With a deep sigh of pleasure Fortune closed her eyes, not in the least afraid when he cupped her buttocks in his palms, drawing her near so that his face pressed into her soft belly. She gasped softly as he covered her flesh with little kisses. Then his hands slid upwards to grasp her breasts in a hard embrace. Her body arced itself, pressing harder against his face, feeling the sandy roughness of his cheek against her.
Kieran Devers was shaken to the core of his very being by her beauty, and her obvious willingness to give herself to him without reservation. His manhood was iron hard now. Why not? he thought to himself. Where was the harm in it? They were to be wed soon. Then his conscience began to niggle at him. Aye, they were to be wed, but he held Fortune in the deepest love and respect. What if he got her with child? What if, God forbid! he were killed in an accident, and their child was born a bastard? She was not her mother, a royal Mughal princess, nor was he a Stuart prince whose bastard child had been welcomed as if he were every bit as legitimate as that prince himself. He felt himself begin to tremble as he reached the outer edge of sanity, and restraint. With a groan he pulled her breeches up, and buckled her belt. "Clothe yourself," he growled angrily at her.
"What is the matter?" Fortune asked him. "How have I displeased you, Kieran, that you do not want me?"
"Put your shirt on, and we will talk," he said harshly, turning away from her as he saw the tears in her eyes.
Confused, and burning with feelings she had never felt before, and certainly didn't understand, Fortune picked up her silk shirt, and pulling it over her head, tied it. Her doublet followed, and she buttoned it up. "I am dressed now," she said, still standing upon the bench.
He turned, lifting her down, and enfolded her tightly in his arms. "I love you," he said. "When I take your virginity, I want it to be in our marriage bed. I want the leisure to caress and admire your loveliness. To kiss you long and sweet kisses, not just on your lips, but all over your fair body, Fortune. If anything should happen to me before we said our marriage vows, and you were with child, our child, a child created from our love for each other; our innocent offspring would be considered bastardborn, shunned. I will not do that to you, Fortune. I will not do that to our child. Do you understand?"
She nodded her head against his chest, then said, "But I long for you so much, Kieran. My body aches with its need for the unknown."
"As mine burns for you, and the thousand pleasures that will come when we are joined together, sweetheart," he told her. "I see now it is better that we be separated else our passions overcome us."
"But we will continue to meet here?" she begged him. "At least until Lammastide?"
"We Celts in Ireland call it Lugnasadh," he told her. "It is a harvest festival, but in ancient times it was the yearly celebration of the many-skilled god, Lugh."
"You know the ancient stories, don't you?" Fortune said. "And yet you claim to have no place here in Ireland. Are you certain, Kieran?"
He smiled down at her. "I like the old history, and the old tales, sweetheart, but it does not mean I feel at home here. Nay, my sweet Fortune, our future together is somewhere else. Perhaps in that new colony your mother's acquaintance, Lord Baltimore, seeks to found. I like the idea of starting afresh in a new place where we will be accepted for ourselves, and not judged by others."
"There will always be those who judge," Fortune replied cynically.
He laughed. "You are so innocent on one hand, yet on the other you are very worldly, my love."
"I have had a rather eclectic upbringing," Fortune said dryly. "Whenever Mama went to court we were left behind at Queen's Malvern with her grandparents. It was, frankly, my favorite place, for Madame Skye was so interesting, and so knowledgeable. We were very small then. I was just four and a half when my greatgrandfather de Marisco died. After that Madame Skye was never quite the same, although she never stopped loving us, or involving herself in our lives. I have lived in France, and in Scotland. I saw the proxy marriage of King Charles in Paris. I have never been bored, Kieran. I look forward to finding this new place with you, for although I have never thought myself adventurous, and I wish only for a good marriage, there is something in me that longs to leave this old world and see the new. I have always been considered practical. Yet of late I have discovered that I am, perhaps, a bit more like the women in my family than I had previously believed. I have never really wanted to be like them. They are too impossible, and wildly passionate to the point of disaster."
He burst out laughing. "And you do not consider removing your clothing before a man in a stone ruin in a driving rainstorm impossible, or wildly passionate?"
"But I wanted you to make love to me," she wailed. "I don't really know what lovemaking is all about, and yet I know I must do it, or die of this terrible longing that has engulfed me," she told him.
He hugged her hard. "I adore you, Fortune Lindley. You are mad, and marvelous! I never thought to find a girl like you, but now that I have I shall not let you go!"
Fortune sighed happily. "I don't care where we go, Kieran, as long as we are together," she told him.
"Go home, you adorable temptress. I will be here at this same time in three days," he said. "If my family is due home at the beginning of August, there will shortly be a message from England for me. My stepmother is extremely organized. If Willy is to be married on September twenty-ninth, she will already have certain instructions for the staff; and she will want me to be her liaison between the Deverses and the Elliots before her return. Poor Willy! His whole life is now quite neatly mapped out."
"Your brother will be happy that way," Fortune replied. "He does not appear to me to be a venturesome lad. That's why I was so certain that he would suit me. Then I discovered I wasn't a demure and retiring girl after all."
He chuckled. "Demure is not a word I would use to describe you, Fortune. Wild and willful is more like it." He ducked the blow she aimed at his head. "Come on, lass, and up on your great Thunder. I've a longer ride than you to get home." He caught her gelding, and helped her to mount.
"I'll be glad when home is the same resting place for us both," she told him softly. She had almost succeeded in seducing him today. She intended trying again. She knew her mother had some concoction she took that had been handed down from generation to generation that prevented conception. She didn't want to wait until October to feel his hard body on hers, loving her as she had never been loved before. She wanted him now, not later!
"Three days from now, sweeting," he told her, wondering what that light of battle in her eye had been about. He took her gloved hand in his, and kissed it, then smacked Thunder's rump hard. The gelding bolted off, Fortune clinging to his back like a burr. He smiled watching her go, his wild and willful lass. She had almost tempted him beyond perdition today, but he would not allow it to happen again. He was older, and the responsibility for her reputation rested in his hands. He loved her too much to fail her.
Chapter 8
“What is it that Mama uses when she wants to prevent babies?" Fortune inquired of her mother's serving woman, Rohana. Then she giggled. "She obviously hasn't been using it lately, or she would not be with child again."
Rohana's dark eyes were expressionless as she carefully folded her mistress's newly laundered chemises. "Your mother thought herself past the time of bearing new life, child," she replied, and closed the storage chest. "As for your question, it is not for me to answer you. Ask your mama, but I am sure she will tell you before you wed with Master Kieran."