The Highwayman (Rakes and Rogues of the Restoration Book 3) (15 page)

“I’m very glad to see you, Jack. Please sit, wherever you please.”

He noted her hesitation, but it didn’t stop him from sitting on her bed. She scooted back farther, making a tent of bed-curtains and pillows. He peered in after her, unable to to suppress a grin. “I’m sorry, Bella. I forgot how very inexperienced you are. I won’t bite, unless you want me too.”

Her startled squeak made him chuckle and Arabella knew something had lifted. He was more like the Jack that she knew. “I am not so inexperienced as you might think,” she replied defensively, tossing her fortress of pillows aside. “I grew up in the country, and there were some books in my father’s library and—”

“You perused salacious books in your father’s library?”

“Of course not!” She hoped he couldn’t see her blush in the dark. Perhaps she
had
glanced at the works of Ovid, but strictly in a scholarly sense. “I mean books on animal husbandry and breeding and such.”

Jack stretched full-length beside her with his hands clasped behind his head as they conversed. The laces of his shirt had come undone, doubtless a result of his climb through her window. She kept giving him sideways glances, surreptitiously admiring the strong column of his throat and fascinated by a thick strand of dark hair that kissed his collarbone. She wanted to take it and feel it between her fingers. She wanted to kiss his throat and feel his naked skin. She had never imagined herself a wanton, at least not until she’d met him.

“And do you imagine that people...ah...breed like animals?”

“What? Oh! Yes. I expect it would be very much the same.” She knew she’d been caught staring and couldn’t hide a guilty flush.

Jack looked at her curiously. “Some men are little better than animals. But making love can be a very pleasurable endeavor.”

“When you kissed me, on Shooters Hill, I felt...well, I felt you pressing against me.”

“And how did they make you feel?”

“Excited...curious...and frightened. I wanted you to kiss me, but I didn’t want to do...that.”

“Ah! So that is why you hid under your pillows. I’ll never ask you to do a thing you don’t wish to do. Men do become aroused very easily though. It might take nothing more than a kiss, a touch, or even a look.”

Arabella couldn’t help it. Her gaze traveled down his length with a will of its own. Her eyes widened. In his tight breeches, the sign of his arousal was abundantly clear.

“Bella?”

“Yes?” She turned her head quickly to meet his gaze.

“That doesn’t mean you’re expected to see the thing through. When I look at you, I might become aroused. If I kiss you, I
will
be aroused. But I leave it to you to decide what we do...or don’t do. Have you no aunt or...”

“No. Just you.” Taking him at his word, she curled up against him, wrapping her arms around his chest. “I am relying on you to explain it to me.” It was a heady feeling to hold him. She was filled with anticipation now her anxiety was gone.

Jack’s eyes narrowed. It seemed she wished to play. “Very well.” He settled her in his lap and spoke in a seductive whisper. “You see . . .when you press your soft womanly parts, against a fellow’s hard manly ones, it makes him swollen and excited, being right next to the thing he wants most. It gets a man’s blood pumping… rushing…filling him up. It gets him wanting to fill her up too. To feel her hot and warm, surrounding him. He wants to touch her and taste her.”

Now it was Arabella who was spellbound, aroused by his words. He nuzzled her neck and she whimpered. He placed a hand on her shoulder and bent to her ear, his warm breath raising the small hairs on her neck as he spoke. “He wants to feel her squirm and sigh beneath him. To feel her firm flesh, and squeeze and fondle her soft skin.”

His fingers skimmed the outer curve of her breast sliding over smooth silk and his thumb brushed the pebbled peak that had so entranced him while he watched her sleep.

A raw bolt of pleasure tugged at Arabella’s nipples, radiating along her limbs and settling between her legs with such intensity it made her gasp. The sensation was startling. Unlike anything she’d felt before. With an incoherent cry, she turned in his embrace and he claimed her with his lips. They kissed long into the night, with no fear of discovery or interruption, a tender exploration, a tentative communion, until she fell asleep in his arms.

~

An hour before dawn, Jack rose from her Arabella’s bed and stretched contentedly. He would never have imagined that he’d spend the night with a woman doing little more than kissing. It had been deeply satisfying and far more intimate than any of his occasional sexual encounters. That thought should have been alarming but he was feeling too damn good to care. He placed a pillow between her arms and grinned when she sighed and hugged it. Leaning over, he gave her one more kiss, a chaste one on her forehead, and then he pulled a coverlet up to her chin to keep her warm against the morning chill.

He smiled, pleased to see he merited a careful mention in the journal lying open on the table by her bed. He had just one thing left to do
.

An hour later he crossed the bridge and into Southwark, stopping to empty his pockets in a poor box he passed along the way. He was back on the highway just as the sun crept over the far horizon.

‘Now thus much without vanity may be asserted of the subject, that if all persons, both Ladies, much more Gentlemen, would spend some of their tyme in Journeys to visit their native Land, and be curious to Inform themselves and make observations of the pleasant prospects, good buildings, different produces and manufactures of each place, with the variety of sports and recreations they are adapt to, would be a souveraign remedy to cure or preserve ffrom these Epidemick diseases of vapours.’

Arabella woke with a sleepy smile. A part of her still lingered in a dream of moonlit kisses. Something soft brushed her cheek, and she breathed deep, savoring the delicate scent of a fresh and sweet perfume. She opened her eyes, curious, and then sat bolt upright with a start. There was a perfect rose on her pillow.
A white rose.
The flower of York.
It wasn’t a dream at all!

She put a hand to her chest as if to calm the wild thudding of her heart. She hadn’t expected him to come so soon. In truth, she hadn’t been certain he would come at all. There was some wild magic afoot at night that made the impossible seem possible, a sort of intoxication that made one throw caution to the wind and say and do things that seemed unimaginable in the stark light of day.

What was she to do now that the impossible was suddenly real?
Can a person fall in love with a man so quickly?
He was an immensely appealing, highly attractive, virile man. Despite what he said, he would not always be content with kisses. Could she take an unrepentant highwayman, as her lover?

Good Lord what would my father think?
Yet he had married a women his peers called enemy and traitor, and she was fairly certain her wild adventurous mother would tell her to follow her heart.

She picked up the rose. It was was absent of thorns and perfectly formed, each petal a soft and lustrous shiver of light. He must have gone to some effort to find it. No one had given her flowers before. She held it to her nose, breathing in its perfume, then brushed it lightly across her lips with a slow smile. A wayward breeze lifted the curtains, letting in a bright shaft of light and shuffling the pages of her open journal. She reddened, wondering if he’d read it.
While I slept, he had the chance to see me, naked in body and thought.
It seemed unfair somehow, that he might gather silent knowledge of her, while she had so little of him.

Something gleamed on the table, caught in a sunbeam. Curious, she reached for her robe and got up to investigate, still carrying her rose. A wide smile lit her face. Piled on top of her journal was her mother’s necklace.
Thank you
, she mouthed silently. Beside it was a note. She blushed crimson as she read it.

Bella,

Seeing you clothed in nothing but silk sheets, with no adornment but that glorious hair and innocent smile was worth the trip to London in itself. I lied about the pearls. I took them so that I might give them back. I wanted an excuse to see you.

Until next we meet,

Jack

“Oh, Jack

“My lady? Is there aught amiss? I heard you call.” Cecilia bustled into the room carrying a tray of tea and cinnamon toast.

With a guilty start, Arabella slipped the note under her pillow and hid the rose behind her back. “No, Caroline. I am sorry if I disturbed you. I was just thinking out loud. It’s a bad habit I’ve got into since I’ve returned to writing my journal.”

“Oh ma’am! Here we’ve been, reading the chapbooks and broadsheets about other people’s adventures, and now you’ve had one of your own. You must have been so excited. And you were so brave! Everyone is talking about how you stared a highwayman down with your pistol, and then slapped him when he kissed you. Mr. Crookshanks says there are over twenty invitations waiting for you in the drawing room, just since yesterday.”

“Why does everyone make such a fuss? Highwaymen have become so common in London that people hide one purse and carry a spare to give to them as toll.”

“But most of those are rabble and common thieves, my lady. Why some even have to hire a horse because they haven’t the means to keep their own. And they can only pretend to good manners. You were robbed by Gentleman Jack. He’s a knight of the road and a legend already. Even Lady Ferrar said she was impressed by his wit and gracious manners. It seems he was quite taken with you. It was you he chose to kiss. How I wish I had been there. We are all so proud of you! Oh, tell me, my lady. Was he as handsome as they say?”

For a preacher’s daughter her maid seemed easily swept away by the doings of gentlemen bandits, but Arabella supposed some might say, for a spinster countess and the daughter of Parliamentarian colonel she was, too. She suppressed a private grin but her eyes sparkled. “It was very hard to tell, Caroline. He was passably handsome, I suppose. He was impressive in stature, to be sure. Very tall and strong. Lean, but well muscled. I could see his eyes. They were dark and deep and very fine and held one quite enthralled, yet they flashed with wit and humor.”

Caroline listened with rapt attention.

“As for the rest…I couldn’t say. He wore a scarf that masked the better part of his features.”

“Even when he kissed you?”

Arabella blushed, momentarily flustered. If she was going to have doings with a highwayman, she needed to be better at dissimulation. “It was dark and I had my eyes closed. Really, Caroline. The ordeal is over. I’d rather not discuss it any further.”

But the ordeal was far from over. The doings on Shooter’s Hill seemed to have thrust her into the center of London’s social whirl. To retire from it too precipitously would offend her eager sponsors, Lady Ferrar and Miss Buckhurst, and likely cause her far more harm than good. Besides, much to her surprise, she rather enjoyed the attention.

Other than accompanying her father on a brief yearly visit to the London townhouse, she had lived a quiet life until she met Jack. The earl had little use for those who shunned his Irish Catholic wife, just as they had little use for him, and after her death, they’d had no social life at all. She’d been taught how to dance but never attended a ball. She’d had a fine education but had no one to converse with besides her tutors and her father. Most of her musings, ideas, and dreams remained confined to the pages of her journal. She knew more about mining, wool and the price of barley than any proper lady should, but she had never flirted, had female friends, or gentleman callers.

What harm in venturing a little deeper into these uncharted waters? At least until any interest in her doings was eclipsed by the frivolities and faux pas of more illustrious ladies and lords? There was no need to hide. She was safe from Robert, according to Jack, and his words last night had almost seemed to dare her. ‘You hide yourself in coats and cloaks and scarves,’ he’d said. As they plowed through a mountain of correspondence from well wishers, new friends, and those curious about London’s latest diversion, she asked for her delighted maid’s advice about the latest fashions in clothing and hair, deciding she would surprise him.

~

Arabella had no trouble staying awake the next night. She waited in her bed with gleaming tousled curls and a loosely fastened nightgown over a voluminous chemise. Caroline had told her it was all the rage and she couldn’t wait for Jack to see. Her heart leapt every time she hear a rustle or a footstep through the open window. She still felt a little apprehensive, but as she re-lived his kisses and the feel of his hands on her silk-clad body her anticipation grew. It wasn’t until the birds began to chirp outside her window that she pulled the bed-curtains closed and tried to get some sleep.

She couldn’t help her disappointment, but she told herself she wasn’t really surprised. London was dangerous for him, of course, and he lived far to the north and doubtless had business there. It might be a week, perhaps even a month before he could visit again.
I’m sure he’ll send a message though.

Over the next few days, she attended card parties and dinners, but she was always home before midnight, and she kept the window open despite the evening chill. She wore emerald silks, gold-trimmed black-velvet, and light-hued rose-satin, and her hair tumbled in ringlets down her back. She was eager to see herself through Jack’s practiced eyes and gauge his reaction—but there was no message, and he still didn’t come. Her nights were filled with wild imaginings and vivid dreams that left her aching and restless. But by day she kept busy exploring the city and told herself she hardly noticed his absence at all.

Three weeks after Jack’s midnight visit she flopped down on her bed after a tour of the tower of London and began to write.