Chapter Thirty-Four
Somewhere on the coast of Cornwall, one month later
The September sun touched Clem’s bare skin with a soft glow as she stretched languorously amid the waving stalks of long grass.
The blanket Will had set down each time they came to this fold in a lonely stretch of hill had flattened the grass beneath them, and he remembered a time at the nunnery in France that now felt so long ago.
Following Bonaparte’s first defeat, Will had been dreaming of honeymooning somewhere like this with Clem, but the reality surpassed everything he’d imagined.
“Are you happy, Clem?”
“Deliriously happy, my love. Buying this farm was an inspired idea. It’s private and allows us to indulge our love for the outdoors with our love for each other.”
He rolled onto his stomach and laced his fingers with hers.
“I thought of doing something like this last year when I was in France. The war—the first one—had just ended, Boney was exiled to Elba, and my thoughts were focused on returning home to you. I imagined a quick wedding and a long honeymoon somewhere like this.”
His free hand traced a lazy path from her breast to her no longer secret place. Beneath his fingers, her body tensed and quivered with anticipation. “And I imagined doing such things as this with you, where no one could see us but the sea and sky.”
Light as his touch was, her body reacted predictably. A soft gasp escaped, and when he reached that one special place, her hips lifted off the ground, needing him as she always did.
“Would you like to—”
“If you don’t do it right this moment, I swear, William Ravenshoe, I’ll—”
His mouth landed on her bare stomach, and his tongue circled her belly button before kissing a slow downward path. “I am yours to command, Lady Ravenshoe.”
Delighted to discover how much Clem enjoyed making love, Will sensed that today, she might be ready to try another new experience. Three days and nights of married life had only made him more hungry for her and more determined to explore with her all the ways they could physically love one another.
When she wriggled her hips and gripped his hair, tugging his mouth up to meet her own, he knew it was time.
He kissed her then, holding her in his arms, Will rolled onto his back.
“What are you doing? I want—”
“The same as I do. But this time, it’s your turn to set the pace. Slow or fast, however you want it.”
She frowned, somewhat perplexed by their change of positions. “But you always lie on top.”
“Now it’s your turn.”
Clem lifted herself a little and looked down along their bodies. Her bare breasts hung tantalizingly close to his mouth, but he resisted the temptation to taste them again. This was her turn to control their lovemaking, and he would follow wherever she led.
“Oh, I like what I see.” She sat on his thighs, so close to his balls he bit the inside of his cheek to stop himself sliding lower and pushing his cock into her.
It stood at attention, so ready he felt that heady mix of pleasure-pain, but he would put up with it for as long as Clem needed to work out how she wanted to have him.
Her hand wrapped around his shaft, his hips rose off the ground, and he groaned. “A word of warning, my love. I don’t think I can take too much of your . . . attentions if you want me inside of you any time soon.”
“We can always do it again later.” Her hand stroked him slowly, and pressure built within him. It felt so good, so—
“Clem…” A seismic disturbance as big as the recently exploded Mt. Tambora was building within his body. “I won’t be able to pleasure you if you don’t stop right now.” His breath was tight in his throat, his chest was tight, and his balls—
So tight now they were painful.
Clem removed her hand, positioned herself above his shaft, and sank onto him in a slow glide.
He almost exploded right then with mindless pleasure, but watching her beautiful face as she quickly learned how to ride him helped him cling to his self-control.
Just a little longer, he thought as his orgasm built, matching the flutters he felt in Clem’s body surrounding his shaft. Then, like the volcano, with no more warning, he erupted into her.
It was intense and passionate, and he rode the wave of pleasure until it faded into soft ripples.
As Will rolled her onto her back, Clem looked up at the sky. How liberating it felt, making love like this. A cloud drifted in a sea of blue as Clem felt herself gently floating back to earth. Lying in each other’s arms, clothing scattered around them, their breathing slowly returned to normal.
“Will it always be like this?” Her voice was sultry but soft. Making love with Will, she had discovered an intense passion for his body, but today’s variation excited her.
“I don’t know, but I hope this lasts a very long time.”
“Are there more ways to make love?”
Will’s mouth turned up in that one-sided smile she loved. It was so much a part of him she sometimes forgot how desirable it made her feel when he turned it on her. “Many, and we can explore as many as you choose to.”
She sighed and stretched her arms above her head. Her hips gave a little wriggle she’d begun to think of as marking the end of their lovemaking. “I’ll always want you, you know.”
“I know, just as I’ll always want you, Clem.”
Rolling onto her side, she raised a hand and traced the line of his eyebrow, then trailed her hand over his face to his mouth. He kissed her fingers as they passed over his lips.
“You said you were thinking of me in France. Are you ready to tell me more about what you were doing there?”
She’d resisted asking too many questions while the whirl of a quick wedding and the purchase of the Cornwall property were happening, but now, with a lazy early autumn day stretching before them, the time felt right.
Will rolled onto his back and leaned his head on his arm, his other around her shoulders. She set her head on his shoulder and rested a hand on his chest, feeling the regular thump-thump of his heart against her palm.
“It was my business connections and native French accent that led me to become a spy. The day I went to sign up, Lord Carstairs himself interviewed me. Rufus had not long returned, carrying a difficult injury. It was he who suggested me as his replacement, but at the time, I thought Vinnie’s brother was behind the posting.
“The night I landed in Calais, my contact, Gervais, was murdered—”
Clem gasped, and worry ghosted through her gaze.
This was the reason he hadn’t wanted to tell her about France.
Dark, terrible deaths and danger at every turn were not memories he wanted her to know about.
He had always known she would worry about him, but surely the fact that he was here with her would allay most of her fears.
Giving himself a mental kick for not editing out that moment from his telling, he continued.
“I had to find my next contact with little more than a prayer and what I thought was the name of a tavern on the Bonneville Road. The tavern turned out to be a religious house, and my contact was none other than the mother superior herself. Mother Bernadette is intelligent and brave, and she took over running the spy network. You see, the murdered guide was her brother, and he’d been in charge of the operation.
She stepped into his role and continued doing what had to be done.
She’s a very capable woman, and she became a good friend. ”
“I should like to meet this nun.”
“You’d like her. She’s a lot like you. I learned she’s the daughter of a duke who was killed during the Revolution.
She and her brother were spirited away by a loyal family servant and kept hidden until the danger of the guillotine was over.
Eventually, she found herself at La Belle Dame.
It was her intelligence and ability to organize that saw her rise to the position of mother superior. ”
“So you spent your time in that area, spying? How did you end up at Waterloo?” Clem tensed, hoping at last to get some answers.
The name of Bonaparte’s final defeat brought the shadows back into his eyes, and she squeezed his hand. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”
His Adam’s apple rose and fell, and his mouth tightened for a moment, then he shook his head. “It’s okay. You should know. I think it’s the main reason Prinny knighted me.”
“I’d like to hear it.” Tracing patterns over his chest in part to distract him, she met his gaze.
“I was riding north to meet up with Wellington’s army, carrying information about the French troops’ strength, which I thought would be helpful to His Grace, but near Ligny, I discovered a vital flaw in Boney’s disbursement of troops that the duke needed to hear.
“After the battles at Ligny and Quatre-Bras, the emperor sent a third of his troops chasing after the Prussians when they withdrew from the field. He thought to keep the British and Prussians from joining against him. He was wrong. Wellington used the information I carried to plan his attack. The Prussians circled back and attacked the French right flank while the British repulsed the last reserves of the Imperial Guard.”
“Is that where you were wounded?” Her voice quavered as her fingers traced the scar on his upper arm. “You were lucky to escape serious injury.”
“Not even Boney was going to keep me from coming home to you.” He picked up her hand, and as he kissed each finger, she felt desire stirring within her.
“Will, can we—”
“As often as you want, my love. After all, our regent is expecting to become a godfather next year.”