Beloved Enemy (7 page)

Downstairs in the dining room, Alex heard his aide-decamp,
young Diccon Maulfrey, tell him that he rather thought Mistress Courtney was
abed and asleep. The fresh-faced, twenty-year-old lieutenant made his report to
a blank-eyed commander, who merely nodded and dismissed him curtly. Alex felt a
fool. Virginia's disappearance had created a panic-stricken frenzy that had
somehow blotted out all his calm reason. He had taken her prisoner on a curious
whim, nettled by her sharpness, by the cold mocking sa
ti
re and the fearlessness of her challenge. And by
something else, too. By his admiration for her, by the overwhelming sense
that
she was like no o
th
er
woman he had ever met, by the feeling that he could not cast upon the world,
alone and friendless, a woman who was both defenseless and courageous. So he
had assumed responsibility for Virginia Courtney and in the doing had
discovered something else again—
a
yearning that the soldier, intent on principle and purpose, had never before
allowed to intrude. He was as experienced in the ways of the world and the
needs of the body as any of his peers, took his release whenever and wherever
the opportunity arose, but he had always been capable of controlling his body's
urgencies, to live for as long as need be without women. Now, in a few short
hours, he had lost all caution, all sense, his careful purpose buffeted to the
breaking point by a young woman with a tongue like a bee sting. An enemy who,
even as she mocked him, even as she fought herself, yielded to the same power
that consumed him.

He stood at the diamond-paned casement, staring out at the
lashing rain, hearing the wind's howl, feeling its breath
whistling through the cracks of the window frame. His
men had searched the house and the estate, and they had not found her. She had,
therefore
,
broken her parole. She was a ward of
Parliament's representative. He must behave now in a manner consonant with that
position. Only then could he recover his operational error and prove, both to
himself and to the men under his command, that this night's frantic search had
had a serious wartime purpose, had had nothing to do with the need of a
tortured would-be lover to find an errant would-be mistress.

Alex stalked to the door.
“D
iccon?"

The lieutenant appeared immediately.

"
Have
sentries posted at all outside doors. In future, Mistress Courtney is not to be
permitted to leave the house from sundown to sunup. If she attempts to break
the curfew, then she is to be brought to
m
e."

Diccon saluted and went to fulfill his instructions. His
colonel was not one to tolerate infraction, and if the lady of the manor had
defied an order, then she would be no more spared the consequences than any
other under his command.

Alex eventually went upstairs. The house was now still, men
and officers dismissed to their quarters. Outside Virginia's door he paused.
How did he know with such certainty that she was not asleep? She had a right to
know of the curfew, he reasoned. If she did not, it could cause her
embarrassment on the morrow. He tapped gently at the door.
"
Virginia
, I must speak with you."

Ginny heard the soft voice, the discreet knock, and realized
that it was for this that she had been waiting. Her voice quavered in response.
"What is it you wish to say to me, Colonel?"

"
Open
the door," he replied. "I do not wish to wake the house by shouting
through a yard of oak."

She slipped from the bed, deep in the knowledge of
inevitability, and
drew
her wrapper around her before turning the iron key.

Alex stepped into the room. He had intended to deliver his
message on the threshold—
h
adn't he? —
b
ut, instead, found himself closing the door quietly
behind him. She stepped back, her eyes frightened, except that they carried the
same tormenting yearning as his own. Perhaps
that
was why she was afraid. He was, himself.

"Where have you been? My men have been searching the
island for you."

"For me!" Ginny sought safety in her tongue.
"I had assumed, Colonel, by all the activity, that you have found a nest
of Cavaliers under a gooseberry bush."

Alex struck a flint against the tinder box and lit the candle
standing on the mantelpiece.
"
You have
sand between your toes," he remarked, and she remembered his statement in
the dairy— that if he refused to fight, she would be unable to do so.
T
hey are very pretty toes," he continued with a
curious frown, "even dirty as they are."

“I
went to the beach." What sort of a conversation was this? Was she
defending her dirty feet or answering her captor's inquiry?

"
The
beach is not contained within the boundaries of the estate, Virginia. You
violated your parole."

"I did not think of it in that way. The beach and the
cove have always been mine. I have sailed the bay since I could walk."
Even as she made the explanation, Ginny realized how much she might have revealed.
She had told this man she was a sailor. It would take
little
deduction on his part to conclude
her most logical means of escape.

But instead Alex moved toward her, took her hands. "What
else can you do, my indomitable
little
shrew of the sandy toes, besides battle the invader and the seas?"

Ginny thought of a passionless lifetime, a lifetime of duty.
She had but to speak the word, and this man would leave her, leave her to live
that life, when the world settled, never to have known the glory. In this time
of schism why should she be bound by a self-imposed discipline that had never
been the courtly norm before civil war? She had done her duty, married her
father's choice, taken her place amongst hostile in-laws—
d
one everything except produce the heir. Why should she
not, just once, allow her mind and body the freedom
they
craved? All the customary bonds and rules of society
were fragmented. She was no maid, and who would ever know, besides themselves,
that Ginny Courtney and Alex Marshall had, once upon a mad time, enjoyed each
other?

Even as she thought she still had a choice, his hands left
hers to slide around her back, and her skin burned beneath his touch. The iron
bands of a courage that had kept her in antagonism melted in the forge of a
white-hot lucidity—
the
absolute knowledge that she wanted
this, that if she did not take it now, it would be lost to her forever.

"
Oh,
sweet Ginny," he whispered against her hair.
"
This is lunacy, but I am moon-mad,
bewitched. T
e
ll me that it is the same for
you."

"It is the same."

His tongue ran gently across her lips, probed the corners of
her mourn, tasting her sweetness. "I cannot imagine why you should taste
of honey and not of vinegar." He chuckled, sliding his hands down to cup
her buttocks. Ginny shuddered at the shocking intimacy. Only Giles had ever
put
his hands there and then only to shift her into the
position that suited him, or to grip with bruising fingers as he
expended
himself. This was a totally different touch- a hungry touch of passion that
nevertheless acknowledged her and her right to feel and fulfill her own
passion.

Alex half-lifted her as he moved backward to the bed. Ginny
'
s eyes were closed as she floated in the ether of pure
sensation. Her brain no longer held the reins of control, and her body seemed
as formless as mercury. She fell back on the bed, and he came with her, still
locked against her mouth as his hands now moved urgently over her breasts, lifting
the aching nipples with the heel of his palm. Ginny moaned, twisting her body,
covered only by the thin layer of cotton, beneath the contours and promontories
delineated by the leather and linen garb of the soldier above. Her own hands
seemed to know instinctively what they were to do and where they were to put
themselves, unbuttoning his shirt, curling in the wiry chest hair, slipping to
the muscled back and then down beneath the belt of his leathern britches.

Alex raised his head, looking down at her as if seeing her
for the first time —
h
er reddened lips, swollen under his
kisses, her limbs sprawled in wanton abandon, her erect nipples, dark splodges
against her nightgown. Passion and longing filled the gray eyes that seemed to
contain her soul, and the invitation was both an offer and an imperative. How
could he refuse either? His mouth returned to hers.

She yielded her body, then, to the hands that stroked even as
they held her fast. He moved his mouth from hers only long enough to cast aside
the wrapper, raising her body as he drew her nightgown over her head. As she
trembled in her nakedness, he whispered to her, soothing and stroking, and told
her how beautiful her body was, how strong and clean were her limbs, how
translucent her skin. She had never before shown herself naked to a man; Giles
had preferred darkness for coupling. But under the words of praise, she lay,
bold and proud, feeling herself as flawless as this lover was telling her she
was. When his hands parted her thighs in magical exploration, she heard herself
beg for gentleness and understanding, whisper that she had never known loving,
only invasion, and the green-brown eyes lifted for a minute to glow their
promise. She lay watching as he undressed, revealing the soldier's body, hard
of muscle and sinew, a lean, long fighting machine that bore a thin, white scar
slash across a thigh, another drawn fine over his rib cage.  He came to her, 
gentling her with hands and mouth as her body quivered in a confusion of panic,
anticipated pain, and the white-hot brand of desire. And the panic went, the
memory scars of pain healed beneath his touch, and there was only the fierce
wanting and an explosion of exquisite joy.

When he left her, it was far, far too soon, but the hard
edges of reality were stiffening the malleable wax of the dream. The lover was
soldier again, commander of a brigade, and he could not afford to be found in
the chamber of his prisoner. Before he left, he remembered to tell her of the
curfew, and even though he kissed her in apology, t
h
e words made clear again the truth of their relative
positio
n
s.

Ginny, in the light of the flickering candle as the st
or
m raged against her casement, attempted to quieten the
storm boiling within her, and to douse the light that for a magical time had
moved from a flicker to a full clear glow. Whatever it was that had happened,
be it love or lust, it could not be allowed to interfere in her future—
a
future that could not contain a Roundhead colonel.
She had known from the beginning of the madness that it could only be an
ephemeral moment, the last chance, the one and only chance she would ever have
in a lifetime of duty. She must leave the island tomorrow, she and Edmund and
Peter, fasten again the shackles of duty and loyalty, and keep the glorious
lunacy of this night in the secret embers of her soul.

She found she had no desire to sleep and sat at her window,
keeping watch as the storm died and the first faint glimmers of a sunless dawn
turned the night's darkness to a gray heaviness. A bugle call pierced the air
with its insistence, and the house came to life around her. There was an
urgency in the hurrying feet, the sharp commands, the snap of irritation, and
she heard Alex's voice, cool but comma
n
ding.
The storm had been all that she had expected, and the men camped in the orchard
had had a wretched time of it as the rain bucketed, running in torrents under,
over, and between the flimsy tents. The wind had howled, tearing at the pegs,
and the lazy and inexperienced had lived with
the
consequences as their fragile shelters had flown with the gusts. The
campsite was in chaos, and Ginny listened to
the
sudden silence in the house as the entire brigade, from the colonel
down, pitched in to restore order.

So fate had played into her hands. The house was deserted,
the colonel and his men in the orchard, and the tide would be full in Alum Bay at eight o'clock. Ginny dressed rapidly and slipped from the room. She went
directly to the still room, where she stood for a moment, allowing the silence
to seep into her pores, her ears pricked for the slightest sound. Nothing . . .
except the voices carrying through the now-still air from the orchard.

Twenty minutes of careful activity produced the poultice of
herbs and distilled alcohol that would keep Edmund's wound clean and aid the
healing. This was one area of housewifery in which Ginny excelled, simply
because it fascinated her. There were few of the common, and no-so-common
ailments, that she did not know how to cure or at least ease. She had spent much
of her childhood gathering simples in the company of the old women of the
island, learning the art of healing.