Beloved Enemy, page 24
“Somethin’ must’ve addled his wits,” Jed said unequivocally. “Unless he’s forgotten the place is full of harlots. Most likely, he has,” he added with an exasperated headshake. “It’s the excitement, always drives the sense from him.”
Ginny found this insight absolutely intriguing. Jed was talking about Alex as a grown man might talk of an irritating small boy for whom he had, nevertheless, considerable affection.
Jed clearly had no intention of permitting her to continue her walk and escorted her firmly back to headquarters, showing her into an empty, large, and rather dusty room that, judging by the faint, lingering smell of liquor, had presumably once been the inn’s taproom. “You’ll be quite all right here,” he told her. “If’n anyone wants to know who you are, just you tell ’em ye’re waitin’ on the colonel.” With that, he left her, closing the door firmly in his wake. Ginny sat on a smooth window seat that had clearly been polished by generations of backsides and looked out onto the street where the scene was as lively as ever.
Alex, in the same company as before, appeared in about ten minutes, and Ginny watched as Jed went over to him. The batman spoke at some length, and Alex, to Ginny’s eyes, began to look rather discomfited, pulling at his chin, as he glanced over at the inn. Then he nodded, said something briefly to Jed who saluted, rather pointedly to Ginny’s way of thinking, and went off. Alex and the other two colonels came toward the inn.
When Alex walked into the room, Ginny was sitting demurely on the window seat, her bound hands resting in her lap, an expression of hurt innocence on her face.
“I gather you had some unpleasantness,” Alex said. “I am sorry, I was not thinking clearly.”
“It was quite horrid,” Ginny murmured in a low voice, twisting her fingers, dropping her eyes to her lap. “Alex—they are ... they are whores, I think!” This last was said in tones of such shocked modesty and innocence that all three men shuffled uncomfortably. “Could it possibly be so?” she asked, wondering how long she could continue the play before laugher gave her away. “Could they indeed be fallen women?”
Alex regarded her with growing suspicion. She had never before given him the slightest reason to suspect her of prudery, quite the opposite. It was certainly true that witnessing a cat fight of the kind Jed had so vividly described could have been a shock to one of maidenly sensibilities, but Ginny? No, she was made of sterner stuff than that.
“Mistress Courtney,” he said, “will you take your eyes off your lap for one minute and look at me?” She raised her head slowly, and Alex gave an involuntary shout of laughter. The gray eyes were brimming with mischievous glee. “Wretch!” he exclaimed. “For a minute, you almost had me fooled. You were not even as shocked as Jed, were you?”
“It had a certain horrible fascination, to be quite truthful,” she replied. “But I do not wish to see such a thing again. The whores themselves do not worry me, but—well, it was disgusting.”
“I do not know what I can have been thinking of,” Alex said with a rueful grimace. “It will be best if I keep you by me, in future.”
“Yes, I think it will,” Ginny agreed matter-of-factly. “Will you not introduce me to your colleagues?” She raised her eyebrows quizzically at the two men with him, both of whom were looking more than a little bewildered by the tone of the preceding conversation.
“Oh, I am sorry. Gentlemen, this is the lady I was telling you about, Mistress Virginia Courtney. Ginny, may I present Colonels Richards and Chambers.”
Ginny rose from her perch, smiled, and attempted a polite curtsy. “You must excuse me, sirs,” she said sweetly, “but I am unable to curtsy properly with my hands restricted in this manner.”
“Give them to me,” Alex said, then frowned over the knot. “Did I not tell you that you would merely tighten this by pulling against it? I cannot possibly undo it.”
“Well, it is a great nuisance,” Ginny retorted. “If I could have undone it myself, I would have done so.”
“I do not doubt it,” he said, pulling a knife from the sheath at his belt. “Mistress Courtney, gentlemen, is a most redoubtable rebel. Do not ever underestimate her.” The cloth parted beneath the blade. “That should not have happened,” he said softly, stroking with his thumb the reddened skin of her wrist bone.
The touch, so innocent seeming, sent a shock wave coursing through her down to the soles of her feet. The caress in his voice turned her bones to putty, and for a breathless second her fingers twined around his. What must Colonels Richards and Chambers be thinking, Ginny wondered distractedly, feeling that betraying flush warm her cheeks.
Alex gave her a knowing smile, well aware of the effect he was having and content to have it so. “Come,” he said, “I will show you to your quarters. They will be a little primitive, I fear, but tomorrow we go to Whitehall, and you will be lodged in a palace.”
Ginny clapped her hands in delight, her face radiant. “Truly?”
“Truly,” he laughed. “I always keep my promises, even to intransigent rebels.”
He showed her to a mere slip of a room, more of a cupboard than a chamber. “There are no other women sleeping in headquarters,” Alex told her, “but you will not be disturbed by anyone.”
“How can you be so sure?” Ginny asked, surprised at this sudden change of attitude. In Guildford, in the interests of her safety, he had locked her in at night and taken away the key.
“Because, chicken,” he said slowly and deliberately, “I have the prior claim, and everyone knows it.”
“Ah,” she said, sucking in her lower lip. “We are to be done with secrecy then?” That would explain the openness of his manner with her in front of the colonels earlier.
“If you would have it so,” he replied, taking her hand, lifting it to his lips. “After tomorrow, I can have no reason to keep you prisoner myself. I must either hand you over to Cromwell with the recommendation that he put you in the charge of a good Parliamentarian family until the fighting is done, or you throw in your lot with mine, sweetheart. Will you follow the drum?” The green-brown eyes were pinpricks of intensity as he asked the question that mattered so much to him. He had no other alternatives to offer. One day they might be able to talk of marriage, but not now when nothing was certain, not even life itself.
“Like those others out there?” Ginny gestured with her head toward the window.
“No!” Alex said, dropping her hand and transferring his hold to her shoulders. “That is not what I am offering, and you know it! Mistress, yes; whore, no!” The vigorous statement was punctuated with a hard shake, and Ginny, who had intended the remark to be a joke, realized that in some things they did not share the same sense of humor.
“It was said in jest,” she protested. “Of course I do not think that.”
“Sometimes I think I will never understand you,” Alex grumbled. “You seem to hold nothing sacred. You have no respect for rank, you do not believe in obeying orders or treating ceremonies with the slightest reverence, or—”
“Then I am going to make a very poor soldier, aren’t I?” Ginny interrupted this woeful catalogue with a grin. “Are you sure it will be a good idea?”
“No,” he said savagely, jerking her into his arms. “I am convinced it will be the biggest mistake of my life, and we shall be always at loggerheads because you will never be where you are supposed to be and will be forever making mock of me in public and refusing to do as you are told.” His hand pushed up her chin. “God’s death, but I love you, Virginia Courtney.” His mouth covered hers with bruising force, and she met the plundering tongue, thrust for thrust, matching his statement with her own passionate assertion. What was between them could not be denied. It would take its own course, and they would flow with it like logs down the rapids.
Alex drew back from her slowly and reluctantly. “I have to go for the moment, sweeting. There are division matters I must discuss with the others. You will dine with us, though, in one hour.”
“If you promise not to treat me like a recalcitrant prisoner,” said Ginny. “I will not tolerate being sent to bed in that irritating manner you have. Not if I now travel with you of my own free will.”
Alex touched the tip of her nose with a long forefinger. “You will preside over the dinner table, Mistress Courtney, as if it were your own.” At the door, he turned back to her. “I do not wish you to stay up late, though.” The green-brown eyes danced merrily. “So make sure you take yourself off before I feel the need to remind you.” Chuckling, he left her, and Ginny shook her head in mild exasperation, under no illusions that there would be true equality between them for as long as she rode as a member, honorary or otherwise, of Alexander Marshall’s brigade.
A thought occurred to her. If Alex was safely occupied and she had been given no orders to remain immured in this cupboard, she could go in search of Jed and see if anyone had need of physicking.
Jed was to be found sitting on a stone bench outside the inn, smoking a pipe and taking his ease in the early evening air. He greeted Ginny and her medicine basket with a grunt. “If ye’re game, mistress, there’s some who’d be glad to see you,” he said, getting to his feet. “I’ll show you where the brigade’s quartered. Best you don’t go wanderin’ among the other regiments, though. Our own men’ll have a care for you, but I wouldn’t bet on the others.”
Ginny spent the next forty-five minutes lancing boils, digging out a long splinter that had set up an infection in a corporal’s thumb, and prescribing treatment for foot rot. They were far from serious ailments, but she knew the discomfort they could cause, and also how little ills, left untreated, could lead to the major horrors of septicemia and gangrene. It was a connection not generally understood, even by the educated, and she did her best to explain this as she worked, but with little hope that her audience would pay more than lip service to the lecture.
She regained the inn with just time to dispose of her incriminating basket and tidy her hair before Diccon, in his customary role as messenger, summoned her to the supper table. It was a pleasant-enough meal at which she did, indeed, preside, but when the table was cleared and packs of cards and dice appeared, together with the brandy, Ginny excused herself promptly. An officers’ mess after a good dinner was no place for a woman, colonel’s mistress or no. She lay in bed, listening to the riotous noise from the parlor below, wondering if Alex would come to her. After a while, in among the male voices, rose unmistakably lighter, female tones. Roars of laughter shook the rafters, there was an occasional crash as of a chair being upturned, slurred voices from the garden below her window as the revelers emerged for a few minutes of necessary relief.
She was just about to drop off to sleep, having given Alex up as lost for the night, when the voices from below rose to new heights, a roaring chant shook the flaking plaster on the wall of her cupboard, and booted feet began a rhythmic stamping. Curious beyond caution now, Ginny slipped from her narrow cot, caught up her cloak, and crept out onto the landing. The steep, narrow wooden staircase led down to the stone-flagged hall below. Halfway down, she stopped. The door to the parlor was open, and she had a clear view. The long refectory table had been completely cleared, and on it stood a woman, swaying her hips in time to the chanting and stamping feet as she fumbled drunkenly with the buttons on her chemise. Shouts of encouragement accompanied a disrobing that Ginny could not help but feel was somewhat inelegant. Diccon, his face flushed with brandy and excitement, could not take his eyes off the woman, and when her petticoat rustled around her ankles, his mouth fell open on an “ah” of wonderment. Had he never seen a naked woman before, Ginny wondered. Poor baby, he must be all of twenty. Surely he could not still be a virgin? Her eyes sought and found Alex among the slavering throng. He was sitting slightly apart, one leg crossed negligently over the other, a pewter tankard in his hand, watching the proceedings with an air of sleepy amusement.
Crossly, Ginny turned and went back upstairs. It was positively insulting that he should prefer such a spectacle to the prospect of a night of love-making in her arms, and so she would tell him in no uncertain terms as soon as she had the chance. The noise continued unabated, becoming wilder, if anything. Muted female giggles came from below her window; she heard Diccon’s voice, sounding half-pleading, half-assertive, then the unmistakable sounds of someone retching miserably.
“Come on, lad, get your head down now.” Alex spoke suddenly, his voice clear and commanding in the general cacophony, but with a note both amused and understanding. “You’ve had enough for one night, and I can promise you that you are not going to enjoy the morning.” Diccon groaned, there was another giggle, then Alex’s voice again, no longer amused, sending the giggler about her business.
Ginny smiled to herself in the darkness, listening to the sounds of firm steps and stumbling ones outside her door. She crept to the door, opening it a crack. Alex, with Diccon draped across his shoulders, was kicking open the door to the room opposite Ginny’s cupboard. He tumbled the inert figure onto a bed on which reposed another soldierly figure snoring stertorously, then bent and pulled off Diccon’s boots, before tossing a coverlet over him and leaving the room, shaking his head in a gesture expressing the resigned acceptance of a sophisticate for the youthful excesses of the naive.
Ginny almost whispered to him; then a better idea came to her, and she stayed still, peering through the crack in her door to see where he went. Alex disappeared behind a door at the end of the corridor, and Ginny chewed her nails for a minute wondering if he had a bedfellow. If he had, it would be one of the other colonels, since presumably rank counted even in such domestic instances. Over the next half an hour, Colonels Richards and Chambers came up the stairs separately, and both continued up to the second floor. Silence fell at last, and no one had entered Colonel Marshall’s chamber.
Ginny left her cupboard, closing the door behind her with the utmost care. There was not a sound as she crept toward Alex’s door and lifted the latch noiselessly. Wraithlike, she flitted across the dark room to the bed where a motionless hump could just be discerned in the gloom. The next instant, the world seemed to turn upside down, and she fought desperately against suffocating pressure filling her nose and mouth, an iron band clamped against her throat, hard, hurtful hands pinning her like a butterfly in a display case.
“Sweet Jesus!” Alex exclaimed, as his hands suddenly registered the familiarity of the body they were subduing. “You little fool, I nearly killed you! Never, ever try to take me by surprise.”
It could have been no more than two or three seconds since she had approached the bed, but they were seconds Ginny would never want to relive. The smothering pillow left her face, and, stunned, she stared up at him as he hung naked over her, and her eyes became fixed on the wickedly thin knife blade poised over her throat. “Why don’t you wait to see who it is before you attack?” she croaked.
Alex shook his head in wordless exasperation and re-sheathed the blade, pushing it under the bolster. “Chicken, I would not give a groat for my chances of survival if I waited for an introduction to whoever is creeping around my bed in the middle of the night. Anyone on innocent business would know to announce himself loudly.”
“I’ll never make a good soldier,” Ginny sighed. “It didn’t even occur to me, and, besides, I thought you were asleep.”
“I was, until you put your hand on the latch,” he told her, swinging onto the bed beside her. “Don’t ever do that again. My reactions are automatic and very fast. You were very close to having your throat cut.”
“On the principle of act first and ask questions later,” Ginny said with a shiver. “I do not care for soldiering, I have to tell you.”
“But then you did not creep in here to be a soldier, did you, my sweet?” Alex asked softly, turning on his side, propping himself on one elbow. The green-brown eyes held a pensive look as he examined the face on the pillow beside him. A residue of that fearful panic still lingered in her eyes, in the tension of her skin over the high cheekbones, the set of the full mouth. With concentrated purpose, he took her lips, tasting, exploring, softly at first, then with increased pressure as he felt her melt beneath the gentle, insidious invasion, felt her fear and tension yield to the wondrous langour of slow-building desire.
His hand slid down to cup the firm mound of her breast, his thumb brushing over the soft linen covering the taut, straining peak. Ginny moved involuntarily, pressing herself against the long, lean nakedness, and he pulled her even closer so that she was made powerfully aware of the urgency of his need, the heat and throb of him through her thin night rail. She was boneless, pliant, and formless, an encompassing softness that he knew would receive and nurture him.
Alex drew the hem of her nightgown upward, smoothing his hand along the fine, supple line of her leg to her hip. His hand slid round to her belly, palming the sharp points of her hip bones as his thumb played in her navel before he lowered his head and flicked the soft cup with his tongue. The slight stubble of his late-night beard grazed her tender skin, setting the muscles of her abdomen fluttering, and her hands raked through the auburn hair glowing bright against the whiteness of her belly as her hips lifted in wanton invitation. With one hand, he freed the sash constricting her waist, then pushed the gown upward, his lips following, nuzzling the gradually bared flesh, tasting deeply of a rose-crested breast as it was uncovered.
Casting the nightgown aside, he gathered her to him, rolling so that she came to rest above him, every curve and hollow of her body molded to his length. Ginny smiled down at him a little uncertainly as she adapted to this novel position. Understanding amusement flickered in the green-brown eyes, and the sculpted firmness of his mouth curved as he ran his fingers though the mass of chestnut hair, drawing it over her shoulders to enclose them both in a silky, fragrant tent. The calloused, swordsman’s hand cupped her face, drawing her mouth down to his, and Ginny discovered the delight of initiation as her tongue penetrated deeply, tasting the brandy sweetness, before venturing forth on a voyage of exploration that left not a millimeter of his mouth and face untouched.
Ginny found this insight absolutely intriguing. Jed was talking about Alex as a grown man might talk of an irritating small boy for whom he had, nevertheless, considerable affection.
Jed clearly had no intention of permitting her to continue her walk and escorted her firmly back to headquarters, showing her into an empty, large, and rather dusty room that, judging by the faint, lingering smell of liquor, had presumably once been the inn’s taproom. “You’ll be quite all right here,” he told her. “If’n anyone wants to know who you are, just you tell ’em ye’re waitin’ on the colonel.” With that, he left her, closing the door firmly in his wake. Ginny sat on a smooth window seat that had clearly been polished by generations of backsides and looked out onto the street where the scene was as lively as ever.
Alex, in the same company as before, appeared in about ten minutes, and Ginny watched as Jed went over to him. The batman spoke at some length, and Alex, to Ginny’s eyes, began to look rather discomfited, pulling at his chin, as he glanced over at the inn. Then he nodded, said something briefly to Jed who saluted, rather pointedly to Ginny’s way of thinking, and went off. Alex and the other two colonels came toward the inn.
When Alex walked into the room, Ginny was sitting demurely on the window seat, her bound hands resting in her lap, an expression of hurt innocence on her face.
“I gather you had some unpleasantness,” Alex said. “I am sorry, I was not thinking clearly.”
“It was quite horrid,” Ginny murmured in a low voice, twisting her fingers, dropping her eyes to her lap. “Alex—they are ... they are whores, I think!” This last was said in tones of such shocked modesty and innocence that all three men shuffled uncomfortably. “Could it possibly be so?” she asked, wondering how long she could continue the play before laugher gave her away. “Could they indeed be fallen women?”
Alex regarded her with growing suspicion. She had never before given him the slightest reason to suspect her of prudery, quite the opposite. It was certainly true that witnessing a cat fight of the kind Jed had so vividly described could have been a shock to one of maidenly sensibilities, but Ginny? No, she was made of sterner stuff than that.
“Mistress Courtney,” he said, “will you take your eyes off your lap for one minute and look at me?” She raised her head slowly, and Alex gave an involuntary shout of laughter. The gray eyes were brimming with mischievous glee. “Wretch!” he exclaimed. “For a minute, you almost had me fooled. You were not even as shocked as Jed, were you?”
“It had a certain horrible fascination, to be quite truthful,” she replied. “But I do not wish to see such a thing again. The whores themselves do not worry me, but—well, it was disgusting.”
“I do not know what I can have been thinking of,” Alex said with a rueful grimace. “It will be best if I keep you by me, in future.”
“Yes, I think it will,” Ginny agreed matter-of-factly. “Will you not introduce me to your colleagues?” She raised her eyebrows quizzically at the two men with him, both of whom were looking more than a little bewildered by the tone of the preceding conversation.
“Oh, I am sorry. Gentlemen, this is the lady I was telling you about, Mistress Virginia Courtney. Ginny, may I present Colonels Richards and Chambers.”
Ginny rose from her perch, smiled, and attempted a polite curtsy. “You must excuse me, sirs,” she said sweetly, “but I am unable to curtsy properly with my hands restricted in this manner.”
“Give them to me,” Alex said, then frowned over the knot. “Did I not tell you that you would merely tighten this by pulling against it? I cannot possibly undo it.”
“Well, it is a great nuisance,” Ginny retorted. “If I could have undone it myself, I would have done so.”
“I do not doubt it,” he said, pulling a knife from the sheath at his belt. “Mistress Courtney, gentlemen, is a most redoubtable rebel. Do not ever underestimate her.” The cloth parted beneath the blade. “That should not have happened,” he said softly, stroking with his thumb the reddened skin of her wrist bone.
The touch, so innocent seeming, sent a shock wave coursing through her down to the soles of her feet. The caress in his voice turned her bones to putty, and for a breathless second her fingers twined around his. What must Colonels Richards and Chambers be thinking, Ginny wondered distractedly, feeling that betraying flush warm her cheeks.
Alex gave her a knowing smile, well aware of the effect he was having and content to have it so. “Come,” he said, “I will show you to your quarters. They will be a little primitive, I fear, but tomorrow we go to Whitehall, and you will be lodged in a palace.”
Ginny clapped her hands in delight, her face radiant. “Truly?”
“Truly,” he laughed. “I always keep my promises, even to intransigent rebels.”
He showed her to a mere slip of a room, more of a cupboard than a chamber. “There are no other women sleeping in headquarters,” Alex told her, “but you will not be disturbed by anyone.”
“How can you be so sure?” Ginny asked, surprised at this sudden change of attitude. In Guildford, in the interests of her safety, he had locked her in at night and taken away the key.
“Because, chicken,” he said slowly and deliberately, “I have the prior claim, and everyone knows it.”
“Ah,” she said, sucking in her lower lip. “We are to be done with secrecy then?” That would explain the openness of his manner with her in front of the colonels earlier.
“If you would have it so,” he replied, taking her hand, lifting it to his lips. “After tomorrow, I can have no reason to keep you prisoner myself. I must either hand you over to Cromwell with the recommendation that he put you in the charge of a good Parliamentarian family until the fighting is done, or you throw in your lot with mine, sweetheart. Will you follow the drum?” The green-brown eyes were pinpricks of intensity as he asked the question that mattered so much to him. He had no other alternatives to offer. One day they might be able to talk of marriage, but not now when nothing was certain, not even life itself.
“Like those others out there?” Ginny gestured with her head toward the window.
“No!” Alex said, dropping her hand and transferring his hold to her shoulders. “That is not what I am offering, and you know it! Mistress, yes; whore, no!” The vigorous statement was punctuated with a hard shake, and Ginny, who had intended the remark to be a joke, realized that in some things they did not share the same sense of humor.
“It was said in jest,” she protested. “Of course I do not think that.”
“Sometimes I think I will never understand you,” Alex grumbled. “You seem to hold nothing sacred. You have no respect for rank, you do not believe in obeying orders or treating ceremonies with the slightest reverence, or—”
“Then I am going to make a very poor soldier, aren’t I?” Ginny interrupted this woeful catalogue with a grin. “Are you sure it will be a good idea?”
“No,” he said savagely, jerking her into his arms. “I am convinced it will be the biggest mistake of my life, and we shall be always at loggerheads because you will never be where you are supposed to be and will be forever making mock of me in public and refusing to do as you are told.” His hand pushed up her chin. “God’s death, but I love you, Virginia Courtney.” His mouth covered hers with bruising force, and she met the plundering tongue, thrust for thrust, matching his statement with her own passionate assertion. What was between them could not be denied. It would take its own course, and they would flow with it like logs down the rapids.
Alex drew back from her slowly and reluctantly. “I have to go for the moment, sweeting. There are division matters I must discuss with the others. You will dine with us, though, in one hour.”
“If you promise not to treat me like a recalcitrant prisoner,” said Ginny. “I will not tolerate being sent to bed in that irritating manner you have. Not if I now travel with you of my own free will.”
Alex touched the tip of her nose with a long forefinger. “You will preside over the dinner table, Mistress Courtney, as if it were your own.” At the door, he turned back to her. “I do not wish you to stay up late, though.” The green-brown eyes danced merrily. “So make sure you take yourself off before I feel the need to remind you.” Chuckling, he left her, and Ginny shook her head in mild exasperation, under no illusions that there would be true equality between them for as long as she rode as a member, honorary or otherwise, of Alexander Marshall’s brigade.
A thought occurred to her. If Alex was safely occupied and she had been given no orders to remain immured in this cupboard, she could go in search of Jed and see if anyone had need of physicking.
Jed was to be found sitting on a stone bench outside the inn, smoking a pipe and taking his ease in the early evening air. He greeted Ginny and her medicine basket with a grunt. “If ye’re game, mistress, there’s some who’d be glad to see you,” he said, getting to his feet. “I’ll show you where the brigade’s quartered. Best you don’t go wanderin’ among the other regiments, though. Our own men’ll have a care for you, but I wouldn’t bet on the others.”
Ginny spent the next forty-five minutes lancing boils, digging out a long splinter that had set up an infection in a corporal’s thumb, and prescribing treatment for foot rot. They were far from serious ailments, but she knew the discomfort they could cause, and also how little ills, left untreated, could lead to the major horrors of septicemia and gangrene. It was a connection not generally understood, even by the educated, and she did her best to explain this as she worked, but with little hope that her audience would pay more than lip service to the lecture.
She regained the inn with just time to dispose of her incriminating basket and tidy her hair before Diccon, in his customary role as messenger, summoned her to the supper table. It was a pleasant-enough meal at which she did, indeed, preside, but when the table was cleared and packs of cards and dice appeared, together with the brandy, Ginny excused herself promptly. An officers’ mess after a good dinner was no place for a woman, colonel’s mistress or no. She lay in bed, listening to the riotous noise from the parlor below, wondering if Alex would come to her. After a while, in among the male voices, rose unmistakably lighter, female tones. Roars of laughter shook the rafters, there was an occasional crash as of a chair being upturned, slurred voices from the garden below her window as the revelers emerged for a few minutes of necessary relief.
She was just about to drop off to sleep, having given Alex up as lost for the night, when the voices from below rose to new heights, a roaring chant shook the flaking plaster on the wall of her cupboard, and booted feet began a rhythmic stamping. Curious beyond caution now, Ginny slipped from her narrow cot, caught up her cloak, and crept out onto the landing. The steep, narrow wooden staircase led down to the stone-flagged hall below. Halfway down, she stopped. The door to the parlor was open, and she had a clear view. The long refectory table had been completely cleared, and on it stood a woman, swaying her hips in time to the chanting and stamping feet as she fumbled drunkenly with the buttons on her chemise. Shouts of encouragement accompanied a disrobing that Ginny could not help but feel was somewhat inelegant. Diccon, his face flushed with brandy and excitement, could not take his eyes off the woman, and when her petticoat rustled around her ankles, his mouth fell open on an “ah” of wonderment. Had he never seen a naked woman before, Ginny wondered. Poor baby, he must be all of twenty. Surely he could not still be a virgin? Her eyes sought and found Alex among the slavering throng. He was sitting slightly apart, one leg crossed negligently over the other, a pewter tankard in his hand, watching the proceedings with an air of sleepy amusement.
Crossly, Ginny turned and went back upstairs. It was positively insulting that he should prefer such a spectacle to the prospect of a night of love-making in her arms, and so she would tell him in no uncertain terms as soon as she had the chance. The noise continued unabated, becoming wilder, if anything. Muted female giggles came from below her window; she heard Diccon’s voice, sounding half-pleading, half-assertive, then the unmistakable sounds of someone retching miserably.
“Come on, lad, get your head down now.” Alex spoke suddenly, his voice clear and commanding in the general cacophony, but with a note both amused and understanding. “You’ve had enough for one night, and I can promise you that you are not going to enjoy the morning.” Diccon groaned, there was another giggle, then Alex’s voice again, no longer amused, sending the giggler about her business.
Ginny smiled to herself in the darkness, listening to the sounds of firm steps and stumbling ones outside her door. She crept to the door, opening it a crack. Alex, with Diccon draped across his shoulders, was kicking open the door to the room opposite Ginny’s cupboard. He tumbled the inert figure onto a bed on which reposed another soldierly figure snoring stertorously, then bent and pulled off Diccon’s boots, before tossing a coverlet over him and leaving the room, shaking his head in a gesture expressing the resigned acceptance of a sophisticate for the youthful excesses of the naive.
Ginny almost whispered to him; then a better idea came to her, and she stayed still, peering through the crack in her door to see where he went. Alex disappeared behind a door at the end of the corridor, and Ginny chewed her nails for a minute wondering if he had a bedfellow. If he had, it would be one of the other colonels, since presumably rank counted even in such domestic instances. Over the next half an hour, Colonels Richards and Chambers came up the stairs separately, and both continued up to the second floor. Silence fell at last, and no one had entered Colonel Marshall’s chamber.
Ginny left her cupboard, closing the door behind her with the utmost care. There was not a sound as she crept toward Alex’s door and lifted the latch noiselessly. Wraithlike, she flitted across the dark room to the bed where a motionless hump could just be discerned in the gloom. The next instant, the world seemed to turn upside down, and she fought desperately against suffocating pressure filling her nose and mouth, an iron band clamped against her throat, hard, hurtful hands pinning her like a butterfly in a display case.
“Sweet Jesus!” Alex exclaimed, as his hands suddenly registered the familiarity of the body they were subduing. “You little fool, I nearly killed you! Never, ever try to take me by surprise.”
It could have been no more than two or three seconds since she had approached the bed, but they were seconds Ginny would never want to relive. The smothering pillow left her face, and, stunned, she stared up at him as he hung naked over her, and her eyes became fixed on the wickedly thin knife blade poised over her throat. “Why don’t you wait to see who it is before you attack?” she croaked.
Alex shook his head in wordless exasperation and re-sheathed the blade, pushing it under the bolster. “Chicken, I would not give a groat for my chances of survival if I waited for an introduction to whoever is creeping around my bed in the middle of the night. Anyone on innocent business would know to announce himself loudly.”
“I’ll never make a good soldier,” Ginny sighed. “It didn’t even occur to me, and, besides, I thought you were asleep.”
“I was, until you put your hand on the latch,” he told her, swinging onto the bed beside her. “Don’t ever do that again. My reactions are automatic and very fast. You were very close to having your throat cut.”
“On the principle of act first and ask questions later,” Ginny said with a shiver. “I do not care for soldiering, I have to tell you.”
“But then you did not creep in here to be a soldier, did you, my sweet?” Alex asked softly, turning on his side, propping himself on one elbow. The green-brown eyes held a pensive look as he examined the face on the pillow beside him. A residue of that fearful panic still lingered in her eyes, in the tension of her skin over the high cheekbones, the set of the full mouth. With concentrated purpose, he took her lips, tasting, exploring, softly at first, then with increased pressure as he felt her melt beneath the gentle, insidious invasion, felt her fear and tension yield to the wondrous langour of slow-building desire.
His hand slid down to cup the firm mound of her breast, his thumb brushing over the soft linen covering the taut, straining peak. Ginny moved involuntarily, pressing herself against the long, lean nakedness, and he pulled her even closer so that she was made powerfully aware of the urgency of his need, the heat and throb of him through her thin night rail. She was boneless, pliant, and formless, an encompassing softness that he knew would receive and nurture him.
Alex drew the hem of her nightgown upward, smoothing his hand along the fine, supple line of her leg to her hip. His hand slid round to her belly, palming the sharp points of her hip bones as his thumb played in her navel before he lowered his head and flicked the soft cup with his tongue. The slight stubble of his late-night beard grazed her tender skin, setting the muscles of her abdomen fluttering, and her hands raked through the auburn hair glowing bright against the whiteness of her belly as her hips lifted in wanton invitation. With one hand, he freed the sash constricting her waist, then pushed the gown upward, his lips following, nuzzling the gradually bared flesh, tasting deeply of a rose-crested breast as it was uncovered.
Casting the nightgown aside, he gathered her to him, rolling so that she came to rest above him, every curve and hollow of her body molded to his length. Ginny smiled down at him a little uncertainly as she adapted to this novel position. Understanding amusement flickered in the green-brown eyes, and the sculpted firmness of his mouth curved as he ran his fingers though the mass of chestnut hair, drawing it over her shoulders to enclose them both in a silky, fragrant tent. The calloused, swordsman’s hand cupped her face, drawing her mouth down to his, and Ginny discovered the delight of initiation as her tongue penetrated deeply, tasting the brandy sweetness, before venturing forth on a voyage of exploration that left not a millimeter of his mouth and face untouched.
