by Mary Balogh
“Thank you.” Captain Blake stood to watch the men on their way. “We might just do that.”
And the men were gone about their appointed task, a spring in their step, their spirits high now that they were about to get their hands on at least some of the hated enemy at last.
“Well.” Captain Blake looked down at Joana, who still sat, her hands clasped about her knees. “Do you want a roof over your head tonight, Joana? It is going to be a chilly night.”
“It is so real, is it not?” she said. “The might of France not far to our left, the strength of England and Portugal not far to our right. Battle is inevitable. All within days. No longer weeks, but days. So many men are going to die. Thousands. And perhaps you too, Robert. Are you afraid of dying?”
“Yes,” he said as she looked up at him. “I have yet to meet the person, man or woman, who is not. But it is something that we must all do sooner or later. It would be foolish to live our lives in fear of it. It will come when it comes.”
“Ah,” she said, smiling faintly. “A fatalist. I hope you do not die in this battle.”
“Thank you,” he said. “So do I.”
“Yes.” She got to her feet and smiled more fully up into his face. “A roof over our heads, please, Robert. A whole house to ourselves with no one else there at all. We can play house. Shall we?”
“We will spend the night there,” he said, “and leave early in the morning.”
“But it is still only early evening.” She set her fingertips against his chest. “Robert, let us play house for a few hours. Let’s find this house and pretend it is ours. Let’s go inside and shut out the world and pretend that the whole world is inside with us. Just for a few hours, shall we? We will pretend that we are a very ordinary couple very much in love. Are you good at pretending? But of course you are. You are a good spy. I saw that in Salamanca. Will you pretend this with me?”
“Joana,” he said, looking down into her eager, beautiful face, “we are in a dangerous place at a dangerous time. We are in the middle of a war. We are on opposite sides.”
“And I am your prisoner,” she said. “You forgot to add that detail. Play house with me for one night. For one night let’s treat each other just as we would do if nothing else existed or mattered in the whole wide world but the two of us. Will you?”
“Joana—” he said, but she set three fingers over his lips.
“When you say my name like that,” she said, “I know you are going to say something stuffy and sensible. Tomorrow or the next day we will be parted. Perhaps we will never meet again. Probably we will never meet again. We have been granted the gift of this night, far from the course of the armies, an empty house in which to stay, and no plans to leave until dawn. It is a gift, Robert. Are you willing to throw it away?”
No, he was not. He was tired of fighting her, holding her always at arm’s length—even though for the past several weeks he had slept with her almost nightly. He was tired of the barrier between them, tired of always thinking of her as the enemy. And he was quite as aware as she of the fact that time was running out and that within the next day or two he would have the difficult and unpleasant task of turning her over to Viscount Wellington as a French spy. Sometimes he longed to be able to step outside his life into one more congenial to him.
Not permanently. He liked his life. It was one that he had made for himself by sheer effort, and he was pleased with what he had done. But just for a short while. Just for a few hours.
“Very well, then,” he said, his harsh tone at variance with his words. “For tonight, Joana—until dawn—we will play house. Let’s see if we can find this farm, shall we?” He shouldered the two guns almost as if he had a quarrel with them.
And just what had he done now? he wondered as he strode off in the direction of the deserted farm, Joana at his side. Had he finally succumbed to her charms just like all those other poor fools who dogged her footsteps wherever she went? Was he really going to bare his heart to her and risk having it hurt? And risk her ridicule?
But it was for only a few hours. Just a short time out of time. At dawn everything would be back to normal again.
* * *
She had rubbed and rubbed at her hair with a spare towel until it was almost dry. She felt it with her hand, felt its dampness and softness, dropped the towel, and used both hands to work through the tangles and push it into some style. She felt so deliciously clean that she closed her eyes and breathed in the smell of herself. And she smiled.
When they had come into the house, she had turned to wrap her arms about his neck and kiss his cheek. He had not offered to kiss hers in return or do more than pat the sides of her waist with his hands. She had felt cheated for a moment. He was not going to play after all. But she knew that men found it more difficult to play such games than women. And at least he had not put her away from him.
She had wrinkled her nose. “Robert,” she had said, “I think you stink. I am not quite sure because I believe I stink too. There will be water here—and a bathtub. Let us have a bath, shall we? With warm water? Can you imagine a greater luxury?”
“Not without having to think very hard,” he had said, and she had smiled more brightly at him. It was the closest Robert had come to joking with her. “So you are going to set me to work hauling water?”
She had smiled dazzlingly. “But think how wonderful it will be in bed tonight,” she had said. “Both of us clean and smelling sweet.” She had had the satisfaction of seeing his eyes kindling. “And I will work too. I will get a fire going. And to think that usually I bathe every day and take it very much for granted.”
That had been more than an hour before. She had bathed first, undressing and stepping into the warm water in the bathtub in the middle of the kitchen without at all worrying that he was in the room too. She had sighed with satisfaction and looked up at him from beneath her lashes. And she had known that he was after all going to play. She had never seen such a naked look of desire on Robert’s face.
Now he was bathing and she was waiting for him in the main bedchamber, a towel wrapped about her. Her clothes were hanging above the stove, drying. She bounced once on the bed where she was sitting and found that, yes indeed, it was soft and well-sprung. It was going to be a wonderful place on which to make love.
And then the bedroom door opened and he stepped inside. He was wearing only a towel wrapped about his waist. He looked almost unbearably masculine and virile. His hair, still wet, curled close to his head as it had when she had first met him.
“Robert,” she said, swinging one foot, “are you clean again and sweet-smelling?”
He stopped inside the door. “You had better come and find out for yourself,” he said.
She smiled and got to her feet. If that was not an irresistible invitation, coming as it did from Robert, then she did not know what would be.
She was indescribably beautiful, he thought, her damp hair in unruly waves about her head and down over her shoulders, her shoulders and arms and legs bare. Her skin had been darkened by the sun during the past weeks, so that many English ladies would have been horrified at the sight of her. But to him she looked healthy and vivid and lovely.
She looked even lovelier when she got to her feet and discarded the towel, dropping it carelessly to the floor. His eyes roamed over her, over the slim legs and rounded hips and small waist, over the firm high breasts to her finely boned shoulders. And to her face, alight with mischief and something else too.
She came up to him and set her nose against his chest and sniffed. She set two cool hands against his shoulders. Her breasts brushed tantalizingly against his chest. He inhaled slowly.
“Mm,” she said. “You smell good, Robert.” And her hands moved downward to his towel and tossed it backward onto the floor. “This is our own home and our own bedchamber, and the night is ahead of us. What shall we do?”
“This for a start,” he said. And he gazed into her dark eyes while he twined his fingers in her hair and lowered his mouth to hers, his tongue reaching out ahead of him. He saw her open her mouth before closing his eyes.
He had not kissed her since the night they had become lovers. He had been too intent during the weeks since on convincing both himself and her that what he did with her was done merely to satisfy a physical need. Kissing implied more than the physical. There was something very personal and intimate about kissing—more intimate, strangely enough, than the actual act of coupling.
Her mouth was soft and warm. Inside it was hot and wet and inviting. She moaned.
She had wanted him to kiss her. For so long she had wanted it. Intimate as they had been for weeks, there had always been something missing. Some closeness. Some tenderness. And now suddenly it was all there—because he was kissing her deeply and because they were naked together and because they were in their bedchamber in their own house, a whole night ahead of them.
“Robert.” She stroked one hand through his hair as his mouth burned a path down over her chin and along her throat to find the pulse at its base. “Robert, this is more than physical, is it not? Tell me that it is more.”
And his face was above hers again, and he was gazing down into her eyes. There was depth in his, so that she knew her answer with almost frightening intensity. She had never wanted this of any man, had never expected it. She had wanted always to be in control. She could never be in control if she allowed him to look at her like this and say the words that accompanied the look—and if she responded to both.
And yet always, always in her dreams she had wanted nothing else but this. Oh, surely far back in dreams she had wanted this. This was all she could ever want of life. There was nothing else. Oh, there was nothing.
And he looked down at her and saw the vulnerability, heard the words she had spoken and the ones she had not yet spoken but perhaps would if he replied as he wished. And he was terrified. For if the words were spoken, then they were not playing house at all. There would be no game involved, but only naked reality.
And he did not want reality. He wanted a night of make-believe. That was what he had agreed to. But, God . . . oh, God, she was beautiful. And not just the more-than-lovely body that he held naked in his arms. She was beautiful.
“Hush, Joana,” he said, his mouth against her ear. “Let’s not talk. Let’s make love. Sometimes the body can speak more eloquently than words.”
“Make love?” She turned her head and smiled slowly into his eyes. “We are going to make love, Robert? At last?”
“Yes.” His mouth was on hers again. “We will make love, Joana. On the bed, if you please. We are too different in height to be comfortable standing.”
“It is such a lovely bed,” she said, drawing away from him and leading him by the hand toward it. “It is large and soft. And look at all the warm covers we may pull over ourselves afterward.”
“Afterward?” he said. “Who said anything about afterward?”
She had never heard him tease so. She lay down on the bed and smiled up at him. She still held his hand. “I thought perhaps I might exhaust you before dawn,” she said.
“Now, that,” he said, lying down on his side next to her and propping himself on one elbow, “is a challenge pure and simple. We shall see who exhausts whom.”
Her breath was coming fast. She had never seen him like this, relaxed and teasing, a smile lurking in his eyes. Ah, she had never seen him like this. He was wonderful almost beyond bearing. She lifted a hand and set her palm against his cheek.
“Robert,” she said, “you have had much experience with women, have you not? No, don’t answer. It was a rhetorical question. Use all that experience on me tonight. Will you? All of it? I want all. Please?”
“On one condition,” he said. “That you use all your expertise on me. We will see who has the most to teach, shall we?”
Oh, dear God, if he only knew! Joana smiled. “And who can learn more quickly,” she said. “Robert.” She was whispering. “Make love to me.”
“Joana.” He was smiling at her as his head lowered to hers. “Make love to me.”
God, he should never have agreed to her insane suggestion, he thought. For he knew even before his mouth touched hers and she turned on the bed to set her full naked length against him that dawn would come far, far too soon. A lifetime too soon. For pretense had only succeeded in opening the door wide to reality. And reality frightened and grieved him. He should have stayed out in the hills with her and taken her for his pleasure again beneath the inadequate warmth of their blankets. He should have kept telling himself and kept telling himself that it was purely for pleasure.
He touched her with his hands, and his hands could not do enough touching. And he touched her with his mouth, and his mouth and his tongue and his teeth could not have enough of her. And she was touching him, her hands and her mouth roaming over him as freely as his own over her. His arousal, his need to plunge his seed into her, was a painful throbbing. And yet he did not want to stop the touching. He did not want to be past the glorious anticipation—not yet.
His hand parted her legs, his thumb pushing at one, his fingers at the other. And he was touching her there, where she had not expected him to put his hand. And at first she was embarrassed to have him touch her there, and embarrassed at the knowledge that she was wet, embarrassed by the sound of wetness. But he sighed with satisfaction and she relaxed and knew that the sound was erotic and that the wetness was a part of her female response, an invitation to an easy penetration of her body. She set the soles of her feet together and let her knees drop almost to the bed.
And she stopped touching him in the wonder of what was happening to her own body. Fingers feathering over her, sliding up inside her, and then his thumb, so light that at first she did not feel it, rubbing over one small spot, arousing an instant and almost unbearable ache that spread inward and upward into her throat.
“Robert.” She whispered his name. Her eyes were closed. “Robert.” Her hands pressed down hard against the bed.
He had not expected her to surrender so totally to the caressing of his hand. And yet he found her total absorption in what he did to her more exciting even than her hands on him had been a few moments before. He raised himself on one elbow again and watched her. He watched her mouth open and her head tip back.
“Ah,” she said, and she drew in breath audibly through her mouth.
He watched her whole body tense.
“Robert,” she said again, and there was agony in the sound.
And there was agony in him too as he stroked with his thumb and brought her to climax. She was Joana, he thought. She was not just any woman whom it was his pleasure to pleasure. He had always enjoyed bringing his women pleasure as well as himself. But it was not that with Joana. That was not it at all. She was Joana. He was not just pleasuring her. He was loving her.
She shouted out suddenly, agony and ecstasy in the sound. He set his hand flat against her during the minute or more while she shuddered into stillness.
The feelings of relaxation and well-being were almost not to be fought against. The urge to slide into a delicious sleep was almost overpowering. Except that his hand remained over her and she could feel that he was still up on his elbow looking down at her. And except that nothing had happened—nothing that she normally associated with making love. He had not been inside her.
She turned her head and opened her eyes. She looked up at him and smiled lazily. “You won that round,” she said. “How did that happen? How did you know to do that?” Her eyes strayed downward. He was still fully aroused, she could see.
He bent his head and kissed her warmly on the lips. “You are not going to give in to defeat quite so easily, are you?” he said. “How disappointing.”
But she did not know what to do. She knew nothing except w
hat she had learned with him. But even under present circumstances she was not about to resist a challenge. She smiled into his eyes and reached down a hand to touch him. Then she reached down the other hand and cupped him in her two hands, rolling them lightly about him, touching the tip lightly with her thumb. She heard him inhale.
“Come inside me,” she said. But there she could only allow him to complete his pleasure.
She turned onto her back, opened herself for him, lifted to him as he slid into her wetness. And she wished she knew more. She wished she had experience to match his own.
She acted from instinct. She nudged her legs beneath his so that he was forced to widen his own about her. And she held her legs together and moved, twisting her hips rhythmically against him, drawing him tight into her with inner muscles.
“God, Joana,” he said urgently, his arms coming up to grip her shoulders, “do you want me to come like a schoolboy?”
She kissed the underside of his chin. “How does a schoolboy come?” she said. “Show me.”
“Very fast,” he said with a gasp, and he moved in her with a frenzy of need.
God, he thought. God, the witch! And he had been beginning to imagine that perhaps she was not as experienced as he had thought after all.
He exploded in her with a cry and lost himself for the following few minutes, or hours—he could not be at all sure which. She was stroking one hand over his back and one through his hair when he came to himself. He was still embedded in her, her legs tight together about him.
“I must have squashed every bone in your body,” he said.
“Have you?” She turned her head to kiss his shoulder. “Then it feels wonderful to have every bone broken. Did we do equally well on that round, Robert? And are we going to compete for the rest of the night? I would prefer simply to make love.”
