Free Jane Feather - [V Series] by Virtue Page B

her inner thighs.
    “If you knew how often I’ve dreamed of this,” Marcus said, still smiling, still watching her face, as his fingers crept upward on an intimate, tantalizing invasion. “While you’ve been treating me to the sharpest edge of your razor tongue, I’ve been tormented with visions ofyour body, with fantasies of how your body would respond to mine.”
    Judith made no response, but her tongue touched her lips, her eyes narrowing as she drifted in sensation, the rapid rise and fall of her bosom the only indication of her mounting excitement.
    Abruptly the self-enclosed world of arousal was shattered by the sound of voices, the tramp of feet, a harsh clarion call of a bugle. The horse between the shafts started and plunged forward into the hedge. Judith fell off Marcus’s knee with a thump and a yowl of indignant surprise. Marcus, swearing, grabbed up the reins he had negligently let fall and hauled back on them, dragging the terrified horse out of the hedge.
    “Hell and the devil!” Judith expostulated, clambering back onto the bench.
    “Nicely put,” Marcus approved, looking over his shoulder. “We appear to find ourselves in the midst of a regiment on the way to battle.”
    “Well, it’s most inconvenient of them,” grumbled Judith, smoothing down her skirt.
    Marcus shot her a sideways glance, radiating amusement. It seemed they must take a brief respite from passion.
    “Tell me,” he said with deceptive innocence. “Why would you consider my proposal this morning to be without honor, whereas a scrambling tangle in a hedgerow like a milkmaid and her swain on May Day is perfectly acceptable?”
    Judith combed her fingers through her disordered curls. “Is that a serious question, my lord?”
    “Most certainly.”
    “You haven’t offered to pay for my services on this occasion. Surely you can see the difference between a whore and a lover.”
    Marcus inhaled sharply and then slowly exhaled, steadying himself. Eccentric principles were at work again. But he didn’t care on what terms they conducted their liaison, only in its fact.
    “And you are willing to be my lover?” he asked quietly. “I want you, Judith, with the most powerful hunger. If you say so, I’ll get down here and leave you to continue your journey, and I will never interfere in your life again. Otherwise …” There was no need to complete the sentence.
    “I don’t want you to leave,” she said, meeting his eye with clear candor.
    “And you know what that means?”
    “I know what that means.”
    Relief swamped him. It was a pleasure to deal with a woman who was plain speaking and unvirtuous. He’d never had a taste for ingenuous, virginal misses, and found sophistication and honesty infinitely more arousing.
    He glared impatiently at the ranks of men marching along the road. How the hell long was the column?
    Judith shifted on the bench. “Where are we going?” The die was cast, and yet she was suddenly apprehensive.
    “There’s an inn up ahead,” he said. “If I remember the road aright.… Thank God, I think the column’s passed.”
    He drove the cart back onto the road and resumed the journey toward Quatre Bras. Full dawn was breaking. Red streaks slashed the sky, finally permeating the gray with a deep rosy glow.
    “How beautiful,” Judith said. “I’ve always loved traveling in the dawn.”
    He glanced sideways at her. “It’s an unusual time of day for travel.”
    She shrugged. “Perhaps. For other people.”
    Marcus said nothing. He didn’t want her to expand on that … not now … not at a moment when he wanted her to forget the constraints of the past, to be driven only by the urgent desire that he knew matched his own. She was an adventuress, wicked and unfettered, and right now he wanted her just as she was.
    A thatched-roof building loomed ahead in the gray light, a creaking sign swinging in the dawn breeze.
    “Journey’s end,” he said quietly.
    Or journey’s beginning, Judith