"Are you saying there really was a nun behind the altar?" Bewildered now, she questioned the extent of her naïveté.
"More than one." He spoke matter-of-fact
l
y, unself-conscious and frank.
"How convenient," she sardonically noted.
He shrugged, recognizing a female tone best left unanswered.
"Did you actually watch them?" she persisted, thinking her life very sheltered in Gloucestershire.
He'd done considerably more than watch in those youthful years. "Sex is a strong focus at that age," he casually replied.
"And it isn't now?"
"You of all people chiding me?" he lightly challenged. "You can't last ten minutes."
"I could," she said in rebuff. "I just don't care to."
"I noticed," he said, the faintest irony in his tone.
"Are you complaining?"
"Au contraire,
lollipop. You're every man's dream. But with your libido, I'd suggest you practice with this or its equivalent," he mildly said, indicating the candle he'd set on a nearby table, "because most men won't be able to keep up."
"You set yourself apart?"
"It's just a suggestion," he blandly said, not responding to her jibe.
"Do you often serve as tutor, Rochefort?" she querulously inquired, resentful of his suave amiability that sidestepped any pertinent queries.
"I occasionally have a charitable impulse." His gaze was impudent.
"Perhaps I'm not in need of your charity," she coolly replied, temperamentally opposed to all his former charitable impulses apropos of females.
"You're bashful," he gently mocked.
"No. I simply take issue with all the complaisant students in your past. I don't care to be added to the number. If and when I decide to, er, practice these, ah, solitary amusements, I certainly don't need any help from you."
"You sound so damned prim, it's quite arousing," he murmured.
"An unusual state for you," she dryly retorted.
"We're a perfect match then, aren't we?" he said, his gaze angelic. "And you like it, after all," he went on with a simplicity that couldn't be denied. "Come, darling, consider this an indulgence for me." And rising from the settee over her protests, he carried her to the bed, where he dropped her onto the disarray of pillows. "Shut your eyes," he quietly said.
She stared at him for a heated moment, irresolute, willful, piqued by an incomprehensible jealousy that served no earthly purpose in terms of Beau St. Jules.
"If you really were a nun, you'd always have to do what you're told," he murmured, his voice deep and low. "You'd have to learn obedience; they insist on i
t
—
a
nd devotion. So lie back, darling, and enjoy your lesson. We'll start with something simple. Put your hand here," he murmured, drawing her fingertips to her cleft. "Shut your eyes, now . . . that's a good gir
l
. . . touch this just lightly," he coached, his fingers over hers as he massaged her clitoris. "Press here. Does it feel good?" he softly asked, guiding her fingers so she stroked and exerted just the right amount of pressure.
It did.
He could tell.
"Try it alone now," he whispered, "and think of waiting for me ... of how I'll come to you tonight after evening vespers, when you're supposed to be on your knees in your cell praying. Can you feel the cool tiles and the summer air?
"I slowly take off your habit while you kneel in prayer, your cowl and veil, your apron and gown and petticoa
t
— your skin is pale in the evening light . . . luminous. When I let down your hair, you shiver in anticipation; you forget the words to your prayers because you want to feel me inside you. You remember how I feel inside you, hard and thrusting, stretching you, and you begin to rise." His voice changed and his hand drifted slowly downward over Serena's stomach with exquisite tenderness. "But I make you finish. I make you recite every prayer in order and only then can you undress me. You always liked that, didn't you? You touched me so gently, so perfectly, I never could wait. And you'd always smile at my impatience."
An austere convent cell, a young nun tempted by worldly longings, a coltish, passionate St. John heir and forbidden pleasures. The images burned through Serena's bloo
d
—
r
ash, reckless cravings like hers, like her constant need of him.
"You loved her, didn't you?" she said, her eyes open, direct. His tone, the faint shift in verb tense had been revealing.
Horror showed in his eyes and, drawing back as if he'd been struck, he precipitously came to his feet.
His heart was beating like a drum as he strode to his liquor table, ghastly memories flooding his mind. He hadn't realized what he was saying. He hadn't dreamed of
Caitlin in years. What a fool he'd been to have spoken so unwisely, he thought, pouring himself a large brandy. The associations, the words, the fantas
y
—
a
ll too thinly veile
d
—
h
e'd been careless, foolhardy.
Watching the brandy slowly fill the glass, he felt the lacerating pain again and the old anger, the incorrigible, perverse anger he'd never been able to resolve.
How long ago it seemed when he'd first seen Caitlin walking in the convent garden with Sister Mary Martha. But unlike Mary Martha, who'd fueled all his friends' fantasies with her private carnal urges, Sister Claire was utterly chaste.
But he'd wanted her desperatel
y
—
w
ith a young boy's heedless indiscretion. He'd sent her notes and left her flowers, bought her jeweled prayer books she couldn't keep and had frantically returned. He'd been stubborn in his pursuit, however, relentless. Although none of it would have mattered had not those irrepressible vestiges of the sensual Caitlin Garrick from Ulster still existed beneath Sister Claire's hard-won piety. And one warm summer night when he was fifteen, she'd succumbed to him.
"You're spilling," Serena quietly said.
Her voice broke his disturbing reverie and he looked at the pool of liquor spreading over the polished cabinet top. "Christ," he muttered, reaching for a shirt tossed on a nearby chair.
"I'm so sorry," Serena apologized. "I shouldn't have asked."
"It's not your fault." Quickly mopping up the spill, Beau tossed the wet shirt into the washbasin. "It's other people's fault. Would you like a drink?" His voice was emotionless.
When she shook her head, he picked up the bottle and returned to the bed. Settling back against the footboard, he distanced himself on the modest dimensions of the mattress, careful not to touch her when he stretched out his legs. And then he proceeded to drink his extremely full glass of brandy without further conversation.
The silence was rife with disquietude.
Some time later as he began refilling his glass again, Serena said, "I don't suppose you want to tell me about her."
"There's nothing to te
l
l. She died," he said in a caustic murmur. Recorking the bottle, he tossed it aside. No religion was worth such a sacrifice, he bitterly thought. He'd loved her and she'd loved him.
But that hadn't been enough when the abbess had discovered them.
She'd hung herself that night without a word to him, without caring that he loved her with all his youthful heart.
Swearing under his breath, he lifted his glass to his mouth and drained it.
"Would you rather be alone?" Serena's gaze was replete with sympathy.
"God no." He exhaled softly. "I think you must remind me of her somehow. Your eyes, I think . . . She had blue eyes like yours that shone green in certain lights. Are you sure you don't want a drink? Some Champagne ... or wine? I could use a drinking companion about now."
"Then I'll have some Champagne."
"Good," he said with a kind of earnest relief, leaning over to retrieve a Champagne bottle and glass set beside the bed earlier. "Jesus, I detest melancholy." He preferred the amnesiac oblivion he'd constructed eight years ago.
"Then you might want to consider the speed with which you're drinking. Papa was plagued with melancholy after a bottle of brandy."
Disagreeing with a shake of his head as he uncorked the Champagne, he said, "Liquor generally cheers me." He smiled faintly. "At least until my fifth bottle."
"I don't think I'll try to keep up."
One dark brow quirked intuitively and she decided he was regaining some of his normal insouciance.
"You keep up very well, Miss Blythe," he lazily replied, offering her a glass of Champagne.
"Thank you, Lord Rochefort. My
m
aman always said a lady should endeavor to please."
"Very astute guidance," the Earl of Rochefort benevolently murmured. He raised his glass to her and dipped his handsome head in salute. "To forgetting," he softly said.
And some lengthy time later when recall of the cheerless afflictions in their pasts had been mitigated by one bottle of Champagne and two of brandy and the door that had accidentally opened into Beau's psyche had been slammed shut once again, when their mild alcoholic bliss had evolved into a luxurious exploration of sensuality, Serena found herself seated astride Beau's hips, thoroughly impaled, shuddering from the bewitching ravishment, and she lightly touched his dark, crisp hair where it met her paler curls. "Mine," she said, looking down at him, winsome, infatuated, a young maiden awash in pleasure.
Unaccountably, he thought her charming, although two bottles of brandy may have tempered his judgment. And more unaccountable yet, he slid a finger delicately over her dewy wet cleft and softly murmured, "Mine."
He didn't mean it, he would have said had some voice of reason called him to account. But no such voice did in the midst of the winter gray Atlantic a hundred miles offshore. And Miss Serena Blythe, so recently released from a long bereavement in durance vile, couldn't be expected to experience less than heady, dizzying bliss. Beau St. Jules was, after all, renowned for his competence.
And the next time she came to climax, he met her release, pouring into her unchecked, each spasm jolting, acute, the world reduced to the minutiae of riveting sensation in the familiar, safe landscape of carnal physicality he preferred. His eyes were shut, his body sheened with sweat, a tidal wave of feeling draining from his body with each convulsive stroke.
A sudden sharp knock on the door jarred his senses.
Softly swearing, he refocused his concentration, recapturing his feverish rhythm, sliding back into his heated orgasmic nirvana.
"Open up!" It was Re
m
y's voice.
"Fuck off," he muttered, the sound half swallowed, his body convulsed, caught in an undertow of sensation.
A vigorous brisk tattoo punctuated the rhythm of heated breathing in the small cabin.
Serena shifted minutely, unnerved by the interruption. "The food," she murmured.
Her voice, wispy with apology, registered through Beau's fevered sensibilities.
Inhaling deeply, he opened his eyes and gazed down on her. "Damn."
"I don't think he's going away," she whispered. "You weren't finished, were you?"
Grimacing, he blew out an exasperated breath. "I am now."
"I'll break the door down!" Remy shouted.
"Fucking calm down," Beau growled, rolling off Serena. "I'm coming."
Serena giggled at the unintentional pun and when he glared at her, she apologized so sweetly, he decided he wouldn't actually throw Remy overboard after all. "I'll make it up to you," she said, pink and warm and unutterably cheerful.
His heavy black brows met in a scowl. "Damn right you
w
ill."
"You needn't frown so. I really will. But I haven't had coquilles St. Jacques since ..." A fleeting poignancy trembled in her voice. "For a very long time," she quietly finished.
He sighed. "Then I'd be an ogre to refuse you."
"Which you're not," she softly said, understanding even in the brief time she'd known him that he was more compassionate than he appeared and inf
i
nitely indulgent.
Heaving himself from the bed with another sigh, he stalked to the door, threw it open with a resounding crash, and standing stark naked and aroused on the threshold, ushered his chef in with a tightly restrained, "Don't ever do this again, Remy, or you won't see Naples."
"It's a mortal sin to let these go to waste," Remy retorted, undeterred by Beau's threat. "Are you eating on the bed?" he calmly went on as though he'd not interrupted them in flagrante delicto, as if he'd simply brought morning chocolate and brioche to the breakfast room. Motioning a serving lad forward with fresh table linen and two more chilled bottles of Champagne, Remy stood with the covered platter of scallops held aloft while the young bo
y
—
c
areful to avert his gaze from Serena draped in a quil
t
—
s
pread the tablecloth on the bed.