The Garden Intrigue

beat, thump by thump. No risk, no reward. No risk, no Augustus. What would happen if she embarked on an affaire with him? There would be storms, she knew, storms and tempests and doubts and broken compasses, but there might be marvels, too.

Emma very slowly lifted her head, gathering all her courage to meet his eyes. “Sail off the edge of the world with me?”

“I’m already there,” he said, and his arms went around her, which was a very good thing, since Emma’s knees didn’t seem to be doing their duty anymore.

She reached up to him, her arms locking around his neck, his hair caught beneath her fingers, his chest pressed against hers, linen to linen, the thin fabric damped with sweat, hardly any barrier at all.

His kiss wasn’t tentative at all, not this time. He kissed her as though he had always meant to kiss her, his body warm and steady against hers, keeping her from falling, keeping her safe. She tasted the lingering tang of coffee on his lips. He felt so solid, much more so than his languid disarray had suggested. Emma spread her hand flat against his back as he bent her backwards, feeling the play of muscles, the broad strength of him. His skin burned through the thin fabric of his shirt—or maybe she was the one burning.

Hands moved, tongues twined, bodies pressed together. Emma felt the writing desk at her back, the edge pressing into her buttocks. Without breaking the kiss, Augustus hitched her up, so that she was sprawled across his latest effusion, her back against the window, his tongue in her mouth and his fingers in her hair.

Augustus brushed kisses across Emma’s closed eyes and down the bridge of her nose. Her familiar features were pinked with passion, hair tousled, lips swollen, cheeks flushed, her face turned trustingly up towards his. The sun fell from behind her, lighting her hair like a halo. An angel. His angel. He traced the curve of her cheek, the whorls of her ear, lowered his lips to echo the motion and felt her quiver at the touch. His America, his newfound land. Donne had known what he was about when he wrote that.

She is all Kings, all Princes I.…Fragments of poetry—other people’s poetry, good poetry—swirled around Augustus’s brain. If we had world enough and time.…

Only the Cavalier poets would do. Augustus pressed his lips to the sensitive spot behind Emma’s ear and felt her shiver. The writing desk wobbled. How had they missed this for so long? How had they spent hour after hour together, writing, talking, and never thought of this? This had been right below his nose all this time. This, the little freckle beneath her right ear. This, the delicate line of her throat as she arched her neck. This, the way the breath sang between her lips as she sighed.

“An hundred years should go to praise, / Thine eyes and on thy forehead gaze,” Augustus murmured, brushing his lips across her closed eyes, along her cheekbones, down to her jaw.

Making a low, murmuring noise deep in her throat, she obligingly arched her neck for him, baring the delicate path along the side of her neck, down past her collarbone, all the way to the first swell of her breasts, where her bodice did more to tease than to cover.

Augustus grazed a knuckle along the low neck of her bodice, watching as her breasts rose and fell against the taut fabric, practically bare already. All it took was a twitch of the fabric—all right, perhaps a little more than a twitch, a slight wriggle—and she went from being daringly décolleté to bare. She was small but well formed, perfectly in proportion to herself.

“Two hundred to adore each breast,” Augustus quoted hoarsely. He leaned down and touched a tongue to one nipple, feeling it pebble in response.

His hand began the long, slow slide from ankle to knee, beneath skirts, beneath petticoats, traveling along her silk stocking to the ribbon that held her garter in place. “But thirty thousand to the rest—”

He leaned in to kiss her again, but Emma pulled away, saying, very clearly and distinctly, “Marvel.”

His finger traced the top of her stocking, the band where silk met flesh. “Yes,” he agreed. “Quite marvelous.”

She pulled back against his arm, pushing his hand away. “Andrew Marvel. ‘To His Coy Mistress.’”

Not exactly in keeping with the mood, but, all right, points to her for knowing her seventeenth-century poets.

“Well spotted,” Augustus murmured, and leaned forward to kiss her again, since her lips were so temptingly red and rosy and this had all been going quite well until…

“It’s not your own,” Emma said. The writing desk wobbled as she pushed back. She shoved her hair back behind her ears. “Those aren’t your words.”

“Not my words?” Augustus’s brain was still keeping company with his libido. He couldn’t help but notice that her bosom heaved very nicely and that she hadn’t bothered to pull up her bodice.

Emma yanked up her bodice. Damn.

“You wrote poetry for Jane,” she said, and bit down on her lip as though to keep herself from saying anything else.

Oh? Oh. A glimmer of comprehension broke through the fog of desire.

He took a deep breath. “My own words aren’t good enough for you. My doggerel was good enough for—well, for an adolescent infatuation, but it’s not good enough for you. You deserve better. You deserve the best.”

“Marvel?”

“And Shakespeare and Donne and Scève and Ronsard.”

Emma pressed her lips together in that way she had when she was thinking. At the familiar gesture, Augustus felt a rush of tenderness as disconcerting as it was surprising. Something in his head stirred and whispered, Emma?

“I’ve been wooed with Sceve before,” Emma said thoughtfully. “And Ronsard and du Bellay. I’d rather just have you. In prose, if need be.” She looked up at him with that peculiar sort of frankness that was entirely hers, saying, “We did promise each other honesty.”

I’m a British spy and I’ve been using you to get to your friend’s plans.

There was a mad moment when Augustus was almost tempted to blurt it out, the whole damnable tangle. He wanted to tell her that he had been using her, but not anymore. That whatever that was, it had nothing to do with this. That he hadn’t ever felt like this before and wasn’t quite sure what he was feeling, but whatever it was, it meant that he wanted her with him for a very long time, not out of ploy or policy, but because she was Emma, and he had got rather accustomed to the Emma-ness of her, to the tilt of her head and the cadence of her voice and the sparkle and glitter of her paste jewels as she blazed her way through the room. He wanted to tell her that he thrilled to the crystalline ring of her laughter, that her bluntness intoxicated him, that her lack of self-deception was a revelation and an inspiration.

And then what? his thwarted libido murmured. Would this all happen before or after she told him he was crazy and/or stomped out of the room?

She looked so good, all warm and pink and tousled. All she was waiting for was the word, and all that could be his, the flushed flesh above the low neckline of her dress, the reddened lips that pressed together as she waited for his reply, the blue vein that flickered in the hollow of her throat, just waiting for his lips.

Revelations could wait.

“It’s prose you want, then?” Augustus said huskily. “I can give you prose.”

“That would be…nice,” said Emma. Her eyes were dilated and her chest rose and fell rapidly beneath the barrier of her bodice.

Augustus brushed a finger lightly across one cheekbone, tracing the lines of her face. “You fascinate me,” he said softly. “You confuse me. You intoxicate me.”

Emma made a breathy little noise that wasn’t quite a laugh. “I don’t seem to have done anything to your vocabulary.”

“Haven’t you?” They were practically nose to nose. “I don’t have the words to describe what you do to me, what you’re doing to me right now. Do you want me to tell you how much I want you?”

Emma made a little noise in the back of her throat, and for an awful moment, Augustus thought she meant to say no.

She leaned forward, setting the desk wobbling. Her voice was husky as she said, “I’d rather you show me.”

Lightning flashed and thunder rumbled, even though the sky outside was still blue and the sunlight,