A day early because I've got to be on the road tomorrow . . . .
Some Desperate Glory—Chapter 10
James arrived at the tree on the riverbank first. He waited impatiently for Beth to appear. Ares, on the other hand, he thought with disgust, appeared perfectly content to placidly pull grass and eat it. The horse had no other care in the world, it appeared. He eyed his horse and wondered where that kind of calm came from. Then again, Ares was never going to fully enjoy the company of a female, so perhaps the animal simply didn't know any better.
When he heard another horse approach, his head lifted, and he stared down the path. He smiled as Beth walked her mare toward him.
Stopping her from dismounting, he said, "We're not there yet."
He disturbed Ares's grazing and then swung into his saddle. James had given careful thought to how to find the privacy he wanted, and while there would be no cabin, no bed, he could at least buy them a few hours where they were unlikely to be seen—provided no one had followed them.
Despite the fact he'd still been a boy the last time he'd gone there, James remembered the way. The path into the copse was hard to see, but he'd followed it so many times when he was escaping his studies he didn't need to see it to find it. Beth rode silently behind him as he and Ares wound through the trees to the meadow he knew waited inside. Hopefully, he thought, scrub hadn't taken root since and filled in the patch of grass.
When he was a boy, his father had explained that it had been created by the local Indians who used to burn out the undergrowth periodically to encourage grass in order to attract deer. James's grandfather and father had followed their lead. He didn't know if the slaves had continued to do it, though, and he decided that was very remiss of him not to know. A man should be aware of what was being done to his property, and he could hear his father's voice say that, just as Jonathan Wilkins had often done before his death.
Thankfully, it was still as he remembered it, a lush carpet of green dappled by sunlight, the trees still thick enough around it to shield it from the view of anyone who passed by it. He dismounted and turned to Beth.
Her eyes surveyed the small, open space, and then she met his gaze. He reached up for her, lifted her from her saddle. "No amenities," he apologized as he set her on her feet and then secured their horses.
Finished with his task, he turned, and the smile Beth gave him warmed. She told him, "Privacy is more important."
James bent and kissed her then, though he found he was in no particular hurry for once. Their time might be limited, but all that mattered in that moment was that she was there. She leaned into him, kissed back, but after a few moments, he noticed there was a lack of heat in her response.
"I think, James," she said softly when he released her lips, "that we should consider again what we are doing."
His heart sank. The last time they had done so, they had quarreled, and he had no interest in doing so again. She took her arms from his waist and caught his hands, tugged slightly until he walked with her to a shady spot. She sank to the ground with the kind of grace he suspected must come from all those hours a princess spent learning to curtsey. Then he remembered they were curtseyed to, for the most part. He was probably less graceful as he folded his limbs to sit against a tree trunk facing her. If he was going to have to listen to a female chatter at him, he might as well be comfortable in addition to having a pleasant view.
At least she met his gaze, and James figured that gave him an advantage. Her face and especially her eyes were expressive, he'd noticed, and when she dropped her guard, it wasn't difficult to see what she truly thought. He had become more expert in how best to get her to drop her guard, he thought, as he watched her fingers work at pleating the skirt of her habit. He reached a hand out, covered hers. They stilled beneath his, and he grasped one, shifted his hand to lace his fingers with hers. The tip of her tongue darted out a moment, but the silence stretched until James felt compelled to break it. "Have you changed your mind?"
He sincerely hoped not, but given she looked nervous, he owned it was entirely possible she had done so.
Beth shook her head. Though she said nothing, her eyes were troubled.
"My mother knows, James," she finally said. "Sooner or later, she will tell someone."
That first hadn't been hard to figure out, he thought, and as for the second, the woman was certainly indiscreet. "She suggested I leave you alone."
Dull pink washed over Beth's face at his admission.
He leaned toward her, pressed a soft kiss against her cool lips. "I don't want to," he whispered, watching her eyes darken, "but I will if that is what you wish."
Those green eyes of hers looked stricken. "Arie says you are my friend," she said, barely above a whisper, "but I think I prefer that we are more." This time her face went crimson, and she dropped her eyes.
James knew he probably grinned like the smug bastard he felt at the moment. Then he sobered. There was risk in what they did, and their discovery would be harsher for her than it would be for him. She would take the blame, and given Will's apparent, previously unknown temperament, she would take the punishment as well. He suspected Will would find a way not to call him out, especially since James would likely win any contest between them. He'd always been better than Will with pistols and a blade, and he was bigger, faster physically.
That wasn't what mattered, though. What mattered was that if they were discovered, Will might do more than leave bruises on Beth, especially since she appeared unable to protect herself, and that James simply could not bear. He reached for her other hand and gave them both a gentle squeeze. He waited until she looked at him again. "I don't want to be the cause of any harm that might come to you."
"You won't be," she whispered, and James couldn't help but think she was simply placating him.
He let her, unwilling to quarrel when he spent so little time alone with her. He studied her, noted she didn't quite meet his eyes now. Unable to leave it completely alone, though, he asked, "Was there more you wished to say?"
She rolled her lower lip between her even, white teeth, and finally really looked at him. He watched her expression shift like the coastal tides, watched her eyes cloud and clear. After several moments, she shook her head.
"I have more to say," he told her and released her hands. She looked alarmed until he reached for her waist and pulled her closer. "No more talk of this." He opened his mouth over hers and was glad when she responded. This time there was heat in her kiss. When it occurred to him that in the normal course of things, they would have taken time to know one another better, he backed off, considered that continuing to talk might not be a bad thing.
Her hands were on his shoulders, and he lifted her into his lap. She asked, "What shall we speak of then?"
Grinning, James laced his hands together in the small of her back. "You."
A smile tipped her lips. "Ah. You wish me to bore you on such a beautiful morning."
Matching her smile, he lifted a brow. "Something tells me you won't bore me at all."
Her own brows lifted slowly. "Really, Mr. Wilkins, you have no idea how dull the life of a princess royal can be, especially mine."
James cocked his head. "Why especially you?" He found it difficult to imagine he would find anything about her dull.
She blushed again. "I was educated in a convent."
"At least you had classmates," he retorted. He'd been educated in what was now his study by a Harvard graduate who had continued his studies at Oxford before returning home to South Carolina in time to watch his father's shipping business go bankrupt. James's father, who had been a friend of the other man's father, had hired him to tutor James.
"You did not go to school?" she asked. He could tell she was surprised, and then her eyes narrowed. "You're well-read, James, unlike many of your neighbors, so I find that very hard to believe."
After he explained his education, she nodded. "I planned to become a nun," she added quietly.
James laughed at that, but he sobered when he read serious indignation on her face. In his wildest dreams, he couldn't imagine her locked away from the world living in quiet contemplation and prayer. One thing he knew about Beth was that she was a passionate woman, and he doubted she would have been able to hide that, to bury it deeply enough to live her life in complete denial of who she was. That thought made him remember what her mother had said about Beth's attempts to deny her heritage, but he was equally certain that Beth was not at all like her mother.
"You could never have been a nun," he assured her. Her curiosity about seemingly everything would have guaranteed that if nothing else. James hid the dark thoughts that crept in then, thoughts that sooner or later some man would have seduced her, claimed her, and he would have missed his chance to know her.
James did not like admitting that.
"I very nearly was," she whispered, and as he caught a kind of pain in her eyes, he wondered if she regretted that she had not seen it through and taken vows. He had watched her in church on those Sundays his mother had forced him to attend, watched as she sat in the Cameron pew, stiffly erect and eyes locked on the priest. She had appeared bored, almost contemptuous, and had failed to rise or kneel when the liturgy commanded it. It had been another of those signals for their neighbors to believe she was a heathen or worse. As he looked deeper into her eyes, he realized there was a tinge of something else there, something old and weary, and beneath that there was yet another layer that looked a little like fear.
"Beth?"
She blinked rapidly but said only, "I don't wish to talk of that."
"Tell me about your childhood, then," he suggested, hoped it was happier than whatever had prevented her pledging herself to her church.
"I was indulged, and I was happy."
He eyed her, noticed the shadows were still there. While he didn't doubt she had grown up privileged, he did question the happy part. "Indulged how?"
Her hand rose, and its palm fitted to his cheek. "I was a member of the royal family," she primly reminded him.
"Alright," he said, willing to let her evade that one, "what is your happiest memory of your childhood?"
Beth's head tilted, and he watched her think. "The summer I was ten."
He waited for her to elaborate, but she didn't. Instead, her hand began to move against his skin. He considered letting that particular gambit go, considered allowing her to encourage more physical activities rather than continued conversation, but he was curious, especially since this was the first time she had appeared willing to talk about herself and her past. There were many things he didn't know about her, and he wondered if this might not provide a key to the discovering who, exactly, this contrary, enigmatic woman truly was. "Why then?" he asked softly.
Her smile turned inward. "Ghislaine and I spent that summer with our father."
"The admiral?"
She nodded. "Only that summer, he was not in your majesty's navy. He was a merchant ship's captain, and we sailed with him."
He knew sailors were often superstitious about women on board vessels, so he wondered that her father had allowed two young girls to spend their time with him at sea. He'd taken a few voyages of his own, mostly with his father to Antigua until his father had finally divested himself of many of his holdings there. It had not struck him as a particularly interesting life, even when he was a boy, so he wondered why it was such a happy memory for her.
When Beth laughed, he frowned. "It was the first time I tasted the kind of freedom most women never experience," she told him. His frown deepened. "My sister will be able to live outside society's expectations if she so chooses, but I must live within them. That summer, I dressed like a boy and learned to be a sailor."
She laughed again, probably because James suspected his expression was likely far more comical than his thoughts. He imagined her as she was now, only without the habit's skirt. He'd had a good look at how those trousers of hers hugged her waist and stretched across her tight backside. He'd spent a goodly number of hours imagining that backside—mostly without the trousers—but he admitted that while he wouldn't mind her wearing them in private if only for a kind of propriety's sake, he far preferred her without them.
"What did you learn?" he asked, tearing his thoughts from her bottom.
"My father's crew taught us all the things boys our age would learn to do on a ship," she told him, and since he knew little to nothing about how ships worked, he let that pass, "but mostly I learned a very colorful vocabulary."
His brows shot up. He thought he blushed as she leaned forward and quietly recited a series of obscene words and phrases in a husky voice that did things to him. When Beth leaned back, it was obvious she understood exactly what they had done to him. He was about to lean into her, but she locked her arm and held him at bay. "And what of you?"
He grasped her around the waist and rolled so that she lay on her back and he leaned over her. "I learned to farm," he said, "and it's about as dull as it sounds."
"On the contrary," she disagreed. "I'm fascinated by—"
Unwilling at that particular moment to discover what about agriculture fascinated her, James covered her mouth with his and made a concerted effort to distract her from further discussion. When her hands at last began to undo the ties on his shirt, he lifted his mouth just enough to say, "I could care less."
Her hands stilled, and she countered with, "In that case, perhaps I should return to Hart's Crossing and not bore you further."
A growl of frustration escaped him.
Another laugh escaped her. One set of her fingers dipped inside the opening of his linen shirt. Her hand flattened, fingers spread on his heated skin, and he watched her face.
"You do not bore me, Anna-Elizabeth," he assured her, "but I can think of far more interesting things to discuss than rice or indigo cultivation."
Beth's hand moved over his skin. He was very aware of her light touch, of the smooth softness of her hand. "What subject do you wish to discuss?" she asked quietly.
Since he was no longer interested in conversation, he dipped his head, took her mouth. He tasted her slowly, and when her lips parted, he tasted her more deeply. The hand inside his shirt moved, stroked up to his shoulder and curved over it beneath his shirt's fabric. Her other hand ran up the other side of his chest to curve around his neck and hold his mouth to hers—not that he needed holding. He intended to get closer to her rather than retreat.
Only then did it occur to him that he would have to move away from her long enough to shed his clothes and divest her of her own.
Perhaps the same had occurred to Beth, for she shifted her hands again and slipped them from beneath his shirt to his waist where she grasped his shirt's linen, tugged it free of his breeches. He moved his arms so she could draw it over his head. When she had done so, she flung it, but James didn't bother to notice where. He was too intent on the buttons of her habit's waistcoat, figured he'd save time by removing it and her jacket together. She kissed her way along his jaw, and James moved his head to accommodate her.
For a heartbeat or two, he considered the probability that they might be discovered, but he'd never brought Will here when they were children, and he doubted Katy was even aware of the spot. The slaves were unlikely to disturb them, so he pushed those thoughts away, concentrated on Beth and on revealing each inch of skin, each curve of her body, and on kissing his way slowly across the parts of her he exposed. Since she wore far more clothes than he, he didn't waste time, made as short a work as he could at dispensing with her garments.
It finally occurred to him that neither of them could return to their homes with grass stains on their clothes and not have to answer questions neither could afford to face. It also occurred to him that he would have to lay her directly on the grass to avoid that, and he decided the next time he met her in such a place, the least he could do was provide something with which he could cover the ground on which he intended to lie with her.
As Beth often seemed to know his thoughts, he wasn't very surprised when they finished undressing and she told him, "I don't mind, and we can't let the grass—or anything else—leave stains." Beth pulled him down to her, kissed him with the heat she'd withheld when he first kissed her earlier, and James met it. Then he decided that he would drive her as mad as she had driven him. As he began to explore her body, he did so as slowly as possible. He smiled against her breast as she tried to incite him to explore faster.
James resisted, continued his slow exploration of her body. He stroked her skin, molded his hand to her curves, tasted her. He discovered that a stroke of his thumb over her nipple could make her whimper, that suckling at the same now-pert nipple could cause her to moan softly. His teeth could make her arch, groan. His fingers teasing between her thighs could make her body undulate and incoherent sounds escape her.
Not that Beth's hands and mouth remained idle. She kissed what she could, stroked and fondled what she could reach of his longer body as well, and James nearly had to release her to prevent her hand from providing a release he intended for when he was buried inside her.
When he finally positioned himself and joined his body to hers, he held his weight off her with his elbows as he flexed muscle, moved deeply inside her with an excruciating slowness that nearly killed him even as it had her eyes unfocused, half-closed, and her breathing coming in uneven gasps. She moved with him, thank God, and James caught her mouth, mimicked the movement of his body with his tongue against hers, and appreciated how she followed him. When she tried to quicken the pace, he maintained his own rhythm, watched her as she moved to meet him. He slowly increased the speed with which he moved inside her, and as she arched into him again, he fought the desire to pound into her.
James liked the fact that his slow pace frustrated her, liked that she began to plead with him to move harder, faster. Even though he sympathized, he liked watching her fight to make him do as she willed even as he denied her what she asked for.
The point came, though, where he needed to move faster, harder, and he did so. When her breathing became rapid and her body pulsed around him as she dug her fingers into his shoulders and cried out, he pushed on to his own completion.
He smiled against her throat, pressed kisses against her soft skin. Beth breathed deeply in and then let it sigh out. Her hands roamed his back, and her mouth nibbled under his jaw. Her body arched, stretched beneath his once more. James liked the slide of her skin against his. He pressed another kiss against her lips.
It kept him from saying something he should never say to her, something he couldn't quite bring himself to admit aloud.
As her arms held him, James did admit how much he liked the way her body pressed against his. When Beth's eyes slowly opened, he spread his fingertips on her cheek. "You are so beautiful," he told her.
A flush spread over her skin. "I'm not, James," she whispered.
Running a finger over her cheekbone and down to trace along her jaw, he then drew it over her lower lip. "Yes, Beth, you are."
She shook her head, and though her lips tipped up at the corners, something wasn't right with her smile. He wondered if she felt guilty about what they did or if it was something else, something related to the shadows he'd seen as she spoke of her childhood.
"I'm not at all what you believe me to be."
The words were so softly voiced he barely heard them. His thumb traced her cheekbone once more to a spot just in front of her left ear. "Does it really matter?"
"Yes," she breathed softly. "It matters, James. It matters because one day we will likely be discovered, and when that happens, then I cannot bear it if you are harmed."
The temptation was to tell her that it didn't matter, that he would be fine, but he could tell she didn't believe that was the case. James knew he couldn't honestly reassure her. He did, though, note that she seemed worried about him just as he worried about her, something he confessed he liked. "I am more than capable of taking care of myself," he assured her. He remained certain Will would attempt to take his anger out on Beth, and he opened his mouth to warn her.
She cradled his cheeks, pulled his mouth to hers and kissed him. James didn't think he imagined her body was part of her kiss. This time she drove him, urged his body on, and it wasn't slow and it wasn't gentle. He worried again he might have hurt her, but when he opened his mouth to ask her, she smiled sleepily at him, and he found himself reluctant to spoil what appeared to be her fairly happy mood.
He rolled to his side, held her to him and asked, "If I had been able to go to Europe with Will, if I had met you there, would I have been able to court you?"
A puzzled expression crossed her face, and though he had heard the story from Will, he had never completely believed that his friend had met a royal princess in a gallery and swept her off her feet. Her expression cleared, and a smile replaced it. "You would have had to court my uncle, the King."
"I wouldn't have wanted marry your uncle," he told her.
"Uncle Alexandre would have been the one who granted you permission to court me," she told him, and James noted her substitution of the word court for his marry.
"How does one court a king?"
Her smile was mischievous. "First, you establish the obscene wealth you rice planters all seem to have—because money matters to a king. Second, you woo him with what you might do for him—especially if it involves all that lovely money. Third, you would have to promise to treat me well—because, after all, Uncle Alexandre loves me. Fourth, you would have to agree with him in all things—because he is the King and by definition always right."
James stopped her there with a kiss. "And if I had done all those things?"
Her face was solemn. "That presumes you would have even met me and that Uncle Alexandre would have granted you an audience."
"I can be persuasive," he told her, ran a hand over her body and watched her eyes darken.
"That kind of persuasion would not have worked on my uncle," she told him with a moan as his fingers stroked one of the more sensitive spots on her body.
"Works on you," he whispered before he kissed her.
She smiled again. "But I am a weak woman, and he's a king."
"I don't think you're at all weak." Except when it comes to refusing to leave Will, he added silently.
Beth must have read something in his face, for her expression shifted, and hurt crept into her eyes. "Will only managed it through subterfuge," she confessed. "He bribed someone to learn where I would be and when, which I don't understand since I had no set schedule at the time."
So Will had planned to seduce her, James thought, and from the look of her, she was unhappy about that.
"He was actually interested in my sister, Ghislaine," she confessed, and a blush stole over her. "He settled for the one of us he could get."
"Did he have to court your uncle?" James asked, and his voice betrayed the anger he felt, though he hadn't recognized it was there until he voiced that question.
"No," she confessed. "He merely had to charm me and then my mother."
Having met the Princess Falken, he suspected it hadn't been difficult at all for Will to convince the woman to let Beth marry him. Will had a great deal of charisma, was favored by many women for that easy charm of his. James had his share, but it didn't come quite as easily to him as it did to his friend.
Beth's hands stroked over his back and around to his chest. "You would have managed," she told him. "I feel certain Uncle Alexandre would like you every bit as much as I do." She smiled. "I would have made sure he knew my preferences, and just as he did with Will, I'm certain he would have let you have me."
James frowned. "I thought you said Will didn't meet him?"
"He didn't, but he did meet Maldon, who told Alexandre about him." She stopped there, chewed her lower lip a moment. "Uncle Alexandre asked me if I loved Will," she continued, and her eyes held James's, "and I told him I did not. I told him I wanted to marry Will because I wanted to escape the rumors and lies. That was true, James, and I'm not sorry I followed Will to South Carolina."
It was telling to James that she didn't say she was not sorry she married his friend, but James neither pointed that out nor commented on it. He wondered how living as a neglected wife, one whose husband sometimes beat her, could possibly be better than enduring rumors and lies, and he wondered what the nature of those rumors and lies were. There were the ones about her mother, which he perfectly understood, but about the others, he could only speculate.
It appeared, though, that Beth no longer wished to discuss that since she moved her body against his and reached up to kiss him. "I must return to Hart's Crossing," she told him softly.
Since he, too, needed to return to his own home, he reluctantly helped her to her feet and dressed once more. He played lady's maid, assisted Beth with her habit before he lifted her into her saddle, mounted Ares, and led her out of the copse. James kissed her and then sent her ahead of him with a promise to meet her again the following week.
-X-
For the rest of the summer, they met at irregular intervals in several places James doubted they would be traced to, including the cabin on Smallwood's farm once or twice. He chose not to think too much about what they did, chose not to dwell on the discomfort and unease he felt when he did think about it. He also chose not to think about the adultery they committed because it angered him that the only way to free her from Will was to take her away, and James could no more leave South Carolina than he could publicly proclaim his affair with his best friend's wife.
Both would kill him.
It also didn't help that in May the British had reached the gates of Charles Town, having driven north from Savannah. They had turned back, though, when General Augustine Prevost had feared the rebel militia was on its way. James supposed it might have been, but he doubted the rabble that would have arrived to stand up to Prevost would have been able to defeat the general's well-trained troops. It did mean, though, that the British truly were looking at South Carolina, and it meant that very soon James might have to make a choice he'd rather avoid.
Rumors swirled that Governor John Rutledge had offered to surrender Charles Town to Prevost on the condition that the citizens of South Carolina would be allowed to spend the rest of the war as neutral parties. Some of the planters with whom James had discussed it believed that Rutledge had been stalling for time so that the rebels could arrive and rout Prevost, but others believed the man had made a serious offer. For James, such an agreement might have made his position easier, would certainly have permitted him to not have to choose between South Carolina and the King while allowing him to protect his land and his people. On the other hand, if it were to come to war in South Carolina, he would have to side with the King, and what would happen after that only God knew.
James knew, though, that it would not be just rebels on the other side of the battle but his friends and neighbors, and he wondered if he would be able to do his duty while looking at men with whom he shared a personal history, some of whom he was related to through intermarriage among the planters. He thought, too, of that late night discussion with his mother about honor and glory, about their difference of opinion on what they meant, and he considered carefully what the true costs would be if he chose the King and if the rebels won the war.