The Complete Regency Bestsellers And One Winters Collection. Rebecca WintersЧитать онлайн книгу.
still?’
‘It was never annulled.’
‘I see.’
The silence in the room heightened, a heavy blanket of question.
‘She had been captured by a group of bandits in the Languedoc region and dealt with badly. I was trying to protect her.’
‘Something that you are still doing here.’
‘Perhaps.’
‘Then take care, Nathaniel, for society can be most intolerant to a woman who would live outside its rules. Even one who is both beautiful and clever.’
* * *
Saint Estelle had been small and run-down, a mountain town of old buildings and kind people.
In the morning after they had eaten they had walked along the river and he had found a shard of blue-green pottery at the water’s edge.
‘If I could buy you a tourmaline, Sandrine, I would, because that gemstone is the exactly the shade of your eyes. But as I am penniless, this will have to do.’
She took it carefully, with the hand that was not ruined, and held it up to look at. ‘Gemstone pottery?’ Her laughter hung in the earliness of the day and warmed his heart. ‘A priceless gift that I will keep for ever.’
‘For ever is a long time.’ Sadness had settled in the corners of his mind. He wanted to hold her away from danger and keep her safe. He wanted to take her to St Auburn and make her understand exactly whom she had married, the coffers of the place filled with the treasure of the past in an unending array of wealth, diamonds, gold and silver and every gemstone in between. He wondered what she would make of the expectations inherent in his title and conversely what those at the castle might make of her. Especially his grandfather.
‘Tonight I will find some leather and fashion a hole through the top so that you can wear it as a pendant.’
Her hair had caught the wind and the many-coloured lights of it tumbled wild with her curls, the length reaching the contour of her hips.
‘Mama always insisted that one gift required another in return. She said that in the giving of a present there should also be the taking of happiness.’
He stood still as her hand came against his cheek, tracing the line of his throat downwards.
‘The gift of the power of womanhood is one I could bestow upon you if you should so desire it, Nathanael.’ Beneath the laughter in her words there was another cadence, full of promise. ‘My cousin Celeste used to say that I should find it one day, this knowledge of the sensual, and that men would not be able to refuse such an authority from me.’
‘She was right.’ Gravity had crept in under humour and he could hear the steady beat of his own heart in his ears.
‘So you accept?’
‘I do.’
They were far from the village and he had seen no sign of others for many miles. Besides, the road out of Saint Estelle lay upon the opposite bank of the river, past the line of trees, out of sight.
Last night had been frenzied and passionate and furious. Today a languid peace reigned, a quiet acceptance of each other’s needs.
‘Come.’ She held out her hand and he took it, following her into the shadow of the trees until they reached an overhang of cliff, the rocky outcrop of the Pyrenees sheltering a little bowl of meadow. It was noticeably warmer.
‘Here, away from the wind we can love each other.’ Bringing two blankets from her bag, she laid them down as a bed.
Within a moment she had removed her clothes, lying on the wool without any sense of shame, burnished like an angel from one of the old religious paintings that graced his grandfather’s library.
Reaching for his fingers, she placed them upon her right breast and leaned into the touch. His other hand she splayed in the warmth of the space between her legs, her thighs apart and waiting. ‘I am yours for the day, monsieur. I am yours until the sun lies upon the horizon and the dusk is reached. My gift for your gift.’
Positioning the other blanket to keep out the cold, his fingers began to move with a will of their own, up into the warmth of her, up into the swollen wet darkness where feminine magic lingered. She did not draw back. He slipped in farther and heard her sharp intake of breath. Playing her tenderly and feeling the answer of her muscles against his hand, the first tremble of release as frenzy tightened. Taking ownership. He did not let her move away as her whole body shuddered into climax, roiling waves clenching skin to muscle.
She cried out, once and then again, her head arched back so that daylight filled her, the sweat of climax dampening her skin and making her rigid with lust.
The scent of her between them, the hard erectness of nipples, the loss of self into a frenzy of feeling. Shivering need brought her arms about him, her nails gouging trails into his shoulder. Joined. For ever. Locked into union.
Moments passed in silence, the heat of her slackening to limpness.
When he brought his mouth onto the peak of her right breast, she simply clasped her hands about his head and nudged him closer. Like she might do a suckling baby, guided to the source.
Quiet. Still. Primal. The reclamation of all that had been once before and now was again. The gift of belonging. The heavy punch of sex and now the softer pull of place. Home. With Sandrine. He shut his eyes and took the offered gift, grateful and indebted.
In all of his life he had never felt as loved.
* * *
They woke to the sound of evening birdsong, the dusk across their blankets. With slow care she moved atop his manhood, filling herself with the largeness, moving in her own rhythms and refusing any help.
Her gift, she had said, and his taking. When she pinned his hands against the earth and told him that she was in charge he had allowed it, the sky above and the meadow beneath. She did not let him come until the sun had fallen almost to the horizon, the tension in him stretched to the full ache of friction, a thin hot pain of need.
And then she had taken each of his nipples between her nails and pinched. Hard. Jarring.
He had climaxed as he never had before, emptying himself into her, wave after wave, involuntary, uncontrolled. And she had taken him in, wanting his seed, drawing him up as the final gift of the day. He felt the undulating motion of her insides around him and knew without a shadow of doubt that he could love her. For ever.
On their return to Saint Estelle the tavern keeper was full of the news of a group of men who had come into the town looking for two strangers.
‘The leader was a big man with dark-brown hair and a scar across his cheek. Here.’ His fingers drew the shape of a crescent. ‘He appeared very angry.’
Lebansart. Cassie drew in her breath and knew that Nathanael had felt her fear.
‘Did they say where they were going next?’
‘They didn’t say and I didn’t ask, but they left Saint Estelle before the noon hour and there was no talk of a return.’
‘We will stay here then for a few days longer.’ Nat dug into his jacket pocket and pulled out a handful of coins. ‘If they should return at any time at all, I would like to be told of it.’
‘Who exactly is this man, Sandrine?’ The question came a few moments later when they were once again back in their chamber.
‘Guy Lebansart. He was an acquaintance of Anton Baudoin.’
‘What does he want?’
She shrugged her shoulders and turned away. Me. She almost said it, almost blurted it out before biting down on the horror. The document she should never have read shimmered in her memory.
* * *
Cassandra spent the morning at the