“You’ll marry me?”
“Yes.”
“You love me?”
“I do.”
He sealed that promise with a kiss. He thought stupid things; he’d have his sealing wax made in the colour of her lips; he’d paint his room in the colour of her eyes so he’d always wake to it… Not that he’d need to because he’d always wake to her beside him in bed. She’d be at his side forever. Breakfasts and dinners and drives and balls…a luxury of Madelaine.
And this…Madelaine under him, looking up at him, lips parted. He watched her face as he pushed inside her. She welcomed him so well, making a sound half-gasp, half-groan as he filled her. This was where he belonged. This woman was his home, his heart…
Then poetry turned to base pleasure. But it was all part of it too. No point pretending this angel was a saint. No point pretending he was. He claimed her fully, sank deep into bliss, and then kissed her as though she was fragile as glass, because she demanded everything, she deserved everything, all the sides and depths of him.
He wondered if there would be a child. He knew it worried her, that she might not be able to. But she’d only been married two years and to a husband who spent months away at sea. She didn’t need to worry. It didn’t worry him. There were children aplenty in this world needing homes. He’d tell her all this in the morning…he’d take away every last doubt and fear.
But for now, he loved her. He made love to her. She moved with him, tilting her hips. He slid a hand underneath her, angled her until the moans she gave sweetened, tightened…
Oh God. He could hardly last a moment more but let him give her this second pleasure… Sweat glowed on her skin, her breasts tipped up as her back arched. He bent his head, sucked and teased those deep pink buds.
She reached her peak with a cry. The way she tightened around him made him blank out for a moment.
He cursed, head buried at her shoulder. She wrapped her fingers around his neck, held him to her as he drove into her.
“I love you,” she whispered.
His release burnt through him, poured into her. There…yes…she took him; she let him fill her. Thank God. Oh, thank God she was his. He kissed her, slowly, deeply, keeping them joined.
They moved apart when they grew cool. With all the necessities attended to, they curled up again in that tiny bed. Drowsy, he eyed the rough planks, the simple furniture. Everything was shadows in the fire’s faint glow. Outside, behind the thin curtains, the storm still darkened the sky though the rain only pattered softly now against the roof.
“You can walk back to your hotel later,” she said. Her back was against his chest, his arms tight around her. “Tell them you got lost on the marsh and fell in a ditch to explain your clothes. It happens often enough to visitors.”
“No.”
She turned her head as far as she could. “No?”
“No. We’ll stay here forever. Become fishermen. Pirates. Never leave this cabin.”
She laughed, quaking softly in his arms. Her rear jiggled pleasantly against him, and he moved his palm from where it cupped her shoulder, sliding it down to cup the soft fullness of her breast.
She made a small hum. Surprised. Pleased.
A few moments later, they were joined again.
He spent the night alone at his hotel, which was wretched but necessary.
She’d left the boat sometime after him, ushering him out while it was still raining and any potential witnesses still hiding away in their homes and fishermen’s huts. Her story, she’d told him, was that she’d taken shelter here alone. There needed to be something to explain the stove light and the chimney smoke, if anyone had seen it, and the firewood’s depleted store.
She told him all this, this clergyman’s daughter, this paradigm of charitable virtue, without the least trace of shame orguilt. Had she told such stories before? Had she once snuck around this familiar patch of Sussex with a boy her own age, stealing kisses behind trees, tugged by the hand, breathless and laughing, into empty shepherd’s huts and fisherman’s shacks?
He’d walked the pitted road back up the hill to Rye realising he felt no jealousy. His own flesh had ceased to be sacrosanct even before she’d ever met that boy. And if her heart had been taken long before his…well…he was glad she’d been loved. He was gladder still now her heart was his.
The night and the morning were interminable. He had an early breakfast and opted to walk. It was three miles, only a pleasant hour’s stroll between the two towns. He followed the path along the canal, at the foot of the hills.
Napoleon would land here, on these flat, shallow beaches, everyone was sure. A few years of urgent debates and high spending had driven this canal all the way along this stretch of coast. Now Napoleon supposedly set his sights on the Continent, abandoning his plans to invade Britain. Sebastian eyed the canal. It was barely three yards wide. He wished there were fifteen more.
Still, with larks in the air and chamomile underfoot, it was hard to imagine war coming here. The path was pale packed earth, cracked by the summer’s heat, only dark and damp in the hollows even after all yesterday’s rain. Rushes trembled and whispered in the ditches, the cries of sheep came on the wind, along with their grassy, rank stink. Crickets sought to drown everything out, and butterflies—orange, white, yellow, and red—danced and weaved around the insistent bees. A buzzard circled high in the sky, a faint shadow of death, ignored by all but the rabbits.
Ahead rose Winchelsea on its wooded hill. A redundant town, but stubborn, hardly seeming to care that it had been forgotten by time, tide, and industry. It was too pretty to care, laid out withprecision at Edward I’s boon. He’d read the hotel’s guidebook that morning, an inadequate defence against pacing his room, watching the clock.
