She stood where she was a moment longer and then came walking back toward him. He did not know if she had said anything to the others, but they kept walking upward after a couple of them had stopped briefly to look down at her.
She stopped beside his horse and looked up at him.
It was too late to send her back. And he knew in his heart of hearts that he did not want to. But he felt the difference between tonight and Saturday. There was very definitely a difference.
He reached down a hand for hers and looked into her eyes, shadowed beneath the brim of her cap. “Come,” he said.
She looked at his hand for a few moments before placing her own in it and her foot on his boot. She felt it too, then. She knew this was different. But like him, she knew it was too late to go back. And perhaps like him, she did not really want to.
She sat before him on the horse’s back. Without turning her head to look at him, she took off the cap and stuffed it in a pocket of her jacket while she shook her hair free. She took a handkerchief from the same pocket and scrubbed at her face with it. Unwise moves, both. She was making herself beautiful for him.
Ah, Marged.
Then, still without looking at him or saying a word, she leaned sideways against him and burrowed her head into his shoulder.
He gave his horse the signal to move.
Perhaps she should not have stopped and looked back. He had made no move to seek her out or to speak with her tonight. Perhaps he had not wanted any further involvement with her. She was as bold as any man in many ways, but she had never taken the initiative in seeking out any man. Perhaps she had made a mistake.
But she knew she had not. She had known as soon as she turned that he was watching her. And she had known by his gesture, slight as it was, that he wanted her to come. And she had known as soon as she was at his horse’s side and looking up into his eyes that he wanted her to ride with him again.
But she knew more than that. She knew that it was different tonight. She knew that tonight he had beckoned to her as a man and that she had come as a woman. She knew that a great deal more had happened on Saturday night than had been apparent and that a great deal more had happened during the intervening days than she had realized. She knew tonight that she had desired him on Saturday and every day and night since. And she knew quite consciously that she desired him tonight. She leaned her weight against him and nestled her head on his shoulder and closed her eyes and felt the heat of him and the strength of him. She smelled the clean smell of him.
She did try for a few moments to tell herself that she could not possibly desire a man she had never seen without the grotesque disguise, a man she did not know. She did not even know his name or his occupation or his marital status. She tried to tell herself that the daughter of the Reverend Meirion Llwyd could not possibly be indulging in and reveling in these feelings of pure physical desire for a man who was not her husband. She had never had feelings quite so intense even for Eurwyn.
But she did not fight for long. For the first time she understood the temptations that led women into sin. And sin did not even feel sinful tonight. Besides, they were just feelings. No one would be hurt by them. He would take her home and kiss her again and she would have the rest of the night in which to dream of these moments. Not as many as last time—they had worked much closer to home tonight.
She knew he was feeling as she felt. There were the physical layers of a disguise between them, but when her eyes were closed she knew that there were no barriers at all between their hearts. Or perhaps she was glamorizing the situation too much, thinking of hearts. But she knew that he desired her. She knew that she had not merely made a fool of herself by turning back to him.
She did not know where they were. She had kept her eyes closed. When his horse slowed and then stopped, she opened them and found that they were in darkness, among trees. Just south of the river, she guessed. Close to home. She wished they had five more miles to go. Or ten.
He lifted his shoulder, bringing her head closer to his. She closed her eyes again when she realized he was going to kiss her, and turned slightly so that she could lift an arm about his other shoulder.
There was something almost unbearably erotic, she thought, about feeling the warm, soft flesh of his mouth against her own but only the wool of his mask surrounding it. He kissed her with parted lips as he had done before. Eurwyn had never done that. Neither had Geraint—she closed off the thought. And he traced the seam of her own lips with the tip of his tongue, something that shocked her and sent raw pain—no, not really pain—shooting down through her body to set up a throbbing between her legs.
“Oh,” she said when he was finished.
But he did not immediately ride on again as she expected or kiss her again as she hoped. He was looking at her, but it was too dark among the trees to see his eyes clearly. And the moon and stars had disappeared, she realized. Clouds must have moved over.
“Shall we get down, then?” he asked her, his voice low and husky against her ear.
She was not so naive that she did not understand him. Or so dazed by his kisses or her own desire that she did not understand all the implications. It was something that had horrified her as a girl of sixteen. It was something she had deplored in others. It was something she would not have thought herself capable of even considering.
“Or shall I take you home?”
Take me home. Oh, yes, take me home. “We will get down,” she heard herself whispering.
He held her steady while he dismounted and then lifted her to the ground, as he had done the last time outside her home. He kept his hands on her waist, as he had done then, and kissed her briefly on the lips.
“You are sure, Marged?” he asked her.
Her legs felt boneless. Her heartbeat thudded in her ears. “Yes.” She was still whispering.
Chapter 17
HE released her in order to tether his horse and lift a bundle from its back, and then he took her by the hand and led her farther in among the trees until it was so dark that she did not believe she could even see the end of her nose. She stretched out her free hand ahead of her.
“Here.” He stopped walking and held her hand firmly while he appeared to be spreading on the ground the bundle he had drawn from his horse’s back. “Lie down.”
Looking back the way they had come, she could see the lighter grayness of the world outside the forest. Here it was blacker than night. She lay down. It was a blanket or a cloak that was beneath her.
When he came down beside her and cupped her face with one hand and found her mouth with his own, she drew in her breath sharply. His mask was gone. She raised her hand to his face. And so was the wig. He had short, thick hair. Wavy. He opened her mouth with his own, and his tongue came slowly and deeply inside. She heard herself moan.
She was wearing breeches, she thought suddenly. It was going to be awkward. But he did nothing about them for the moment. He was unbuttoning her jacket and then her shirt. And his hand was coming inside, over her shoulder, down the valley between her breasts, and then around to cup one of her breasts, to feather his fingers over it, to rub his palm over her nipple, to pinch it gently.
Oh. Eurwyn had never . . . “Oh.”
His mouth was moving down over her chin, down her throat, trailing hot kisses to her breast, opening over its tip and closing again. His tongue rubbed the nipple.