Her need was visceral, flagrant and declared. Her wanting was tangible, a giddy purpose scenting the air. Her craving was elemental, a primitive itch that demanded to be scratched.
All she felt resonated within him.
Their kiss was all-consuming, a blatant expression of all that was to come. Her hands slid from his hair to grip his shoulders. She pushed; when he stepped back, she steered. With slow deliberation, she backed him to the bed.
He let her.
Curious to see what her wishes were, he complied when she pressed down on his shoulders; without breaking the kiss, he sank down to sit on the side of the bed.
She came between his widespread thighs. One hand trailed down from shoulder to chest, to waist. To his groin to cup him.
To fondle with intent.
He mentally gritted his teeth and let her play, while he reached around her and found the laces of her gown. Stripping it from her slowly had been his ambition from the first instant he’d seen her in it, in Madame Latour’s salon.
Now he got to, and she allowed him to, realize that ambition. To slowly peel the gold satin from her perfect shoulders, to ease the slinky fabric down, taking her chemise with it, to expose her magnificent breasts.
Then it was his turn to fondle, with educated intent.
Her turn to grow even more heated. Until she moaned and drew back from the kiss. Until her spine bowed and she leaned back in his hands, and he bent his head and set his hot mouth to her flesh.
And ardently possessed.
By the time he consented to draw back, to push her gown down, over the swell of her hips until it slid of its own accord, whispering down her legs to puddle on the floor, her ivory skin was flushed with desire, her nipples tightly peaked, her breasts swollen and firm.
Her lids were so heavy she could barely lift them enough to see as she slipped the buttons at his waist free, and took his rampant erection between her hands.
Then it was his turn to close his eyes, to bite back a moan. To feel her hands possessing until the desire that rose beneath his skin seemed too much for his body to hold.
She leaned in, nipped his earlobe. Gained his attention. “I want you inside me. Now.”
She didn’t have to ask twice. His hands tightened about her waist and he lifted her, set her down on her knees on the bed, straddling him.
She didn’t hesitate, but shifted closer. One small hand wrapped about his shaft, she guided the engorged head between her slick lips.
Then sank down.
Took him in.
The air left Deliah’s lungs in a slow exhalation as she sank steadily down and he filled her. Stretched her, completed her.
It felt better than good, even better than blissful, to have the rigid rod of his erection buried so deeply inside her. It felt right. Sublime.
When he nudged deeper, nudged her womb, she reversed direction. She rose upon him, gauging the distance. Just before she lost the fullness of him, she smoothly changed direction and sank down.
Slowly.
She knew the theory of what she, they, were doing, but she’d never before experienced this particular pleasure. Now she was so engaged, she wanted to feel all, learn all, know all there was.
All that might come of loving him like this.
Of using her body to pleasure his like this.
Of taking her pleasure in pleasuring him.
And it was more, much more, than she’d ever imagined. The ride was exhilarating, stupendous, marvelously freeing. She was in charge, and he ceded the reins to her, let her set the pace, let her take him as she would.
Watched her as she did.
Watched as she experimented, then found her rhythm.
Watched as she rode him hard, then harder.
Watched her as she crested, as she rode faster, more desperately, taking him ever deeper as they pushed relentlessly up the final peak.
He held her, his hands tight about her hips, her arms locked about his shoulders, through those last fraught moments when the friction of their joining became a fire that ravaged and consumed.
At the very last moment her eyes locked with his, then she gasped, let her lids fall as she leaned in, and pressed her lips to his. Felt his open.
She slid her tongue between, found his tongue. Stroked, caressed, as the flames erupted, and the world cindered about them.
Del held her, kissed her, felt her sheath clamp tight, all fire and wet heat, about him. Felt her burn between his hands with an incandescent glory.
With a power he couldn’t deny.
Then he felt her soar.
Felt the tug, the command, the need to join her flower and sear, and pull him on.
To her promise of paradise. To all he knew awaited him in her arms.
He wanted her, and she wanted him.
Surrender was his only option. He closed his eyes and did.
Later, much, much later, when they’d recovered enough to together remove his clothes and then crawl between her sheets, he lay on his back, one arm behind his head, staring up unseeing as he listened to their tumultuous heartbeats slow, feeling all residual tension fading into sated languor.
Gradually, his mind cleared.
Leaving, etched with crystal-clear clarity, all she’d revealed—everything the most vulnerable part of him had so desperately needed to know.
He hadn’t known the question he’d needed to ask, but she’d unstintingly given him the answer.
Glancing down at her, curled against him, her head pillowed on his shoulder, her hair fanned over his chest, he saw she was at peace, floating, but not yet asleep.
Beneath the sheet, he slapped her naked rump, not enough to hurt, enough to claim her attention. “Don’t, for the love of God, ever do what you did this afternoon again.”
“I won’t, as long as you don’t attempt to fight three cultists at once in front of me again.” She scowled up at him, then pouted as she rubbed her abused posterior. “It would have served you right if I hadn’t intervened and saved you. I should have left you to reap your just rewards.”
He was, he realized, still smiling inanely. He couldn’t seem to stop. He’d just reaped all the rewards he presently needed. Still, with a sense of inner wonder, he stated what he now realized was obvious. “You wouldn’t have, couldn’t have, sat still and let that happen.”
“No, you’re right.” She snuggled down against him again. “Sadly, I’m too patriotic for my own good.”
“So you saved me for the good of the country?”
“Of course.”
His smile only broadened, deepened; he felt as if the sun were shining on his soul. He might not appreciate how he felt when she tried to protect him at the expense of her own safety, but at least now he understood why she did.
Understood that she might not be able to refuse the call any more than he could when it came to her.
And, oddly, that felt right. Good. Elementally reassuring.
Fundamentally contradictory, but that seemed the norm for his feelings about her.
His thoughts circled, settled…as far as he could see through the haze of pleasure clouding his brain, there was really only one—or maybe two—questions remaining. How should he propose? And when?
He fell asleep before he could decide.
Ten
December 16
Somersham Place, Cambridgeshire
In the wee small hours of the morning, Sangay crept along the corridor on the first floor of the very big house.
He’d seen the colonel take the scroll-holder from Mustaf in the inn yard. He hadn’t seen either Mustaf or Cobby take the scroll-holder back. And now he knew what to look for, once they’d all settled in the big house he’d been able to tell that neither Cobby nor Mustaf had been carrying the holder.
Just before the servants had had their dinner in the servants’ hall, when Cobby had been sitting with Sligo before the fire there, and Mustaf and Kumulay had been waiting at the big table, Sangay had slipped into first Mustaf’s, th
en Cobby’s rooms, and searched. Thoroughly. He was getting very good at searching. But the scroll-holder hadn’t been there.
Later still, after he’d come back from speaking with the evil sahib behind the stable, he’d surreptitiously followed Cobby and learned where the colonel’s room was.
Now, silent as a ghost, he slipped through the deep shad ows. The house was gloomy and dark, but it was almost as if he could hear it breathing—as if the house itself were alive. As if it might wake at any moment and see him. He tried not to think of such fanciful things, but concentrated on retracing his steps to the colonel’s room without getting lost.
There were so many rooms down so many different corridors, but he’d noted the steel armor mounted like a metal man on a stand just along from the colonel’s door. Finally he saw it, and hurried forward, his slippered feet silent on the rugs. He took a moment to check that it was indeed the right armor, then, going to the door, he opened it, peeked in, then slipped inside.
The colonel spent his nights in the memsahib’s bedroom. He was never in his room until close to dawn. So Sangay was free to search.
It was still hours before dawn when he reached into the top drawer of a high chest and his fingers closed around polished wood and brass.
Almost reverently, he drew the holder out. One glance was enough to confirm it was the one the evil sahib sought.
Closing the drawer, Sangay slid the holder up the sleeves of his tunic and the coat he’d donned over it, then, quiet as a mouse, he slipped out of the room and shut the door.
He was downstairs in mere minutes. He paused in the corridor leading to the back door and closed his coat up tight. It would be cold out there—freezing. He hadn’t yet had a chance to look for the big church, but the evil sahib had said he had to go back down the carriage drive, and he knew where that was. He would go now and be well away from the house before the other servants stirred. When daylight came, he would be able to see the church tower.
He wondered how long it would take him to reach it. Even going around by the roads, in this country it wouldn’t be that far. A few hours, perhaps?
Telling himself to keep his spirits up—he was nearly free of the evil sahib’s demands—he reached for the bolts closing the back door, eased them back with barely a sound. Carefully, he lifted the latch, opened the door.
And looked out at a wall of white.
He stared. He could only just see over the top of the white blockage. Hesitantly, he put out a hand. White sand, but cold, and it melted where he touched.
The white stuff slithered, started to slide like sand in through the door. Quickly, he swung the door closed, pushed hard and managed to shut it.
Snow! The white stuff was snow. He’d had no idea it could come like this.
That it could trap him in the house with the scroll-holder.
Stunned, he reclosed the bolts, then looked for a window, saw one over the iron trough in the next room. He hurried over, had to clamber up and balance on the trough to see through. The snow had piled up across the bottom of the window. He couldn’t push it open. Looking out, he saw to his amazement that there was plenty of light to see, even though it was still hours until dawn.
A soft, pearly-gray glow bathed the scene, moonlight and starlight reflecting off the snow. Sangay had never imagined the world might look like this—untouched, and so cold. As if there were no people, no animals anywhere. Only the naked trees and the buildings…and in the far distance, off to the east, the huge tower of a church spearing up through the white-gray, its stone a solid, deeper gray than the sky behind it.
Three hours at most, Sangay thought, but he couldn’t walk through snow that deep.
He looked at the white dunes filling the kitchen yard. Perhaps it might be less on the other sides of the house?
He spent the next hour frantically going from room to room, window to window, but the snow lay everywhere, apparently equally thick. There was no window he could open, no door he could slip through. Everywhere he looked, the snow hemmed him in.
Then he heard the first maids stirring.
Sternly he told himself he couldn’t sniffle and cry, that his maataa’s life depended on him getting the holder to the evil sahib.
He looked down at the wooden holder, peeking past the edge of his sleeve. He couldn’t afford to be found with it, but if he put it back in the colonel’s room, he might not be able to fetch it later.
On impulse, he hurried back to the kitchen, slipped into the corridor to the back door, then turned off it into a big storeroom. It was close to the back door, and he’d seen bins there. He found one behind some bags; it was half-filled with wheat. He buried the scroll-holder deep, then, feeling a vise ease from about his chest, drew an easier breath. He went back into the kitchen and curled up in a corner near the fire.
He didn’t have long to wait. Three of the kitchen girls came down the servants’ stairs. Yawning, laughing, they saw him, smiled and called a good morning, and started taking down pots and plates.
Sangay returned their greetings, then got to his feet. He went to the table, smiled as best he could. “There’s lots of snow outside.”
The girls exchanged glances, then set down what they held and rushed down the corridor to the window over the iron trough.
Sangay followed them.
“Ooh! Look, Maisie. It’s ever so pretty.”
“Looks to be dry, too—it won’t be thawing today.”
“Ah—how long will it last?” Sangay asked.
The girls looked at him, then out at the snow. They pulled measuring faces, then the one called Maisie said, “No one’ll be moving for a couple o’ days, at least.” She flashed Sangay a grin. “Assuming no more comes down, that is.”
Sangay felt his eyes grow wide. “Will more come down before this lot goes?”
Maisie shrugged. “Who’s to say? In the lap of the gods, that is.”
Sangay managed a weak smile. Turning, he left the room. He slipped through the kitchen and went quickly up the stairs. Reaching his room, he quietly shut the door, then climbed into his bed and pulled the blanket over his head.
He tried not to shiver. He wasn’t cold. But he didn’t know what to do. Desperation clutched his chest, his heart.
What would happen to his maataa?
He believed in the gods. They had sent the snow. They didn’t want him to take the holder to the evil sahib, at least not yet.
But was that so? Was there some other route he was meant to take to the big church?
He didn’t know. He didn’t know this country, and with the snow on the ground, it had only become more alien.
Curling up in the bed, he shivered harder.
Del woke to see a strange, subdued light slanting through a gap in the curtains drawn across the window in Deliah’s room.
It took a moment for him to recall what such a light portended.
Deliah slumbered, warm and soft against his side. He glanced at her, then, carefully easing from under the covers, leaving her sleeping, he padded quickly across the room, pushed the curtain aside—and looked out on a scene that embodied the essence of “home” to him.
He looked out on a world covered in white. The thick blanket stretched as far as he could see, the bare branches of trees weighted with an inches-thick coating of soft white. The air was curiously clear. The wind had died during the night, leaving the smothering snow undisturbed, unmarred.
He hadn’t seen such a sight for decades.
A soft footfall sounded behind him. Before he could turn, Deliah was there, as naked as he, but she’d brought the coun terpane with her; she tossed one end over his bare shoulders as she came to lean against his side.
Her face was alight. “I haven’t seen snow for more than seven years!”
The excitement in her voice, innocent and sincere, found an echo inside him. Tugging the counterpane around him, he put his arms around her, held her close. For long moments, they stood snuggling together, looking out on the pristine scene.
“We might even have a white Christmas,” she said.
“Much as I, personally, would appreciate that, I hope this will thaw, and soon.” When she looked up at him, brows rising, he explained, “The others have yet to get through. Snow will only make them slower—make them easier targets.”
She sobered, closed her hand on his arm. “Yes, of course. I hadn’t thought of that.” Then she frowned. “But there’s—what?—nine days to go? They should be here before then, surely?”
“I don’t know. Devil hasn’t heard anything about the others. We’ll have to wait until I see Wolverstone to ask.”
They stood silently for some minutes, he thinking about his colleagues, most likely still some way from home. “With luck Gareth will have landed in England by now.”
Deliah gave him another moment, then jabbed her elbow into his side. “Let’s go down. I haven’t thrown a snowball since I left Humberside.”
He chuckled. “All right—I challenge you to a snowball duel.” Ducking out from under the counterpane, he headed for his clothes.
Trailing the counterpane like a shawl, she went to the wardrobe. “What are the rules?”
“There aren’t any.” In his trousers and shirt, he slung his coat on. “I need a different coat. I’ll meet you in the front hall.”
Pulling out a red woolen gown, she nodded. “Five minutes.”
He left.
She rushed.
He’d only just reached the front door when she hurried down the stairs, buttoning her pelisse. Breathless, more with excitement and anticipation than exertion, she let her momentum carry her to the door.
Del pulled back the heavy bolts, then reached for the doorknob. He swung the door open, waved Deliah through, then followed her into a world turned white.
Into a world of long-ago childhoods and innocent delights.
The carriage drive had disappeared beneath the tide. The lawns were a blanket of glistening purity, punctured by the skeletal trees, their branches limned with a thick coating of snow.