Amanda Scott (5 page)

His smile became warmer. There was amusement in his dark eyes, but she could not accuse him of laughing at her, for his voice when he spoke was even gentler than it had been. “Waiting would be wrong, sweetheart. Your imagination would only blow the business bigger in your mind than it is now. Now you are only nervous, but time and anticipation would turn nervousness to fear. We don’t want that.” His hand tightened against the back of her neck, and when he bent to kiss her, she did not try to pull away, knowing her strength would be as nothing against his.

His breath was sweet, his lips soft. At first he seemed only to taste her, his kisses like the whisper of a summer breeze, just brushing her lips, teasing her. Then his touch became firmer and she found herself responding, tasting for herself, wanting more. She scarcely noticed when his free hand moved beneath her right arm and he urged her to her feet. She obeyed him as though she were in a dream. But when his hand moved against the side of her breast, she gasped.

“You are so soft, sweetheart,” he murmured against her lips, “so very soft and lovely. Touch me.”

Her hands had been in her lap until she stood. Now they were at her sides, just hanging there, as though she had forgotten she had hands. She lifted them to his waist, and at first they felt heavy, as though they were under some sort of spell over which she had little control. She felt the fine material of his shirt beneath her fingertips. She felt, too, his body beneath the shirt. He was not soft. Not in the least.

His arms went around her, drawing her closer as his lips claimed hers more possessively than before, encouraging her response, demanding it. And she responded, not merely with her lips but with her body, melting against him, feeling suddenly as though she were someone else altogether, no longer Adriana but someone softer, more pliant, someone whom Chalford gently bent to his will while Adriana watched from a vantage point high above.

His right hand moved between them to the opening of her robe, pushing the velvet aside, caressing her skin, moving slowly, tantalizingly, over the soft silken mounds of her breasts. When his fingertips brushed across the tip of the right one, Adriana gasped again at the sensations thrilling through her body. No longer in any way detached from what was happening, she gave herself up to passions that threatened to overcome her.

She felt Chalford’s hand move downward, then felt his fingers briefly on the lacing at the waist of her robe. The robe fell open. Both his hands moved to her shoulders now, beneath the velvet. He held her a little away from him. Slowly, he eased the material off her shoulders. It caught at her elbows.

“Put your hands down now, Adriana,” he said quietly.

She obeyed without a word. The robe slid to the floor with a whisper, and she stood naked before him. Gently, Chalford lifted her into his arms and carried her to the bed. When she felt the chill of the sheet beneath her body, she shivered and reached for the coverlet.

“No, sweetheart, I want to look at you.”

Her hand paused in its motion as her gaze shifted to meet his. The candlelight made her skin glow like the inside of a ripe peach, and as Chalford began to remove his clothing, his gaze explored her body with shameless hunger.

She stirred languorously. Her lips parted. She murmured, “Joshua,” the single word a verbal caress.

Without taking his gaze from her body, Chalford flung the last article of his clothing to the floor and moved to claim his bride.

T
HE NEXT MORNING ADRIANA
awoke to a feeling of disorientation. The bedchamber was dark except for a vertical slit of light in the center of the near wall, but she was facing the wrong way to be looking toward her window in her brother’s house. She began to roll onto her back before she sensed the bulk of his body behind her. Memory flooded her senses then, setting warm rivers aflow in her veins.

“Good morning, Adriana.”

She held her breath, hoping he would think she still slept, that he would say no more until she brought some order to the chaos of her emotions.

“Look at me, sweetheart. I know you are awake.”

Slowly, she turned, conscious of her nakedness beneath the coverlet, and his, remembering all she had learned of his body the night before, all that she had let him take from hers. Heavy warmth crept into her cheeks, and she was grateful for the dimness. He would not see her confusion.

He was lying on his back, his arms folded back so that his hands cradled his head upon the pillow. She remembered how big his hands were, how gentle they could be, how strong and demanding, and her confusion grew. When first she felt and then saw through the shadows that the arm nearest her had begun to move purposefully toward her, she pulled a little away from him without thinking why she did so, but he didn’t seem to notice. He merely reached for her and, with apparently no effort at all, slipped his arm beneath her shoulders and drew her to his side.

Her head fitted into the hollow of his shoulders as though the one had been created for the other, and with his arm around her and the warm length of his body touching hers, she relaxed again, her cheek against his bare chest. She could hear his heart beat and feel her own, and as time passed with comfortable silence between them, hers slowed until its pace matched the steadiness of his.

As though he, too, had been aware of her changing pulse, Chalford moved then, turning toward her, pushing the coverlet away from her with his free hand, then caressing her as though he would test his memory of her body. Without haste, clearly knowing exactly what he was doing, he stirred her senses again, making slow, sensuous love to her until she squirmed with delight beneath him, gasping his name, begging him for release.

Afterward, she lay quietly in his arms again. He had not said a word throughout and she began to think he had fallen asleep. She stirred.

“What is it, sweetheart?”

“Nancy will come.”

“So she will.”

She could hear the smile in his voice, and awareness of it kindled her temper. “What will you do, sir? Lie here and watch while she dresses me, or leap out of bed to astonish her with your brawny nakedness?”

“The first plan sounds best,” he replied.

“Joshua!”

He chuckled. “Very well, I’ll go. But ’Tis under protest, sweetheart, and only because I am not yet fully acquainted with your Nancy.”

“And when you are better acquainted with her?”

“She will know better than to come in when you are in my bed,” he responded. There was silence while Adriana digested his words. Then, as he swung his feet to the floor and reached for his breeches, he said over his shoulder, “Miskin might come in then, but your Nancy will not.”

Coming swiftly to her knees, Adriana flung her pillow at him, but it missed because he moved just then to draw the curtains. Gray dawn light flooded the room.

His breeches slung over his shoulder, he turned, grinning. Then, with a chuckle, he said, “Very pretty, my lady, but if Nancy comes in now, she will no doubt suggest that you cover yourself. You needn’t do so on my account of course.”

Horrified by her wanton posture, Adriana snatched at the covers, pulling them up to her chin, then wished she had something harder than a pillow to throw at him when, still chuckling, he turned away toward the corner door.

When they were both dressed, Miskin served their breakfast in the private parlor, taking the dishes from the inn servants at the door and carrying them to the table before the fire. His attitude was perfectly respectful and correct, but Adriana was embarrassed by his presence, certain that he must be aware of what his master had done the night before, and wondering if he could tell about their morning activities merely by looking at them. She found it hard, too, to look at Chalford, to respond to his remarks in a tone anywhere near as casual as his own.

“Still glad we did not go to Prospect Lodge?” he asked suddenly after a long period of silence.

Her eyes widened and she looked directly at him for the first time since entering the parlor. His words had brought a sudden vision of Sally Villiers to her mind’s eye, and it was as though Sally stood there, in that very parlor, one slim hand covering her mouth as she tittered and teased.

“Merciful heavens, yes,” Adriana said. “I can just imagine the things Sally would say.”

“My goodness me,” Chalford said in a mocking falsetto, “what have we been doing all morning, my dear ones?”

Stifling laughter, Adriana shot a glance at the manservant, but Miskin was at a side table ladling equal portions of sliced fruit in syrup into two compotes and seemed unaware of their conversation. When she looked again at her husband to find him smiling warmly at her, her embarrassment melted away, and she smiled back, thinking marriage might be rather pleasant. That he had proved to be not so easily managed as she had hoped meant only that she would have to exert herself a trifle.

By the time they finished breakfast, their chaise was ready and they were off. Chalford showed no inclination to doze this morning and willingly answered Adriana’s questions about the countryside through which they passed. For the first five miles there were no villages, only trim hedges, rolling downland, and occasional cozy-looking white weatherboarded cottages with neat brown- or yellow-tiled roofs. Chalford explained that over most of this rolling, grassy land, two thousand years before, had lain the dense forest known to the Romans as Silva Anderida. “Even as late as the fourteenth century,” he told her, “it was nearly roadless and unmapped, impenetrable enough for Edward the Third to require twenty-two guides to get him from London to Rye.”

“And now it is all gone?”

“Oh, there are woods still, lots of them. You’ll see. But the only thickly forested part nowadays is in the Weald, to the west of us. The downs are excellent for growing the world’s largest sheep. The rest is fertile, productive farmland.”

“Do you own a lot of tenant farms?” she asked, recalling the way it had been at Wryde and remembering, too, Sarah’s teasing remarks about a possible wedding celebration for their tenants.

He shook his head. “Not so many as you might think. One of the privileges confirmed by the Conqueror was the ‘gavelkind,’ whereby land is divided equally among all a man’s sons, instead of going automatically to the eldest. Thus, we have many small yeoman farms here instead of a few huge estates. That isn’t to say, though, that I don’t help when I can or that local loyalty to Thunderhill isn’t as great as it might be somewhere else.”

Their conversation continued in this desultory fashion, punctuated from time to time by long periods of comfortable silence. They changed horses at Lenham and again at Ashford, the little town at the confluence of two branches of the River Stour.

As the postboys climbed back into their saddles, Chalford said, “Less than ten miles now.”

Eagerly, Adriana turned her face to the window again, to watch the passing countryside. Ten miles was nothing. She was certain she could smell the sea in the air already. The road ran along the base of the North Downs, the hills rising to their left, the East Stour on their right, meandering gently alongside the road, narrowing as they left Ashford behind. Large black clouds appeared beyond the river, moving toward them, and the sun was sinking lower in the sky directly behind them. She realized with a start that they were traveling almost due east.

“I thought ’twas the south coast,” she said without thinking how cryptic her words might sound.

Chalford smiled. “The coastline from Hythe to Dungeness Point runs north to south,” he said. “We are twenty-seven miles west of Calais, thirty northwest of Boulogne. None of that makes it any less the south coast, however, and there will be times, during storms particularly, when you will feel surrounded by the sea at Thunderhill. Our sunrises are spectacular, however, for the sun appears to rise straight out of the sea. And the sunsets over Romney Marsh are no less beautiful.”

She gave a little shiver. “A castle on the edge of a marsh sounds like the setting for one of those gothic tales Miranda delights in, Joshua, something about which Monk Lewis would write—damp and dreary, eerie and mysterious.”

He chuckled, watching her, delight lighting his eyes. “The marsh holds its mysteries, all right, but it isn’t really a marsh at all, you know, only a vast land of water, grass, wind, and solitude, a maze of hedges, dykes, ditches, and roads. Tiny hamlets dot the landscape, sometimes no more than a stone’s throw apart, but each one an entity with secrets of its own. Look ahead to that arched stone bridge,” he added suddenly.

The bridge was no more than a single ancient arch with sparkling water racing over rounded stones beneath. Adriana could see that the road forked on the far side, the right fork winding steeply up a ridge of the North Downs that looked as though it had somehow shot away from the others.

“The left fork leads to Hythe,” Chalford said. There was silence until they reached the midway point on the bridge, Then he said, “Now look up there, on the hill.”

Adriana looked and gasped. Thunderhill Castle looked like a child’s notion of what King Arthur’s castle might have been, like Windsor looked from Eton on a clear day. Built of gray stone, its turreted enclosure walls, curtain walls, and tall, round, pointed towers dominated the crest of the escarpment upon which it sat, looking solid, mighty, impenetrable. The black clouds rising behind it gave the castle an ominous look.

“I didn’t know,” she whispered. “It’s so big.”

“Big enough,” he agreed. “Once there were a number of these fortresses all along the coast, built to hold England for her Conqueror and his successors. Not many remain, and fewer still are habitable. Only Thunderhill, Arundel, and one or two others. Dover Castle has been turned into a martello tower with a gun battery to defend Dover against Bonaparte’s invasion fleet. Other such towers, new ones, are being erected in Hythe and on Dungeness Point. The sea has receded, you see, so although we can see the Channel clearly from the castle, we’re too far back from the water for a successful gun emplacement.”

“Are we really in danger here?” she asked.