“Good. Keep your eyes open. The watch is yours.”

With firm, insistent tugs, he gathered her skirts and petticoats, lifting them to her waist. He found the slit in her drawers and widened it with a loud rent of fabric, baring her delicate flesh to the cooling breeze and his warm, rough touch.

He petted her, parted her, spread her wide to his view. His fingertips traced every contour of her intimate flesh. She’d never felt so exposed. If she’d paused to think too hard about what he was seeing and doing, Susanna would have lost her nerve altogether. So she did as he said. She kept the watch, training her eyes on the sparkling blue water and the silver-kissed horizon.

A muted rustle told her he was freeing the closures of his breeches. She grew restless with need, damp with anticipation. A little cry of relief escaped her when his hot, aroused length sprang up to lodge snug against her cleft.

His hands caressed her bared bottom and thighs. “God, I think I’m going mad. You can’t imagine how much I think of this. All the time, everywhere. Yesterday, I stopped in the shop for ink, and all I could think of was you, spreading your legs for me on the countertop. Or bent over the display case. Then slammed against the storeroom shelves, skirts hiked to your waist and one leg propped on a crate. Every waking moment, I’m thinking of this. Every night, I’m aching for it.” He worked his hard, thick shaft against her, sliding back and forth over her sensitized flesh. “Tell me you want it, too.”

Wasn’t showing enough? She wriggled her hips, increasingly desperate for him.

“Tell me, love. I need to hear it. I need to know this madness isn’t mine alone.”

“I . . .” She swallowed. “I want you.” Excitement raced along her skin. Just uttering those syllables pushed her to a new, wanton degree of arousal. The madness was definitely shared.

“You want this.” He nudged her opening with the smooth, blunt crown of his erection. “In you, hard and deep. Isn’t that right?”

Those words . . . so indecent. So crude. So utterly arousing.

“Y-yes.”

He licked her ear. “Did you say something?”

Decency be damned. She had to have him, soon, or she would die of wanting. “Yes,” she said. “I want it. All of it. In me. Now. Please.”

Yes.

Yes. He entered her on a slow, gliding stroke. Stretching her. Filling her. Then retreating for a brief, agonizing pause before thrusting deeper still.

He set a rhythm, rocking her against the ancient parapet, and as they moved together, he lavished kisses over her bared neck and shoulders. The tight knots of her nipples chafed against her corset seams. Bliss curled and coiled from her center, spreading through every inch of her body.

He slid one hand around her hips, sifting through the folds of petticoat. His talented fingers knew just how to please her, circling gently over that needy bud as he kept up his strong, steady thrusts.

“Bram,” she gasped. “Hold me. Tight.”

“I have you.” His arms tightened around her middle. His pace did not relent. “I have you.”

She stared, eyes wide and unfocused, at that thin, indigo line of horizon. And then he pushed her beyond it. Flinging her off the map of charted sensation and into unknown, unimagined bliss. It went on, and on. She rode the crest of pleasure as far as it would take her. Startled sounds of pleasure pushed from her throat, mingling with the cries of gulls. She was helpless to stop them.

“Holy God.” With a profane growl, he pulled her hips tight to his, burying his full length inside her. Her intimate muscles clamped around his thickness. They moaned in unison. After a few thumping heartbeats’ pause, he began to move again.

He was close to his peak. She could sense it in the acceleration of his rhythm and the new, deeper angle of his thrusts. His guttural noises of satisfaction. If he wasn’t careful . . .

“Bram. Take care.”

“I don’t want to take care.” He bent close, breathing in her ear. “I want to take you. Mark you. Spend inside you, and feel you holding me tight while I fill you with my seed. I want the world to know you’re mine.”

Oh God. Those words . . . they both frightened and aroused her. She opened her mouth to object, to plead with him. Take care, take care. Take care with my heart when you say such things. But then he shifted, thrusting deeper still, and his thumb grazed her flesh just where she needed it. Pleasure racked her body for a second time, and the only sounds from her mouth were primal, desperate moans.

She hadn’t known, hadn’t dreamed she could feel so exposed. With each one of these hasty, stolen couplings, he stripped yet more layers from the woman she’d always believed herself to be. He denuded her of witty banter, of polite virtue, of all the trappings of a gently bred, overly educated spinster. Reducing her to nothing but raw, wild sensation and a fiercely thumping, wholly unguarded heart.

While the last pulses of her climax were still shuddering through her, he withdrew from her body. She felt the hot splash of his seed against her thigh. In the aftermath, he held her, brushing sweet kisses to her temple and cheek.

His breath came in ragged huffs. He pressed his brow to her shoulder and gathered her close. “That gets more difficult every time.”

“I know.” Tugging down her petticoats, she slid free. When she had her clothing rearranged, she slowly turned to face him. The words stuck in her throat, but she forced them out. “Perhaps this time should be the last.”

“Susanna. You know I didn’t mean it that way.” He hiked his breeches from where they hung tangled about his knees. With impatient motions, he began to straighten the falls and fasten the buttons.

She smoothed her hair. “I should go.”

“Wait.” He grasped her wrist, forbidding her to leave. “What do you mean? You can’t mean to run away from me. From this.”

“I’m not running away. You’re the one who’s leaving. And we can’t keep doing this. We’re going to be caught.”

“So what if we are caught?” he said. “You know I plan to marry you. I’d marry you tomorrow.”

“Yes. And then you’d leave me a few days after that.”

With the hint of an ironic smile, he gestured out over the castle ruins. “If I’m not inducement enough, this great, moldering heap of stone could be all yours.”

She sniffed, looking around the jumble of walls and turrets that had once housed all her dreams. “You have no idea the affection I hold for this great, moldering heap of stone. I just wish a resident Lord Rycliff came with it.”

He belonged here in Spindle Cove. Ever since he’d addressed the village the day of the picnic, Susanna had felt certain of it. Bram was strong and capable. A good leader, with an innate sense of loyalty and honor. This place could use a man like him. If he would only trade his military life for a calmer, more peaceful existence, she could see him being so happy, living here as Lord Rycliff.

And she could be so happy—so blissfully, completely happy—as his wife.

“Don’t you want a real home, Bram? You know, a place with a roof and . . . and walls, and those rare luxuries called windows? Upholstery, even. Carpets, drapes. Proper meals and a nice, warm bed.”

“I’ve never been one for homely comforts. Five-course meals on fine china, wallpapered parlors . . . That life just isn’t for me. But I could grow to appreciate a bed, if you’re the one warming it.” He tugged on her wrist, attempting to draw her close.

She resisted. She would never have the strength to say this without the benefit of some distance between them. “A home isn’t only defined by what you need, Bram. It’s also about the people who need you. What am I to do when you’re gone? What about your cousin? What about all the men and women in Spindle Cove who are working so hard for you right now, even as we speak? You’re their lord. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”

“Yes. It does.” His gaze firmed, and so did his grip. “It means a great deal. And the best way I know how to repay them is by finishing this war. Protecting the freedoms they enjoy and the sovereignty of the land they call home. Susanna, this isn’t a matter of England clinging to some island it probably should have never seized. You know Bonaparte must be defeated.”

“And he can’t possibly be defeated without your personal presence in Spain? That’s a bit arrogant, don’t you think? My father has done more to combat Napoleon’s forces than you ever will, and he hasn’t left Sussex in a decade.”

“Well, I’m not like your father.”

“No, you’re not.” She lifted one shoulder. “And once Napoleon is defeated, what then? There will always be another conflict, another campaign. An outpost somewhere that requires defense. Where does it end?”

“That’s the thing about duty,” he bit out. “It doesn’t.”

She stared at him, slowly shaking her head. “You’re afraid.”

He made a dismissive noise.

“You are. You are a big, strong man with a wounded leg, who feels useless and terrified. You say you don’t need a home or a family or a community or love?” She gave a disbelieving laugh. “Please. You want those things so badly, the yearning just wafts from you like steam. But you’re afraid to truly reach for them. Afraid you’ll fail. You’d rather die chasing your old life than screw up the courage to forge a new one.”

His hand clenched her wrist, tight as a manacle. “Who said anything about dying or failing? Christ, you’re always limiting people, holding them back. Your father’s too old to work. Your friends are too delicate to dance.”

“Limiting people? After all you’ve learned of me and this place, you would accuse me of holding these young women back?” A lump formed in her throat. “How can you say such a thing?”

“After all you’ve learned of me, you still can’t trust me? Marry me, and trust that I’ll finish this war and come back to you. For God’s sake, Susanna—” His voice broke, and he looked away briefly before continuing. “I’m no stranger to doubt, this past year. But of all people, I thought you believed in me.”

“I do.” A tear trickled down her cheek, and she dabbed it with the heel of her free hand. “I do believe in you, Bram. I believe in you more than you believe in yourself. Do I believe you can be a capable field commander? Of course I do. But I also believe you could be so much more. A leader off the battlefield, as well as on. A respected lord, essential to his community . . . perhaps even a voice for your soldiers in Parliament.” She pressed a fist to her belly. “I believe you’d make a wonderful husband and father.”

His grip on her arm gentled. “Then why—”

“I just can’t marry you, not like this.” She tugged her wrist from his clasp. With her other hand, she cradled it, rubbing away the red marks of his grip and cursing the scars that would never, ever fade. She stumbled a pace in retreat. “Can’t you understand? I won’t be abandoned again.”

The world was suddenly so quiet. No crashing waves, no gusting breeze. No calling gulls.

When she finally gathered the strength to look at him, his eyes were intense, searching. And his question pierced her straight through the heart.

“Who’s afraid now?”

She let action be her answer. She turned and fled.

Twenty-three

A few evenings later, Bram stood watch on the very same turret. It was a dark, cloudy night, and there was nothing but shifting mist to see. With so little to occupy his thoughts, he once again found himself reliving that last encounter with Susanna. Again and again, the night brought her words back to him.

I won’t be abandoned again.

God above, he did not intend to abandon her. All he wanted was to marry the woman, so that no matter how far apart the world flung them, there would always be a tether connecting her life to his.