“Alas, my lord,” she said in a breathless voice, “it appears that you have trapped me.”
“You deserve a good beating, my girl.”
“Yes, Edward,” she said, and bowed her head.
In an instant, she felt his hands grasp her shoulders and his breath warm upon her forehead. She raised her head and parted her lips in mute invitation.
He realized vaguely that she had tricked him, but she was standing on her tiptoes, her mouth close to his, and he felt rational scruples slip willingly from his mind. They were to be wed, after all, in but two days’ time.
“I love you so, Edward.” He felt her breasts pressing against his chest, and wrapped his arms tightly about her back.
“And I you, Cass.” He brought his mouth down to hers and kissed her, savoring the taste of her. He grew more demanding, and wrapped his hands in her hair that hung to her waist. He shuddered when she dug her fingers into his back. She was filled with passion, innocent passion, and it was driving him mad.
“Please, Edward, touch me the way you did on the beach, when you first saw me.”
He released her hair and his hands caressed her. He cupped her buttocks and lifted her to press her belly tightly against him.
“Damn your ridiculous skirt and petticoats.” He pulled away from her and shrugged quickly out of his coat. He spread it on the sand and eased himself down. “Come here, Cass,” he said, and held his hand out to her.
Cassie fell to her knees beside him and let him pull her into his arms. She fell onto his chest and let her hair swirl about his face. Edward circled her chin with his fingers, tilting her face to him so he could look into her eyes. They were huge and dark in the pale light, full of tenderness and excitement.
“Lie on your back, Cass,” he said softly.
He balanced himself on one elbow and smoothed her hair away from her face into a golden halo about her head. “God, you’re beautiful,” he whispered. His fingertips traced the straight line of her nose, and gently outlined her cheek.
“I feel so urgent, Edward,” she said, as his fingertips lightly touched her mouth. “My heart is pounding so, I can scarce breathe.”
He saw her eyes widen as he cupped her breast and pulled her to him, and felt a shudder pass the length of her body. “There is much, much more.”
“Please teach me, Edward. Let me become a woman.”
Although he had had much practice, Edward’s fingers trembled as they probed at the small buttons on her bodice. He wanted her as he had never before desired a woman. She lay passively, staring up at him as the material parted, and he pulled free the blue ribbons that held her chemise close over her breasts. When cool air touched her skin, she stiffened, for no man had ever before seen her naked.
“Don’t be afraid, Cass,” he said. He parted the chemise, baring her breasts. They thrust up firm and full toward him, delicately white and smooth, her creamy nipples a dusky pink.
“Do I please you, Edward?”
He groaned deep in his throat, and closed his mouth over her. She sucked in her breath in surprise as he licked and tugged at her with growing possessiveness. He felt her quicken and arch her back instinctively to press more tightly against him.
Edward sat back on his knees and jerked open his white lawn shirt.
Cassie raised her hand and tangled her fingers in the light brown hair of his chest. She lightly traced the diagonal white scar that slashed down his shoulder. “Let me feel you against me,” she whispered.
He lowered himself down upon her, his senses reeling at the giving of her, and he kissed her deeply, savagely, until she moaned breathlessly into his mouth. He drove his hands frantically beneath her, to the buttons on the skirt of her gown.
Cassie joined her fingers to his as he jerked free the bowed sash, and tugged at the strings of her petticoats.
Edward gave a shaking laugh as he clumsily helped her to rise to free her of her clothing. As her shift fell from her hips to land on her discarded skirt, Cassie hesitated and furtively crossed her hands over her thighs. She remembered starkly having overhead whispered words of two young maids when she was but twelve years old. Molly had said hoarsely, “He’ll drive it into ye and ye’ll scream with pain and bleed afore ye learn to like it.”
She realized dimly that she was afraid to give herself over to him, to lose the mystery and innocence that bound her to herself, to a self that was known and safe. She stood stiff with uncertainty, lacing her fingers tightly together.
“You needn’t fear me, Cassie. Come, look at me, love.”
She forced her eyes to his face and saw understanding there. “I’m being quite silly,” she said in a low, nervous voice.
“No, you are being you. Trust me, Cass. I’ll not take anything from you, nor would I ever hurt you. I want to give you everything that I have and that includes my passion and my body.” As he spoke, he traced her throat with his fingers, and then her breasts. He felt her quiver at his touch and drew her into his arms, closing his mouth over hers.
His fingers caressed her until she dropped her arms to her sides and leaned against him.
“Do you want me now, Cassie?”
“Yes.” She closed her hand over his caressing fingers.
He fell to his knees in front of her and she felt his eyes upon her, looking at her. His fingers touched her, and her embarrassment at his intrusion slipped away from her as his gentle caressing sent intense sensation down to her belly. His other hand was kneading her buttocks, pressing her closer to him. His fingers caressed her until at last they parted her. Cassie panted, her breathing hoarse. Her legs trembled violently, and she felt she would collapse if Edward were not holding her.
“Oh, please, Edward.” She moaned, and tugged at his shoulders.
He lifted her in his arms and laid her gently on his coat. He pulled at the buttons on his breeches, so caught up in his desire that he did not at first hear the nearing shouts.
But Cassie did. Her face paled in consternation and she scrambled to her feet, her passion turned to furious embarrassment.
Edward dropped his hands from his breeches and whirled about toward the mouth of the cave.
“Cassie! Edward! Where are you?”
“It’s Becky,” Cassie said between clenched teeth, feverishly pulling on her rumpled shift and petticoats.
“Damn that woman to the devil,” Edward said under his breath, but he too reached down to retrieve his shirt.
“Cassie! Edward!” Miss Petersham’s voice was growing closer.
“It is too bad of her. We are soon to be married, and we are not children.”
Becky Petersham was on the point of calling out again when she saw a disheveled Cassie and Edward emerge not twenty paces away from a narrow rift in the side of the cliff. She sucked in an angry breath, angry with herself for trusting in the viscount’s scruples.
The viscount appeared as pale as Cassie was flushed. She drew her lips in a tight line, her foot tapping the coarse sand.
“What a pleasure to see you, Miss Petersham,” Edward said in a tone of bland sarcasm. “You wish to explore the cave with Cassie and me?”
“I imagine that there has been sufficient exploration, my lord,” Miss Petersham snapped, her eyes narrowing on an open button of Cassie’s bodice.
“For heaven’s sake, Becky,” Cassie said, “Edward and I are to be married in two days. You are acting as if we were both ten years old. I’ll thank you to mind to your own affairs in the future.”
“You are my affair, Miss, until the day that you are married.”
“I believe everyone’s points have been clearly made,” Edward said. “Cass, Miss Petersham, may I escort you ladies back to the Hall?”
Chapter 6
Eliott looked up from his late luncheon to see his sister tugging at an old muslin gown that had become an indeterminate gray from its many washings.
“Where are you off to, Cass?”
“I am going fishing, as if you didn’t know. I promised Cook
some fresh sea bass for dinner tonight.”
Eliott laid down his fork and sat back in his chair. “And just what does your fiancé think about your fishing jaunt the day before your wedding?”
“Edward is spending the day in Little Wimmering with his agent, and will not be here until this evening.”
“So the bride is having her last outing before the groom cracks the whip?”
Cassie frowned down her nose at him. “I’m sure there will be even more outings after Edward and I are married. Actually, it was Becky’s suggestion that I get out today. She thinks some fresh air will do me good.”
“Off with you then, Cass, and don’t forget your hat. Don’t want to have you sunburned on your wedding day.”
Cassie gave her brother a quick hug and stepped outside into the bright afternoon sunlight. She crammed her wide-brimmed straw hat firmly over the braided coronet atop her head and walked briskly across the east lawn to the line of landward-bowed beech trees that sheltered Hemphill Hall from the sea winds. A narrow path snaked through the trees, down the rocky cliff to a small protected cove below. A long wooden-planked dock stretched from the beach some thirty feet into the inlet. She firmly grasped her bucket of bait, small minnows which she had learned from long experience brought her as many sea bass as her baskets would hold, and walked gingerly over the floating boards to the end of the dock where her twenty-foot sloop lay anchored.
It heeled sharply as she stepped aboard, and she clasped the thick-stalked mast to steady herself. She stepped to the helm, stowed her bait safely on the shelf below-deck, and pulled out the folded canvas mainsail. She smoothed out the wrinkles and attached the slides sewn into the foot of the sail to the boom, smiling happily as her eyes followed along the luff to ensure that there were no twists in the sail.
From long habit, she gazed out beyond the mouth of the cove to the sea, and saw that the wind was whipping the waves into stiff whitecaps. She put a double reef into the mainsail and tied the sheets loosely. She cast off the hemp lines, drew out her long-handled paddle, and rowed with deep, sure strokes toward the mouth of the cove, the familiar sounds of squawking birds and the loose flapping of the mainsail in her ears. She sniffed the tangy salt smell and enjoyed the wind slapping lightly at her cheeks until she reached the open sea and eased out the sail to catch the wind. She examined the wildly fluttering wool telltale tied to the shroud to gauge the strength and direction of the wind. She smiled ruefully, knowing that with the tide outgoing and the stiff northeasterly wind, she would be spending more of her afternoon with her hands tightly on the tiller and working the sheets than lazing back with her fishing pole dangling comfortably over the side.
She let her sailboat continue on its starboard tack, and the mainsail bellied out as it caught the full wind. She laughed aloud when the bow of her boat sliced through the trough of a wave and sent a fine mist of salt spray into her face. She steered away from the wind to slow her speed, and relaxed her grip on the tiller, content for the moment to let her boat glide smoothly in a course parallel to shore. She baited her hook with a small minnow, flung the thin hemp rope over the side and rested the fishing pole between her knees.
She sat back contentedly on a cushioned plank and allowed her thoughts to drift with the lulling motion of her boat to the afternoon before and the incredible moments she had spent with Edward before Becky’s wretched interference. The image of Edward’s lean chest and arms as he had stood over her and the vivid memory of his hands and mouth on her body made her tremble even now. She wished she had seen him naked. She had felt the swollen, demanding hardness of him as he had pressed her belly against him, but she had been too shy to touch him as he had her.
Cassie gazed up into the cloudless blue sky and decided that making love with Edward in the middle of the day would be a delicious experience. Her sail suddenly luffed wildly, and she pushed quickly at the tiller, chiding herself for her inattention, before she promptly fell back into pleasant fantasy.
She was disturbed again by waves slapping sharply against the bow, and looked up to see a large sailing vessel in the distance. She drew in her empty line, dropped the fishing pole into the boat, and shaded her eyes, trying to make out the lines of the ship.
She gave a crow of delight when she realized that it was the yacht she and Edward had seen the afternoon before. It rode high in the water, its many square-rigged sails tautly full as it held its northeasterly course close into the wind. She saw the gun mounts on the starboard side and several sailors perched high up the mast, unfurling the royals and topgallants.
Cassie wanted to see the yacht more closely before it passed her by, and she jerked on the tiller, bringing her boat high into the wind. She eased in the sheets, and the mainsail bulged tautly as it took more wind.
As she drew closer, she could make out sailors standing on the quarterdeck. She fancied she could see the captain of the yacht shouting commands to the sailors swarming over the rigging, and to the helmsman as he steered the ship past the dangerous shallow inlets. She was suddenly able to see the name of the yacht, painted in bright yellow letters on the starboard bow. She stared with growing confusion at The Cassandra.
The yacht was overtaking her, and she was perplexed to see that its course had shifted more northerly. In a few minutes, if she was not careful, it would cut in front of her small boat. Grim visions of the huge vessel ramming her, blind to her presence, sent her speeding into action. She jerked the tiller sharply, and tacked to starboard and landward. In her haste, she backwinded her sail, and for a few frantic seconds, her sloop lay dead in the water, bobbing up and down in the crest of waves from the approaching yacht. She let the sheets fly free, and ducked as the boom swung with a grating thud to starboard. She pulled at the tiller to put the wind to her back, and her small sail took the wind with agonizing slowness. Cassie fought off her growing panic, secured the tiller between her thighs, grabbed her paddle, and rowed furiously toward shore.
She heard a man’s shout, and slewed her head about for a moment to see the yacht bearing down on her, its graceful, full bow slicing cleanly through the water.
The huge shadow of the yacht blotted out the sun, and Cassie moaned low in her throat as the specter of death rose before her.
A man’s voice commanded sharply, “Veer off! Hook the ropes and haul her in!”
Cassie gazed dumbfounded at several sailors hanging precariously from rope ladders over the side, each of them holding in his free hand a thick looped rope. By God, they are pirates, white slavers, she thought. She saw herself tied in irons, bound for servitude on the Barbary Coast, and pulled frantically with her paddle.
She heard a whirling sound over her head and was suddenly thrown backward against the teller as looped ropes encircled the mast and the outjutting bow. She shook off the pain in her back from the sharp-edged tiller and scrambled forward. She tugged at the thick hemp rope about the mast, but it was pulled taut.
She looked up when one sailor shouted upward to a man who stood at the railing. “All secure, captain!”
“Pull her close in! Steady now!”
There was something oddly familiar about the commanding deep voice, but her mind was so clogged with fear that she did not heed it. She saw that fumbling with the thick rope about her mast would gain her naught, and quickly stumbled to the stern of her wildly lurching boat. She measured her distance to shore and groaned with frustration, for in her heavy skirt and petticoats she would drown long before she reached shallow water. She was thrown to her knees as her boat heeled sharply, drawn closer to the yacht by the ropes. She watched numbly as the captain gingerly stepped over the side and began his descent down a rope ladder. He was a powerfully built man, dressed in a full-sleeved white shirt, and tight-fitting knit breeches above his black boots.
He is a pirate, she thought, their leader. She grabbed the long wooden paddle and held her weapon tightly against her.
Her boat heeled as he stepped into the cockpit, and he closed his hand about the mast f
or support.
She took in his thick black hair and deeply tanned face and gasped in astonishment.
“Lord Clare! Oh, thank God it is you. I thought it was a pirate and that I was to be taken, or killed.” She ceased her babble of words when Anthony Welles only gazed at her, unspeaking.
Cassie drew a shaking breath and lowered her wooden paddle. “You frightened me, my lord,” she said more calmly. “I do not think I like your joke; you could easily have rammed my boat. Pray tell me, why have you done this?”
“My purpose was not to ram your boat, Cassandra, only to capture it,” he said in his low, clipped voice. “You gave me quite a chase until you backwinded your sail.”
Her fingers tightened about the wooden paddle. “What are you saying, my lord? You wished to capture my boat?”
“I commend your bravado, Cassandra. However, I must ask you to drop that deadly paddle and accompany me aboard your namesake.”
“Lord Clare, what is the meaning of this? I asked you just why the devil you have secured my boat. I demand that you answer me.” She took an angry step toward him.
“Come, Cassandra, enough of this foolishness. The time grows short. You will come to understand everything, in time.” He stretched out his hand toward her. “Drop the paddle and come here.”
“You can go to the devil, my lord.” She took a wobbly step backward and lost her footing. Her attention wavered from him as she struggled to regain her balance, and a strong hand clasped her arm and jerked her forward. She tried to raise her paddle to strike him, but he twisted it easily from her grasp and pulled her against him.
“Damn you, let me go. My brother will hear about this, my lord. As will Edward.”
Even as she yelled at him, her arms were pinioned to her sides as he lifted her easily and hoisted her over his shoulder.
“Don’t fight me, Cassandra,” he said, and stepped from her boat to the ladder.
Cassie felt a numbing sense of disbelief sweep over her. She had known Anthony Welles for most of her life, as a gentleman, a sophisticated yet kind man. She realized through a haze of fear that he was really someone different, a man she did not know or understand.