They hadn’t time for languid lovemaking, and this time he used no finesse. He cupped her most womanly part and stroked her. He did little more before she was moving against his hand, wet and willing. In another moment he was inside her again and her legs were wrapped around his hips and there was nothing in his mind but her and the way it felt to be joined with her and the shock of it: to feel so deeply, to feel so much happiness.
A soft pressure enclosed him, and he felt her muscles contract, drawing him in, holding him. The wonderful madness returned. The world went away and nothing remained but the way she felt and the way they felt together. It was new, still new, and a wonder to him.
He was inside her, trying to make it last, not wanting it to end.
Not yet. Not yet.
But it was like the maddest of races, fast, fast, too fast. The peak came too soon and there was no resisting or slowing it. It came to him in a burst of joy. And then he was tumbling, tumbling down into a quiet place.
This time it took longer for Ripley’s breathing to slow and his mind to uncloud.
He didn’t want it to uncloud. He didn’t want to think. He wanted to wallow in the thousand and one delights of Olympia.
He couldn’t wallow.
He needed to be calm, to think. To plan.
Ashmont. What to do about him. If anything could be done.
If not, it was going to be very bad.
“It’s a good thing I knew nothing about what this was like,” she said shakily. “I’d have been ruined in my first Season.”
And if Ripley had had any idea, all those years ago when he’d first met her, he would have ruined her in short order. So much wasted time. But no. If he’d ruined her years ago, he wouldn’t have realized what he’d found.
Two days ago he hadn’t realized. All while he’d pursued her and tried to get her back to the wedding, Ripley had told himself that she was perfect for Ashmont.
Blind, blind, blind.
“It’s only this way with me,” he said.
Just as it’s only this way with you.
The realization was simply there, where it hadn’t been moments ago. He’d thought at first that what he’d felt for her was simple, if powerful, lust, the result of too long a time of celibacy. He’d realized, but not until yesterday, that it wasn’t simple at all. Now there wasn’t the smallest question in his mind. It had to be her. Nobody else, ever.
“I promise to make up for those lost years,” he went on. “Would much rather start now, making up for lost opportunities. The trouble is, I’ve already started when it’s not a good time.”
Could there be a worse time? Not much more than forty-eight hours after she was supposed to marry his best friend—to whom she was still, technically, engaged. Who was going to hate him. And try his best to kill him. And whom nobody would blame for doing so.
No time to fret about that now. One thing at a time.
Look after Olympia first. “I’m going to get up,” he said. “Some things to attend to. But you stay.”
She murmured an answer he took to be affirmative.
Gently he released her and sat up. He felt shaky. Had he eaten anything this morning? He couldn’t remember. It didn’t matter.
He stood, and was surprised at the twinge, until he remembered the bad ankle. Still, it was only a twinge. He found a handkerchief and quickly cleaned himself. He saw no blood. Nothing obvious, at any rate, in the firelight on a gloomy day. He’d been too impatient—really, a schoolboy would have shown more consideration. Still, he hadn’t hurt her as much as he’d feared. She hadn’t screamed or wept. That was good. Mindlessly he pulled up his trousers and tucked in his shirt. He buttoned the trousers.
“Stay here for a minute,” he said. “I’ll be back straightaway.”
He grabbed a small pitcher from the collection of utensils on the mantel and went out.
It was still raining, though less fiercely than before. Not that it mattered. As it was, he had to cover only a short distance to the river, and trees sheltered most of the way. He filled the pitcher and limped back to the fishing house.
When he opened the door, she still lay where he’d left her. She was staring at the ceiling, but her gaze quickly shifted to him.
“No time to clean up properly,” he said. “But there are some linens—it looks as though Alice camped here recently—and the water’s clean.” While he talked, he set the pitcher down within easy reach. He collected a few cloths from the basket of linens and lay them over the top of the pitcher.
She sat up, blushing, and the blush spread all over her neck and down, over her breasts. Swallowing a groan, he reached over her to retrieve the spectacles from the window ledge. He gave them to her, then busied himself with putting out the fire while his mind reviewed the perfection of her skin and the way she was round in all the right places.
What a miracle it was that nobody had caught her ages ago.
I’m boring and pedantic, she’d told him.
That was completely wrong, but he was glad that everybody had believed it. And he supposed he was glad it had taken him so long to discover she wasn’t like the other respectable girls. Now at least he was old enough to appreciate how special she was.
But it would have helped if it hadn’t taken him quite so long.
He turned back to her. She was pulling the tapes of her chemise closed. She tied them and started to reassemble her corset.
“I’d better help,” he said.
She slid off the cot and stood. “It’s easier standing up,” she said. “Although I doubt it makes any difference to you. Even my maid can’t get my corset undone as quickly as you did.”
“Practice,” he said. “Though I’m better at getting them off than on.” Not that one needed to get corsets off so very often. Furtive couplings rarely involved much undressing, and he’d always rather liked furtive couplings. For the danger. “At any rate, I can do it more easily than you can.”
He had only loosened the corset string enough to get at her breasts, and so it was mainly a matter of tightening it again and tying it. He picked up her dress and helped her into it.
He looked at the long parade of buttons and remembered her unbuttoning them, and the look she’d given him when she’d finished, and he wanted to pull the dress off again and throw it down and toss her back onto the cot.
But no.
Death awaited.
Not certain death, but it was a definite and well-earned possibility.
“You do the top,” he said. “I’ll do the bottom.”
He knelt and started buttoning.
Her knees, very much to Olympia’s surprise, managed to hold her upright.
Her breathing had returned to something like normal.
As to the rest of her, she’d never be the same.
No wonder Mama had been so inarticulate.
She looked down at his dark head. She wanted to drag her fingers through his hair and kneel on the floor with him and kiss him and . . .
. . . make him do it again. And again.
You have to marry me now, he’d said.
Well, of course. She could hardly go back to . . .
“Ashmont,” she said.
“Wrong name,” Ripley said, looking up. “It’s the shock. Got you confused. I’m Ripley. The other DisGrace. The one you’re going to marry. And no bolting this time.”
“No, I mean that Ashmont—”