At a glance, he detected the crisp handwriting of a man who valued efficiency over elegance.Rather like himself.
Bowen,
Having obtained the King’s approval, the Quartermaster-General’s Department requires you update all surveys of the Schleswig-Holstein approaches.Given recent French activity and Denmark’s uncertain position, we need current intelligence on coastal routes, inland waterways, and passable terrain between the Elbe and the Baltic Sea
Your work on the Norfolk coast has proven exemplary.You will act in concert with those already well disposed to our interests and convey your survey findings by means of discreet and reliable intermediaries.Particulars to follow.
Come to my office tomorrow at eleven o’clock for detailed orders and necessary introductions.
Ashworth
Jonathan read the note three times.
Holstein.
He would be going to Holstein.
Where Lise von Ostenfeld was enjoying her life.
The inappropriate surge of hope that he had no business feeling made him jubilant despite the tone of the missive.Ashworth wrote to him as if he were an order-taking officer, instead of a peer of the realm.No matter.It was simply the Colonel’s manner.Tomorrow, at noon and not a second earlier, he would grace the war office with his presence.
Folding the note carefully, Jonathan let his gaze drift over to the tools of his profession, to his theodolite in its brass-bound case, his Gunter’s chain coiled carefully on one of the bookshelves, and his long surveyor’s staff propped in the corner.
Soon, he would begin preparations for a journey that would take him across the North Sea and into occupied territory on the Continent.And he would become useful in exactly the way the Crown required.Tonight, however, he allowed himself one moment of purely selfish anticipation.He smiled and decided to have that drink after all.
He was going to see her again.
Eutin
Lise had thought herself safe.The distance was her defense against any silly yearning.
The crossing from England had been rough, the North Sea churning beneath the packet boat as though determined to discourage her return.She had welcomed the discomfort.Physical misery gave her something to focus on apart from the memory of Jonathan Bowen’s hands on her body, his mouth on hers, the way he had looked at her afterward.
As though she were something precious he had no right to touch.
Of course, he’d had no right beyond what she’d granted him.How could she have let herself behave so uncharacteristically wanton that even now, weeks later, her cheeks burned when she thought of it?Fourteen days of travel, some of it heart-pounding, when French troops stopped them not once but thrice, even though her brother wore no uniform.
At Hamburg, occupied by the French since the year before, they had disembarked posing as Holstein merchants on business.With papers in order, Lise and Henrik slipped pastcheckpoints with cautious courtesy.From the city, they had traveled over winding roads and along quiet rivers, blending in with local travelers, until Eutin lay ahead.
Home looked exactly as it always had — beech trees lining the approach as they had for generations, the old timber and brick house with its steep roof, and her mother’s favorite modernization, tall windows replacing the deep-set narrow ones.The entire von Ostenfeld estate was nestled in a cleared forest.
Nothing had changed.Everything had changed.
In the privacy of her room, late at night, lying awake in her chaste bed, she couldn’t help reenacting what Jonathan’s hands had done.Vowing never to touch herself again, Lise would break that vow almost nightly.
Closing her eyes tightly against the moonlight, she’d tug her nightgown up her thighs, let her nimble fingers slip between her legs, and then ...picture him!
AlwaysJonathan.Never once her betrothed.
The recollection of the moment the viscount’s lips touched hers would make her damp and cause her insides to flutter.That was her invitation to stroke herself as he had done, slowly at first, then faster, until her hips lifted off the linen sheets, as she neared her release.Her body would tense while she circled her hard little nub and moaned as her muscles spasmed.
Finally, the tension she’d built would spiral away, leaving her drained and tired.Only then could she sleep.
Henrik departed again mere days after they’d arrived home.Once more wearing his KGL uniform retrieved from the depths of his trunk, his spirits had seemed high despite the gravity of his orders.Their father clasped his son’s shoulder in silence, then turned away to hide whatever expression might have betrayed his worry.
Their mother wept silent tears, consoled only by the fact that Henrik’s commanding officer was the brother of Lise’s intended.Somehow, that almost-familial connection, would keep him safe.
Lise hugged her brother fiercely, breathing in the familiar scent of him, soap and wool and indefinably Henrik.Then she prayed for his safe return as he rode away to meet up with the small detachment currently gathering, one by one, in the nearby Dodau Forest.
