For Queen and for country or for the dubious needs of men left in charge of a foreign policy decades out of tune. Aye, England had not thanked him at all and he did not wish it to. But sometimes in a quiet corner of the world such as this one, and in the company of a woman who was as beautiful as she was beguiling, he wished for … something else.
He could not name it. It was too removed from the roads that he had followed, at first in wanderlust and excitement and now out of habit and ennui.
Murder, even in the circumstances of national security, sounded wrong. His father would have told him that, and his mother, too, had she lived. But they were long gone and the only family member left to give some guidance was Alfred; his uncle's scrambled mind still lurked in the remnants of the second Peninsular Campaign under Wellington, reality lost in the scarred remains of his left temple.
Stephen would have sworn had he been alone, but the sunset crept over her upturned face, painting untarnished skin the blush pink of dusk. The very sight of her took his breath away. Like an angel offering redemption to a sinner, her fragile stillness warming a heart long since encased in ice.
'Keep the pendant, madam, for I should wish another payment altogether, here in the open air and far from any community.' The beat of his rising want hummed beneath the banter. Part of him knew he should not voice a request that was as inappropriate as it was banal, but the larger part of him ignored such a warning. He was a man who had lived for years in the land of shadows and ill repute and it had rubbed off on him, he supposed. Aye, he almost welcomed the distance scandal had brought, though sometimes, like now, a crack appeared, small and fragile, and a worm of longing for the good life that he might have lived wriggled through. He should turn and walk away, protecting the little decency still left inside him.
But he didn't.
Instead he said that which had been building from the first moment of meeting her. 'All I want as payment is a kiss, given freely and without anger.'
She waved such a notion away, the diamond clutched awkwardly in her hand. 'You do not understand, my lord, it is my sister whom I need you to introduce into polite society. It is not a liaison for myself that I seek here … .'
'Then I refuse your terms.'
She was silent and still, long slender fingers worrying the dark folds of her skirt, and further away the birds gathered for a last chorus before slumber.
'Only a kiss, you say?' Whispered. Unbelieving.
The deep blush of blood bloomed under paleness.
He would know her name soon enough and then he would despise her as everybody else did, and too late to change it. But a chance for Leonora to be in the top echelons of London's Society was not to be dallied with.
One chance.
Fate had a way of occasionally throwing a lifeline and who was she to refuse? Even had he asked for more she could not have said no. For Leonora and for the twins. The stakes had risen as their circumstances had declined and with Papa … She shook her head. She would not think of him.
Goodness, why did he not just take the pendant and be done with it? It was worth so much more than this nonsense he sought. And how was this to work? Did she face him and wait or did he require some prior flirtation?
A refusal would egg a man like him on. She knew it. Better to be sensible and allow him this one small favour, hold her lips up to his and close her eyes, tightly, until it was over.
His finger against her throat stopped every logical train of thought, the gentle play of the sensual so very unexpected. If she had been stronger, she might have stepped back and away. But the sensation of a man whose very name incited hysteria and frenzy amongst a great portion of the fairer sex in England caressing her was mesmerising and she could neither move nor call a stop to it.
The braiding holding the material of her gown together was thick and stiff, a resilient barrier to any more intimate caress. She was glad of such armour.
The hat surprised her, though, his free hand simply lifting the contraption off her head and away, the trailing ties lost in a growing wind as the piece fell to her feet.
'The colour of fire,' he said of her hair.
Or of shame, she thought, deep amber catching the final burst of sunset. She could see in his expression just what she had so often seen in those of others.
Uncertainty.
All the difficulties in her life surfaced, roaming free in her head, and she shut her eyes.
'Nay. I want you to see me.' He waited until she complied.
Closer he came, breath against her skin, the dark green of his pupils surrounded by gold. She could have fallen into those eyes, like the sky into a puddle, fathomlessly deep. Disorientated, she felt him draw her inwards, the muscles in his arms strong. She would remember this particular moment all the days of her life, she thought, with a heat of anticipation beating inside. His right temple held a raised crescent scar beneath the line of hair.
Blood surged through fear, like a river breaking its banks and running unconfined across a land it did not normally traverse, taking with it all that was more usually there. A changing landscape. An altered truth.
His heat was surprising. Each part of her skin seemed on fire as his lips took her own, ignoring the small token she thought to give him and opening her mouth to his tongue instead.
Inside, tasting, hard pressure and thin pain winding upwards from the depths of her being. Her fingers came to his neck of their own accord, threading through dark strands, her body splayed along the length of his, no space to separate them. She felt him turn her into a deeper embrace, the ache of need blooming over any sense that she might have tried to keep hold of, and she opened to him further. Her whole body now, legs jammed against the junction of his thighs, riding lust. His breathing was as hoarse as hers, no control, the huge yawning space of nature about them consigned to only this touch.
Hers. She wanted more. She wanted what she read of and dreamed about in her bed late at night as all the house slumbered and the banked fires dimmed.
She felt his masculinity through the wool of her skirt as he tipped his head to break the kiss.
'God.' The sound he uttered was neither soft nor gladdened. It was harsh and angry and uncertain, his mouth nuzzling her throat, biting into flesh, asking for completion, the knowledge of all he sought unspoken. When his thumb ran across the hardness of her nipple, flicking at the covering of bombazine, she simply went to pieces, the control that she had kept so tightly bound dissolving into disorder.
He held her against the half-light and the silence and the empty landscape, and release left her shaking. No sense in it, save feeling. When he raised her chin she took in the glory as he watched her, waves of passion wrenching gasps without voice. Lost and found, the gold in his eyes the only touchstone to a different reality, the tightened cords of lust entwined into every sinew of her body, her nails running unnoticed down the skin at his neck. A thousand hours or a single moment? She could not know the extent of her loss of governance until the world reformed and they were standing again on the top of Taylor's Gap.
Aurelia felt embarrassment and then shame. If he let her go, she would fall, like a boneless thing, all stamina gone. Laying her head against his chest, she listened to his heartbeat, the strong and even rhythm bringing her back.
'Thank you.' She could not say more and to say less would have been mean spirited. He had to know that, at least, but in the face of her appalling behaviour all she wanted was to be gone.
Lord. She had come as he watched her, the feel of her body tight against his own and wonder in her eyes. Like quicksilver. Like magic. Like all his dreams wrapped into one, her long red hair curling against his skin, the serpent snakes of Medusa.
He knew not one single thing about her save that of a connection in flesh.
But he wanted her. He wanted to lay her down beneath the bushes behind them and remove the black and dowdy robe. He wanted to see her slender pale limbs in the oncoming moonlight as his hands wandered the lines of them before slipping into the wet warmth of her centre. He wanted to take her and know her again and again until there was nothing left of self, melded into the eternal.
His cock grew at such awareness and he could not stop the swelling.
She felt it, too. He saw the flicker of the awareness of danger in her eyes as her tongue took the dryness from her lips. He heard her breath quicken, the line of darker blue around one pale eye pulsating.