The River of No Return (39 page)

“Do you remember how the poem ends?”

“Shhh . . .” He kissed her, pulling her dress higher still. “Let’s make our own poetry. . . .”

She couldn’t help it; she laughed.

His eyes widened. “You scoff at me in the middle of your maiden voyage?”

“Yes, but that was just such a ridiculous thing to say, Nick.” She felt his cock leap against her belly; he liked her teasing. “Do you not remember how the poem ends?”

“I am hardly in a position to recall rhyming couplets.”

She propped herself up on her hands, looking down at him. “He spends the whole poem begging her to undress, and then finally he says, ‘To teach thee, I am naked first.’”

That made him unfurl a smile like a banner. “What are you suggesting?” He took his arms from around her and laced his hands behind his head.

She lay against his chest and played again with his cravat. “I think that to teach me, you ought to be naked first.”

“You are a literalist.” His smile faded. “And I’m not a pretty sight. I’m slightly the worse for wear under these fine clothes.”

“I don’t mind.” She kissed his suddenly sad mouth. “I want to see you.”

“Very well. But first you must climb off me.”

Julia slipped from him, smoothed her dress down, and sat on the cushions with her knees tucked up under her chin and her arms wrapped around her legs.

Nick sat up and began untying his cravat. He glanced sideways at her. “You look like a little gargoyle,” he said.

Julia just blinked and watched. It was fascinating, observing how his fingers flew without the use of a mirror. He must have tied his cravat every morning and untied it every night, and yet she found it the most exotic thing. He finished, pulled the long cloth free and tossed it aside. The sight of his strong, bare neck, framed by the starched collar of his shirt, sent a thrill through her.

“Now boots,” he said, yanking awkwardly on one and then the other of his tall, black Hessians. “It’s rather undignified, this undressing part.” He tossed boots and stockings to one side.

Barefoot, he stood up. Julia hugged her knees more tightly to her chest. He looked ridiculous, in unmentionables that stopped at his bare calves, and a shirt and jacket but no cravat. She laughed.

“Yes, you see?” He gestured at his own body with a theatrical hand. “The rest of this absurd rig is still to come off. A jacket so tight I can’t get into or out of it on my own, a shirt that doesn’t even button all the way down, and trousers with two different fastening devices. While for your part, you can dress in what is basically a sheet. It’s unfair, I tell you. Now, will you help me out of this wretched jacket?”

Julia got to her feet and helped him by pushing the jacket up and away from his broad shoulders. She could feel the muscles of his chest stretching as he shrugged off the blue superfine. She laid it carefully aside and looked at Nick in his linen shirt and red braces—the only splash of color in his sober clothing, color that no one ever saw. Except that now she was seeing it. As she watched, he pulled the braces from his shoulders with his thumbs and began to unbutton his shirt. But she found herself gently pushing his hands away. “I want to,” she said.

He let his hands fall to his sides. She reached up and slipped the first button through its hole, her fingers unsteady. A pulse was beating there among the sinews of his throat, and she could feel his chest rising and falling beneath her wrists. She continued, unbuttoning the second button, and then the third and last. The linen fell open to reveal golden skin, dusted with darker, bronze hair. She put a finger to the hollow of his throat and traced downward to where the buttons stopped. His skin was warm to the touch, and his breath quickened as she touched him. She slowly pulled the shirt from his trousers, and he sucked in his breath. She pushed the linen up, past his ribs, her hands skimming over smooth skin. Then he took over and pulled the shirt quickly over his head.

Her first impression was that he was beautiful. His chest tapered to his hips. His stomach was bisected by a wavering line of hair that plunged down to his navel, then disappeared mysteriously into his trousers. In spite of his obvious arousal he stood at ease, his weight on one leg, watching her look at him. She reached a hand out, stroking over his ribs, passing up and over his flat nipple. She heard and felt his breath quicken.

Then she saw the scar.

He had been shot through the shoulder. It had not been a clean wound. The scar was ragged. His skin was a paler gold than his hair, but the scar was a shiny, sickly white. She passed her hand across it and back, and felt its contours beneath her fingers.

“You are brave,” he said, and she could feel his voice in his chest.

“For touching your scar?” She laid her hand fully over it. “I am not brave. You are. It must have hurt dreadfully.”

“Yes,” he said simply. “But I am in no mood to discuss my scars. Especially since you are about to meet another one. If, that is, you wish to continue this lesson?”

“I do.”

He unbuttoned the fall of his trousers. Then he unbuttoned the waistband and looked up at Julia. “Do you know what my great-grandfather’s family motto is?”

“No, of course not.” She smiled at his stalling technique.

His answering smile was slightly lopsided. “Fear Garbh Ar Mait
.
” He began to push the tight breeches down his hips. “It is Irish. It means ‘Here is a good, blunt man.’”

“Oh, no.” Julia laughed and covered her eyes. When she peeked out from between her fingers, he was stepping out of his breeches and kicking them to one side.

“There.” He straightened, his hands open at his sides. “‘To teach thee, I am naked first.’” He stood amid the debris of his previously immaculate attire, gloriously naked.

His cock stood up, very proud. It was more . . . forthright than she had thought it would be. Best not to think about it yet. She let her eyes move to the scar that ran down his thigh. It was puckered and cruel, but it was part of him, and so she could not mind it. She let her eyes drift down his legs. She even thought his feet were handsome.

“Your turn, Julia.”

Her eyes flew up the length of his body to his face. He was not smiling. He stepped forward and quickly untied the ribbon at her waist, turned her round and undid the buttons down her back. His breath sent a delicious shiver all down the length of her neck and spine; then he pushed the dress off her shoulders and it simply fell from her like snow. She stood in her shift and turned to face him again. She raised her arms, and with a tickling thrill he whisked the fine linen up and over her head. Her slippers, stockings, and drawers followed, awkwardly and with a few laughs, but then she was in his arms. Never, in her entire life, had she felt anything so incredible as being one of two, standing naked together, wrapped up in each other’s arms. She closed her eyes, spreading her hands across the wings of his shoulder blades.

“Julia?” His voice seemed to come from inside her own head.

She opened her eyes. “Yes.”

He drew her back and down to the cushions. He stretched alongside her, one arm supporting her head, the other pulling her to him. She turned to face him, her hand on his chest. She could feel his cock pressing against her hip. She seemed more aware of it than he did, for he was looking at her almost sternly, though there was a twinkle way at the back of his eyes.

“You were mistaken about the last line of the poem, I fear,” he said in the schoolmasterish voice with which he’d teased her on their Hyde Park walk.

“Oh, really?”

“Yes. It was a grave error.”

A few of the glinting golden hairs that dusted his chest curled over her fingers. She spoke in playful tones. “Then you must correct me, sir.”

With one quick twist Nick shifted both their bodies so that she lay underneath him, breathless. He had captured her wrists and was pressing them into the cushions above her head. “‘To teach thee, I am naked first,’” he said. “That’s the
second
-to-last line. The last line is, ‘What needst thou have more covering than a man?’”

Julia laughed, but Nick didn’t. His expression was intent, and his hands slid up her wrists to grasp her hands, his fingers interlacing with hers. It was both caressing and possessive, the way he had her pinned beneath him, her arms above her head. She could feel how her breasts rose, only to be pressed against his chest. His eyes were almost cold with some emotion she couldn’t recognize. “What needst thou have more covering than
this
man?”

Julia held back on her breath. “What are you asking me?” she whispered, gripping his hands tightly.

Nick watched her mouth as she answered. His own response was broken. “I am about to make you mine. I want to promise you . . . but I cannot, in good conscience . . . not until . . .”

It seemed a hundred years ago that she had stormed home in anger, intent upon seducing Nick just to show that she could. Now that she had him here, poised above her, she didn’t want to hear empty protestations or promises or excuses. “Do you know the motto of the earls of Darchester, Nick?” she asked.

“No.”

“‘
Facta non verba.
’”

“Deeds, not words,” he translated.

Julia nodded. “Please,” she whispered.

Another heartbeat as his eyes searched hers. Then his hands released her and slid softly down her arms. She reached and drew his face down to her, kissing him. He stroked a hand over her breast, past her waist, and feathered his fingers across her thigh, then brushed his hand lightly across the place between her legs.

He whispered endearments that she couldn’t quite hear. It felt luscious and wicked—she bit her lip and closed her eyes; she was poised, sweetly, between the quick, light action of his thumb and the firm, slow movement of his fingers. She gasped with each breath, his murmuring voice keeping her from spinning away. Then his whispers broke into a groan, and his hand thrust and she tightened—and burst exquisitely, like a summer berry. Was that her voice crying out? She shuddered, pressing up against him.

He was positioning himself between her legs. Again he touched her with his thumb, and she thrummed with pleasure even as she felt herself stretch to allow him in. Caught there between bliss and pain, she watched his face. His eyes were closed in concentration as slowly, slowly, he entered her. It felt impossible, and it felt wonderful, and edged with alarm. Then, just when she thought she couldn’t take any more, he stopped pressing forward, and his serious, passion-dark eyes opened. “I love you,” he said.

With quick intent, he pushed forward past a barrier she hadn’t known was there—and she cried out even as the sharpness gave way to a honey-sweet ache. He kissed her, spoke softly in her ear, stroked her hair, and held very still. Then he began to pull away, and she cried out “No,” wanting him back again. He eased himself into her once more, smiling down at her. She clung to him as he moved in her. She was flying up and up with him in widening circles, gripped by an exquisite vertigo that sang along every nerve; he clasped her to him and she felt him shudder and thrust in more deeply than before; she toppled off some high, windblown ledge of pleasure into a deep, endless sea that was all the shifting colors of his eyes.

* * *

The bayonet was his own hand and his nails were ripping, catching . . . and now he was flying away, backward, into a tunnel of smoke at hideous speed, and at the distant end of the tunnel the splash of red and the young man’s black eyes fixing in death. . . .

There was something pulling him back, something holding him. Instead of the Frenchman’s face at the end of the tunnel he saw a pair of dark eyes. Julia was speaking his name, quietly, and he realized he could hear it—“Nicholas . . .”—piercing the horrible silence of the dream. The power that was drawing him backward into an unknown future died, as abruptly as a wind can die. Nick awoke, fully. Julia was lying half on top of him, stroking his hair, one leg tossed over his thighs, her breasts resting on his chest. Behind her tousled head and through the glass panes of the cupola he could see the late-afternoon sky, a few clouds drifting across it.

“Hello, Sleeping Beauty.” Julia brushed her knuckles down his cheek. “You were dreaming. A bad one?”

Nick breathed in deeply, through his nose. He exhaled slowly, letting the air hiss between his teeth.

“Was it Badajoz?”

Her face was alive with that just-loved look and flushed with health. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

Julia reached down and traced the puckered scar on his thigh. “You don’t have to,” she said.

He didn’t have much feeling there, but still, her touch tickled the edges of the old wound. The feeling shocked him into sudden realization. He was lying, naked and entwined, with an unmarried woman of gentle birth he had just deflowered. They had just had sex. “Julia.”

“Yes.”

“I . . .” He moved his hand to the back of her head and drew her face down to his for a long kiss. His cock stirred beneath her hip.

She drew back and brushed the tip of her nose against his. “Mmm,” she said. “Do you think it’s very late? Is there time to . . .” She grinned. “You know. . . .”

He opened his eyes wide. “I have no idea to what you’re referring, Miss Percy.”

She wiggled herself to the right until she was firmly on top of him. His cock strained against her belly. “You have no idea?” she whispered. “Are you certain?”

He shook his head and stroked his hands all down her spine. The small of her back was somehow a revelation. “Julia . . .”

“Yes . . .” She breathed the word.

Half a honeyed hour later, their positions were reversed, with Nick half across Julia, their eyes closing again in drowsy contentment. But this time Nick fought it. “We must get up and return to the real world.”

“Mmm.” She traced his eyebrow with kisses. “I don’t want to.”

“But we must.”

She pouted, and he had to kiss her mouth. But as he pulled away, he stood up. He looked down at her. She lay at her ease across the cushions, late-afternoon sunlight burnishing her skin and casting half her body in warm shadow. She was perfect, from her ten orderly toes to the curls that decorated her sex, to her dream-soft face. He had said he loved her and it was true. He did.