Ginny
waded waist deep in the water, holding her arms out at her sides, the cold
making her catch her breath as it crept up over her ribs. Unable to bear the
slow torture of gradual immersion any longer, she plunged headfirst beneath the
water and emerged with a gasp, shaking out her wet hair. Alex chuckled to
himself.
Ginny
still had her back to him, so was blissfully unaware of his far-from-covert
observation as she soaped her hair and body with scouring vigor before plunging
back beneath the water, finding it invigorating rather than cold now that she
was used to it. Still clutching the precious sliver of soap, she swam across
the river to the far bank, glorying in the feel of the water on her clean limbs
cleaving the water with all the power of the skilled swimmer. Alex watched the
white shape beneath the water, still smiling appreciatively as the curve of her
backside broke the surface. At the far side, she rolled onto her back, keeping
herself afloat with a lazy paddling motion of her legs. The crowns of her
breasts, hardened by the cold water, rose clear to be stroked by the soft air.
It was
really rather more than flesh and blood could be expected to bear, Alex
reflected with a degree of pleasurable discomfort. Then, with a jolt, he
remembered why he had not intended to be seduced on this bathing party. Lusting
after her was all well and good, but it simply added to his confusion. He flung
himself onto his back again. Why would she have left him? What had he done to
deserve that? Certainly, they had had an unpleasant squabble over the wounded
prisoner. Ginny had behaved without due circumspection in the presence of that
damned governor, and Alex had retaliated in his usual fashion by treating her
publicly like a recalcitrant and exasperating responsibility. It was a
familiar-enough pattern; on previous occasions they had made up with an
exchange of apologies and another inch of compromise on either side. But not
content with betraying his plans to the enemy, she had been fully intending to
run away with the enemy. He could understand, just, why she had felt the need
to run to Edmund's rescue, and he would have forgiven her easily enough once
she had come back and they could have had it out. But he could neither understand
nor forgive the fact that, having gone to Edmund's rescue, she had then been
intending to throw in her lot with her cousin, just as she had been about to do
that morning at Alum Bay. If his brothers had not been there, had not decided
to lie in wait for him, if Edmund had not decided to do the same, she would
have flown the coop with the rest of them, and he would not have discovered her
absence until he returned empty-handed to Nottingham. He would not even have
known where she had gone. Since he would not have discovered Edmund, he would
not have been able to make the connection. It was hopeless. He could not begin
to understand.
Ginny
swam back to the beach and emerged from the water with a marked flash of
chagrin that her watchman had not even stirred from his supine pose, gazing up
into a most uninteresting sky. Picking up her towel, she trod deliberately over
to him. Alex did not move until she tossed her soaking wet hair forward over
her head and a rain of river water fell upon his chest.
"Damn
you, Ginny!" Alex sat up, brushing at his shirt. "I am soaked. What
are you thinking of?"
"Only
that you could do with a bath, sir," she replied promptly. "If you
will not take one for yourself, then I must encourage you." Laughing, she
shook her hair over him again. "I will even lend you my soap."
"Stop
it!" Alex roared, grabbing her ankle. "I am not in the mood to play
games."
"No,
you are only in the mood to sulk and look black and make everyone's life a
misery," she retorted, kicking lightly at his ribs with her free foot.
"Don't
you talk to me like that, Virginia Courtney." Alex released her foot and
sprang upright. His arm brushed her bare breast, and he jumped back as if he
had been scorched. “Put your clothes on at once."
Slowly,
Ginny shook her head. "Not until you agree to talk about this that is
making you so wretched, and everyone wretched with you." She planted her
feet firmly, put her hands on her hips, shoulders back so that her breasts were
thrust forward with a defiance to match her jutting chin.
Alex
inhaled sharply. She was so damnably beautiful, and his aroused body throbbed
with longing, even as his wounded spirit kept him from yielding to that desire.
"Get dressed," he repeated with creditable calm. "There is
nothing to talk about, and you cannot continue to stand stark-naked in this
field."
"I
most certainly can," Virginia said, not moving a muscle.
"Do
you want me to take my hand to your backside?" His words were clipped, as
he took a menacing step toward her.
Ginny
stood her ground, narrowing her eyes, the tip of her tongue running over her
lips. "Whatever gives the general pleasure," she murmured in dulcet
tones.
Laughter
welled deep within him, taking him totally by surprise. He turned away hastily,
lest she should see it in his eyes, and went rapidly down to the beach,
throwing off his clothes. He was now in sore need of dousing with cold
water—and not just for its cleansing properties.
Ginny
watched him with a rueful little smile. She had not really achieved her object,
but a little progress had been made. He had been forced to respond to her, at
least, without taking refuge in that icy withdrawal. She dressed in her
gloriously clean clothes and sat upon the bank to comb out her hair. Alex was
in the river for an inordinately long time, and he did not scorn the soap when
she tossed it to him. Neither, however, did he say anything further to her when
he finally came out, merely helped himself to her towel before pulling on his
britches.
"You
do not want to put that sweaty shirt on again, now you are all clean,"
Ginny observed in domestic manner. "Or your stockings. I should go back to
the camp as you are and find clean domes."
"Thank
you for the advice, Mistress Prim," he said sarcastically. "I did not
need it, however. If you are quite finished, let us go."
That
evening, Ginny went to considerable effort to lighten the mood around the
campfire, deliberately including the general in her cheerful chat, although she
was very careful not to tease him as she had done in the past. Her efforts were
aided by the creature comforts of hot food and a sack posset that she made for
them with warmed wine. The general, while he bore no part in the conversation,
at least made no disparaging remarks and remained in the group, sitting with
his back against a tree trunk. Ginny ached to go over to him, to lean against
his knees while he stroked absently through her hair in the old way. She ached
because of the hurt in his eyes that seemed to have lost their clarity of
purpose, but how could she put it right if he would not talk about it? Would
not allow her near him? She sighed. At least, though, she had made matters a
little easier for everyone else by taking a stand this afternoon, and Alex,
while pride would perhaps not allow him to acknowledge it openly, would
recognize that she had been right and would act accordingly in future. The
consequences of her actions sow rested entirely between herself and Alex, where
they belonged. But it was so lonely. Biting her lip hard to keep back the
tears, Ginny got to her feet. "Gentlemen, I must bid you good night. The
opportunity for an early and relatively comfortable night is not one to be
ignored."
In the
chorus of good nights, Alex's silence went unnoticed by all save Ginny. But
then what could she expect? She lay in the tent, breathing in the scents of
crushed grass and wood smoke, listening to the low murmur of voices from the
campfire that eventually lulled her to sleep.
The
sensation that woke her was so light, so exquisitely tantalizing that for a
moment she did not know whether she slept or woke. Something was moving over
her skin, something insubstantial, incorporeal. Her eyelashes fluttered, and
she whispered a little murmur of dreamy pleasure. Then her eyes snapped open.
"Alex?"
"Hush,
not a word," he commanded softly. "Not a word, not a movement."
The green-brown eyes burned their message as she lay looking up at him, baffled
by this strange visitation. There was something different about his expression,
not stern exactly, but not soft with love either. Something determined,
purposeful, as if he had come to a decision after long agonizing. "I am
come," he said quietly, “to take possession of my own."
Her
breath seemed to catch in her throat as his meaning became clear. She opened
her mouth to speak, but he placed two fingers over her lips, pressing firmly.
"No, you will not speak, my own, and you will lie quite still."
A
flicker of apprehension crept up her spine. What would he do with her? He had
just reminded her that she was his, had given herself to him in exchange for
Edmund's life; but this was not what she had meant. Yet, he had the right to
interpret the bargain as he chose; it had been made with no conditions. Alex
had pulled the covers from her while she slept, and for the first time in his
presence, Ginny felt overpoweringly conscious of the vulnerability of her
nakedness.
Alex
removed his fingers, then very lightly brushed across her lips with the fine
tip of a delicate sable brush. She knew then what she had felt in the
half-trance between sleeping and waking. The brush flicked across the shell of
her ear with a sweet and piercing pleasure that drew a gasp from between her
parted lips, then moved to trace the curve of her cheek and down to her
collarbone. His eyes remained locked with hers as the brush drifted down to the
mound of her breast, touched and stroked until her nipples tightened and the
slow languorous delight began to build deep in her belly. The delicate
instrument of pleasure fluttered across her abdomen, painted in her navel,
dipped lower over the rippling skin of her belly. His free hand parted her
thighs with gentle, yet inexorable insistence, and her throat seemed to close
in an anticipation so intense that it verged on pain.
The
brush trailed upward over the tender satin of her inner thighs, and still he
held her with his gaze, the fine mouth relaxed, yet unsmiling. He drew circles,
smaller and smaller circles inside her thighs, moving ever upward. Hot tears of
near-unbearable prescient delight scalded her cheeks as her body tensed,
waiting as the brush hovered. The Waiting seemed to stretch into infinity, and
the deep secret recesses of her body filled and throbbed. In that moment, Ginny
finally understood that this was for her, that this strange possession was to
give her ultimate joy even as she was branded by the giver of that joy.
Then,
when she had almost ceased to expect it, he touched her, a delicate, light
caress of the brush that made her body thrum like the plucked string of a lute.
He opened her with delicate fingers, parting her soft petaled center to paint
with exquisite artistry until she slipped over the edge of reality, mindless
and sensate, a body that existed only to be pleasured by the one man who knew
how to give that pleasure —and so possessed her.
Only
then did he smile in the old way, cover her mouth with his as he gathered her
against him, sliding into the tender, opened body with the ease of temptation,
with the pulsing throb of his need, and she held him tight within her as joy
peaked again and again. He drew her knees up, pressing them against her body as
he penetrated deeper into her very core, and the explosion ravaged them, tore
them apart even as it renewed.
He did
not leave her body once the tempest had expended itself, but instead slipped
his hands beneath her buttocks, clasping her tightly so that she held him
within. "Why would you leave me?" he asked. "I have not been
able to understand what I had done that you would go with Edmund Verney."
The
tears that had never been long absent in the last hour trickled down her
cheeks. "I thought that I had betrayed you, and you would not want me
back. But I had to save Edmund. If you had killed him, then you and I would
have been destroyed whether I stayed or no. But I
did
betray you. Not
just fought for my own cause, which I have done many times since we came
together, but I hurt you directly. I had thought you would see only
disloyalty."
He
shook his head. "I was hurt that you would betray me to save another, but
it was no mortal wound, little rebel. You did not think you could trust me
enough to come back and face me afterward?"
"I
am sorry," she whispered. "But you are a man of strong principles, my
love. Strong enough to overcome all ties of kinship, to accept total severance
from those you must always have held most dear. How could I know it would not
be the same with me?"
"Nothing
could ever keep me from loving you," he said with fierce insistence.
"Not principle, not duty, not even the thought that you did not love me in
the same way. It is that thought that has racked me these last days. But not
for one minute have I loved you one iota less than before."
"I
understand that now." She reached her hand to trace the chiseled mouth
with her little finger. "I could not have borne to have left you either,
love. I would sooner be with you, even though you loathed and despised me for
my treachery, than live in passionless friendship with Edmund."
Slowly,
he moved out of her, drawing her head into the crook of his arm as he lay down
beside her. There will be no further mistrust between us, and, God willing, no
further need for you to ply your trade against mine, my lady Cavalier. Only the
one battle lies ahead now; then all will be over, and we will begin anew, you
and I, as England begins anew."