“I’m not lying down on that thing,” Phoebe said. But she was tired, from the wine and a hard day’s work in Mistress Bell’s tavern.
“Here,” Duncan replied, taking her shoulders in gentle hands. “I’ll lie with you. If there’s a rat, I’ll scare him off.”
“Who’s going to scare you off?” Phoebe asked, stifling a yawn even as her loins tightened pleasantly at the thought of sharing a bed, narrow or otherwise, with Duncan.
He chuckled. “The Queen’s Town detachment of His Majesty’s army, if we don’t snuff out this candle and you go on talking.” The flicker of light died, leaving them in utter blackness, but he lowered her expertly onto the cot, and joined her there, tucking her into the curve of his chest, groin, and thighs.
A fierce arousal overtook Phoebe in those moments of intimacy, but something even more primitive was happening to her heart. Tears filled her eyes, because the emotion was too huge to contain, and she was grateful that her back was to Duncan, and that it was dark.
He found her chin with his hand and turned her face toward him, though, and her traitorous body followed. He kissed her, not eagerly, but as though dragged to her and forced into touching his mouth to hers. A groan—of protest, of loneliness, of need—rumbled up from somewhere deep in his chest, and Phoebe felt the heat and hardness of him against her thigh.
At first, the kiss was a skirmish, but soon it deepened into something more elemental, and their tongues did battle and then mated. Phoebe was lost, though she sensed that Duncan was still struggling, still trying to hold himself back.
“I promised you would be safe with me,” he gasped, when at last the kiss ended.
Phoebe loved Duncan. She realized that fully now, and if she couldn’t say so in plain words, she would tell him with her body. She pulled his shirt up, and slid her hands beneath it, to caress the warm, granitelike flesh of his back and his ribs, the downy wall of his chest. He felt sleek and muscular and very dangerous.
He moaned and lowered his head to conquer her mouth, once more, with his. Phoebe gave a little sob, of desperation and pleasure, and thought if he didn’t take her completely, and soon, she would surely die.
Duncan, though he plainly desired her as much as she did him, would not be hurried. He stripped her expertly, kissing and caressing each curve and hollow of flesh as he uncovered it, and the reverence in his touch made Phoebe feel like a goddess being worshipped. When he took one waiting nipple between his lips, he simultaneously covered her mouth with his palm, anticipating the long, low cry that trembled against the flesh of his hand.
Phoebe arched her back, whimpering softly now, aware of nothing but the sensations Duncan stirred in her as he stroked and suckled and cherished her. She had not known—had never even imagined, even in her hottest fantasies—that lovemaking could be like this.
When he had nourished himself at both her breasts, and she was soaked with perspiration from the hard, sweet work of wanting him, seeking him, straining instinctively to capture him, Duncan removed his own clothing, and then poised himself over her. She felt his erection at the moist juncture of her thighs and uttered another sob, full of yearning, muffled by his hand.
He kissed her forehead, where tendrils of hair clung to her skin, and whispered to her. “Your body reaches for me,” he said. “But what says your mind, Phoebe Turlow? I’ll have no woman who does not want taking.”
She nodded her head, like someone delirious with fever, and laid her hands to his buttocks, splaying her fingers and urging him to enter her. And she kissed his palm, where it pressed lightly against her lips so that her cries of pleasure would not be heard beyond the walls of the cellar.
Duncan did not torment her further by delaying their joining; he knew she was ripe for him and claimed her in one shattering, explosive stroke.
It was a good thing he’d thought to put his hand over her mouth, for she could not have forestalled the primitive, growling shriek of welcome that seemed to have its beginning in the tips of her toes.
“Oh, God,” he murmured, “God.” He was moving faster upon her, plunging deeper, and all the while he kissed her cheekbones, her eyelids, her temples, and forehead.
Phoebe tossed beneath him, now arching like a bow tightly drawn, now thrashing, now flinging herself at Duncan, matching him thrust for thrust, her flesh wet and slippery and hot with exertion. Her heart thundered with emotions so ancient that their names had long since been forgotten; she battled for completion, pleaded for it with every wild movement, every muffled groan and whimper, and yet she feared it as a sinner fears judgment. The light, the power, the sheer force of the release Duncan was driving her toward was nuclear in scope, and she truly believed it would consume her.
Suddenly, the end was upon her, upon them both, like some vast, universal cataclysm. Phoebe raised herself high off the rope mattress, her heels braced in the netting, and received Duncan rapturously, and without restraint. He was deep inside her, every muscle of his stallion-like body straining, and she felt his warmth spilling into her womb. She knew, even in her frenzy, what Old Woman had seen in her palm, and why she’d helped Phoebe escape Paradise Island. Even as she buckled helplessly beneath the man who had just conquered her, she knew.
The release went on for some time, catching them both up again when they thought the last flicker of pleasure had already been wrung from them, and the descent was slow and fraught with smaller crises. At last, Duncan collapsed beside Phoebe, one leg still flung with possessive abandon across her thighs.
Duncan remained in a state of dazed euphoria, and she smiled in the darkness, her fingers woven through Duncan’s silky hair. “She knew this would happen, you know.”
Duncan shuddered in some belated aftermath, and even that was pleasurable for Phoebe, causing her to give a small, crooning gasp. “Dare I ask whom you’re talking about?” he said at length, without raising his head from her breast.
“Old Woman,” Phoebe replied, winding a lock around her finger. “She looked at my palm when I told her I wanted to leave Paradise Island, and then she arranged everything.” She paused, suddenly worried. “You’re not going to punish her, are you? For helping me get away?”
Duncan chuckled and began to nuzzle his way toward a nipple, which immediately turned hard in anticipation of entertaining him. “I wouldn’t dare. She’d cast some spell, and all my teeth would fall out, along with my hair and a few other parts I value.”
Phoebe felt those same unnamed, overwhelming emotions welling up within her and used both hands to guide Duncan to her breast. She held him there at first, because the wanting was so ferocious, but then she knew he would not leave her, and smoothed his hair gently, and murmured to him while he drew on her.
Phoebe’s eyes opened wide, the next morning, when she realized that someone was bathing her, quite tenderly, with tepid water. Duncan, of course. She started to speak to him and realized there was a cloth tied around her mouth.
He chuckled, making a deliciously thorough business of washing her most intimate place. “You can take off the gag if you wish, of course,” he said, “but I wouldn’t advise it. Not with what I’m about to do to you, and me down here where I can’t reach your mouth.”
Something wicked surged through Phoebe; she was naked, except for the strip of cloth that silenced her, and at Duncan’s mercy, and it was glorious.
She watched, fascinated, her blood heating by degrees, as Duncan set aside the basin and parted her legs so wide that one was on one side of the cot and one on the other. With his rough, sea-captain’s hands, he stroked the tender flesh on the insides of her thighs, which quivered at each delicious pass of his fingertips.
“All you have to do, if you don’t want me to proceed, is shake your head,” he said.
Phoebe braced herself on her elbows, but otherwise did not move.
Duncan knelt fully dressed beside the cot and teased her with a devil’s grin. Then he bent to her, as though he were thirsty and she were a cool, pure spring. With his fi
ngers, he parted the tangled nest of curls, and she felt his breath on her, and she trembled violently, watching, waiting, swelling for him. And then he touched her with his tongue.
Phoebe whined against the gag, and Duncan began to nibble.
She made a pleading sound and tried to move her hips, but he held them fast and enjoyed her at his leisure, like a rare and exquisite sweet that must be made to last. And last.
Phoebe tilted her head back and groaned, and then Duncan straddled the cot, at the end, and clasping Phoebe’s ankles, forced her knees to bend, so that she was totally vulnerable to him. Not once, during this time, did he raise his mouth from her.
The pleasure was keen beyond bearing, akin to pain in its intensity, but woven of a million glittering strands of ecstasy. Phoebe used what movement was permitted her to rock against his tugging lips, his tongue, which tamed and disciplined her even as it spurred her to greater and greater passion.
He knew when she was about to climax and withdrew, murmuring soothing words against her flesh, calming her, making her wait. Only when she was lying back, breathing in deep gasps and shuddering with need, did he take her into his mouth again and suck until she was pitching against him like a mare trying to throw off a rider. When he had exhausted her, made her sing every note of a private rhapsody behind the band of cloth, he raised his head from her thighs and reached up to remove the gag with a gentle tug.
“Wow,” Phoebe raised her head to say and then fell backward in complete collapse.
Duncan rose, beaming as if he’d just plucked a thistle from the paw of a lioness, and maybe he had. Phoebe had sublimated her sexual needs for a long time, sine there had been no viable way to fulfill them, and she’d obviously built up a backlog.
“I suppose you expect me to get up and dress,” she murmured. Those simple feats sounded physically impossible, given the fact that her bones and muscles had melted like wax.
“Since your hair, unlike Lady Godiva’s, will not suffice to shield your virtues, yes. Furthermore, I should think a naked woman riding through the streets of Queen’s Town would draw a certain amount of attention—an inconvenient state of affairs in present circumstances, of course.” Duncan gathered her dress, torn petticoat, camisole, and drawers, and tossed them to her.
Phoebe raised herself, with considerable languor, and began making hit-and-miss attempts to don her clothes. Duncan, the very soul of chivalry, finally came to her assistance. He was crouching by the cot again, this time to lace her shoes, when she voiced a growing concern.
“Won’t we be taking a tremendous risk, trying to leave town in broad daylight?”
“Oh, yes,” Duncan said affably, rising and offering his hand to her as though to lead her onto the dance floor for a minuet. “Leaving is a risk, staying is a risk. I’ve weighed one against the other, you see, and decided it’s better to put the place behind us.”
Phoebe took his hand and used it as leverage to raise herself shakily to her feet. “I don’t suppose I get any say in this? As an interested party who might well be killed in the attempt, I mean?”
Duncan’s grin warmed his eyes and made Phoebe’s limp, sated senses begin to pulse again, just vaguely. “None at all. I had hoped to exhaust you into silence and docility, but I see I wasn’t entirely successful.”
She blushed, remembering. “Spare me the false humility,” she said. “If you’d been any more successful, I’d be in orbit by now, and the air’s mighty thin up there.”
He frowned. “What the devil are you talking about?”
“There’s no time to explain now,” she told him with some impatience, spotting his saddlebags and beginning, without asking permission, to forage for food. “If you must go around kidnapping people,” she said, glowering at the piece of jerky she finally unearthed, “you might at least provide decent refreshments.”
Duncan only shook his head, but there was a twinkle in his eyes that said he would have laughed outright if he hadn’t been afraid of bringing half the King’s army down on their heads. “I’ll remember that in future.” He turned and raised the dusty lid of a trunk, pulling out a scarlet coat with epaulets and gleaming brass buttons, a pair of buff-colored breeches, a simple shirt, and a pair of Hessian boots. For Phoebe, he produced a long velvet cape, hooded and trimmed with gold and silver embroidery.
She looked up at the low, beamed ceiling. Only then had it occurred to her to ask what now seemed an obvious question. “Exactly where are we?”
Duncan had begun to strip off his own clothes and put on the uniform of a British officer, taking no thought, apparently, for the constraints of modesty. His grin was broad, boyish, completely void of the pain and pathos that sometimes caused him to pound the keys of his harpsichord like a demon gone mad. “That’s the genius of it, Phoebe, my dear. We’re underneath the island headquarters of His Majesty’s army.”
Phoebe closed her eyes, swaying slightly with the shock, and the torrent of rage hurtling along in its wake. “Are you crazy?” she hissed.
“Opinion is divided on that,” Duncan said, sitting down on the edge of the cot to pull on one slightly scuffed black boot. “Fate favors the daring—that’s my theory. And besides, there’s no better place to hide than in plain sight, is there?”
Phoebe’s voice was a hissing whisper. “Do you mean to tell me that while we were—while I was carrying on that way, a bunch of British officers were upstairs chatting and having tea?”
Duncan’s smile was lavish, blinding. “They do like their tea,” he agreed. “We did, too, before they put so murderous a tax on the stuff. Why do you think I covered your mouth?”
Her knees gave out, and she dropped onto the milk stool, clasping the velvet cloak as though it were the only thing keeping her from drowning. “Oh, my God. I don’t believe it.”
“I thought I’d convinced you,” Duncan said. “Hurry up, now. So far our luck has been good, but fortune is a fickle mistress, and we’ve got some distance to cover before we dare rest.”
“I think I’m going to throw up,” Phoebe said.
“If that means what I think it does,” Duncan replied, pulling her to her feet and bundling her into the cloak, “it will have to wait until later. Keep the hood over your head at all times, because if anybody gets a glimpse of that hair, we’re as good as hanged. Should someone speak to you, just nod and keep your eyes lowered, as if you were timid—which, as we both know, you are not. Any questions?”
“Yes,” Phoebe answered miserably. “Why do I get myself into these things?”
Duncan only smiled, for he was busy buttoning his spiffy coat, which made him look like an usher at an old-time theater, or the lead singer of a sixties rock band. He reached for a tricorne hat, and it sat at a rakish angle on his head, casting a shadow over his face. His fair was tied with a black ribbon.
“Couldn’t I just wait here until the war is over?” she asked.
Duncan took her hand and drew her toward the steps. “I’ll go first. Don’t come out until you hear me whistling a tune. Walk rapidly, with your head down, straight to the smithy’s. He’ll lend us a pair of horses.”
“The smithy’s?”
“The place where you poured whisky over Billington’s poor bleeding back,” Duncan said, and then he was mounting the steps, pushing the doors open, stepping out into the bright morning sunshine.
Phoebe waited for shouts, or musket fire, her eyes squeezed shut, but all she heard were the ordinary sounds of a coastal town going about its business—and the clear, whistled strains of “Hail, Britannia.”
Guessing that she shouldn’t have expected “Yankee Doodle,” Phoebe drew a deep breath, gathered the folds of her voluminous cloak, as well as the tattered shreds of her courage, and mounted the cellar steps.
Duncan, she saw in a sidelong glance, was walking on the other side of the street, pausing to exchange jovial greetings with storekeepers and children, foot soldiers and matrons with their maids and marketing baskets. All of them pretended to know him, and
looked after him with expressions of good-natured confusion when he’d passed them by.
Phoebe took no such chances. She hastened along the narrow wooden sidewalk to the smithy’s and felt a chill of remembered horror before slipping inside. Except for the previous one, she hadn’t slept through the night since she’d seen the deep, gruesome lash marks marring Mr. Billington’s back.
A moment passed before her eyes adjusted to the dim interior, and when they did, she thought her heart would stop beating. Major Lawrence was standing not six feet away, with the smithy, and he was looking straight at her.
She kept her eyes down and prayed Duncan would tarry a while in the streets. He might fool common soldiers and townspeople with his disguise, but the major would certainly know him for a stranger.
“Well,” drawled Lawrence, causing Phoebe’s skin to crawl, “what have we here?”
The smithy came quickly to her side and took her arm. “It’s my sister, Florence,” he said. “You’ll forgive her shyness, I hope …” He lowered his voice to a confidential whisper. “She’s just over the smallpox, you see, and lucky that she survived. It’s marked up her skin a little, though, and I’m afraid she’s been left a mute, into the bargain. We can’t tell if she hears anything we say to her. What the lass needs is a good husband, to look after her and give her a home.”
Phoebe felt Lawrence’s recoil, graceful though it was, and was torn between elation and a bone-deep desire to claw his eyes out. She tucked herself deeper into the copious folds of the cloak and tried to look meek. Duncan, to her eternal gratitude and relief, did not bungle into the smithy’s and ask for a horse.
Lawrence slapped the blacksmith on the shoulder and spoke in the too-loud, too-pleasant tones of a man who wants to escape before he’s asked to come for supper and meet the family. “Really must carry on,” he blustered. “There’s a war to wage, you know. Can’t rest on our laurels, down here in the islands, just because we’re apart from the fighting, now, can we?”
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