Free The Amorous Education of Celia Seaton by Miranda Neville

at the word. She might be wrong but she had a premonition about a visit that, judging by Joe’s face, was unusual. She seized the countryman’s arm and spoke in a fast near-whisper.
    “Can we hide? It may be the foreigner I told you about.”
    Mr. Compton flexed his fists. Joe appeared undecided.
    “Please, Joe,” she said urgently. “He wants to capture me again. He’ll take me away if you don’t help us.”
    “Go in the barn.”

Chapter 9
     
Though not the best manners, sometimes you have to hit and run.
     
    N ot a moment too soon they pulled the barn door closed. Agreeing in sign language, she climbed a ladder to a hay loft, Mr. Compton following behind, his body crowding her up the narrow wooden ladder. In case Joe proved incapable of fobbing off their pursuers, they burrowed into the hay.
    It was dark and cool and the hay smelled fresh and sweet. They lay on their sides, Mr. Compton behind her with one arm draped loosely over her waist. They seemed cut off from the world, the distant melody of birdsong and their soft breathing the only sounds. She was acutely sensible of his beating heart, his chest pressed against her back.
    A cacophony of barking dogs and flapping hens shattered the stillness, then a counterpoint of male voices. Celia strained to hear through the open window of the loft and sensed Mr. Compton angle his head for the same reason.
    Her instinct had been good. A familiar, slightly exotic voice asked—rather rudely—if a man and a woman, scantily clad, had passed that way. Thieving Gypsies, they were. Celia smiled. The man had no idea how to manage Joe. Predictably he received no answer at all.
    The other man spoke for the first time, revealing a local accent and a better notion of how to make friends and gain information. “Our hound lost the scent at the crossroads. Followed you then. There’s a half crown for you if you tell where they’rt.”
    Joe hemmed and hawed. “Might remember for five shilling.”
    “Three.”
    “Four.”
    A pause. “Four then, but only if your news is worth it.”
    “The brass first,” Joe said. “I know where.”
    Mr. Compton’s arm tightened, heavy and comforting. His whisper buzzed in her ear. “Stay up here and let me do the fighting.”
    A moment’s silence as Celia imagined rather than heard the clink of coins.
    “I were driving home. Met Farmer Thorpe coming from crossroads. Man and a lass in his cart. Never seen them before. Reckon they be the ones.”
    “And where’s Thorpe’s place?”
    “Over to Bracewell.”
    Their release of tension was mutual and simultaneous. So were their movements. Somehow she was on her back in the hay and he lay over her. A flutter of excitement rippled under her ribs. His mouth came down on hers.
    She’d never been kissed before. Bertram had too much respect for her to take liberties beyond a salute on the back of her hand. She had imagined it a static experience, a mere meeting of stationary mouths. Instead his lips were warm and firm and very alive, nibbling at her own, coaxing her to open and admit the hot mist of his breath. Initial uncertainty quickly turned to pleasure. What a lovely feeling it was! She moved her own lips in return.
    Good heavens! His probing tongue came as a shock, but one soon adjusted to. Caressing inside her mouth, it set up a tingling that somehow shot to her breasts, her hardening nipples, down through her torso and lower.
    More than the physical reactions, delicious as they might be, kissing Mr. Compton gave her a feeling of intimacy, of knowledge of the man at a deeper level than the little she knew of his real person, or the false one she’d invented.
    Tarquin. No, Terence. And her pleasure was marred by a twinge of genuine guilt, the worst she’d suffered, that she had robbed him of his identity.
    She thrust aside such inchoate thoughts. Leaning back into the bed of hay, she sensed her whole body soften, almost melt with blissful sensation. Without conscious knowledge, she