Travis returned to the room with a tray heavily laden with food. When his efforts to wake Regan only made her snuggle deeper under the covers, he dug into the food alone. He’d been drinking with his friends from America since early afternoon, celebrating their safe voyage and the completion of Travis’s business in England. In a week he’d be sailing for Virginia.
All four of the men had been saying they’d like a sweet girl in their bed when this one ran into Travis. She was pretty, young, and clean, in spite of the pound of dirt he’d washed from her. He wondered what she was doing alone at night, running through the streets in her torn nightgown. Perhaps she’d been kicked out of the house where she usually worked, or maybe she wanted to try it on her own and found that working the streets frightened her.
Having finished most of the food, Travis stood and stretched. Whatever the girl’s problem, at least she was his tonight. Tomorrow he could return her to the streets.
He undressed slowly, his hands clumsy with the buttons. The way the girl had clung to him had excited him, and he wondered where she’d learned such a trick; no other whore he’d met had used that technique.
When he was naked, he slipped between the sheets and pulled the girl to him. Her body was limp, but as he slipped his hands beneath the shirt she began to awaken.
Regan felt the warm, masculine hands on her body, and it seemed to be part of her delicious dream. No one had offered her affection before; even as a child, when she’d longed to be held by someone, there was no one there to offer her love. In the back of her mind was the memory of some recent, horrible hurt, and she wanted someone to cling to, someone to take away the pain.
In a half-daze between sleep and wakefulness, she felt her shirt being removed. When her breasts touched his chest and felt the hardness of it, the coating of hair, she gasped with delight. Lips kissed her cheek, her eyes, her hair, and finally her mouth. She’d never kissed a man before, but she knew instantly that she liked it very much. His firm-soft lips moved over hers, parting them just a bit, savoring the sweetness of them.
As he pulled her closer to him, her arms went around his neck, glorying in the size of him, and she moved closer, pushing her body next to his, wanting to touch all of him.
But as Travis’s movements grew quicker, she opened her eyes in surprise. Her senses began to return rapidly, and she started to pull away from him. Yet Travis’s strength was such that he didn’t notice her weak efforts to push him away. His head was none too clear from the whiskey he’d consumed, and the girl’s eager response had inflamed him.
Regan pushed harder, but Travis’s arms only tightened as his lips swept down on hers, sealing off any negative response she might make. In spite of her growing awareness that what she was doing was wrong, she couldn’t resist for long, and so she started to respond to him fully, arching against him, wanting from him she knew not what.
Travis’s hand held her head, cradling it, caressing it, his thumb running along the back of her ear. His teeth nipped her earlobe. “Sweet,” he whispered. “As sweet as a violet.”
Smiling, Regan moved languorously as Travis’s thigh came across hers. She moved her head to one side, allowing him access to all her throat and shoulder. She felt she might dissolve into a pool of liquid when he began to make love to her collarbone. Running her hands through his hair, losing them in the thick mass, she held his head down, didn’t want him to move. When his hand first touched her breast, her body went rigid with surprise. Then, as the exquisite feeling flowed through every pore and vessel of her body, she pulled his head back to hers. Eagerly, passionately, thirstily, she sought his lips.
When he moved on top of her, her first thought was that for a man so big he was extraordinarily light. The next instant she felt pain, and her eyes flew open, her body lost its feeling of pleasure, and she pushed at him with all her might.
But Travis was past hearing her. His desire for this ardent, willing bit of heaven was raging, towering, and he could not listen to her protests.
Fuzzy from drink or not, he knew what he felt when he hit the tiny membrane. Somewhere in the back of his mind a bit of sanity told him that he was making an error, but he could not stop. He thrust into her quickly, much of his original zeal gone.
When he was finished he lay still on top of her, feeling her small, delicately boned body begin to shake with sobs. Her hot tears wet his neck, mingling with the sweat on his body.
As he rolled away from her, he didn’t look at her. The sun was beginning to come in through the window, and Travis had never felt so sober in his life. When he had put on his pants and boots, and then his shirt, which he didn’t bother to button, he turned back to her. Only the top of her head showed above the cover.
As gently as he could, he eased himself down onto the bed to sit beside her. “Who are you?” he asked quietly. A shake of her head and a loud sob were all the answer he got. Taking a deep breath, he pulled her upright, keeping the sheet around her bare breasts.
“Don’t touch me!” she hissed. “You hurt me!”
Wincing once, Travis frowned. “I know I did, and I’m sorry, but….” His voice got louder. “Damn it! How was I to know you were a virgin? I thought you were….” He stopped because he could see the innocence in her eyes. How could he have thought she was a prostitute? Maybe it had been the mud or the poorly lit room last night, or more likely the whiskey he’d drunk, but today he could see that he should have known her for what she obviously was. Even sitting naked in his bed, her hair a tangle about her shoulders, she exuded an air of refinement and gentility that only the upperclass English could keep in times of stress. As it began to dawn on him what he’d done—taken some lord’s virgin daughter to his bed—he started to realize the seriousness of his actions.
“I don’t guess I can apologize for what’s happened,” he began, “but perhaps I can explain myself to your father. I’m sure that he’ll….” Understand? Travis thought.
“My father is dead,” Regan said.
“Then I’ll take you to your guardian.”
“No!” Regan blurted. How could she return to her uncle like this, with this great American confessing what they’d done together? “If you would get me something to wear, I will leave you. You needn’t bother about taking me anywhere.”
Travis seemed to consider this for a moment. “Why were you running around the docks in the middle of the night? Unless I miss my guess, a child like you”—he smiled at her look—“pardon me, a young lady like you has probably never even seen the docks before.”
Regan tilted her chin upward. “What I have or have not seen is no concern of yours. All I ask of you is a dress, something simple if you can afford it, and I will leave immediately.”
Again Travis smiled. “I can probably manage a dress. But I’ll not release you into that pack of animals out there. You know what happened to you last night.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “And what worse could happen to me than what you did last night?” She buried her face in her hands. “Who would want me now? You’ve ruined me.”
Sitting beside her, Travis pulled her hands away. “Any man would want you, sweetheart. You’re the most delightful bit—.” He cut himself off.
Regan wasn’t sure she knew what he meant, but she had an idea. “Why, you vulgar Colonial! You are as savage as I’ve heard. You pull ladies off the street and drag them to your room where you do”—she sputtered—“horrible things to them.”