The General’s Wife: An American Revolutionary Tale (9 page)

“Thank you, Mr. Bridgers.”

He made a slight bow and went out the door.

Clara sat on the bed waiting, surveying the room once again. Then she spied the chamber pot. Mr. Bridgers had said she was in a fever for two days. She must have had to relieve herself during that time, but had absolutely no recollection of how that might have been accomplished. She stared at the commode in wonder.

Mr. Bridgers returned carrying two buckets of water. He stood in the doorway for a moment, watching her. She looked at him, distressed.

“I helped you, my lady.”

The distress turned to horror.

“As, I am sure,” he said gently, putting down the pails of water, “you would have done for a very ill friend.” He exited out the door again, returning with an empty laundry bucket.

Relief now crept through Clara. He was right, of course. “I’m sorry, Mr. Bridgers,” she said. “I’m afraid I’m still in shock over all that has happened.” She watched him pour boiling water from the kettle and cold water from a pail into the large wooden basin he had placed in front of the fire. He set a sponge, a small cake of soap, and a clean dry towel on the kitchen table.

“I’ll be outside, my lady. Please let me know when you are finished.” He closed the door behind him.

Clara got up from the bed and stripped off her shift. She was humbled by Mr. Bridgers’s concern for her modesty and moved by his caring for her. And not only for her. He had been quite upset about what had happened to the girl in the brothel.

As she washed, Clara was reminded of another time when she had had to wash blood from her body: the night of the Millington ball when the general had taken her virginity in the garden. That night when he had danced with her and then suggested they take a walk, she had considered herself not in love, of course, but smitten perhaps. By the end of the night she knew precisely what he was. He was a cruel man and their marriage was a sham. She was only the means by which he would obtain an heir. She did not want to go back to the man. Perhaps Paul could get his ransom and then help her escape home to England.

Paul.
For the first time, she had thought of him as “Paul” and not as “Mr. Bridgers”.
Paul.
She loved spending time with him, would love to call him by his first name, hoped that they would have such intimacy. She laughed softly to herself. He had already seen her practically naked with just her shift, and had helped her piddle. How much more intimacy could there be?

The kind that she had dreamed of just that morning. She always got a funny, glowing feeling inside her when she saw him during her trips to town. In fact, she could say she hoped to see him so she would get that feeling. It was quite pleasant. And she never felt it with her husband. She only felt it with Paul.

She smiled as she dried herself, then padded over to her traveling box to see what Annabella had packed for her to wear.

* * * * *

Even as he snatched a glimpse through the window, Paul knew he shouldn’t look. He had seen women in various states of undress every day for the last several years and had never felt the compulsion to look at any of them. But Clara was different. She was beautiful and … something else. It was a mixture of endearing innocence and unconscious sensuality, and it drove him to madness. The last couple of days, seeing her in nothing but a sheer piece of cotton, having her need him, having to touch her in response to that need, had sent him out of doors to frig himself several times. He didn’t know how long he could sustain the fiction that she was nothing more to him than a pawn in a game with her husband.

He had never put curtains in the kitchen building. There was no reason to, and the light inside was much better without them. He struggled not to peer through the tiny panes. He busied himself with everyday tasks. There was wood to be brought from the shed and fresh water to be pumped.

“Mr. Bridgers?”

Her voice calling to him from a crack in the door woke him as if from a dream. He went inside the kitchen immediately.

“Yes, my lady?”

She stood near the fire almost entirely dressed except for the lack of a bodice. Instead, her stays hung loose over her clean shift. Her hair was brushed and fell in soft honey-brown waves down her back.

“I need help with my stays,” she said demurely. “I can’t lace them myself.”

She cast him a chaste pleading look that sent a flutter from his stomach straight to his groin. “Yes, of course,” he said. She turned back around when he approached, drawing her hair to one side.
This is impossible. I have to tell her.
He pulled the laces taut and tied the ends in a bow.

“Thank you,” she said, her back still to him. “Now can you hand me my Brunswick on the chair there?”

Paul picked up the exquisitely made silk jacket and reached around to hold it out to her. His arm brushed her shoulder. The flutter in his groin flared with heat.

“I want to thank you so much for everything you have done for me while I was ill,” she said as she worked on the buttons. “I am so grateful. I don’t know what would have happened if I had lost my child in my husband’s house. I fear he would have done something horrible to me.”

He stood frozen, saying nothing.

She turned around to face him. “Paul?”

They were so close, practically nose-to-nose, he could see the concern in her eyes. “Clara, I can’t do this anymore—” He stopped. “You called me ‘Paul’.”

She smiled. “And you called me ‘Clara’.” She quickly turned her head and looked down, trying to hide her adorable blush.

He lifted her chin gently until she faced him again. “Don’t look away. You don’t know how beautiful you are at this moment.” He dipped his head and touched his lips to hers.

In a flash, his senses exploded, the world as he knew it crumbled away. For a man who had performed or witnessed every erotic act the human body was capable of, this simple kiss was unexpectedly, devastatingly sensual. Her lips were the warmest, the most tender, the most luscious lips he had ever touched with his own.

She held back in her innocence, not knowing what to do, and he showed her. He tasted and teased her lips, gradually parting them with his velvety tip to play with hers. She was hesitant, tentative, until instinct overtook modesty. She sucked his tongue into her mouth with a hunger and passion that had lain dormant, merely awaiting the right lover to awaken her.

They finally parted for want of air, panting, still touching.

“Paul,” she said in almost a whisper. “I want to repay you. You’ve done so much for me.” She took his hand and held it to her breast.

He felt weak, his head spun out of control, his cock strained against his trousers. He wanted her desperately. But, she had just lost a child and he knew she would not be ready to accommodate him for several weeks. He held her face in his hands and pressed his forehead to hers. “My lady … Clara … God, you don’t know what you are saying. Please. You are in no condition. You must wait after what you have just been through. Please know I do desire you. By God, I want you. But we have to wait. And for your well-being, I am willing to wait.”

Clara kissed his palm. “There must be something I can do for you?” she said with unaffected naiveté.

He almost fell on his knees before her. “Not just yet. Please. I cannot take pleasure from you without giving it back.” He pulled her into his arms. “You don’t know how long I have wanted you.” He kissed her hair. “Clara, darling. I want this to be right, to be wonderful for both of us.” He drew in a long breath, then held her at arm’s length. “Let’s take this slowly, love. You haven’t had a proper meal for two days. Come.” He led her to the table and sat her down. “I’ll show you how to make a stew.”

* * * * *

Annabella could tell something was preoccupying Redmond. It was probably because he wasn’t telling her the truth of their situation. But he would tell her—of course he would. He had played the part of devoted husband very well the last week.

They lay in bed huddled under the quilt, his strong arm around her shoulders. She nuzzled against his robust chest, letting the soft hair tickle her nose, breathing in the scent of his strength. She glided her hand down, feeling every bump and ridge of his muscled torso, skirting his groin to reach his massive thighs and absently tug on the fine hairs there. He pulled her closer and kissed her, his other arm enveloping her, protecting her from some unknown foe.

“Annabella, love, there’s something I have to tell you.”

“Yes, my sweet.” She threaded her fingers through the hair on his stomach.

“We can’t stay here.”

She sighed into him. “I had figured that part out. Where are we going to go?”

Redmond inhaled deeply. “I’m going to join the patriots.”

“What?” She raised herself up on her elbows. “No, love, no. Please. You can’t. You’ll be killed.” Her head swirled and ached at the possibility.

His beautiful blue-green eyes gazed at her with remorse. “Sweet, it gets worse. The other man in the coach when we kidnapped you, he’s holding Lady Strathmore hostage—”

She gasped.

“General Strathmore owes this man a thousand quid and he’s demanding the general pay up in return for his wife.” He drew her back down to lie on his thick chest, his heart thumping in her ear. “It’s known she’s with child. That’s the reason why the general will pay.”

Annabella lay silently for a moment, soaking in his warmth, his strength. “What is it that I need to do, Redmond?”

“You need to take the ransom note back to General Strathmore.”

Tears welled in her eyes. He was asking the impossible. Go back to General Strathmore? And his Hessian officers? “Please, love, don’t ask that of me. I would rather join the patriots.”

“And I would rather you were coming with me.”

He kissed her forehead. She looked up at him to see his lashes wet with tears. He had never cried before her. The sharing of such a deep emotion brought her closer to him, forever binding them together.

Annabella sucked in a steadying breath. “I’ll do it, love, for you. But you have to promise you’ll come find me and take me home with you. Wherever that might be.”

“I love you, Annabella.” He hugged her tightly. “I love you with all my soul.”

Chapter Seven

Over the course of a fortnight, Paul grew to know Clara far more intimately than he had thought would ever be possible. Because of her condition, he had tried to go slowly. The first week had been torture, with languid kisses and semi-clothed embraces, Clara asking pointed questions about what his girls did in the brothel. Eventually, the temptation of her young, supple body and her eagerness to explore a new-found enthusiasm for carnal indulgence was just too overwhelming. At nineteen, her form was exquisite. Firm breasts—each a perfect handful, as white as a dove’s wings and tipped by blooming pink buds—swelled gracefully above her taut belly. Her skin was soft, unblemished, lusciously inviting. Initially, he was embarrassed by his bulky shape, his own belly paunched from good living, and the mass of dark hair trailing from his chest to his groin snaking around to cover his butt. But Clara reveled in his body, exploring him as much as, if not more than, he explored her. At night they lay naked, clinging to each other, caressing, kissing, he struggling against unfulfilled needs.

He did what he could for her, helping her discover her body, touching what he allowed himself to touch to release pent-up desires. Clara’s response was astounding. Simply drawing a nipple in his mouth, tantalizing the erect tip, could bring her to climax. His whores had never delighted in their bodies so much. For them the act of love was a display of skill, not so much an enjoyment of pleasure.

The eroticism of their lives lived so closely in the little outbuilding was simply too much. He finally broke down and frigged himself in her presence. Clara watched in amazement as his hand raced, his muscles tensed, and he cried out as jets of warm milky fluid spurted onto his belly. She pleaded with him to show her how to make him come, and at first he refused. But, with pouting looks and cloying words, she persisted, and he relented.

He taught her how to suck him, where he most enjoyed her touch, how to take all of him into her throat. And, after the first time when she choked in surprise and spat out his seed into the chamber pot, he taught her how to swallow.

She was a quick learner.

“That’s right … yes, oh, yes … aahh.”

She knelt before him, naked, gripping his thighs. He brushed back her hair to get a view of her perfect breasts.

“Now inhale and take me in deeper.”

She smoothed her palms along his hips to grab hold of his butt cheeks, then drew his cock in as far as it would go, fluttering her throat around the tip. He groaned as she pulled back, gliding her tongue along the sensitive underside and tantalizing his prepuce. Hers was by far the most luscious oral pleasure he had ever received, and he wished it could last forever.

But she had figured out exactly how to bring him to climax before he was ready.

She increased her pace, sucking him harder, drawing him all the way in then teasing the glans with the tip of her tongue. It was agonizing ecstasy.

He grabbed a fistful of her hair. “Oh, God, Clara … not yet, love … please…”

She giggled, the vibrations taunting him more.

“I’m … not … ready!”

She held onto his hips as he jerked up and came in her mouth. She kept him inside her to swallow every drop.

Paul sighed in exasperation and release. If Lady Clara Strathmore had not been the noble-born wife of a British general, she would have made a great whore.

“Lie with me, love. I think we’ve waited long enough for your pleasure,” he said.

Clara giggled and stretched alongside him, her eyes wide in anticipation.

“I want you this way.” Paul pulled her body to lie diagonally across the mattress. “Now lift your hips.” She did so and he placed a pillow underneath her and gently pressed his palm on her belly. “Relax.” He glided his hands along her thighs, massaging her muscles, then gently pushed her knees open. He settled himself on the mattress, his head between her legs. His finger dallied in her soft brown curls before touching the skin.