Page 24 of The Smuggler & the Society Bride

How long it had it been since she’d been on an outing which promised only pleasure? Too long, she answered her own question. She would suppress all those tiresome voices of what and why and should and shouldn’t and simply enjoy this day as the gift it was from benevolent providence.

Chapter Twelve

Three quarters of an hour later, Gabe helped the ladies into a gig and the little party set out. With a bit of entirely justified flattery, he’d induced a beaming Mrs Kessel to provide not just biscuits and cider, but some of her excellent ham and cheese along with a flask of ale and a blanket to spread upon the ground.

As they set out, Eva’s urgent motions indicated she wished them to proceed to the south, toward Land’s End. Acquiescing to her wishes, they proceeded several miles down the coast until she gestured for them to stop. She then led them to a large rock that formed a table-like structure set at the edge of a rocky point with breakers foaming below.

‘It’s a perfect place to spread out our provisions,’ Miss Foxe exclaimed. ‘What a clever girl you are indeed, Eva!’

‘Shall we sample Mrs Kessel’s fare before you begin sketching?’ Gabe asked.

Slanting a glance at Eva, she replied. ‘Yes, let’s. Aunt Foxe tells me she sets an excellent table.’

‘A fact I can confirm,’ Gabe replied, handing Miss Foxe the quilt the landlady had lent him. While she and the girl spread the coverlet over the flat stony surface, he unpacked the repast and they all sat.

‘I already knew her cider to be superior; the ham is delicious, too,’ Miss Foxe remarked as she nibbled at the sampling Gabe offered her. Eva, however, hung back, not touching any of the feast he’d arranged before them.

‘Please, have some, Eva,’ he urged. ‘The food and cider are for you, too.’

A worried frown on her face, the child looked over at Miss Foxe, as if seeking confirmation. ‘Yes, Eva, the refreshments are for all of us,’ Miss Foxe said.

Even so, Gabe had to encourage her again before finally, she took a small piece of cheese. A rapt smile crossed her face after she swallowed the morsel, and she made a rapid hand gesture that even Gabe could interpret meant ‘good.’

‘Try the ham, too,’ he coaxed, meeting Miss Foxe’s look of disbelief and consternation over the child’s head. Who could have been so cruel, her expression asked, as to have fed themselves before her while forbidding a hungry child to eat?

Knowing that Laurie Steavens worked at the inn, Gabe had a grim suspicion just who it might have been.

It required a bit more encouragement from both of them before Eva relaxed and began to partake freely of the food. And when she did, they both effectively abandoned their own repast in the pleasure of watching the child’s uninhibited delight.

Each bite was chewed slowly, each sip of cider savoured. Then she set them both to laughing when, at the bottom of the basket, she discovered an orange. After picking it up and rolling it between her fingers, she was winding up her arm to throw it to Miss Foxe when that lady cried, ‘No, Eva, it’s not a ball! You eat it.’

She took the fruit and held it up to the girl’s nose, letting her smell it, then carefully peeled it, Eva watching wide-eyed through the whole process. After sectioning the fruit, she handed it to the girl. ‘Taste some, it’s delicious,’ she urged.

The child looked dubious, but encouraged by her idol, took a tiny bite. She looked startled, probably by the sudden spurt of sweet juice, but almost immediately closed her eyes and made a little humming sound, clearly enraptured by the taste.

After swallowing the first bit, she looked back questioningly at Miss Foxe, who handed her several more sections. ‘Good, isn’t it?’ she asked. ‘It’s called an orange—like the colour. It grows on trees in warm lands far away.’

With even greater appreciation than she’d shown with the ham and cheese, the girl methodically devoured the orange pieces. After watching Eva for some minutes, Miss Foxe looked over to Gabe and mouthed ‘Thank you.’

If he, who had only a glancing interest in the child, found it oddly moving to watch her enjoy this unprecedented treat, he imagined it must be even more gratifying for her mentor. A pleasant warmth filling him, he was glad he’d hit upon the idea of the picnic that was providing a deprived child—and the kind-hearted lady who cared about her—with such pleasure.

Indeed, so absorbed was Miss Foxe in watching Eva that not until the slices had almost disappeared did she recall she still held another segment of the orange in her hand. ‘Excuse me,’ she said to him softly. ‘I almost forgot to give you your part.’

She held out the orange. He reached over to take it, but at the last minute, rather than simply pluck the fruit from her, he slipped his fingers beneath hers, brought her hand to his mouth and ate the orange off her palm.

In every sensitized nerve, he heard her almost imperceptible gasp, felt the tremor that shivered through her as his lips nuzzled and his tongue tasted. For long, lovely, slow minutes, he held her unresisting hand to his lips, even that miniscule contact sparking sensation to every nerve as with the brush of his lips and the slow exploration of his tongue he devoured the fruit, then licked up every drop of nectar.

He made it last as long as he could, well beyond any excuse he had for resting his lips there, before reluctantly releasing her hand. Her arm flopped jerkily back to her side, as if she had little control over its motion, while her eyes never left his face, now raised and gazing straight at her.

Cheeks flushed, eyes bluer than the dancing waves far beneath them, lips slightly parted, she looked startled, taken aback—and aroused. As he certainly was, the blood rushing thick and heavy in his veins, his body tightening with erotic tension while he went as hard as her lips looked soft and pliant.

He burned with everything within him to kiss them.

But if his orange-eating gesture had been impulsive, he wasn’t idiotish enough to try to make love to her before the fascinated gaze of a ten-year-old. Nor, his instincts warned him, despite that firm evidence that the spontaneous gesture had evidently shaken her as much as it had disturbed him, was she yet ready for kissing.

Oh, but soon, he hoped! Else he’d need a great many more swims in the cold sea water.

His wits needed dousing to revive them, too, for his paralyzed brain couldn’t seem to come up with some clever remark, or indeed, give voice to anything at all. It was Eva, pulling at Miss Foxe’s sleeve, who finally broke the spell between them. Even then, the child had to tug for a full minute before Miss Foxe finally turned to focus on her.

Still holding her sleeve, the girl gestured at the sketchbook and then toward the cliffs. ‘You want to show me something?’ Miss Foxe asked, a bit breathlessly.

At the child’s vigorous nod, Gabe finally recovered his voice. ‘You two go along. I’ll pack the basket into the gig.’

Still looking distracted, Gabe thought, Miss Foxe allowed Eva to carry her box of charcoal while she gathered up the sketchbook and followed.

Still more than a little distracted himself, as he walked over to stow the basket, he marvelled at the strength of the sensual response she sparked in him, that could fire him to a need so acute it approached pain with just one smoky gaze and a taste of her palm.

A need that only made him even more voracious to taste the rest of her, all of her, to suck and lick and savour every delicious inch from the arch of her instep to the curve of her ear. How readily he could identify with what Eva must have felt as a starving onlooker beholding a table full of savoury dishes she was forbidden to taste!

Oh, that soon, Miss Foxe might invite him to feast.

But though he’d made good progress in disarming her suspicion and luring her closer, instinct told him he hadn’t quite drawn her close enough to try breaching the citadel. Besides which, damnation, he still didn’t know her true status.

Much as he burned to, he wouldn’t sample the nectar from an unplucked flower—or even further disturb one from which someone had already sipped, if there were a chance that taking such liberties might harm what he only wished to cherish.

Cherish?

He shied away from the implications of that word with the speed of a timid virgin stepping out of the path of a notorious roué. Putting the notion out of mind, he turned from the gig and paced off toward the horizon beyond which Miss Foxe and the girl were about to disappear.

To his surprise, Eva was leading Miss Foxe away from, rather than toward, the cliffs. He picked up his pace to keep them in view as Eva trotted along the edge of a deep ravine, skirting large boulders, then dropping out of sight again.

Quickly rounding the rocks, he saw just the top of Miss Foxe’s bonnet as she descended a narrow trail into the ravine. A few minutes later, the trail grew narrower still as it doubled back on itself, passing around and under protruding rock formations. He was about to call out for them to halt and come back, as the trail was becoming ever more slippery and dangerous, when around the next bend the path suddenly opened up onto a vista of a cove sheltered behind a narrow inlet. He stopped, inspecting the place while Eva led Miss Foxe down the steep descent to the crescent of sand below.

The inlet was even narrower than the entrance to the cove where the revenuer had run his boat onto the shoal. Waves from the open sea beyond roared through the perilously skinny passage, then broadened out into a wide, shallow cove where the water lapped peacefully onto a flat, sandy beach.

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