by Daria Vernon
Lady Weldon scowled, even as her brows knit in suspicion. Lord Weldon, looking rather lost at her side, was suddenly brought to life. “What’s this now? Killed a wolf?”
Lady Weldon waved the fan in front of his face as if to whisk away a bad smell. “Pay them no mind. It’s just some gauche joke they have between them.” The undisputed matriarch of her little group, Lady Weldon spun on her heels to lead them away. Yet, Beth’s father lingered a moment, wary and protective. When he turned to follow the Weldons, it felt purposeful—like a little gift to Beth.
Allison had crossed the street and was now pressing coins into the gate boy’s hand for admission to the rest of the menagerie. Lady Weldon was going to love that.
“Should we accompany her?” Rhys asked, nodding in Allison’s direction.
Beth shook her head. “She’ll hardly have a moment’s peace before her mother finds her. She’ll be fine.”
And then they were alone.
Beth’s fingers rested on Rhys’ arm. There seemed a detectable sliver of trust in her affection—something he’d not felt since his return. It lit through him like a sunbeam.
Together they escaped to the fringe of the village, where the crowd was thin and the torches fewer. Behind Dulcet Street, a small stage had been set up. On it, a brightly painted woman soliloquized to a handful of patrons on the grass. “You miss’d your fortunes when you met with her, sir . . .”
“I know this play,” said Beth, in an unobtrusive whisper. Rhys followed the gentle tug on his arm, ready to glide on a cloud to wherever his Beth led him.
“Young gentleman, that only love for beauty . . . they love not wisely . . .”
Beth’s eyes fixated on the performer. “It’s Thomas Middleton. Livia’s speaking.” But Rhys scarcely heard her. He was stuck instead on the words spoken by the actress—They love not wisely.
No. They certainly do not.
Beth’s eyes glittered with appreciation for the performance. Her feathery lashes flicked up and down, reminding Rhys of how they’d once flicked against his cheek like soft little paintbrushes. Her lips moved with Livia’s as the actress orated downstage. “And want’s the key of—”
“—whoredom.” The word spilled loudly from Beth’s lips in unison with the performer, jarring Rhys from his contemplation.
Beth caught him watching her. It was too dark to see her blush, but Rhys knew the expression she made when she did. The apples of her cheeks rose and she looked away with tight lips. Such was her tell, and she was telling.
“Do you want to stay and watch?”
She shook her head. “No. Let’s wander.”
There was nothing else beyond Dulcet Street. The village abruptly ended at the canal, which cut a dark gash across the land, having nothing to reflect in its still waters. They followed it to where a different sort of revelry was taking place. A field had been overtaken by the troupes who brought their skills to the fair. Here, actors changed their costumes by candlelight, and acrobats invented new feats with their nerves shored up by wine. Tents and carts and bonfires dotted the grass.
Beth stopped at a tree and pulled away from Rhys to sit at its base. She patted the ground beside her.
Rhys looked toward the village, aware of her family so nearby. Wondering if Desmarais was about. Wondering if his own associates from the Home Office were keeping their eyes open. He hadn’t told her about Harry yet. She’d be glad to learn of his life now.
Rhys allowed himself to be drawn down to the ground beside her. He remembered leaning against the wall with her in the folly. Commiserating.
“What are you thinking about?” she asked, sinking into his arm.
“The folly.”
“I remember it well.”
“Oh?”
“Sometimes it felt like another place but only when you were there.”
This truce between them—her trust, her nearness—it all felt so fragile. Rhys hesitated to speak. “How do you mean?”
“You once told me that it was easy to imagine it differently.”
“Yes.”
“It was the same for me. In my lonelier hours, I would close my eyes and light all of the sconces in the house. I’d imagine them flickering against gleaming wood and wallpaper. All the fires roaring. All the carpets unrolled and bright—”
“Solomon and Lionel, on a different continent,” Rhys added. The smile she gave him then was warm, but sad. He pulled her closer, wishing he’d not interrupted her beautiful thoughts. Thankfully, it did not deter her.
“And all the while, I pictured this too—”
She waved a hand across his body, but he didn’t understand.
“This?”
“I mean you, looking like this. You, not covered in mud and me not covered in mud. I saw us ascending the stairs of the folly as we did that first morning . . .” Her pupils danced as she paused, as though her story now ran ten paces ahead of her and she could not catch up.
Rhys took her hand. “Please go on.”
“I saw us as if we were leaving a grand party behind us downstairs. As if we were retreating to the bedchamber for something more delicate—more intimate than simply stitching up my shoulder.”
Rhys tightened his hand on hers. Simply stitching up her shoulder had been one of the most intimate moments of his life.
But he understood her. His days and nights at the hideout had been plagued by similar obsessions. Obsessions that tangled with his guilt even as they brought a foreign lightness to his heart. Obsessions that would remain to burden him if she truly was preparing to leave England.
He could hardly see her eyes in the dim light and yet felt pulled into them. He was brimming with the desire to tell her—to share with her what sort of strange and terrible ghosts messed with his stomach whenever she was near. Yet the words evaporated before he could find them. Sighing, he raked a hand over his hair.
“What is it?” she asked.
He shook off the ghosts and smiled at her.
“You knew that Middleton play so well, perhaps you should take up acting.” He nudged her. She flung her head back with laughter, her throat stretching tight as she did. Rhys resisted the urge to bend down and kiss it.
“But truly,” he said, “it would make your ruination complete.”
“Being alone with you among the caravans is likely enough to accomplish that.”
“There are ways to make it more complete yet.”
The words hung between them. Beth matched the tightness of his grip on her hand. The air tasted suddenly humid and thick.
Rhys’ arm settled around her. Drew her in. His cheek slid against hers until his lips, hot and vital, found the corner of her jaw and pressed a kiss there—a kiss which shattered the padlock on three years of longing. She turned to join his exploring lips with her own.
Perhaps they’d be discovered. Perhaps Lady Weldon would make use of her hound-like sense for rooting out impropriety. Perhaps Beth would be shunned again. But what did it matter? Beth had her highwayman and had no shame left to give to the world.
Rhys’ kiss obscured all other thoughts. With every tug of her lip between his teeth, she felt sense dissolve. Something else took its place—warmth, desire—a certain effervescence as though her body tingled with a million champagne bubbles.
Yet that still did not define it. It was as powerful and as wrenching as grief . . . yet was also quite its opposite. As she searched for the poetry to describe such a thing, Rhys’ tongue swept across hers. She breathed him in.
Her last thoughts slipped through her fingers. Until there was nothing. Nothing. Just the midnight blue sensation of his body against hers.
A loud laugh cracked like lightning through their embrace.
They both turned shyly toward the interruption.
But it wasn’t merely laughter that had broken their embrace. It was also
an exchange of moans that ebbed and flowed from a canvas pavilion across from their tree. The sound lured Beth’s attention like a sweet aroma as recognition dawned on her. A woman’s sighs—loaded with her mewling voice—climbed upward in octaves as a man’s faint grunts kept time.
Beth’s scalp tingled as Rhys combed a hand through her hair. Neither spoke as they listened to the sounds from the tent. For Beth, it brought to mind the more subdued opera of their night in the woods together. Heat blossomed in her lap. The hand she’d rested on Rhys’ thigh began to tighten—grasping for something. Back in the forest, she’d not been granted the pleasure of seeing him. What did his body look and feel like when no clothing was between them?
Her fingers slid up his hard thigh, curious to confirm the reaction that she already suspected—a solid stalk straining for egress. At her touch, Rhys let out such a telling exhale that she nearly begged for him to take her then.
But as she locked eyes with his, it was clear such begging would not be necessary. She spread her hand wide across his lap and pressed against him, exploring the heat of his rod.
He jerked beneath her touch. Then his face fell to hers and his lips took such a deep pull of her essence that she thought she might turn to dust.
The very tops of her inner thighs began to slip silkily against one another, spread as they were with her response to him.
A long and shrieking sound came from the tent then, snatching Beth and Rhys’ attention once more. Dim shadows moved within as the chorus of gasps died down inside.
Beth turned to Rhys seriously. His eyes were wide and thirsty, no doubt from the hand still lingering on his groin, in torturous stillness.
“Rhys, I want—”
Just then, the amorous pair staggered from the pavilion together. First, a ruffled soldier, his regimentals wadded up in the crook of one arm. Then, a woman with dark copper curls. She paused to retie the ribbons of a colorful but shabby bodice. The soldier kissed her cheek before dashing off toward the village.
The auburn-haired beauty smoothed down her locks and looked in their direction. Beth could swear that they were winked at before the woman wandered off to a darker part of the camp.
Rhys gently removed Beth from him and stood up. A burn of rejection swept over her until he offered his hand.
He helped her up and kissed her hand—a reassurance that eased the confusion as he led her toward the now-forsaken tent. He pulled back the entry curtain.
Beth dug a heel into the grass. “Rhys, it’s not our place . . .”
He looked over his shoulder at her as he ducked to go inside. “I highly doubt it belonged to those two either.”
Entering the space, she found Rhys slightly hunched beneath the low swag of the canvas, extending to her a most mischievous smile. “You enjoyed me first as a highwayman, Beth. Surely you don’t wish to see me completely reformed?”
Her smile spread like fire. Of course not.
Chapter 22
Two lanterns burned low near the rear canvas wall, but as Beth stood in the small space, assessing it, she seemed to Rhys to be that which lit up the space the most. White voile poufed out from the edges of her pink overdress. A wilting gardenia pinned into her hair now shed its fragrant petals into her locks. She was the very spirit of spring.
Rhys swiped a palm discretely over the tightened fabric at his crotch—seeking to extend his patience yet making it worse than ever.
“I don’t know,” said Beth, casting a concerned look at him. “It seems rather inside-of-doors for our tastes. Does it not?”
“A bit luxurious by our standards, certainly, but I believe it still counts as an encampment, if that makes you feel any better. Even if there are carpets.” A cot was set up against one side of the canvas, but Rhys was more interested in the large cushions that were strewn about. Beth silently toed the fringe of one of the threadbare carpets. Whatever she was ruminating about, Rhys couldn’t lose her to it now.
He stepped up behind her and pulled her against him. She rested her hands on his. How soft those palms were. It was this sort of soft touch that he recalled a dying shipmate crying out for in the throes of fever: to be held again by my sweet Anne—her hands are lighter than snow resting on ye. Rhys began to long for such a thing himself, on the endless nights spent swaying in his hammock. Such dreams could push away the ripe stench of the ship’s bowels for a spell. Now here he was with his own sweet Anne’s hands—Beth’s hands—making him feel worthy and alive. He’d be just as tormented as the dead sailor, should he never be touched by these hands again.
Beth pressed her palms against the backs of his hands, persuading him to move where she pleased. She drew his left hand upward.
His fingertips lifted with the gentle ripples of whalebone that he felt through her layers. She guided him to the top edge of her stays where hardness became softness at the gentle spilling of her bosom flesh over the lip of the garment. His fingers curled into that softness with rapt appreciation as he lowered a kiss to the side of her neck.
But his right hand was being guided lower, to the dip where her many layers of sheer skirts would sink between her legs with a gentle press. As their hands slid together into that dip, the heat he discovered there made his cock lurch.
He was certain she must have felt it, pressed as he was against the low curve of her back. She pushed against him in response and again he caught the scent of that gardenia. His body flooded with gratitude. The past two days had rivaled the last three years in his impatience for this moment.
Rhys arched his body over hers, bending her with him, giving himself the range he needed to reach a hand to her inner thigh. Pressing into the cushion of fine fabric, he drew his hand upward until the heel of his palm dragged across that wonderful dip. Beth let out the most lovely noise, like that of one struck in the gut but ten times softer. A cry of need that was thrown like a bolt into Rhys as she clutched his other hand to her breast.
He didn’t know how to begin, and it seemed neither did she. He lingered at her back, rubbing his nose through the wispy hairs at the nape of her neck, taking in her dewy springtime scents. They breathed in unison in their awkward embrace.
She was the first to break from it. Taking his hand, she looked to lower them both to the ground as she had beneath the tree, but Rhys stopped her.
“Not yet.” His words brought a puzzled expression to her face, but she asked no questions. His heart clenched—thrilled at this sign of her trust.
The sheer fichu around her neck had already been displaced by his caresses. With one swift motion, he discarded it to the floor.
Rhys took a step back to shirk off his coat, and Beth’s eyes followed it nervously to where it landed on the corner of the cot. “Rhys?”
He traced her low neckline with a fingertip. Several frog closures of gold braid stretched across her stomacher. He toyed with the first one. A hand placed gently around his wrist gave him pause, but he looked reassuringly into her eyes. He didn’t see fear there, only curiosity. “Beth, I won’t have this be like the forest. It won’t be desperate and cold.” It will be naked and indulgent. It will be loving. He undid the first loop. “It will be so much better.”
She looked around. The only thing protecting them from passers-by was tarpaulin. It was clear how aware she was of it—how aware she was of their trespass. Rhys lowered his head, awaiting her judgment. He could make concessions if he must, but it was unbearable how badly he wanted to be against her skin.
“I’ve waited three years to see you and feel you.” Beth’s eyes skimmed across him hungrily before meeting his, keeping him in terrible suspense. “I won’t forfeit any part of it. I’ve wanted it for too long. The risks don’t matter.”
The risks of scandal, she meant, and he was glad that such ideas were fading for her. She didn’t deserve to feel tainted by even a drop of shame. But he was risking something too. He risked that he mig
ht once again be sharing a night with her, only to never see her once she left for the Continent. He risked becoming that sick sailor crying out in the night.
She tightened her grip on his wrist before releasing him decisively. “I want to feel you, Rhys.”
Her words sent him careening off a precipice, and together they descended to their knees as they both feverishly worked at the closures down her bodice.
He growled softly against her neck as he worked his way toward her lips with his kisses and bites. Her throat uttered another needy gasp as the sides of her robe parted, as he peeled her from it and slid the sleeves down, feeling the cool skin of her forearms against his thumbs. Beth.
So desperate she was to snatch the cravat from his neck that she nearly choked him and they both snorted at her fumble as his fingers came to their rescue. Her eyes lingered dangerously on him every time a new flash of skin was revealed to her, and the desire evident in those looks and in her frantic fingers made him as hard as marble for her.
His eyes lingered too. As he unpeeled her from her trappings, it seemed the forest witch from his memory was revealed, layer by beautiful layer. The increasing mess of her hair, sprinkled with gardenia petals, brought back razor-sharp visions of her staring at him from behind it, breathing hard and heavy as she did now. The place in his heart that she held residence in could surely be occupied by no other.
His lifetime of sailing on rat-infested merchant brigs, the catastrophic mutiny, the desperate days of highway robbery, they all blurred together into a singular path that led him here—at last—to something he was grateful for. One day soon, it might be taken from him, as most good things were. Most but not all. Because the crossing of their paths had long ago changed his fortunes. The mistake of taking her to the folly had revealed what sort of men he’d been protecting. It cut him free of his debts. It brought him into Cobton Dale, where the loss of her things had led him to a most respectable change of career. He owed so much to her.
