Jane Feather - The Accidental Bride

He picked up his cloak and gloves from the settle beside the empty hearth. “I’ll travel as an English merchant looking to find transport for lace and Delftware. It’ll give me a good excuse to roam around the port. If there’s information to be found, it’ll be found where sailors and ruffians congregate.”

“Aye,” Cromwell agreed with a dour smile. “And by the same token, you’d best watch your back.”

“I’m a past master at that, Oliver.” There was a small pause as the possible significance of the remark sank in. “However, I don’t expect to look for the knife in the hands of my friends,” Cato continued deliberately.

“I’ve no wish for a falling out,” Cromwell said gruffly after a minute. He held out his hand. “Godspeed, Cato.”

Cato took it in a brief firm clasp, then shook hands with the others and left, calling for Giles Crampton as he emerged into the bright sunlight.

“But how long will you be gone?” Phoebe asked in dismay, pushing herself upright against Cato’s bare chest.

“I can’t say for sure.” He reached up to pull her down again, but she resisted his encircling arm.

“But Italy is such a long way away. And this mission… it’ll be dangerous, won’t it?” She knelt on the bed, looking down at him.

“No more dangerous than anything else,” Cato said. “Come now, Phoebe, if I told you I was going to be away at a siege, you wouldn’t give it a second thought.”

“Oh, yes I would,” she declared. “I’d give it dozens of thoughts! You could be killed at a siege, and that’s not a matter for indifference. How could it be?”

“Maybe it isn’t,” Cato conceded. “But this journey will be no more dangerous than anything else I’ve been doing in the last several years.” He smiled up at her with a hint of placation, twining his fingers in the luxuriant fall of her hair obscuring her face. “And a damn sight less dangerous than a pitched battle. And I’ve been in a good many of those.”

“But you could be gone months!” she wailed. “Across the sea. You could sink and be drowned.”

Cato laughed. “No, that’s not going to happen. Although I admit I’d sooner not have to go anywhere by ship. I’m a terrible sailor.”

“How?”

“Sick,” he said with a grimace. “Sick as a dog from the moment the vessel puts out of harbor.”

“I wonder if I would be,” Phoebe mused, her imagination caught by a whole range of possibilities.

“Well, you’re not about to find out,” Cato declared. “Now, come back down here and let’s go back to where we were.”

Thoughtfully Phoebe nibbled her lip for a second. Then she grinned mischievously and said, “I’ve a mind to try something different, my lord.”

She swung herself astride him as he lay supine, and ran her hands up over his chest, her fingers playing in the dusting of dark curls clustered around his nipples.

Cato brought up his knees so that he was supporting her back and then watched her lazily through hooded eyes.

Phoebe moved her hands down over his flat belly and then up over his rib cage. She loved the feel of his body, the surprisingly soft skin stretched taut over the ridged muscles. She cupped his biceps in her palms, ran her hands down the corded sinews of his forearms where the hair grew thick and dark. She loved his wrists. They were slender, bony, amazingly strong; and his hands, broad yet elegant, hard yet so surprisingly tender, the fingers long, the nails pared and pink.

She caught her bottom lip between her teeth as she concentrated on an exploration that never failed to delight her, never failed to reveal new areas, new possibilities, however often she made it. Leaning against his legs, she reached behind her to run her hands down the long, firm length of his outer thighs, then behind to the backs of his legs, the deep hollow behind his knees, the corded muscles in his calves, the sinew that ran from his knees to his buttocks.

Playfully she kept her exploration away from his sex, even as she felt his penis harden and flicker against the base of her spine.

Cato reached up and took her breasts in his palms, caressing them languidly before he brought his mouth to her nipples, inhaling the delicate scent of her skin mingling with the sharper fragrance of arousal. The cleft of her body was hot and moist against his belly as at last she stroked his engorged and needy shaft of flesh. His teeth grazed the erect crowns of her breasts as he sucked upon them, flicking with his tongue, knowing how she loved such caresses, how they never failed to bring her to a peak of delight.

Phoebe moaned softly and when his hands slid down her body, beneath her bottom, lifting her, she guided herself onto him, taking him deep within her with a little crow of triumph that made Cato chuckle through his own pleasure.

Leaning back against his drawn-up knees, she moved herself upon him and around him, glorying in the control she had over her own sensation. Her eyes widened in delighted surprise as she understood how she could heighten her own pleasure by discovering where deep inside her the point of contact was the most sensitive.

Cato continued to play with her breasts, content to let her bring them both to fruition in her own time and at her own pace. Her movements became more rapid, her skin damp and glowing with the growing intensity of sensation. She pressed the heated cleft of her body hard into his belly and cried out with delight as the waves of pleasure radiated through her loins, streaming into every cell and pore.

At the same instant, Cato dropped his knees and drove his hips upward to meet her, and Phoebe fell forward, unable to contain a pleasure so exquisite it verged on pain. She felt his climax throbbing against her womb, and the hot flood of his seed laved the tight sheath that held him, and again, impossibly, the wave broke over her and she thought she couldn’t endure such joy.

Cato stroked her damp back as she lay against him, her heart beating as fast as if it would burst from her chest.

“How was that possible?” she murmured after long minutes. “I don’t know what happened.”

He pushed her hair away from her forehead, catching it at the nape of her neck so that the cool air could get to her heated skin. “You have a gift for loving,” he said with a soft laugh. “It’s not given to everyone.”

“I always knew I had to be a little lucky,” Phoebe mumbled. “Diana couldn’t have had all the advantages.”

Cato slid his hands down between their slick bodies and gently lifted her off him. She fell on the bed beside him and lay breathing deeply, one round arm flung across his body.

Cato thought she was asleep. He continued to stroke her back with little circular caresses, thinking how he didn’t wish to leave her. It was a revelation that had come slowly and one that he had tried to resist. But it was unavoidable. His offer to take the mission to Rotterdam would have been perfectly natural for the man he’d been before Phoebe had come into his life. He would not then have given a thought for his personal safety, and certainly not cared a farthing for leaving house and hearth, wife and children, for however long was necessary.

Even though he was keeping his destination a secret, offering a false trail for any malign ears, the hazards were undeniable. And for the first time in his military career he would have preferred to avoid them.

His hand stilled in the small of Phoebe’s back. It was one of his favorite places. There was something so vulnerable and yet so sensual about the little dip, before it swelled into the rounded curve of her bottom.

To be absent from thy heart is torment…

A woman bound in love…

He couldn’t forget those words she had written, could hear in his head his own voice reading them, could hear Phoebe’s reciting the answering lines.

“I think it would be best if I came with you,” Phoebe murmured.

“It most certainly would not be best,” he said roundly.

Phoebe rolled over and sat up cross-legged on the bed beside him. She brushed her hair out of her eyes and fixed him with an appealing gaze. “I can’t stay here for weeks and weeks without you. I shall go into a decline.”

Cato laughed. “I’m immensely complimented, but the answer is still no.”

Phoebe twisted a lock of hair around her ringer as she continued to regard him thoughtfully, then she said, “So where will you take ship?”

“Harwich.”

“That’s several days’ ride, isn’t it?”

“Three days probably.”

“Well, if I accompany you to Harwich, we’ll have three more days together. I’ve never seen the sea.”

“You couldn’t possibly ride that far,” he said.

“I will undertake to ride that far and ride back. You’ll take an escort to Harwich; they can bring me home again.” Her eyes were bright, her cheeks delicately flushed.

She leaned down and kissed his nose. “Why can’t I?”

“Apart from the simple fact that you don’t know one end of a horse from another?” he inquired dryly.

“How soon before you leave?”

“Two days. It’ll take that long to put matters in order here and-”

“Then I have two days!” Phoebe declared. “I will spend the next two days on Sorrel and I’ll prove to you that I can do it. If I can prove it to you, will you let me come?”

“No, Phoebe, it’s out of the question. Your place is here, not racketing around the countryside with my troopers. Now let’s go to sleep. I’ve been riding all day and I’m awearied.”

Phoebe’s mouth had taken a stubborn turn, but she lay down beside him as he reached out and snuffed the candle.

She lay listening as his breathing moved into the deep, regular rhythm of sleep. He was impossible, she thought. There was no logical reason why she shouldn’t go with him if she was willing to ride.