The Escape (Survivor's Club) (22 page)

She had lain down across the bed, and he had followed her, his hand beneath the hem of her nightgown, smoothing its way up the heat of her inner thigh. His tongue simulated in her mouth what he would like to be doing with her body. His weight was pressing against her breasts.

He had made her a promise downstairs just an hour or two ago.

But not tonight. You are quite safe from me, I promise, despite the situation in which we find ourselves. I will not take advantage of you
.

He tried to ignore the voice in his head—his own voice. It could not be done, however.

He lifted his head and gazed down into her passion-heavy eyes.

“We cannot do this,” he said.

She said nothing.

“We would regret it,” he told her. “It would have been provoked entirely by this room. We
would
regret it.”

Idiot
, he thought.
Fool
.

“Would we?” She sighed, but he could see that she was returning to her senses.

“You know we would.” He sat up, lowering the hem of her nightgown as he did so, and pushed himself to his feet without using his canes. High mattresses were always a blessing to him.

“And yet,” she said, “it is quite acceptable for a widow to have an affair, provided she is discreet about it. I learned that when I was with Matthew’s regiment. I think it would be a grand use of freedom—to have an affair.”

“With me?” He did not turn to look at her.

“With a man who wanted one with me as much as I wanted one with him,” she said. “Perhaps with you, Ben. One of these days. But not tonight. You are right about that. It would seem slightly sordid.”

He drew a few slow breaths. “Now,” he said, “if you would get beneath the covers and pretend to fall into an instant sleep to spare my modesty, I will slip out of a few of my clothes and climb in on the other side. And tomorrow and for every other night of our journey, we will continue on our way, even if the distance is a hundred miles, until we find an inn that can properly and separately accommodate us.”

She got down from the bed, climbed beneath the covers so far to her side that it was a miracle she did not fall off, pulled the covers up over her head, and snored softly.

He smiled and made his way around to the other side.

“The only trouble is,” she said when he was slipping out of his waistcoat, “that by the time
one of these days
comes along, you will be long gone from my life.”

“Hush,” he said, and she started snoring again.

He blew out the candle and climbed into bed, as far to his side as was possible.

He would be laughed out of any officers’ mess tent, he
thought, if he was ever unwise enough to give an account of this night’s doings—or absence of doings.

Not that he would ever again be in any mess tent.

He stared at the pale outline of the bay window.

He would never again be in any mess tent
.

The army did not take cripples.

S
amantha’s first impression when she awoke was of warmth and comfort. She had surely just enjoyed her best night’s sleep in a long time. And then, as she woke further, other impressions intruded. Her nose was virtually pressed against a naked chest that rose and fell to the steady rhythm of its owner’s breathing. His body heat enveloped her and made her want to move her whole body closer though she was alarmingly close as it was. One of his arms was about her beneath the covers.

So much for a sleepless night as they each clung virtuously to their respective edges of the bed.

Samantha had never before slept with a man.
Slept
, that was, as opposed to having marital relations with. For close to four months after their marriage, Matthew had come to her bed almost nightly, but he had always returned to his own afterward. Somehow, this seemed almost as intimate as those brief sessions had been, perhaps because they were so long ago that she had forgotten just what real intimacy felt like.

They had come close to making love last night—until conscience had smitten him. She was not sure if she was glad or sorry.

He was sleeping. She could tell that from the deepness of his breathing and the warm relaxation of his body. She was tempted to fall back to sleep herself. But good sense prevailed. What she really needed to do was remove herself from the bed, or at least from this particular
part of it, before he too woke up. He might believe she had done this deliberately.

She considered her strategy. His arm was heavy across her. One of her legs was trapped beneath one of his. One of her hands was splayed across his chest. The other was resting on the side of his waist—she had only just realized that. It was full daylight. Goodness only knew what time it was. It might be dawn or it might be noon. She really had slept deeply.

She wriggled her leg free. She lifted her hand from his waist and removed her nose from his chest and then her other hand. She inched backward under his arm. She did it all in no more than five or ten minutes. He inhaled deeply, exhaled audibly, and fell silent. She edged back a little farther. If she turned now, she could swing her legs over the edge of the bed and sit up and then stand and be safe even if he then awoke and saw her in her rumpled nightgown, her unbraided hair in loose tangles about her head and shoulders and along her back. He would not know …

“I suppose,” he said just as she sat up, in a perfectly normal, everyday conversational voice, “you did not sleep a wink all night.”

“I slept a little,” she admitted in a tone to match his own. She did not turn her head to look at him.

“Did I leave you enough room?” he asked. “I did not inadvertently touch you?”

“Oh, no,” she said. “There was plenty of room.”

“Samantha McKay,” he said, “you will surely burn in hell one of these eternities. You are lying through your teeth.”

She let out an enraged shriek and whisked her head around to glare at him. She grabbed her pillow and hurled it at him.

“You, sir,” she said, “are no gentleman. You might at
least pretend to believe that we kept to our own edges of the bed.”

He clasped the pillow to his chest. “I woke up at some time in the night,” he said, “to find that I had rolled to the center of the bed and that you had done likewise. To be fair, I do not believe either of us was the aggressor. You grumbled some nonsense and grabbed me when I would have beaten a strategic retreat back to my edge, and, being the gentleman I am, contrary to your unjust accusation, I remained where I was and allowed you to burrow against me.”

She shrieked again and grabbed for her pillow so that she could fling it at his head once more.

“And you,” she said, “are going to
fry
. I did
not
. And if you had been the gentleman you profess to be, you would have moved, not just to the edge of the bed, but right off it onto the floor with your pillow.”

“You were lying half on it,” he said. “And being a gentleman …” He completed the sentence with a grin.

She stared down at him. He was enjoying himself, she thought, and so, strangely, was she. What had seemed horribly awkward and embarrassing just a minute or so ago had been turned into … fun. But oh, dear, he looked tousled and almost boyish. And attractive. It really would be wonderful to make love with him.

“What?” he said. “You have no answer?”

“You might have taken
my
pillow, then,” she said.

“But you were lying half on that too.”

“Poor thing,” she said, narrowing her eyes. “And so you were doomed to spend the rest of the night in the middle of the bed with only half a pillow for your comfort.”

“I am not complaining,” he told her. He laced his hands behind his head and looked complacent. “Pillows are not the only source of comfort.”

“Hmm.” She got to her feet. “Turn your back and
pull the covers over your head. I am going to get dressed. I do not suppose anyone has fed and watered Tramp this morning or let him loose in the stable yard.”

He did as he was told with great ostentation, and Samantha dressed quickly, a smile on her face, and dragged her brush through her hair before twisting and knotting it at her neck.

“I shall see you at breakfast in half an hour or so,” she said as she let herself out of the room.

He snored softly beneath the bedcovers as she had done last night. She was laughing as she shut the door. How her life had changed in the span of a week. She scarcely recognized herself despite what had been said last night about having to take herself with her wherever she went. She could not remember a time when she had simply enjoyed someone else’s company, when she had laughed and joked with that person and talked nonsense. And hurled pillows.

And shared a bed.

And felt a knee-weakening desire.

She was going to miss him dreadfully when they had arrived at her cottage and he had resumed his travels. But she would think of that when the time came.

Tramp greeted her as if he had been shut up all alone for at least a week in his perfectly comfortable stall.

T
hey talked about the weather and the scenery. They talked about books—she had read a good many during the five years of her husband’s illness, and he had read a fair number during the years of his convalescence and since. They talked more about their families and the homes where they had grown up, about their growing years, the friends they had had, the games they had played, the dreams they had dreamed. They talked about
music, though neither claimed any proficiency on a musical instrument.

They carefully avoided any situation or topic that might ignite the attraction they undoubtedly felt for each other.

Sometimes they talked nonsense and laughed like silly children. It felt ridiculously good. Sometimes they bickered, though even those flare-ups usually ended in nonsense and laughter.

They talked with fellow travelers at inns where they stayed and at places of interest they visited. Ben began to think that perhaps he
would
enjoy traveling after all. He was sure he would have lingered in southeast Wales longer if he had been alone. He was fascinated by the new industries that were springing up—coal mines and associated shipping concerns and metalworks. He would have loved to make a few detours—into the Rhondda and Swansea Valleys, for example, to see the industries at work. Perhaps he would come back one day and add chapters to his book that were not concerned purely with pictorial beauty. But not yet. After he had seen Samantha settled, he would want to put as much distance as possible between himself and her.

“I have been thinking,” he said the morning they left Swansea behind and proceeded toward West Wales, “that after you have taken up residence in your cottage I will take the route up the west coast of Wales rather than return the way we have come. I will see Aberystwyth and Harlech and Mount Snowdon, and then travel along the north coast.”

Her dark eyes—those lovely, expressive eyes, which seemed to have come more fully alive since they left County Durham—looked steadily back into his own. She was wearing pale spring green today and looked young and wholesome and pretty. And desirable, though he tried to ignore that thought.

He was very glad they had not become lovers that night. It was going to be a lonely enough feeling, driving off on his own, without the added complication of having indulged in an affair with her.

Or would he regret not having reached for pleasure when it had surely been offered?

“There is sure to be some lovely scenery on that route,” she said, half averting her face to gaze out of the window. “There already has been, has there not? Being in sight of the sea so much of the time smites me
here
.” She tapped the outer edge of one curled fist against her stomach. “Or perhaps it is Wales itself that is affecting me. It really does feel like a different country even though most people speak English. But, oh, the accent, Ben. It is like music.”

“Penderris is by the sea,” he said. “Did I tell you that? It is at the top of a high cliff in Cornwall.”

“With yellow sands, as there are everywhere here?” she asked.

“Yes. Sands far below the towering cliffs. I can only look down on the beach when I am there. But it is a beautiful sight.”

“You do not swim, then?”

“I did once upon a time,” he told her. “Like a fish. Or an eel. Especially in forbidden waters. The deep side of the lake at Kenelston was always infinitely more inviting than the river side, where the water was no deeper than waist high even to a boy. How could one even pretend to be a self-respecting fish there? But I have digressed.”

She turned her face toward him while the dog snuffled in his sleep on the seat opposite and moved his chin to a more comfortable position. He saw in her face an awareness of the fact that their journey together was coming to an end.

“When we arrive in Tenby,” he said, “there are going to have to be a few changes.”

Mr. Rhys, the solicitor who was looking after her cottage, had his chambers there. Since she did not have the key to the house or even know exactly where it was, they were going to have to find him. And then everything would change. Either the cottage could be lived in or it could not. They must discover the answer to that question first and proceed from there. But there was no point yet in wondering what their next step would be if it turned out that it could not.