain that needed to be handled with delicate, careful care, that he wanted to protect her with his body as well as his love.

So he touched her perfect pink breasts carefully, almost reverently, gently thumbing and tweaking her nipples into tight constriction, until her breath shivered out of her on an uneven sigh of pleasure.

His own sigh was the breath rushing from his body, as the pleasure that was almost a pain, from holding back his own desire, broke across him like a wave.

Her torso began to move restlessly beneath his hands, rising to counter the gentle pressure of his palms and fingers as he worked to arouse her, trying to give her the same pleasure that he got just by looking at her. Slowly, as if she were waking from a deep, troubled sleep, she began to undulate, the movement flowing sinuously through her body so there was no mistaking what she wanted, even if she did not yet know what that was.

He reached down to get a handful of her skirts, and fist up the long wet length of fabric, drawing the damp ends of skirts, petticoats, and shift up over the junction of her soft, cool thighs.

He pushed aside the damp fabric, concentrated all of his energy and remaining intelligence on getting it right. On touching her gently and carefully as he circled his thumbs on the vulnerable skin of her inner thighs. On readying her by trailing his fingers over the soft downy hair covering her mons. On waiting until she sighed and shifted restlessly within his arms, and eased her legs apart before he parted her folds and eased his finger within.

Her body was soft and warm and welcoming. And for a long moment, the painful pleasure of his own arousal was sharpened by the incandescent bliss of touching her so intimately.

“You’re tight,” he whispered into her ear, and wondered how he was going to control himself. But she was weak and exhausted, and struggling to stay alive, and only the basest of men would take advantage. And he was not the basest of men. He was an officer and a gentleman, and he could bottle up every ounce of heat and aching, frustrated passion he had to until the time was right.

“I’m sorry.” He could hear the embarrassed confusion in the smallness of her voice.

“Don’t be, Jane,” he assured her. He turned his head to murmur into her ear, so she could feel the words hum through her, all the way down to where his fingers played upon her body. So they could feel the echoes of need and desire together, almost as one. “It’s lovely. You’re lovely. Perfect.”

He slipped his finger inside her, touching her deeply, stroking lightly within her sweetly tight passage until her hips arced up into his hand. A wordless sound of breathless want and discovery flew from her mouth, and her breath started to come in heated gasps that blew warm against his cheek. Dance’s own pulse was roaring in his ears as he slid another curious, questing finger alongside the first, and twisted his wrist so his thumb could graze ever so slightly against the hidden pearl just beneath her folds.

“Dance.” Her eyes flew open, as did her mouth, forming a perfect O of shock and surprise, and her hand clamped upon his wrist, holding him still. “Dance.”

“Shh,” he murmured as he took her bottom lip, and sucked it tenderly between his own. “Too much, or not enough?”

“Too—” But her hips were moving, arcing into his hand, bringing his hand back into fleeting contact with her pearl.

“Yes,” he assured her, as best he could, but his voice was tight and drawn, and his own breathing was just as fractured and gasping as hers, as if he had run up the shrouds.

“Yes. Just enough, Just—” And he moved his hand so that just the very tip of his callused finger brushed against her, and her body convulsed against him, and she was gone.

*   *   *

Jane came awake to daylight, and gray, overcast skies, warmer air, and the nearly overwhelming memory of Dance bringing her to ecstasy with his fingers.

Her body heated and tingled just at the thought, and she pushed herself upright. She had been sleeping on top of the starboard bench seat, where presumably Dance had placed her.

The object of her thoughts was standing in his shirtsleeves in the middle of the boat putting up the small mast.

“Hello,” he said, as if he were a casual acquaintance, and not the man who now had an intimate knowledge of her body.

“Hello,” she answered, because she hadn’t anything else to say. “Where are we?”

“That has yet to be determined. Can you by any chance do complicated mathematics in your head?”

Of course. She was a spinster scientist. She could do complicated sums in her sleep—at least she thought she could if she weren’t being brought to shattering climax at the same time.

Another wash of heat scalding her skin had her turning away from the deep green intensity of his eyes to the flat gray expanse of the ocean stretching in every direction around them. There was nothing. But at least it wasn’t sleeting or raining, although they might miss the water soon enough. “Some.”

“Excellent. I do better with a bit of paper. Can’t carry figures in my head. I use a page in the back of my log normally, but though I’ve got the book, I made the mistake of not bringing pen and ink while the ship was sinking.”

He had other talents that more than made up for this slight deficit. “But I have pens and ink, as well as paper. I packed a great supply for my drawing in waterproofed folding cases.” She had ordered them made to her specification by the chandler in Cowes.

Jane pulled back the edge of the tarpaulin where it was still draped over the small covered bow and began her search. “It should be right … here. I packed everything—”

“Just so,” he finished for her. “And so you did. For which”—he took the paper and uncut pencil from her hand, and put it on the bench seat while he went back to attaching the sails—“I remain eternally grateful. What else have you got in there?”

“Equipment. Collecting gear. Pails and nets. More paper and pen and ink. And a great many folded tarpaulins.”

“Any food?”

“Some. Tinned biscuits. Salt. Flour. I’m afraid I left more food on the ship. I had gone to my cabin to get it.”

“I wondered why you hadn’t stayed put.” He looked away out over the sea and back to her, as if assuring himself that she was still there. But mercifully, he did not rebuke her for not staying in his cabin as he had asked. Perhaps he knew she had already paid a very steep price for her disobedience.

“I should have known you would be so prepared and efficient,” he said instead, almost praising her. “I have never been so glad that I violated all navy protocol in leaving your boat on the davits.” He smiled at her—a genuine smile that gave her the first inkling of hope.

“So am I. We should have drowned otherwise.”

“We didn’t.” His tone was emphatic, leaving no room for the slightest intrusion of argument. “So let’s not think about it at the moment.”

But the scowl etched between his brows as he scanned the endless gray horizon told her that was exactly what he was doing—thinking about the treachery of Manning, and the others who had not kept their boats nearby until Dance had brought her up to the deck.