nearly eight feet long and almost as wide. A basket beside this impromptu mattress contained two bottles of fine wine and a cooked chicken. Belinda lay down, smiling in anticipation. He must have sneaked these things in during the afternoon, but it could have been no easy task. How he had managed to do it without being detected was beyond her. What a change this man was from the limp clots she met at Whitehall. When it came to the more practical side of an affair, their ingenuity stopped before it began. Unless it were simply a case of sneaking into an empty bedroom and locking the door, she had to make all the arrangements herself.
She lay waiting for John to appear, wondering what was keeping him. It was a bit eerie, laying there in the flickering half-light, listening to the dancing feet overhead and watching the silhouette of the passing crowd reflected against the bunting.
As she thought of the Captains long, hard body, his strong hands and huge, heavy rod, she felt the moisture of desire begin to collect between her thighs. She remembered the feel of that great organ in her mouth and hands, and her breath quickened as she thought of the joys to be had from that source. She wanted it deep in her body, stretching her, hurting her, driving her mad with passion. Damn! Why didn't he hurry.
It is one thing for a tiny woman to slip quickly and unnoticed under a platform five and a half feet from the ground. It is quite another for the same feat to be accomplished by a man a foot taller than that. What Belinda didn't know was that John, himself, had not been under the platform at all. He had hired three urchins to furnish his bridal suite on his instructions, and had only peeked inside to see that all had been properly prepared.
He stood now, trying to figure out the best way to navigate. There were a lot more people around then he had expected, and after a couple of abortive attempts at subtlety, he decided that he must either stand there all night or simply pull up the stuff and crawl under. This he did, but one long leg caught in the bunting and he was catapulted full length onto the ground, cursing and swearing. It was hardly the entrance he had planned.
“God be damned to all the seven hells! My boot's caught in this whoreson cloth.”
Belinda slipped across to where he was lying and quickly unwound his foot, setting him free. She was laughing so hard that she almost fell over herself.
“That's better. God damn it.” John sat up and looked around. His scowl changed to a delighted, boyish grin. “I see the lads did well. Not exactly palatial, but we've got all the comforts.”
He crawled over to the broad couch, Belinda behind him, still giggling. He lay down and pulled her down beside him.
“Laugh, you little baggage. Is it my fault that God cursed me with such lengthy limbs? We'll see how you laugh when you feel the length of something else.”
He pulled her closer and his mouth, hot, demanding, came down hard on hers. Belinda felt her passion quickly returning as Forthering's tongue pushed deep into her mouth. She sucked it hungrily. His hands moved over her, kneading her flesh through the silk of her clothes. She reached down and felt the hard, throbbing bulge in his trousers and with a hand shaking from desire, she pulled at the lacing in his pants. The pulsing organ burst out like a wild beast just freed from a cage and she closed her fingers around it. God, how she wanted him!
John rolled away. He knew that it would take very little playing before those soft fingers pumped the hot juice out of his loins and that was not what he had in mind. When he spent his seed it would be high up that tight, wet cunt, known to his fingers, but not, as yet, penetrated by his burning cock.
“Lindy, take those damn clothes off. I want you against me-all of you.”
Belinda stood up quickly, reluctant to leave that thrusting organ and anxious, so very anxious, to get back to it. She pulled her garments from her, watching as John struggled out of his clothes. It was difficult for him in the confined space, and his haste made him even more awkward. By the time he had everything off and turned back to his “bed” Belinda was laying upon it, naked, her arms and legs spread wide in abandon.
He knelt beside her, his mast proud and erect.
His hand cupped the full breast and his mouth was drawn down to the blushing nipple like a moth to a candle flame. She arched her back high as he suckled her, alternating from one breast to the other until both nipples were stiff and pointed. She tried to reach his penis with her hand, but he kept well out of her way. Event he feel of her fingers teasing and stroking the skin on his back sent spasms through his body. He pulled her onto her side and drew her left leg up over his hip. He could wait no longer. There would be plenty of time later to do all the other things he wanted, but he must have her now.
Although she was ready for him, her vagina went and slippery with the lubrication of her need, Belinda groaned as he forced his way into her. The great nob pushed into her sheath, and she arched against him as he thrust forward, driving deep into her burning belly. She could feel him ramming against her cervix, and she ground her nails into his buttocks, pulling him even closer to her. It was so good. God, it was so good!
“Fill me. Oh, John, fill me with your cream.” She bucked frantically, her body pressing forward to meet each pounding stroke. Faster and faster they worked, as John felt the hot tidal wave rise higher and higher. Belinda's head went back and a sound, half scream, half moan, escaped from her throat as her body jerked and stiffened in the ecstasy of climax. Still John pounded into her, holding her tight by the hips. Higher and higher the great wave rose, till, at last, it burst in a mountain of foam on the welcoming shore of her soaking hole.
It was nearly dawn when they crawled out of their hiding place. It had been a night of almost uninterrupted love. Once in a while they had lain, exhausted for the moment, and listened to the revelry around them. It was like being invisible and they laughed together at the thought of someone peeking down through the floor boards at them. At times the dancers made such a pounding that John prayed that the platform had been built strong. It would be a hell of a way to die, flattened by two hundred silly, drunken courtiers.
Somehow, they managed the ride back to the inn and sneaked in to their respective chambers undetected.
Undetected? Well, we won't count Robert, grinning at them behind his closed door as they crept, not so quietly as they thought, along the corridor. After all, had he not just seen his own lady friend along this same corridor, sneaking back to husband or father or wherever she had come from? It had been a hard night all around. But a good one.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Several months had passed and it was now the late autumn of 1586. Once again Robert Finch was at Hollyburn, but this time it was not to rest. He had left Belinda at Whitehall and had come down himself, ostensibly, on private business. Actually, it was secret, not public, business that had brought him to Essex.
For many years, Chelmsford and the surrounding Essex countryside had been the stronghold of English witches. Reginald Scott's famous attack on the belief in witches had been published two years earlier, and there were many in England who agreed with him. Even the law was not too concerned with these creatures, unless actual murder or destruction of livestock could be proven. Certainly the brilliant and shrewd Walsingham had no interest in such things. However, it was to attend an assembly, or Sabbath, of these mysterious beings that Robert had been sent to Essex.
The particular coven in which his employers were interested had already been infiltrated, and their proceedings reported. It was not the mystic rites, odious as they were, that brought the attention of the mighty, but the almost certainty that these things were, indeed, no more than a cover for the hiding of foreign priests. These servants of the Pope were far more dangerous than any servant of the devil in less human shape.
Sir David's contact was a local man, and it was because Robert was also local that they felt there would be no difficulty in introducing him. Since only the female novice was subjected to initiation, there was no danger of Robert being put through that indignity. There was to be an initiation, though, this being the main reason for holding the Sabbath, and Robert hoped that the orgies following the ceremony would enable him to do some scouting. If the priests were indeed being hidden, they must be hidden somewhere, and as the rites were held hard by an old, ruined manor, it was thought that the hiding place might logically be there, perhaps in the old cellars that lay beneath the crumbling building.
Robert leaned against a tree and took out his watch. He had been waiting patiently in a small grove of trees near the entrance to the drive at Hollyburn, but he was becoming restless. His man was late. The bright moonlight made it a simple thing to read the raised numerals, and Robert smiled to himself as he closed the case. The
