A Gentleman By Any Other Name (12 page)

Unbidden, another bit of the poem sprang into Julia's head. “‘The other was a softer voice, As soft as honeydew: Quoth he, ‘The man hath penance done, And penance more will do.'” Now she was becoming fanciful as well as scaring herself. “It's growing late….”

“Yes. Yes, it is,” Chance said, snapping himself back to attention and to the matter at hand. “You're an interesting woman, Julia. The vicar's daughter, who knows too much about what goes on in the Marsh, who has no qualms about tending to bloody wounds…who spouts poetry.”

He pushed his fingers through his hair. “I don't know if you're the luckiest find a man could stumble over or his just punishment.”

Julia swallowed down hard, amazed at how vulnerable Chance Becket looked to her at that moment and how in charity she was with this maddening man who harbored so many secrets. So many, she felt sure, sad secrets. “This hasn't been an easy homecoming for you, has it?”

Chance looked at her and laughed softly. “You noticed? And here I thought I was putting such a fine face on things.”

The room was becoming smaller, more intimate. And he was becoming very aware of how alone he had been for so very long and how sweet it would be to have someone to hold, someone to care for him. Someone who someday he might even be able to talk to….

Julia felt so sorry for the man, both for the man and the boy he'd been. If he were Alice's age, she would take him in her arms and try to comfort him. “Yes, I did notice. And my presence here isn't making any of what's going on here easier for you.”

He shook his head, shocked to realize what he would say next was true. “No, Julia, there's where you're wrong. Frankly I can't imagine being here without you. God knows what I would have done if you hadn't been there on the Marsh with me last night. I might have…might have been stupid enough to destroy everything.”

Should she pretend not to understand what he meant? But what was the point in that? “If Dickie had not said
Black Ghost
to me, and me to you, you may have done your duty. Then Dickie may have said the words to someone at Dover Castle.” She closed her eyes for a second, then said the rest. “And brought the world down around your family's head.”

“Billy would have stopped me,” Chance said before he could measure his words. Too close, too close; this woman was much too close.

Julia put her hand on Chance's arm. “Do they really spy on you in London? Don't they trust you?”

Now Chance laughed in genuine amusement. “Billy
protects
me. Or at least he'd like to think so. Don't become too fanciful, Julia, not everything is a mystery to be solved.”

You are.
Julia closed her eyes and turned her head away from him as she prayed she hadn't said the words out loud. “I'm tired. Please.”

Chance reached out to lightly touch the side of her throat. “There's still those buttons to contend with,” he said quietly.

“I can manage them, thank you.” She didn't look at him but kept her head turned, refusing to believe that she wanted him to keep touching her, even as his fingers drifted to her cheek and then lightly to her chin.

“Look at me, Julia,” he said, the slight pressure of his fingers beneath her chin. “Look at me. What do you see in my eyes?”

“I…I don't know,” she said, her own eyes searching his face, drinking in the beauty of him, the restrained but probably never to be conquered strength of him. “I think you frighten me.”

“Oh, no, not that,” Chance said, dipping his head to nuzzle at the silky skin below her ear. She tasted as good as he remembered. He whispered into her ear, “Don't be frightened.”

Julia took an involuntary breath as tiny shivers of awareness spread like silken cobwebs, tracing over her shoulders, down her arms. She could feel her nipples pressing against her undershift.

He slid his arms around her, pulling her closer, and she wondered if he'd felt as alone as she had and if he, too, felt less alone now.

She was weakening. Chance knew it. Knew it and cursed himself. Cursed Ainsley and Jacko and Courtland. All of them.

Then he cursed himself again, because he wasn't here with this woman on orders from anyone. He was here because here was where he wanted to be. Holding her. Tasting her. Introducing her to what it felt like to be a man and a woman together.

“Never be frightened of me,” he said as he raised his head slightly, then brought his mouth down on hers. Slanted his lips against hers until she opened to him, then plunged inside.

Her arms came up of their own volition, it seemed, for Julia was now holding him, clinging to him, the small fires he had lit this morning now bursting into flame with a vengeance.

She didn't know what she felt or even why she felt it. But she wanted to learn, to feel more, because she was sure there would be more. “Please,” she murmured against his mouth, then gasped as she felt his hand cup her breast.

Holding the kiss, with his right hand Chance released the row of buttons that ended just below her waist, then pushed the material from her shoulders, along with the straps of her simple cotton shift.

Julia felt the night air on her bare skin, cool and surprising, before Chance covered her breasts with his hands, lightly rubbing the pads of his thumbs over her.

She should stop him. This was madness. She didn't even know this man. She'd never known a man, not in her nearly one and twenty years, had resigned herself to spinsterhood.
Which is no excuse.

“Go away,” she breathed without realizing she'd spoken aloud as Chance kissed her cheek, her chin, began nibbling maddeningly at the tingling skin of her throat.

His hands stilled on her breasts. He would never force a woman. He'd seen enough to have given him a horror of that sort of display of physical dominance. “You want me to leave?” he asked, then gave in to the desire to lick at her magnificently straight collarbone with the tip of his tongue.

Julia tipped back her head, breathing hard as she looked up at the dark ceiling, mentally waving goodbye to her common sense and a lifetime spent believing she had a clear understanding of right and wrong. “No,” she then said honestly. “I…I was talking to my conscience.”

“God, you're a fascinating woman, Julia Carruthers,” Chance told her, then scooped her up, carried her over to the bed, gently laid her against the cool, fragrant sheets.

He joined her on the bed, taking up where he'd left off, kissing her mouth, touching her breasts.

She knew she was naked to the waist, exposed to his eyes, but she didn't care. Still, what was fine for the goose…

He was dressed casually again, just evening shoes, hose and skintight fawn breeches, not even the vest of this morning covering his snow-white, generously sleeved shirt with the collar opened, exposing a small part of his tanned chest and a few golden curls. She ached to touch him.

Julia tugged at the buttons, amazed to find herself feeling frantic now, as if his touch on her breast was somehow urging her on to her own explorations. If only she could remember how to open a button….

“This is much better done without clothes, sweetings,” Chance told her, covering her hand with his own. When she didn't disagree, he pushed away from her and stripped off his shirt and the
gad
around his neck before blowing out the bedside candle. He hardly needed protection from Julia. Only then did he rid himself of the remainder of his clothes.

She was an eager virgin, yes, but that didn't mean the sight of a naked male body could be counted on to increase that eagerness. He joined her on the bed once more, his hand going to her waist even as he leaned over her, kissed her again.

And again. And again, trying so hard to remember that it was him seducing her, as she not only allowed his kiss but set her own tongue to dueling with his…all the while he deftly relieved her of her clothes before covering them both to the waist with the soft bedsheet.

He held her close as he lightly stroked her bare back, reveling in the way that back curved, the enticing indentation that marked her spine. And she did the same.

He had lightly nipped at the lobe of her ear. Now she did the same to him. The eager student, learning, practicing what she'd learned.

Chance felt sure he was about to go out of his mind…even as he reveled in the role of teacher.

He taught her that her body was a garden of delights for both of them.

He suckled at her breasts, his blood singing when she began to moan, pull his head closer, hold him very still as he laved her nipple with the roughness of his tongue, held her breath as if to move either of them would utterly destroy her.

Julia felt herself floating on a cloud of sensations she hadn't even dreamed possible. His hands on her. His mouth. On her.

She could stay like this forever or so she thought until Chance began moving his hand lower. To her waist. To trace delicate circles on her belly. To move lower still, to slip between her thighs and touch her so very intimately, even as she clenched her teeth, suddenly aware that what she'd been feeling had been only a prelude to the aching wonder she felt now.

The anticipation of something wild, something wonderful. A willing step off that cloud and into the unknown.

Julia could feel his hard body against hers, his manhood that she could only imagine sunk deep inside her…and for the first time she felt fear.

“It's all right, Julia,” Chance breathed against her ear as he felt her body tense. “This is the way it's supposed to be. This is why we were made the way we were made.”

And all the time he was touching her. Stroking her. Learning her. And when she relaxed her thighs, when she sighed, he felt a surge of power run through him that he had to shut down immediately or else disgrace himself.

He was losing control. He never lost control. She was unschooled, her lovemaking tentative, almost clumsy. But still so eager. And now so trusting.

And he was a bastard of the first water.

“Nature makes certain that you're ready for me, sweetings, and you are. You're glorious,” he told her, gentling her as he would a timid young colt. “There will be some pain, I won't lie to you, but only this once, and I'll make you forget it. I swear I will.”

“Hold me, please,” Julia said, her eyes closed as she reached for him. “Don't talk. Just…just do it.”

There never was a bastard like him.

Chance kissed her yet again, then levered himself over her, settled himself between her thighs and let nature do the rest.

Julia felt the pain, digging her nails into the hard flesh of Chance's back, knowing she'd just crossed over from maidenhood to womanhood and knowing there was no way back.

And then he began to move. She could feel him take possession of her, moving inside her, and she was the eager pupil once more. She moved with him, tentatively at first, and then, as the heat grew, as the
need
grew, so did her courage. Holding on to him as his breathing became even more rapid and shallow than hers, as she felt the sweat break out on his skin, as she felt something inside her grow and bud…and burst into bloom.

Chance felt her give over, give in, let her body take her where it wanted to go.

He didn't have that luxury.

Muttering a curse under his breath, he withdrew to all but collapse on Julia as he spilled his seed on her belly, then lay there, his strength gone, his passion released but not wholly satisfied.

“Stay here, sweetings, don't move,” he told her quietly, then retrieved a towel from the washstand in the corner. He sat on the bed and slightly pressed the towel between Julia's legs, then wiped her belly. “Are you all right?”

All right? She was mortified! She was lying there naked. She'd just given herself to this man, and now somehow something very beautiful had become something very tawdry as he wiped away the seed he hadn't cared to spill inside her.

“I'm fine,” she said, glad for the dark that was broken only by the small candle she'd brought to the room with her. “Could…um…could you please leave now?”

Chance tried for some humor, something to lighten what was rapidly becoming the most awkward moment of his life. “Are you speaking to your conscience again?”

Julia pulled the covers up to her chin. “No, I'm not. Please…just go. I don't know if you feel some small need to talk now, to
discuss
what just happened, but I must tell you that I most assuredly do not.”

Chance nodded, then reached for his clothing, quickly pulling on his breeches and stabbing his arms into the sleeves of his shirt, not bothering with the buttons, then lowered the
gad
over his head. His hair was hanging loose, and when Julia dared to peek at him in the semidarkness, she caught her breath. He looked so beautiful and yet so dangerous. Untamed yet vulnerable.

And he had just made love to her, to the spinster daughter of a Hawkhurst vicar. The world had turned upside down, and Julia still wasn't quite sure how that had happened.