It was a long time since he had felt like this about a woman. Seven years, in fact. But that was in another country, and besides, the wench is dead. He shook himself; now was not the time to be thinking of those dark dramas and the poetry into which he had plunged in the aftermath of the scandal on Minorca.
She was transforming under his hands, that thin body curving into him, her boyish gestures becoming languid and feminine. The strong part of him, the code of honour he had been brought up in, the naval discipline that had formed him and had all but broken him, were enough to stop the animal within from pressing her back on to the hard bunk and taking her, but they were not enough to stop him kissing, holding, inhaling the female scent of her skin. In the brutal masculine world in which he was trapped, that scent was like everything civilised and beautiful.
If he tried to take her now, he probably could. Not because she was wanton, but because she was frightened and he represented all she had of safety. He sensed that in her near collapse into tears and could only admire the way she had summoned up her courage to keep fighting. That alone was enough to restrain him, he realised, sliding his tongue between her lips, sweeping it around to taste her, tease the sensitive tissue. Clem gave a little gasp, her breath hitching, and he lifted his mouth away.
Too much, too soon. She is so fragile, Nathan thought, as he ran his thumb gently under the downswept lashes that shielded those big green eyes and feathered her undamaged cheek. Despite her height, her bones felt slender; despite her deceptively boyish appearance, the high cheekbones and pointed chin had a charm that spoke of delicacy.
He couldn’t imagine the courage it had taken for her to escape the way she had, the guts she needed to cope and adapt to finding herself here on what must seem a ship from hell.
‘I think that cold bath is probably a good thing for any number of reasons,’ he said, finding his voice oddly husky.
‘I—’ She opened her eyes and looked at him. ‘What happened?’
‘I kissed you.’
‘I know that.’ She gave him a look part-exasperation, part-amusement, wholly female. ‘Why? I mean, why did you stop?’
‘Because I shouldn’t have started and, having started, I knew damn well I shouldn’t continue. I don’t seduce virgins, Clem.’ Although one once seduced me. And now he really had opened a Pandora’s box of troubles for himself. He didn’t need his imagination any longer to guess how she would be in his arms, he knew. He needed no fantasy to conjure up the sweet softness of her mouth or the taste of her.
Nathan stood up and went to sit on the far side of the table. No reason to let her see just how aroused that insane kiss had made him.
‘Thank you,’ she said politely, making him smile despite himself. ‘But you shouldn’t take all the blame. I enjoyed it and I feel better for you holding me. I’ve missed being hugged,’ she added, rather forlornly.
Oh, God! There was nothing he would like more than to hug her. And kiss her. And take off those boy’s clothes and unwrap the binding around her small breasts and kiss the soft, compressed curves beneath. And lay her back on that hard bunk and—
‘I must go up on deck. I’ll tell them I want a tub sent down and some water and they are to be quiet about it because you are very sick from that blow to your head.’
He stood looking down at Clem, fighting the urge to grab her, bundle her into a boat and get away. Which was impossible. There were things he had to do and no one girl was going to prevent him doing them.
Clemence. He said the name in his mind, savouring the sound of it, a sort of fruity sweet tang of a name. Tart and challenging, yet mellow, too. She nodded, watching him. She was thinking hard, he could tell, but those thoughts were hidden. She had learned well in those nightmare weeks at the mercy of her relatives.
‘I’ll get into bed, pull up the blanket and pretend to be dozing. When they’ve gone I’ll wedge the latch before I take my bath.’
That did it. The image of Clem standing up, slowly pulling off that shirt, unbinding her breasts, stepping shivering into cold water, her nipples puckering, was so vivid Nathan drew in a deep, racking breath. Her eyes slid down his body, stopped, widened. ‘Good idea. I’ll knock when I come back.’
Clemence sat staring at the back of the cabin door for some minutes after it had shut abruptly behind Nathan. So, not only was she sharing a cabin with a man she desired and who had discovered she was a woman, but a man who was showing unmistakable evidence of the fact that he desired her, too.
She understood the theory of lovemaking, naturally. But she had never observed the—her mind scrabbled rather wildly for a word—the mechanism before. And she had produced that effect on him. The feeling of gratification was something to be ashamed of, she told herself severely.
What would she have done if Nathan had done more than kiss her? Protest or yield? She had a sinking feeling that she would have yielded. No, worse, she would have positively incited him. She had seen those sculpted muscles; now she wanted to caress them.
Shame, confusion, arousal were all uncomfortable internal sensations when yo
u had just had a nasty thump on the head. Clemence slid down under the blanket, pulled it high over her ears and closed her eyes, thankful to be still for a while. If she could slip into sleep, she could pretend this was the dream.
The sound of voices, the rattle of the door opening, jerked her out of her doze, rigid under the blanket. It seemed a very slight barricade. There was a thump on the floor, some more banging about, then the door closed again. Cautiously Clemence sat up. There was a small half-barrel on the floor, just big enough for a person to sit in with their knees drawn up, and two big buckets of water and a jug.
She slipped out of bed and wedged the latch on the door with her knife, then went to dip a finger in the water containers. The buckets were salt, but the jug was fresh for her face and hair. A rummage through Nathan’s kit bag produced a new block of green soap. She sniffed. Olive oil. On the side were imprinted the words Savon de Marseilles. And there was a luxuriously large sponge as well. French olive-oil soap and sponges? Had he been in the Mediterranean recently? She sensed there was a lot he had not told her.
Clemence stripped, sighing with relief as the linen strips uncoiled from around her ribs. She ran her hands over her torso, massaging the ridges where the bandages had cut into her skin. Nathan’s hands had rested there, and there—and just there.
She stepped into the tub, shivered and hunkered down, gasping as the cold water covered her belly. Her head throbbed; the strange new pulse between her thighs throbbed, too, despite the chill of the water, and she realised the fear that had been ever present in the pit of her stomach for days had gone at last.
There was no logical explanation—it was dangerous folly not to be frightened. Clemence reached for the block of soap and began to work up a lather.
Nathan tapped on the door, wondering at the apprehension that gripped him. What was he going to find inside? His imagination reacted luridly to months of enforced celibacy at sea; it suddenly seemed a long time since he had left England and paid off his mistress. The remembered sweetness of Clemence in his arms conjured up the vision of a slender, naked woman, dripping with water, a nymph uncoiling herself from her tiny pool. The reality, when the door opened, was Clem, wet hair tousled, cheeks glowing and exuding a healthy, and less than erotic, smell of olive-oil soap.
In her clean second-hand clothes she looked the perfect well-scrubbed youth until she met his eye and blushed, rosily. Heat washed through his body and he gritted his teeth. ‘Better?’