A Scandal to Remember (38 page)

Her fingers found their way to his nape, and then up, raking through his hair, petting him, and encouraging him without words, with only the evocative language of her lush body.

Lust overtook him then—dark and fierce and unstoppable. He pushed himself deeper within her, losing himself to the pull of her exquisite flesh, and the sinuous rhythm of her body as she began to move beneath him.

Her name became a chant in his head—Jane, Jane, Jane—filling his ears with a roar, and pushing him on when she arched beneath him. Dance drove himself on the rhythm, pulsing within her, until he lost himself to the hot slippery friction of her body beneath him, and his release washed through him and pulled him under.

*   *   *

Jane took to living on the island even more fully than even she might have wished—and she had wished and prayed a very great deal through all the hours that she had written and prepared and arranged. Yet not even she could have planned the joy she felt at the start of each new day, or the perfect suitability of their island to her purposes.

It was something of a trial that she could not always share her happiness with Dance, who fretted about how to repair the boat without tools, and worried about his crew and his ship and his future, and climbed the hill to make a signal fire and scan the endlessly gray horizon. She could only kiss the scowl from his brow and immerse herself in the joy of her work.

She set up a schedule that followed the tides so that she could make as thorough a survey of the reef as possible, but without the pinnace, a full circle of the islands clustered on the ring of reef was not possible.

But still, as she had told Dance that first day, there were shells aplenty to keep her busy from each yellow-tinged dawn through the slightly less gray, warming days to each purple sunset.

This morning the sun shone bright enough for her to spot a dark pink, scrolled cone shell of a sort she had never seen before, but she felt sure to be an undiscovered species of the genus
Textilia.
She was hurrying back to their little camp so she might get to mixing the colors before the shell might begin to fade out of the water, when Dance came striding along the sand from the other direction with that near permanent scowl etching an even deeper line into his brow than usual.

“What is wrong?” she asked immediately. He had been up to his lookout position on the hill, and might have sighted a ship far out to sea that she couldn’t see.

But his mind was on something entirely different from potentially passing ships. “Good God. What are you wearing?”

Jane looked down at herself clad in little more than her chemise, and a canvas apron. With the sun peeking through the curtain of cloud, the day had proved too hot for the wool of her only gown. “My collecting apron. I devised it to protect my clothing when I’m out collecting. The seawater tends to be rather harsh on clothes, as you have no doubt noticed.”

But he did not take notice. He bent one of his stony looks on her. “You’re practically … I mean, I can see your bare legs.”

It was something of a pleasure to nettle him so. Jane made her voice as bland and easy as the breeze. “Can you? Oh, good Lord. Yes, there my legs are, at the end of my feet.”

“Jane.” His voice held a note of warning she blithely ignored.

“Why, Captain, I had no idea you were such a puritan.”

“Jane.” His eyes grew a stormier green.

“You will recall we’ve lost all our other clothing.” She decided upon an instructional tone. “And we are quite, quite alone. And if any of the natives do come along, chances are that they will be quite naked, so all in all, I’m feeling quite sanguine about my sartorial choices.”

“Sanguine,” he repeated before he closed his eyes, as if the very sight of her pained him. And she was sure it did. She had endeavored to make it so. “How can you have no idea what you do to me? How can a woman so learned and so clever have absolutely no clue that the sight of her rather magnificent bosom pressed so innocently against the plain cotton of her chemise leaves me eaten up with lust and longing for her?”

“Dance.” He was teasing her, even as he sounded so put out.

“No. You’ve left off your stays, and a moment ago, when you turned to face the wind to push your hair out of your eyes, your rosy pink nipples peaked into visible buds against the fabric of that chemise.”

She had no resistance when he looked at her like that. As if nothing mattered to him but her. As if he could see into the needy selfish depths of her soul, and wanted her anyway. “I know.”

“You know?”

Jane all but stopped breathing. There was heat and even pain that became pleasure in her chest where his words rumbled down inside her. “Yes.” The word sounded breathless and sure and frightened all at the same time, but he slowly began to smile, and she had nothing left of fright, only sureness and want. “I know.”

He took her hand, and without another word led her back along the sand line of the beach to their camp, and carefully placed her beautiful shell—which was one day in the near future going to be christened
Textilia fenmora
after the expedition’s patron, or even perhaps, if she dared,
Textilia burkesana
—in her specimen bucket.

And then he loosed the ties of her apron, and set that carefully aside, just as he did her chemise, until she was well and thoroughly naked. And then he made love to her with his hands and his mouth and his tongue and his body, until she could think no more of shells, or patrons, or tomorrow, and could only think from each heady moment to the next. And wait for the bliss that was his gift to her to explode within, and leave her sated, and thinking about how next she might seduce him.

For the first time in as long as he could remember, Dance felt himself begin to relax. Jane had already awoken, and had quietly eased herself off his chest and away before he was sufficiently alert enough to hold her back. So he did what he had never done—never in all his years of being in the navy, not even before that, as far back as he could remember—he lazed about his pallet bed in the soft morning air.

In a little while he would begin his day with his usual walk up to the top of the promontory at the north end of the small island to check the horizon for ships. If he had been left to his own choices, he would have made their camp there so that the moment a ship was sighted he could light the signal fire without having to leave her, and sprint up the hill.

But Jane had been right—the promontory was the most exposed place on the island, and it was far more comfortable and convenient and practical for them to camp nearer the drinking water and fruit trees down the side of the hill. And the walk gave him something to do.

But on a day like today, when the sun was strong enough to shine through the strange atmospheric gloom, he gave himself the pleasure of watching Jane instead. She had taken to their primitive life as if she were born to it—as if she had spent years happily cracking coconuts open on sharp rocks and wearing next to nothing. When the sun shone down, and made her hair and skin golden and glowing, it was hard for him to remember her as that buttoned-up lady scientist of Portsmouth harbor.

But lady scientist she was, now more than ever. And when she took up her pails and her nets and set off up the beach for the most accessible part of the reef, Dance shook off his lethargy and set himself to his chores, collecting water, and gathering fruit and firewood before he went up the hill.

This was his job—this was what he spent nearly every minute that he was with her in the comfortable camp thinking about—looking for ships. And looking for signs of
Tenacious
’s boats.

They had to have come somewhere near. They had to have been subject to the same forces of wind and current as he. Doc Whitely ought to have been as aware as he of their position at the time of the storm, and the location of the nearest land. The Pitcairn Islands had been on Royal Navy charts for nearly thirty years. They had had only an hour’s advantage on Dance and Jane, if at all.

They must be nearby.

Unless they had been rescued by a ship—the southern ocean off the northwest coast of South America was winter whaling grounds for Yankee whalers. It was more than conceivable that the small flotilla of
Tenacious
’s boats—if they had stayed together—might have been visible to the eyes of a larger ship in a way that their small pinnace might not. And certainly any whaler, with its churning stacks sending inky plumes of smoke high into the sky, would have drawn the boats’ attention.

Dance shaded his eyes against the sudden glare as a few fitful rays of light broke through the gray to dapple the lagoon, and surveyed the horizon one more time, searching, always searching. He had to employ the trick he had learned long ago as a midshipman of not looking for anything but water, so the moment there was anything different out there on the horizon, his eye would pick it up.

But he was no topman. Picking a ship out of a thousand miles of water had never been his strong suit. Just what his strong suit was, was moot these days. And with every day that went by, it seemed to matter less and less.

With every day, he grew more accustomed to the idea that they might never leave.

He turned full circle, surveying the horizon in all directions, when a movement on the beach below caught his eye—Jane walking barefoot along the sandy ridge of beach at the outer edge of the reef. Her long blond hair was blowing out of her braid, and the wind was pressing her sun-bleached chemise against her legs, and making the ragged hems flutter in the breeze.

She carried one of her canvas buckets, and a long thin pole, suitable for poking and prodding snails and other creatures. She was on with the business of her day—collecting—wearing only her chemise and that strangely erotic canvas apron that made her look like she was naked beneath it.

And then she was naked. Because she was peeling the apron and chemise off, and leaving them in a neat, organized little stack on the sand, and wading deeper and deeper into the lagoon. Entirely and thoroughly naked.

Dance’s feet, which appeared to be far more instinctively intelligent than the rest of his body, were carrying him down the path before he had even properly formed an excuse for going to her. But here he was, rushing down a hillside as if that canvas apron were on fire. He rather thought it was he who was on fire.

He broke out onto the beach near their camp just as she disappeared under the surface. An instinct he could not stop, and could not direct to better use, had him speeding to a run, splashing his way down the curved line of the beach onto the reef, and across the ankle-deep water.

“Jane!”

She surfaced a dozen yards from him with a gasp and a smile as wide as the lagoon. “Dance. It’s all right. The water doesn’t bother me at all like I thought it would. Because I’ve located those
Tridacna gigas
I saw that first day—bivalves the size of a breadbasket. Four of them. Come see.”

What he saw was the neat pile of her clothes on the rock outcropping. And what he saw through the clear blue water was not a bivalve clam, but the unmistakable outline of her naked body, the pink crests of her breasts, and the darker whorl of dark blond hair at the apex of her thighs.

His eyes had not deceived him. “You really are completely naked, aren’t you?”

She stared at him for a long moment, her body moving to and fro as she treaded water, before she answered. “Not completely. I am wearing a knife.”

Lust, pure, clean, and unadulterated by anything like gentlemanly manners or caution, sliced through him as if she had cut away his clothes with that knife. Every fiber and sinew in his body came alive with awareness. Awareness of her golden body dappled in the fitful sunlight, her arms and hair glinting and glistening in the sun. Awareness of his own body, his chest expanding with something more heady than air, and his cock swelling in arousal.

“Jane.” He could hear the strain in his voice as he waded in until the water came up to his calves. “I want to see you.”

It took her only a moment to answer. “Then I want to see you.” She looked up at him, those wide, forthright blue eyes shining at him. “All of you.”

Dance backed himself out of the water until he was completely on the beach, and began to take off his clothes. He went slowly, methodically, giving her time to say something, or protest, or swim away.

But she didn’t. She watched him undoing each and every button at the neck of his shirt before he drew it slowly over his head. And folded it neatly and placed it next to hers. He heeled off his worn-down boots, stooping to pull the heavy leather off his feet, all the while watching her, making sure she felt the brush of his gaze against her wet skin.

Making her part her lips, her delicate nostrils flare, and her skin pebble up in anticipation.

He moved his hands even more slowly to unbutton the flap on his breeches. He shucked the breeches and small clothes in one fluid motion. And he was naked before her. Tall, erect, and proud, not hiding.

She swam forward slowly, stroking the water in a languid, deliberate fashion without ever once taking her eyes from his, until she was only fifteen feet away from him. And then she stood. And the water lapped against the very peaks of her breasts.

Dance dove into the water, letting the cool liquid slide of the lagoon wash over his skin. He surfaced within reach of her, but didn’t touch her. Jane had turned toward him, her hair trailing out like kelp.

He swam out farther, circling around her, so he could dive down below the surface and see the weightless liquid grace of her body underwater. The pale slide of her long limbs, the dark slash of the belt holding her collecting knife, slung from one shoulder and across her chest. The suspended sway of her long blond hair, the erotic contrast of the darker curls at the apex of her thighs.

He surfaced next to her, and a bead of water at the corner of her mouth drew him in. He took her in his arms and kissed her, the cool of the lagoon contrasting with the surprising heat of her mouth, and making him think of other surprising, heated places on her body that he wanted to explore and discover.