The Pirate and the Pagan (23 page)

He towered above her, gazing down at the desirable picture she made against the silken sheets. “You look absolutely decadent making love in your jewels and lace like some goddess queen.” His lips traveled to all his favorite places until her skin became so sensitive his mouth felt as if it was burning her, setting her whole
body ashiver. He lifted her breasts with his palms and his tongue teased her ruching nipples, then licked the silken skin beneath each delicious globe. His lips traced her rib cage, and his hot mouth trailed down across her belly to tongue her navel. Then he kissed her lacy knees and traveled up to the bare expanse of thigh where her stockings left off. Finally he rained kisses on her swollen mons, his lips teasing the dark curls between her legs.

“Ru!” she cried in protest. His head lifted and he raised himself above her so his mouth could plunder her lips again and taste his name, which she cried out with such yearning.

Their needs became a greedy search for more and her heart cartwheeled over as his plunging hotness penetrated her like a flaming blade. With avid arms she pressed him close, then her hands slipped down over his hard flexing buttocks and her mouth sought out his small, flat nipples and sucked until they became diamond hard.

His body was fiercely demanding and his blood sang with delirious excitement. She cried out as she reached her climax, but Ruark ignored her plea for him to stop. He scythed deeply in and out until she thought she could not bear it, then miraculously she began to build again. Her cries of “stop” changed to cries of “please don’t stop.” He urged her on with heated love words, blushingly intimate and explicit. Now his hands reached beneath her to perfectly cup her bare bottom and help lift her to meet his savage downward thrusts and she cried out into the velvet darkness as she peaked again. He was teaching her boldness.

He rocked against her pulsing erect bud just below her mons and she began a countermovement against him, twisting and writhing to escape his demanding shaft, but then deep within her something blossomed like a flower, unfurling its petals and then its center core. He withdrew his erection all the way, arched himself high above her, then plunged, sheathing himself to the hilt and crying her name with a hot rasping sob as his burning seed spurted high inside her.

To be part of him like this was all she would ever ask of heaven. It was a long, languorous, delicious spiral back down to earth. She smiled with deep satisfaction as she now realized what Shrewsbury had meant when she had spoken of triple orgasm.

Ruark handed Summer down from the carriage in the square bailey of Launceston Castle. The shell keep had stood since the
twelfth century. Royal troops had been garrisoned there during the Civil War and it had changed hands no less than four times.

“This place used to be dubbed Castle Terrible because of the filthiness and squalid conditions of its jail.” His face was grim as if the castle held bad memories for him, and yet, Summer reasoned, he would only have been about fifteen when Cromwell’s army had forced the Stuarts from Cornwall.

She saw that the town of Launceston was shaped like a camel with two humps. The two hills were called St. Thomas and St. Stephen, and she now understood why this town was called the gateway into the rest of England.

She looked up at the castle and indeed its bluestone and shale tiers gave it a menacing quality. Summer was surprised that the townspeople were gathering and realized they had come to sit in the court over which Lord Helford would preside. Before he left her in the crowded great hall, he put his fingers beneath her chin and looked into her eyes. “That rakish ostrich feather is so damned fetching I want to kiss you right here before the whole court.” She stepped away from him quickly because she had learned he was fully capable of taking liberties while people gaped.

A short time later when he took the dais, she hardly recognized him in his magistrate’s wig and robes. The prisoners were led out. There were twenty-five men, all in shackles, but one stood out from all the rest. The first man was corpulent with a jowly, red face. His clothes, though filthy from his imprisonment, were expensive and fashionable. The other two dozen all looked alike to Summer. They were thin to a man, with a mean, sly look about them like a cur that you would not dare turn your back upon. She could not stifle the urge to shudder, so loathsome did they appear, and when the Crown read out the charges, she understood the reason for her revulsion. They were wreckers!

The corpulent man was William Godolphin, who owned tin mines in the area. There were many witnesses to give testimony against the wreckers who hid in the mines while ships were lured onto the rocks, then emerged to murder and plunder as the helpless ships were smashed to smithereens on the jagged coastline. None of the witnesses was brave enough to give evidence against William Godolphin, but he had damaged himself by being found in possession of over ten thousand pounds’ worth of cargo from wrecked ships.

Ruark’s face was hard and set in grim lines as he listened to the
evidence given in court. Then an eyewitness to a wrecking began to give lurid details of how the ship had come aground in the shallows and its passengers, though terrified, were halfway to saving themselves and their children by wading in carrying their little ones on their shoulders. The wreckers had stoned their victims, breaking their arms and legs with cruel, jagged rocks so that they drowned in four feet of water rather than let there be witnesses to their filthy trade.

Ruark’s countenance was black with suppressed fury. He banged his gavel heavily. “Bailiff, clear this court of women and children before any more evidence is given,” he ordered.

Summer was trembling. It had brought the horror of Lizard Point back to her vividly. Her heart went out to Ruark. His appointment by the King was not a pleasant one. She went up upon the ramparts where she could see for miles each way along the freshwater shore of the Tamar, which almost severed the rough triangle that was Cornwall from the rest of the country. She could see the Tors of Dartmoor, those massive sentinels of stone which had stood there since the hand of God had created them. They had such strange shapes, those long stones which stood on end as if they were leaning against the wind.

The moors were untamed and dangerous, fit only for wild ponies and sheep, ravens and buzzards, and yet their solitary beauty tore at her heart. She closed her eyes to let her soul fly free and was immediately comforted.

Ominous dark clouds swept in and she felt the first sharp needles of rain. She ran down to the coach, and when she saw their driver huddled in his greatcoat, she took matters into her own hands. “Is there not an inn where we may be comfortable until Lord Helford is done with his business?”

His face brightened then fell at what his lordship might think of allowing his new bride into a common inn, but Summer insisted and he had no choice but to obey her orders. They went over to the square, to a coaching inn named the White Hart with its magnificently arched Norman doorway. Summer ordered plain fare for ’twas what she liked best. Hot, mulled cider and Cornish pasties arrived and soon the coachman’s diffidence at dining with his mistress melted away as their bones warmed in front of the inn’s peat-turf fire.

It was midafternoon before Ruark was finished with the business of Launceston. His face had a closed, forbidding look about it
when he joined her and she chose not to question him. After a large mug of cider, however, he gave her a small regretful smile. “I’m sorry your promised day in Plymouth didn’t materialize, darling.”

“It doesn’t matter, Ru,” she assured him.

“It matters very much. Drink up and fetch your muff—there’s still time to take a barge down the Tamar to Plymouth Sound. We’ll stay over tonight and go back to Stowe tomorrow.” He bade his coachman stable the horses and take a room for himself at the White Hart.

“I brought nothing with me, Ruark, for an overnight stay,” she half protested.

The darkness in his face lifted at last. “You have lace stockings? And rubies? What more do you need?” he teased.

She laughed with him, happy that thoughts of her were strong enough to lift his black mood.

T
hey stood together at the barge’s railing, his arm cuddling her to his warmth. She took off her pretty wide-brimmed hat, lest the wind steal it from her, and let it raise havoc with her black tresses: She almost reached up to snatch the black ribbon which clubbed back Ruark’s hair so severely, but then decided a lord should not abandon decorum as she was wont to do.

When she saw the large harbor that was Plymouth Sound, it took her breath away. There were more ships anchored here than had been in the Pool of London. Ruark’s knowing eyes scanned the vessels, taking a quick inventory. “Hello, what’s this?” he said almost to himself.

“What?” asked Summer.

“Yonder is one of my ships on loan to the East India Company. Looks like she’s limped into port.” A frown creased his brow as he scanned the double-masted cargo vessel which was bristling with guns.

The
Golden Goddess
rode at anchor between two royal vessels belonging to the King. Ruark gave orders for the bargeman to pull alongside his ship and he cupped his hands and shouted, “Ahoy there!”

The next thing she knew Summer was climbing up a rope ladder
and being pulled aboard ship with eager hands. The ship’s master, Captain Hardcastle, had a bushy brown beard and prickly eyebrows above pale blue, twinkling eyes. He was a barrel-chested man, his shoulders humped with muscle like an ox.

“What happened?” asked Ruark with concern.

“The bloody Dutch is what happened, beggin’ yer pardon, ma’am,” said Hardcastle. “Three of us convoyed for safety; would have made it through the Channel and up to London if it hadn’t been for the bloody Dutch, beggin’ yer pardon, ma’am. They chased us all the way from Java.”

Ruark grinned. “Didn’t catch you, though!”

“Too bloody slow to catch a cold, beggin’ yer pardon, ma’am, then the cheeky bastards sailed right into the Scilly’s after us … imagine … right into our own waters. They’re proclaiming themselves ‘Lord of the Southern Seas.’” Captain Hardcastle spat deliberately.

“Well, they may have put a hole in your side, but they didn’t get the cargo,” said Ruark happily.

“Bastards sank one of the East India ships, though. We saved most of the crew and t’other ship’s on its way to London.”

“Bloody Dutch!” echoed Ruark. “I don’t know why the hell we don’t declare war on them … it’ll come to that in the end anyway.”

“Well, war or no war, the bloody Dutchman who was greedy enough to tail me into the Scilly’s found a watery grave.”

“You sank her?” asked Ruark.

He nodded. “With all hands.”

“Good man. The King’s here in Plymouth. I’ll tell him what you did. Let’s see what you’ve got,” said Ruark, taking Summer’s hand to guide her belowdecks.

The air was redolent with the heady tang of spices. “I’ve never smelled anything like this before. What is it?” she asked curiously.

“I’ve no sense of smell, ma’am, but they do say cloves and nutmegs are the strongest.”

Ruark sniffed the air. “You’ve got cinnamon and green ginger and frankincense and what’s that drug called … camphire, that’s it.”

“I’ve got everything—pepper, mace, aloes, tea.” The captain nodded.

“Oh, how wonderful; may I have some?” asked Summer.

“Get one of the men to pack my wife some of each,” instructed Ruark.

“Oh, I only meant tea—not everything,” she protested.

Ruark grinned, delighted that he could give her the riches of China and the Indies. “This is nothing, darling. Wait until you see the bales of silks and damasks. Have you any fashions the London ladies are demanding?” asked Ruark.

Captain Hardcastle winked with relish and took them to a storage cabin. Summer couldn’t believe her eyes. There were trunks filled with mantuoes—gowns worn open down the front to show a flash of elaborate petticoat. Other trunks held Indian gowns called negligees of the finest cobwebbed cotton embroidered all over with pearls and crystals. Ruark told her to choose and after great deliberation she picked a turquoise mantuoe and a pale green petticoat embroidered with silvery thread.

Ruark picked up another mantuoe which he said was melon color. She had never seen a melon, but the color looked like a sunburst. He piled her arms high with Indian gown negligees before they moved to another cargo hold which contained hundreds of bolts of cloth. A sigh of wonder escaped her lips as she drank in the exotic colors and textures laid out before her. They were so fine she hesitated to even reach out a hand to touch them until Ruark took some of the great bolts and unrolled them across the floor.

She chose a bolt of tissue-thin silk damask in pink as pale as the blush of dawn and another bolt of stiff, rustling taffeta which had the color and crackle of flames.

“And this,” said Ruark, choosing the altobassos cloth of gold.

Some of the calicos and chintzes had fantastic painted patterns covered with sprigs of flowers, seed pods, vines, and trailing grasses. Others had native birds flitting about trees of bamboo and Summer thought what beautiful drapes and bedhangings they would make. She pictured how splendidly she could refurbish Roseland and tucked the thought away for another day in the near future.