by Jane Feather
She lifted her hips, and he pushed the skirt and petticoat down to her knees, his flat palm stroking her belly. A finger slid between her thighs, exploring, feeling the heated core of her sex rise hard beneath his touch. Hero gasped as his fingers slid inside her, teasing, stroking, flooding her with sensations more intense than any she had experienced. Her hips bucked, her hands tightened around his neck, and she gave herself up to the exquisite moment of fulfillment as the last rays of the dying sun warmed her closed eyelids.
Even as her body still pulsed from that delicious moment of pure pleasure, he unfastened his britches, rising above her for a moment, his eyes holding hers, before he entered her in a slow glide, his penis sheathing itself within her moist and welcoming body. She tightened her internal muscles around him as he pushed against the very edge of her womb, and he gave a little cry of surprised pleasure, then withdrew to the edge of her body, watching her face, her smile as the tip of her tongue touched her lips in a moment of pure sensual delight, and then he plunged deep within her to become a part of her, his sex throbbing deep into her core, and Hero heard herself cry out, her hips lifting, her buttocks tightening, as the shafts of sensation shot through her body with such intensity she was no longer sure whether it was pain or pleasure she felt.
And then it was over. She felt herself sinking into the earth beneath her, her hips falling heavily, her legs sprawled, and William fell alongside her, his penis still pulsing against her thigh, one arm flung across her body.
No anger had fueled that explosion. Passion, pure and simple, Hero thought, her hand resting on his chest, feeling the rapidly beating heart. And it was wonderful. For a wistful moment, she thought how lovely it would be to fall asleep now in a deep shared bed, with nothing to worry about. Instead, there were two dead men surging on the tide downriver, a weak and ailing young woman, and many miles as well as the Channel to cross before the possibility of a bed, shared or otherwise, could be considered as anything more than a dream.
William stirred first. He rolled sideways and stood up, fastening his britches. He looked down at Hero, still inert on the bank. “It’s almost dark, and you have to move, sweetheart. We need to take the boat and get downstream, where we can make a fire and cook the fish.” He bent to take her hands, pulling her to her feet.
Hero shook down her skirts, refastened her bodice, and flexed her shoulders. “How do we take the boat?”
He tilted her chin on his forefinger. “Such an indomitable Hero you are. Alec and I will take it, while you help Marie Claire to her feet. She will need certain things,” he added delicately.
Hero interpreted that correctly as meaning that the other woman would need to relieve herself before they set off again. “Will you gut the trout?”
“When we get where we can cook it.” He picked up the fish and tore loose some reeds from the bank, wrapping them around the glistening trout. “You take care of Marie Claire. Alec and I will see to the rest.” He gestured ahead of him back to the glade.
Alec was sitting up beside Marie Claire, hugging his knees, as they reappeared. His eyes met his sister’s for barely an instant in the gathering dusk, but it was enough to tell him what they had been doing in their prolonged absence. “Did you catch anything?” he asked lightly.
“A big brown trout,” Hero told him with a suggestive flicker of a smile. She knelt beside Marie Claire, who was sleepily awake. “It’s almost full dark, love. We need to leave.”
The girl nodded. “Yes, I know. I feel much stronger, in fact,” she added in a tone of some wonder. “I appear to be hungry.”
Hero laughed and helped her to her feet. “Let’s see if you can make it to the river.”
The open fishing boat was secured to a pole deep within the rushes a few yards down the bank. It was barely big enough for the four of them, but it would have to do, William reflected from his hiding place in the rushes. Anything was better than walking. Alec was beside him, watching the bank for any sign of movement. The evening star was bright in the night sky, and a crescent moon was rising slowly over the water. It would make them visible to anyone who happened to be out and about instead of tucked away where they should be beside their own firesides. But it was a risk they had to take. There was no way of knowing where or when the bodies of the two militia men would wash up, but if they got snagged in the reeds too close to where they’d gone in, there would be an instant hue and cry, and any stranger would be suspect. They needed to put as much river behind them as they could before dawn.
William crept towards the boat, seeming barely to part the reeds in his stealthy approach. He untied the painter and pulled the boat along for a few yards to a spot on the bank clear of reeds. Hero slithered down the bank while Alec helped Marie Claire down and into the craft and took up the oars. Hero hoisted the knapsack into the boat and climbed in herself. William pushed the boat out into the river and hauled himself in, sitting in the stern, his bare feet squarely planted, his britches rolled to his knees. Alec pulled strongly into midstream, where the current would help them on their way.
Marie Claire sipped water and nibbled on a piece of bread, gazing around her, fully aware of her surroundings for the first time since her escape. The night quiet was broken only by the hoot of an owl, the plash of the oars breaking the moonlit water, a pair of stately paddling swans. They passed small groups of cottages along the bank, but they were all in darkness. Hero sat with her back against William’s bracing legs in the stern and felt his fingers idly trawling through her hair, which had long since escaped its tight knot on top of her head and fell in unruly tangles to below her shoulders. After an hour, William took the oars from Alec and pulled steadily until sometime in the early hours of the morning, when he took the boat into a narrow inlet in the river, where the bank sloped down to a small beach, sheltered by tall reeds.
Hero awoke as the boat ran onto the beach. Alec had jumped out to secure the painter to the trunk of a slender sapling. She uncurled herself from the bottom of the boat, her muscles protesting at their cramped position, and jumped down onto the beach. It was very quiet, and the moonlight was dimmed, filtering through the low branches of the trees along the overhanging bank.
William issued crisp orders, sending Hero to find wood for a fire, Alec to bring water, while he himself made short work of gutting the fish in the shallow water. Within the half hour, a fire crackled on the little beach, and the fish was cooking on a flat stone over the heat. Above it hung a makeshift trivet with a pan of water boiling for coffee.
William, squatting on his haunches before the fire, looked up from tending the fish as Hero approached with an armload of twigs and small pieces of wood. She let them fall from her arms to the sand and sniffed hungrily. “I’m famished.”
“We all are,” he said with a swift smile, his gaze lingering on her for a second. He found her irresistibly attractive, with her grubby skirt hitched up to her knees, her bare feet firmly planted on the sand, her hair a honey-colored tangle around her unmistakably dirty face. “You are a complete urchin,” he said, somehow making of the words a most intimate caress that sent that little jolt of desire through her belly.
“I feel filthy,” she said, smiling despite herself. “When we’ve eaten, I’m going to bathe in the river.”
“I’ll join you,” he responded, turning the fish over on the stone with the edge of his knife. “Is there any bread left?”
“Half a loaf.” She withdrew it from the knapsack. “And some cheese and a few apples. A positive feast. And the coffee smells wonderful.”
Alec and Marie Claire joined them at the fire as William took the fish from the heat. He sliced down the backbone with his knife, then pulled a piece off with his fingers and popped it into his mouth. “Eat up, children.” He broke a piece of bread and put another piece of fish on it.
It was a big trout, but it didn’t last long among the four of them. Hero wiped her sticky fingers on a tuft of g
rass poking out of the bank and took a long sip of coffee from the single beaker they had brought with them, before passing it to Marie Claire, who had more color with each mouthful and each sip. “Can we keep the fire going until I’ve had my bath?”
William nodded. “Alec, why don’t you take Marie Claire up onto the bank and find a place to sleep for an hour? I’ll stay here and keep watch. We’ll go on until dawn. Then we’ll pull out and rest for the day.”
Alec and Marie Claire disappeared, and William leaned back on his elbows, regarding Hero with a slightly wicked smile. “Go on, then, take your bath. I’d like one myself, but we can’t both be in the water at the same time.”
It was a disappointing truth, Hero reflected, kicking off her skirt and petticoat. The thought of their naked bodies in the water together was almost enough to send her into a spontaneous climax of passion, but someone had to keep watch. She shrugged off her bodice and chemise and walked to the water, dipping her toes in a little wavelet that broke on the beach. It was colder than she expected, and she glanced over her shoulder. William was watching, with desire clear in his golden eyes and in every line of his alert frame.
“Get in,” he instructed softly. “My willpower is proving much more feeble than I thought.”
She laughed with pure exhilaration, twirled once on the sand in a teasing little dance, then turned and plunged into the cold waters of the Seine. It took her breath away but felt wonderful, washing the filth of the day’s grim journey from her skin. She had no soap, but there was no point reaching for the stars. She lay back, letting the water stream over her hair as she scrubbed her scalp with her fingers. It was probably the closest thing to heaven she would ever experience, she decided.
“Come out now.” William was standing at the edge of the river. The fire, freshly fed, glowed and crackled behind him.
Reluctantly, Hero obeyed, splashing her way to shore, squeezing the water from her hair. William pushed off his britches and flung aside his shirt before taking two steps into the river, then diving beneath the water. She stood on the sand, wringing out her hair, watching his powerful arms cleaving the water as he swam. Then, still naked, she walked to the fire and stood turning herself slowly in its heat, like a chicken on a spit, until her skin was dry. She didn’t dress, instead wrapped herself in William’s discarded jerkin and sat on the sand to watch him as he swam back to shore, rising dripping from the river like some male Venus. No, it would have to be an Adonis, she corrected, watching him with the same lascivious gaze that he had had watching her.
“Oh, you are hungry,” he said softly, coming to stand above her, water glistening on his skin. “I can see it in your eyes.”
“Are you not?” she whispered, her tongue touching her lips.
“Stand up.” He reached down for her hands and pulled her up, the jerkin falling from her shoulders. He glanced once around, then murmured, “Oh, to hell with it,” and pulled her beside him back into the river. He walked until the water lapped around her thighs, then turned her into his arms. “Hold on to me.” She put her arms around his neck as he lifted her against him, and she wrapped her legs around his waist, her body opening with an aching need for the delicious feel of him sliding within her beneath the water. She clung to him as he moved, just little movements that sent needles of arousal across her skin, filled her loins with urgent desire. She kissed him, her mouth hard on his, and his tongue pushed within her mouth as his sex pushed into hers, and she felt herself climbing slowly up and up, hanging for a long and glorious moment at the very peak of pleasure before she seemed to explode with joyous sensation and felt the tears of joy streaming down her cheeks as she clung helplessly around his neck, unable to move until the glory began to fade.
TWELVE
For nearly a week, they kept to the river, traveling only by night. William and Alec made short forays into the towns they passed to buy provisions, and to both Hero’s and Marie Claire’s joy, on the third day, they returned with new clothes. Secondhand but clean, together with a bar of that most precious commodity: soap. The two women spent a blissful hour alone in the river, bathing, washing their hair, before dressing in clean clothes. Marie Claire was ecstatic at being able to discard the britches and jerkin for a peasant’s petticoats, kirtle, and laced bodice, but they still wore the necessary red bonnets.
It felt to Hero rather as if she was living through a dream during those long warm days of Indian summer. Everyday life and concerns seemed to be quite irrelevant. True, there was the ever-present fear of discovery, of making some fatal slip that would endanger them all, but even so, the hazy, trancelike nature of their journey was something she knew she would never forget. And the exquisite sensuality of her relationship with William was a daily entrancement. There were opportunities aplenty for lovemaking during the day, when they rested in readiness for the night’s journey, and they took full advantage of every one.
Alec was content as always to leave his twin to manage her own life as she thought best and was too busy himself bringing his beloved fiancée back to full health. Indeed, Marie Claire blossomed under the sun and fresh air, plentiful rest and food. Her grief for her parents was now a part of her, but she no longer lived in fear, and that freedom was evident in the way she moved, the way she would sing softly to herself when doing some chore or other, and Alec lost the worry from his eyes and the tension from his mouth.
Just before dawn on the seventh day, they drew close to the town of Honfleur on the southern bank of the estuary of the Seine. William shipped his oars and rested, leaning his elbows on his thighs, looking across the estuary to the port of Le Havre.
“So we made it this far,” Hero said softly, following his gaze. “Will we find a packet boat to take us across to England, or should we look only for a fishing boat? It’s a lot farther across the Channel from here than it is from Calais, and it would be horridly uncomfortable.” She reached across to brush the errant lock of hair from his forehead.
“Yes, we’ll certainly need something more substantial than an open dinghy,” he agreed, looking somewhat ruefully at his callused palms. “We can pay for passage; it’s just a question of not drawing too much attention to ourselves. The ports are actively watched by the agents of the Committee of Public Safety.”
“I wonder if we could commandeer a small sailboat,” Alec suggested. “Hero and I are competent sailors. We grew up with boats. Our family home is on the Beaulieu River.”
“Oh, yes, we’ve sailed the waters of the Solent many times,” Hero said with enthusiasm. “If we could . . .” She hesitated for a moment. “If we could borrow a sailboat from someone, I’m sure we’d manage to sail it across the Channel.”
William chuckled. “I don’t doubt your abilities. As it happens, I’m not exactly inexperienced with sails myself, so, yes, I’m sure we could manage under our own steam. It’ll probably take several days, depending on the wind, so we need a craft with some kind of cabin.”
He would, of course, be a competent sailor, Hero reflected with an inner smile, wondering if there was anything at all at which William Ducasse, Viscount St. Aubery, was not an expert.
William took up the oars again and turned the little boat back the way they had come. “I noticed an inlet just a little way upriver. We’ll tie up there out of sight and take a look around.”
“Why don’t Marie Claire and I go into Honfleur and look for a suitable vessel?” Hero suggested as they entered the narrow inlet, protected on both sides by tall reeds. “Two women with shopping baskets are less likely to draw attention than either of you. And I know perfectly well what to look for.”
William inclined his head in acknowledgment. “True enough. But don’t do anything, and don’t speak to anyone about a boat, is that clear?” He fixed her with a steady stare and held her gaze until she nodded.
“As crystal.”
“In that case, you may go.” He shipped his oars as Alec stepped out of
the boat with the painter. His feet sank into swampy mud, and he swore vigorously, splashing through the reeds until he found what passed for a bank, pulling the craft behind him.
“I’ll be glad to be done with this river business,” Alec muttered, securing the painter. “Give me the open sea any day.”
Hero hitched her skirt and petticoat above her knees and, carrying her shoes, stepped into the water and up onto the bank. Marie Claire, with a little more reluctance, followed suit. She was not quite as unconcerned as Hero about exposing her legs thigh-high.
“Bring back fresh bread and fruit.” William handed them a basket that Marie Claire had woven from reeds one idle afternoon. “And anything else to make a satisfactory breakfast. And Hero, I repeat, do not mention boats to anyone. Use your eyes, but keep your tongue still.”
“Yes, milord.” She gave him a mock curtsy, and he shook his head in warning, but there was a glint of amusement in his eyes.
“Just be careful. This is not a good time for games.”
“Spoilsport,” she threw at him, hitching the basket on her arm. “Come, Marie Claire, let us go to market like any other femme de ménage.”
Marie Claire followed her along the narrow bank towards the little town. She was accustomed now to the banter between William and Hero, but she couldn’t imagine herself and Alec indulging in anything that was quite so sharply provocative, and the sparkling, keen-edged sexuality it revealed intrigued her even as it slightly shocked her.
Hero strolled along the quay, her eyes on the craft bobbing at anchor in the bay and tied up at the long piers. They would want one docked at a pier. It would be easier to take than one at anchor farther out. And it needed to be an undistinguished working boat, one that would draw no attention if they passed other shipping in the Channel.
