The Countess and the Cavalier (Hearts in Hiding 4)

“Silas lashed me but three times in our marriage. There are worse husbands.” Her simple defence was curiously devoid of emotion. But when she spoke of her father her hatred was palpable. “Father whipped me often.”

Charles pressed his lips to the corner of her mouth and enveloped her more closely in his arms. The feel of her heartbeat through his linen shirt was curiously affecting. If he could have his way he’d peel back the years and wipe away every hurt his Elizabeth had ever suffered.

“What was the reason for these lash marks?” He could hardly get the words out, he was so angry.

“Disobedience.”

He struggled to ask his next question. “You said you were whipped when you refused to marry Silas?”

“Of course.” She pulled back to smile at him, as if it were a stupid question. “When I told him I wanted to marry you—a King’s Man—he locked me in my room for ten days and whipped me every day. He tried to break me but my resolve was stronger than…” She broke off. “I bribed one of the servants to help me escape and I ran to your lodgings, but you’d gone.” Her look was bleak as she stared into the fire. “With nowhere to go I had no choice but to return home. To face my father’s fury.”

Charles closed his eyes. “After your message that you had chosen to accept your father’s will and would marry Silas within the month, my attempts to communicate with you were met with the repeated tale that you wished to be left to make your own decision.”

Elizabeth nodded. “I did not know that, then. I thought you’d given up because you knew, as I did, that our love was impossible. Just as it is now.” A bitter-sweet smile clouded her face. “I am a Puritan married to a Puritan and you are a Cavalier, the enemy. I am married with two children. We can never be together, Charles, but for one night I am prepared to risk my soul to sin with you because it will be worth the price.” She kissed him again and moved his hand to her breast. “We have only a short time. Let us make the most of it.”

There was no point in denying what she said. If he could change the truth, he would, but now they must glory in the few short hours available to them. He’d learn what gave her pleasure, for she’d had little enough of that in her life.

She liked the heated feel of his mouth upon her breast, he discovered, as he started his sensory explorations, and to his surprise she was not shy about showing it. She threw her head back and sighed softly, running her hands over his face as he took first one nipple into his mouth, then the other. It astonished and thrilled him, the way the rosy peaks grew taut and she moved her body with sensual delight and barely audible moans.

Despite the violence and bloodshed and the brush with death they’d experienced, her body was attuned to his every ministration. When he stroked her heated inner thigh her desire for more was obvious. He was quick to oblige, moving his hand up to cup her sex, delighting in her obvious pleasure as he gently stroked her. When he slid two fingers into her she clamped down on them, and the pain of his own erection was almost more than he could bear. But he wouldn’t enter her just yet. He wanted this to be a more languid journey to the peak.

“Please, Charles!”—her voice was hoarse—“I want you. Now.” When he just chuckled, her desperation became more obvious. “We haven’t much time.”

He heard the tread of a soldier’s boot in the passageway. A sentry, only, most likely. They would not come in, for they all knew with sly collusion what was taking place, but it was a reminder that what she said was true.

Her lips upon his registered the growing tension within her as her tongue thrust into his mouth, her hands gripped his shoulders and she writhed against him. Yet it was almost with shock that she opened her eyes wide as he drove into her, and the surprise and delight of her smile almost made him lose himself upon the moment.

With extreme effort he managed to keep himself at a low simmering point. She was near her peak. Beads of sweat stood out upon her forehead as she rocked back and forth in perfect rhythm with him. Every time she shifted her hips and tried to force

him to drive deeper, he resisted. He was too close to the edge, himself. It was both agony and ecstasy to sheathe himself within her, time and again, and to experience her rise to the summit. He wanted to be there with her at the exact moment they shuddered to climax. He wanted to plunge into oblivion with her. To be together in this moment of shared joy.

And to wake up with her beside him and know they could do this for the rest of their lives.

With a cry of anguish he threw his head back as he felt her shudders, pouring himself into her, feeling the waves of her orgasm echo his own, and in that moment he knew she would forever be a part of him, and that his life would be empty of meaning without her.

“By the Saints, what is this?”

He’d heard the sound of footsteps the instant the door was thrust open. Now Silas stood upon the threshold, his face mottled with fury.

As well it might be, for there was Elizabeth, with not a stitch of clothing, straddling Charles, and nothing to suggest that her involvement in this act was against her will.

9

His response was swift and cutting. Cutting as he whipped out his sword and sliced it at Elizabeth. “By God, woman, when I overpowered the sentry and came for you I never expected to find this!”

Too late, Charles pushed himself in front of her, tasting her blood as the wound showered the air with droplets and Silas bore down upon them.

With only enough time to dodge her prone body he lunged forward to parry Silas’s blows. His only chance of survival for both of them was to reach his own sword which he’d discarded in the corner of the room. Then he’d invite Silas’s anger so he’d desist from raining further violence upon his wife.

A quick glance at Elizabeth, crumpled upon the flagstones, was no reassurance. He could see the blood seeping from a wound in the region of her arm or neck but was unable to gauge the extent of her injury.

“You’ll get more than my wife for your filthy, sinning ways,” Silas snarled as he lunged forward, the point of his sword striking the ground an inch from Charles’s foot. “I’ll kill you like a dog and feed your body to the pigs!”

Charles took a quick step to the right, holding out his arms as if to present himself as a target, using the opportunity to snatch his sword as Silas drove his own weapon vainly towards a target that was no longer there.

Charles scrabbled for the hilt of his sword, whipped it out of his scabbard and scrambled to his feet. Now Silas was upright and on target again and the point was driving towards him, trapping him by the wall with only inches to manoeuvre.

But Charles was adept at swordplay. He was lighter on his feet than Silas and his confidence that he was the better swordsman was borne up by his success in fielding Silas’s next three parries. The sense that victory would be his, despite the inauspicious start, surged up his gullet. This would be a fight to the death and the ultimate prize was Elizabeth.