“All right now, ease up on your grip and don’t sit so tense in the saddle or the horse will sense it and act skittish.”
Cecile gripped the strap of leather in her gloved fists and stared at the ground miles below her. Nate had promised that Persia was a very small mare, but she wasn’t—not at all. A fall from her back would likely break a person’s arm. Cecile clamped her legs tighter and increased her death grip on the reins.
Nate patted her leg, the foot of which was secure in a stirrup. “You’re safe up there. Trust me. Now I’m going to mount Jackdaw and we’ll walk slow and easy. The place I’m taking you to isn’t far, and I’ll be right beside you. You’ll be fine.”
Cecile would have thrown daggers at him with her eyes, but she was too busy concentrating on clinging to the shifting muscles of the beast beneath her.
Nate left her to mount his own steed, a tall gelding whose glossy brown hide matched his hair. She was sure he must look like a centaur astride the great animal, but now she was focused on the trail before them as her mare walked forward. The faint path wove through the tall grass and between boulders, up and down gentle rises and dips in the land.
Cecile squeezed her legs even tighter around Persia as she descended a particularly steep slope, and the dappled mare broke into a trot. Sliding in the saddle like a sack of wet socks, Cecile gasped and hooked her knee more firmly around the pommel. She decided the side saddle was a ridiculous invention, an accident waiting to happen.
“Hold on now. I don’t think you’re ready for posting.” Nate rode up alongside her.
“I’m not trying to.” She spoke in short bursts as her teeth clicked together. “The beast just started bumping along.”
“Rein her in, then. You have to let your mount know who’s in control.”
It’s not me. But Cecile did as he bid and gave a tug on the reins. Persia immediately slowed to a leisurely walk again.
“Very good. You see. It’s not so hard.”
This time Cecile did cast a pointed glance at him. Nate laughed and spurred his horse ahead to lead the way.
After about five minutes, Cecile became accustomed to the sway of the horse and began to feel more secure in her seat. Unless the animal bolted, she really was quite safe. She began to look at the countryside around her with more interest.
This late in the season the land was tan and gold rather than the vibrant green of spring or summer. In the great stretches of fields, farm families harvested their crops, men, women and children and moving up and down the rows of a crop Cecile didn’t recognize. Interspersed between the fields were stands of trees, their leaves shades of burnished bronze and brown with an occasional startling splash of scarlet or orange. They also passed through uncultivated meadows where grasshoppers whirred up from the grass to hit the horses’ flanks and bounce off the riders’ boots.
The day was hot and soon sweat rose on Cecile’s forehead. Her scalp prickled beneath her smart, feathered bonnet, and she longed to take it off, shake out her hairpins and let the breeze blow through her heavy hair to cool her head.
She gazed at Nate’s erect back and could imagine him in his scarlet uniform riding his horse into battle. She shuddered as she pictured the carnage he’d witnessed during his military career. It didn’t take much imagining on her part as she’d witnessed some horrific events herself.
After several minutes, he glanced over his shoulder. “Almost there. Are you still all right?”
“Perfectly lovely,” she assured him. “And you’re right. Persia is a dear.”
He smiled and faced forward again. They approached a copse of trees that was more than a thicket separating fields. It was a forest with tall, thick-trunked trees the branches of which arched over the path. Beneath their cool green canopy the ground was dappled with light and shadow. Bird calls, buzzing insects and sticks crunching beneath the horses’ hooves were the only sounds to disturb the silence.
Cecile sat relaxed on her perch now, taking in the pastoral beauty of the primordial forest. The trees were so huge that there was very little undergrowth. They seemed rooted in a sea of ferns, and she could imagine the woods had remained unchanged since the dawn of time.
As they penetrated deeper into the gloom, the musical sound of water bubbling over stones came from up ahead. Again Nate looked back at her. “This is a magical place. You must enter with a reverent attitude lest you upset the dryads who dwell in the water.”
She smiled at his fancifulness and thought she glimpsed the imaginative boy he’d once been. Had he brought his Fiona here? Was this a special place where they’d escaped to hide from disapproving eyes? Young love, innocent, passionate and pure, burning like an unwavering flame. She could see the pair of them passing under these branches, entering this clearing, seeing the water tumbling white and frothy over mossy stones, dark and brackish under overhanging bushes. The youthful lovers would embrace with all the passionate yearning they had to suppress every day in the bleak manor house.
Cecile envied them and wished it had been she sharing that first bloom of love with Nathaniel. She’d never had a first love in her own life. There hadn’t been an opportunity.
“What do you think?” Nate’s eyes were bright blue as he reached up to help her down from the horse’s back.
“I think you’re right. It’s an enchanted place.”
The delicate white marshflowers growing at water’s edge were like stars against the lush greenness. Bright dragonflies flitted over the quiet water in the eddy of the stream. Foam swirled busily around mossy rocks and a fallen tree branch in the shallow stretch. The water sounded and looked so cool, begging one to wade in.
Cecile removed her frippery of a bonnet and fanned it in front of her steaming face to drive away a cloud of gnats. She swatted at a deerfly buzzing near her ear.
“The dark side of nature,” Nate said, waving a hand by his face. “We don’t get to appreciate the beauty without suffering the annoyances—and doesn’t that have some kind of cosmic significance? But I have an herbal remedy our old cook gave me when I was a boy and used to spend hours in these woods.”
He reached into his saddlebag, took out a jar of salve and handed it to her. “Not as aromatic as violet cologne, but it will keep the pests at bay.”
Nate gathered both of the horses’ reins and led them to the still water to drink. While they slurped great mouthfuls, he unsaddled and rubbed down the animals.
Cecile removed the cap from the ointment and smeared it on her face and bare arms. She’d worn her lightest muslin day dress at Nate’s request, the best gown she had for a hot day of foraging in the woods. He’d suggested she forego her corset as well, and she was glad she had. The fewer layers, the better.
When Nate was done picketing the horses so they could graze, he turned his attention back to Cecile, striding across the clearing to pull her into his arms and kiss her. “Mm. It’s too hot for this, isn’t it?” He rested his sticky forehead against hers. “Do you feel adventurous enough to join me in the water?”
Cecile glanced past him at the dark pool where the dancing water settled to a sluggish flow. “There aren’t any leeches?”
“Didn’t used to be. I haven’t been here in years.”
Not since Fiona, Cecile mentally supplied.
“But we can wade among the rocks where the bottom is gravel instead of mud.” He sat on the grass and pulled off his boots. And as he shed his tailored jacket and waistcoat, he seemed to be stripping off the years and the trappings of a gentleman. Again, Cecile saw his boyish aspect and was charmed.
She sat and began to unbutton her calfskin boots, a time consuming prospect. Nate was down to his drawers and nothing more before she’d finished removing the first one. He knelt at her feet and took over the task, taking off her boots, unfastening her stockings from her garters and sliding them down her legs. His hands and eyes lingered on her bare legs as her toes dug into the soft, damp grass.
“This feels wonderful!”
“Even better once we’re in the water. And how is your bum feeling, by the way, after our jaunt?”
“Aches a little, but hardly enough to notice. I believe I could come to enjoy riding.”
“Good.” He grinned and reached for the bows on the front of her dress.
“No. Those ribbons are purely decorative. This one fastens up the back.” She turned and offered him her backside, amazed at how quickly she’d become accustomed to stripping down to her skin in front of Nate.
Soon she was clad only in her chemise and pantalets, as white and virginal as spring. She took Nate’s hand and he led her into the icy cold stream. Her feet slipped on shifting pebbles as she felt her way between the larger boulders.
“Where does the water come from?” she asked. “It’s so cold.”
“An underground river. It’s amazing to consider all there is that’s beyond our sight, under the earth and under the sea. We have so little knowledge of the world around us. Humans are too busy with squabbles over land to pay much attention to the earth itself.” He bent and scooped up water, splashing it on his face and torso. When he straightened, the droplets gleamed on his shoulders in the sunlight and sparkled on the chest hairs they clung to.
Cecile knew dryads were female sprites which supposedly lived in water, but Nate looked the part of some primal water god. His brown hair was streaked blond in the shafts of sunlight and his eyes caught the light and sparkled a brighter blue than ever. Her breath caught.
Nate stooped again and splashed handfuls of water on her. “It’s lovely and cool. Come in farther.”
Cecile gasped as the cold water wet her thin lawn underwear, but she moved away from the shore and into the deeper water at the center of the stream. With every step the water rose higher, covering her ankles, calves and knees.
“Breath-stealing.” Her teeth chattered as she spoke, and she leaned over to cup water in her hands as Nate had done and splash her face. It was numbing. “Is it safe to drink?”
“Ron and I drank from this stream as children and never got sick.” Nate scooped more water in his hands and dipped his face to drink.
The water was the purest, most delicious Cecile had ever tasted. She drank deeply then scooped more water up in her hands and splashed it at Nate, wetting his drawers as he had hers.
“A water battle is it? Then we must go deeper.” He grabbed her hand and pulled her downstream toward the quieter water. The water now covered her thighs then her crotch.
Cecile shrieked as her pussy was doused in icy water. “I don’t know about this.”
“Your body gets so numb you can’t feel the cold.”
And as they stopped, waist-deep, she found it was true. Her legs lost feeling and she was almost comfortable. Not giving Nate time for a first attack, she swept water up in her arms and pushed it toward him.
He laughed and splashed her back, and soon the dark, still water churned white as they drove it back and forth between them. Cecile laughed and swallowed a mouthful of water as Nate swept a towering wall of it at her. She dodged around him and he caught her by the waist, threatening to dunk her under.
“Don’t you dare! My hair will be ruined.”
“Sorry, sweetheart. It’s already too late to worry about that.”
He was right. Hanks of damp hair straggled down from her chignon on either side of her face. She squirmed in his iron hard arms around her body and kicked his shin with her heel.
Nate released her, and she bent with her back toward him and her cupped hands flailing the water, spraying it behind her and dousing him.
Soon they were both weak with laughter and soaked from head to toe. Cecile’s chest ached. She didn’t remember ever having laughed so hard in her entire life. She felt awake, alive, uninhibited and free in a way she never had before, refreshed by the water, revitalized by the laughter. And, as she stood there, dripping wet, her transparent undergarments clinging to her body, and her chest rising and falling as she panted for breath, Cecile wanted to tell Nate everything. She wanted no secrets between them. Surely a man who had once loved a maidservant could do so again. He wouldn’t be bound by convention and would accept the truth about her station in life. Wouldn’t he?
She could become his mistress, stay with him for as long as he would have her, perhaps even after he took a wife—because eventually he would marry and beget children to ensure the Covington line in case his brother wasn’t able to produce heirs. It wasn’t unusual for gentlemen to set up actresses or other lower class women as their mistresses, and Cecile would be content to be ensconced in an apartment somewhere if it was the only way she could be with Nate.
“Are you frozen? My God, your lips are purple and your teeth chattering. Time to get you out of the water.” Nate grabbed her hand and tugged her toward the shore.
They shook the water off their bodies like dogs. The heat of the sun quickly warmed Cecile’s frigid flesh and began to dry her clinging chemise and drawers.
Nate pulled more supplies from his bulging saddlebag, spreading a blanket over the grass and producing a bottle of wine and some tin mugs. “Not very elegant, but much less prone to breaking than wine glasses,” he said as he poured.
He handed her a glass of the blushing rose vintage, and Cecile took a sip. Then Nate rummaged in his seemingly bottomless bag and produced a small leather-bound volume. “Do you enjoy sonnets?”
“You’re an incurable romantic, aren’t you?”
“Apparently.” He tossed the book on the blanket and ruffled his hand through his thick, wet hair, making it stand in crazy swirls. “I thought I’d stamped out that streak in myself after eight years in the army, but here it is again.”
He offered Cecile a hunk of cheese and a knife to cut it with then settled on the blanket beside her. “‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Thou are more lovely and more temperate.’”
“You don’t know me that well yet. I do lose my temper on occasion.” She set her mug on the ground and carved a bit of cheese which she handed to Nate.
“I can’t imagine it. You seem the calmest, most even-tempered woman I’ve ever met.”
“I learned long ago that getting angry didn’t help in most situations. It was better to bide my temper and do what I must to get along in the world.”
He paused with the slice of cheese partway to his mouth. “I don’t mean to pry, but I’d like to know more of your life. I feel like you know much more of me than I do of you.”
She could tell him some of her history by remaining vague and speaking in generalities, and she wanted so badly to share with him. “Well, after my parents’ deaths my life was transient. I lived with one family then another and spent quite some time in a…boarding school. There are too many years, too many moves for me to tell you about them all.”
“So you were passed from one relative to another before you married and were widowed.”
Here the exaggeration of her father’s employees cast as distant relatives and the Catholic orphanage masquerading as a boarding school became an outright lie. Cecile couldn’t stand to directly lie to Nate so she picked up her cup and took another sip of the sweet-tart nectar. After she’d swallowed, she said, “I’m sorry. It’s difficult for me to speak of the past.”
“I understand.” He bit into the cheese at last, chewed and swallowed as he opened the book of Shakespeare’s poems.
“Of course, I could start with a classic: ‘My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun’—but although it’s lovely, it doesn’t really apply, because you are beautiful physically.”
He flipped pages and came to a stop midway through the book. “Ah. ‘Let not my love be called idolatry. Nor my beloved as an idol show.’”
By the time he reached the final words, “Fair, kind, and true, have often lived alone, Which three till now, never kept seat in one,” Cecile was blushing. The sonnet praised attributes she didn’t have. She wasn’t true, but a liar pretending to be something she wasn’t, and she longed with all her heart to tell Nate the truth, but she didn’t dare.
“Don’t look so uncomfortable.” He smiled and leaned forward to cup her chin and give her a kiss. “Just relax and enjoy Will’s pretty poetry.”
Urging her to lay back and rest her head on his lap, Nate resumed reading. Cecile listened to his mellifluous voice, watched the shimmer of leaves overhead and felt the heat of his body through the damp fabric of his drawers. The continuous flow of water, the heat of the day and Nate’s beautiful recitation lulled her into a trance.
After a bit, she glanced at his groin, inches from her cheek. His erection was clearly outlined by the material molded to it. She suddenly craved to examine his cock closely, something she had not yet done. Cecile understood that men enjoyed having their members fondled and sucked. When she’d first learned that, she couldn’t imagine doing such a thing, but now understood its attraction. She reached out a tentative hand and stroked the white-clad bulge.
Nate stopped reading. His voice broke in the middle of “Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds.”
Cecile smiled at the power of her touch and grasped the hot and heavy shape of him through his drawers.
Nate tilted the book and looked down at her.
“Keep reading,” she urged as he tugged on the drawstring of the pants and pulled them down, letting his hardened cock bob free.
A smile twitched the corners of his lips and he turned his eyes back to the volume. “‘Or bends with the remover to remove.’” He sucked in a breath when she took the shaft in her hand. “‘O no! it is an ever-fixed mark that looks on tempests and is never shaken.’ Christ!” This time he hissed as she scratched her nails ever-so-lightly down his length.
With her head resting on his lap, she had a very good view of the rigid beauty of his cock: the dark-flushed head protruding from its sack of foreskin, the shaft ridged with purple veins. It was a marvelous thing, silken skin over hard organ—rather like a gentleman’s powerful hand tucked into a kid glove.
Cecile glided her hand up and down its length, rubbed her thumb over the oozing slit in the head then she lifted herself up so she could bring the tip to her mouth. She licked its smoothness and tasted salt.
Nate groaned and his eyes fell shut.
She pulled the cockhead from her lips and ordered, “Keep reading.”
His eyes flickered open and he smiled. “Minx. Very well. ‘That looks on tempests and is never sh-shaken. It is a star to…to every wandering bark.’ Oh, God.”
She’d drawn him deep, sucking the head, the shaft, all of him into her mouth. The head hit the back of her throat, nearly gagging her, and she eased off a little. She kept her hand clamped around the base of his shaft and moved it up and down while she sucked. This was how it was done. She’d read some of Madame’s erotic books and had learned as much from them.
Nate groaned again and the book hung limp from his hand. He stared at her, watching his slick cock emerging from her mouth and being swallowed over and over. Naked hunger made his eyes dark. Cecile relished the need in his expression. It made her feel powerful to hold his manhood literally in the palm of her hand, to be able to give him pleasure and…if she gripped it very tightly…pain.
Another gasp and a louder groan. Nate’s eyes nearly closed again.
Cecile released his cock from between her lips. “You’re not reading.”
“Can’t.” The word was strangled as his hips thrust toward her.
“You must,” she teased, enjoying her newfound control. She’d also read about dominance and submission in Meredith’s books and now understood the pleasure to be found in those games.
“‘…to, um, every wandering bark whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken. Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips’… Oh God, Cecile. Please!”
She bobbed her head, sucking hard. Beneath his shaft, she cradled the soft sac, fondling the orbs inside. Releasing his cock from her mouth again, she burrowed her face between his legs and took his balls into her mouth. She moved her tongue over the so-soft skin and tasted his sweat and the slightly mineral tang of the water they’d played in.
Nate pushed into her fist which was still massaging him firmly.
“More.” Cecile’s command was nearly unintelligible, muffled by his balls, but Nate gave a choked laugh and continued.
“‘…rosy lips and cheeks within his bending sickle’s compass comes. Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, but bears it out even to the edge of doom. If this be error and upon me proved, I never writ nor no man ever loved.’ There!” Nate read the last couplets in a rush and threw the book aside.
He slipped his hands into her hair, holding her head steady as Cecile took his cock into her mouth once more. His hips thrust rhythmically as his tension grew and for several moments, the sound of her sucking and his gasps rose above the babbling brook. She felt the change, the swell moving through his cock, a moment before he spoke.
“I’m going to…” He tugged at her head to pull her away, but Cecile stayed put. She massaged his shaft, imagining her hand was pulling his seed from within him, and when his come jetted into the back of her throat, she swallowed it down before she’d even tasted it.
“Oh.” Nate’s harsh groan reverberated through the glade and the sound of his pleasure thrilled her. Between her legs, her pussy clenched in time with his pulses, eager to join in, aching to be filled. It was amazing how she’d lived for so many years, unaware of what she was lacking both physically and emotionally. For, now that she’d experienced it, she couldn’t imagine going without sex…or living without Nate.
Cecile wasn’t certain how long to keep moving her hand, but his climax seemed to be over so she let his depleted cock slip from her mouth. She cradled him in her hand. It was still a hefty thickness but much reduced, and she watched in interest as his cock lost its rigidity and softened. Such a marvelous and strange thing it was, and she wondered how soon before he could grow hard again.
His hands ruffled through her hair and down to her shoulders. He tugged, urging her to rise. “Come up here.”
Cecile sat and moved into his embrace, her hands sliding around his warm, strong back. Nate kissed her then gazed into her eyes. “That was the most…invigorating poetry reading I’ve ever had. Thank you.”
“It was my pleasure,” she said and meant it. She hadn’t known how pleasurable oral sex could be.
He coiled a lock of her hair around his finger. “I wish… I mean, I would like very much like it if you extended your visit.”
Since they’d never set a time limit on how long she’d be there, Cecile wasn’t certain what that meant.
“Indefinitely,” he added.
“Oh, I…” She had no idea what to say. This affair hadn’t been intended to go on much longer than a few weeks. Her charade wrapped around her like a spider’s web, the sticky strands drawing tighter the more she struggled. The need to tell him the truth about her identity grew stronger, but so did her fear of his reaction. “I’ll have to see.”
He nodded. “Take your time deciding, but I want you to know that I’d like you to stay here for as long as you’d like.”
“Thank you.” She managed a coquettish smile. That’s the way a lady behaved. She kept an affair light and didn’t allow herself to become overly involved. Cecile had watched Meredith for years as she dallied with one lover after another, and now she finally understood her mistress’s behavior. To open one’s heart to someone was a dangerous game, and rejection could cut with the savage slice of a guillotine blade.