Page 27 of The Smuggler & the Society Bride

Anxious as she was to find a way to guarantee a decent income for the Steavens family and make it possible for Laurie to escape the protection of the unsavoury John Kessel, Honoria knew that was not the true reason behind her excess of nerves—but her fraught interlude with a mesmerizing free-trader.

For a moment, she wished the exceptional sketch Eva had produced this afternoon had been a likeness of the captain, so she might have something tangible to remember him by.

Though what could she do with it, if she had obtained one? Hide it in her room, pretending it was just a pleasant example of Eva’s skill? Trying to deny the powerful mix of admiration, desire, curiosity and longing Captain Hawksworth inspired in her?

She hardly needed a portrait of him to prompt her memory or induce sighs, so indelibly seared into her being were his image and actions.

She could scarcely touch her palm against the door handle without a reminiscent shiver—and would probably never be able to eat an orange again without heat suffusing her body. Even envisioning the fruit now without its peel led her to inappropriate, erotic thoughts.

How fortunate that Eva had accompanied them that afternoon, she thought as she entered the library. She’d been attracted to the captain from the first—but never with such powerful intensity as today. Had he kissed her after eating that orange from her palm, she would not have objected. Nay, had she not been so conscious of Eva’s curious gaze upon them, she would have surrendered to the compelling urge to throw her arms around him and pull him close, ravenous to feel his arms around her, his hard, lean body next to hers.

Ravenous for more. She’d burned to explore other, more hidden places—those manly parts she’d seen often enough when swimming with her brother, who’d never troubled to hide his nudity when they were both children. Parts he hadn’t begun masking from her sight until he’d become a young man and caught her staring in fascination at that which had once been small and dangly and was now long and thick.

The thought of exploring Captain Hawksworth’s manly parts made her flushed and a little dizzy. Since she and her mother were not close enough to comfortably discuss intimate issues, she’d been relieved that the shortness of her engagement had spared her receiving from that lady what would doubtless have been an awkward and embarrassing description of the wedding night. Being country-raised, she knew well enough what the coupling of animals entailed and could extrapolate how the human species accomplished the same.

During that brief engagement, she had given some thought to what married life with Anthony would entail. Only a few years her senior, he was generally accounted a handsome, well-made man, and she’d speculated with a mild sense of titillation about exploring his body, having him explore hers. The flurry of excitement and anticipation such thoughts engendered were similar to the sensations she experienced when he kissed her.

The feelings engendered by thinking about kissing the captain were a hundredfold more intense. More acute and breathtaking than the heightened sense of pleasure she’d felt on a few occasions before her engagement, when she’d allowed one of the more dashing bucks to kiss her, the naughtiness of her behaviour and the need to conceal it adding spice to the encounter.

In short, her response to the captain was so markedly more intense than anything she’d known previously that it seemed her knowledge of passion fell into two halves: everything she’d experienced before coming to Cornwall, and the sensations he inspired in her.

If the touch of his hand on hers, of his lips against her palm, worked upon her so strongly, she wasn’t sure kissing him was wise. She very much feared that any control she intended to maintain over her subsequent behaviour would disintegrate within seconds—if she indeed survived the initial brush of his lips against her own without fainting or having her rapidly accelerating heart simply beat its way out of her chest, like a sea osprey taking flight.

Just thinking about kissing him made her heartbeat race. As she looked at her palm, halfway expecting to find some trace of him engraved there, her hand tickled and burned. She pressed it against the cool surface of the library table with a sigh.

What was she to do about Captain Hawksworth?

If she feared she could not behave with modesty and decorum around him, so rapidly was her curiosity about, admiration for and desire for his touch and taste growing, prudence dictated that she avoid him.

But she didn’t want to avoid him.

Every sense within her that spoke of life and joy and adventure and desire shrieked to be with him again, to experience to the fullest everything his daring, seemingly kindred spirit could offer her. The resulting din of demand was drowning out the calm voice of reason so effectively that she had to struggle more and more to hear its whisper.

Plain and simple, she wanted him. She wanted to touch and kiss and fondle him. She wanted him to touch and kiss and fondle her—and possess her, in every sense of the word.

It was madness.

What difference would it make? the seductive, cunning little voice whispered. You are ruined already, with a reputation that can never be restored.

True, the acerbic voice of reason answered. But a ruined reputation damaged only oneself. Giving her body to Captain Hawksworth might result in a child who would be condemned for life by the taint of being born a bastard.

Had the captain laboured under such a stain? It might explain how a man whose speech, dress and such details as he confided about his background, which all suggested a noble up-bringing, had ended up at the helm of a Cornish free-trader.

No, disgrace imparted enough of a disadvantage; never would she knowingly extend the damage by inflicting such a burden upon an innocent child.

So honour dictated she avoid him, no matter how much her heart and spirit, as well as her body, clamoured in protest.

Unless he was not only as mesmerized by her as she was by him, but was prepared to make her an offer.

And if he should offer marriage, how would she respond?

Marriage with a free-trader, about whom she knew virtually nothing other than that he had been well educated, served in the Army, was handsome, alluring and seemingly possessed of strong principles of which she approved?

How could she even consider marrying a man who was so wholly a stranger?

But he’s not a stranger, a little voice said. In him, you are coming home.

There you have it! the rational part of her replied in triumph. Could there be anything more illogical than this instinctive, insidious sense of connection to a man she knew so little? She must wean herself from it!

But logical or not, she didn’t want to.

Enough, she would think no more on it! Exasperated, she began to pace the room, from the hearth to the window and back to the bookcases. Halting, she ran her restless fingers along the shelves, straightening and arranging, although in her aunt’s well-ordered household there was scarcely anything to straighten or arrange.

She did find one volume whose title seemed to indicate it had been misfiled, tucked as it was among tomes about botany and science. Pulling out a book entitled Aristotle’s Masterpiece, she was about to return it to the section containing the works of the Greek philosophers, when the subtitle caught her eye.

‘The Secrets of Nature Displayed,’ she read off the frontis-piece. Idly flipping it open, she realized with shock that the book had nothing at all to do with classical philosophy. Instead, beneath her scandalized and very interested gaze appeared a detailed description of the appearance and function of those very manly parts she’d just been contemplating.

A well-brought-up, genteel young maiden like Verity would have slammed the book shut. Fascinated, titillated, Honoria read on.

In precise detail, the book described each part of the masculine apparatus, how it worked and how its performance led to pleasurable coupling. She lingered particularly over the description of that most essential part called the ‘yard’, a long, smooth cylindrical shaft, sensitive to its tip, which the writer described as ‘soft and of most exquisite feeling’.

There followed an equally exhaustive discussion of a woman’s parts. Hers began to throb as she read feverishly on, noting those places subject to arousal like a man’s, places that that ‘close with pleasure upon the yard of the man’. Then, in the poem designed, the writer said, to stir the appetites to a more joyous coupling, the poet urged the lady to take ‘his rudder’ in her ‘bold hand…like a try’d and skilful pilot’ and ‘guide his bark in love’s dark channel, where it shall dance…’

Oh, how she burned to follow that admonition and feel the captain’s ‘tall pinnacle’ within her, ready to ‘ride safe at anchor and unlade the freight’.

Though no fire burned on the grate, the room seemed over-warm. Fanning herself, Honoria was turning the page to the next section when an amused voice interrupted her.

‘Find some instructive reading, my dear?’

Startled, Honoria dropped the book with a thump and looked up in consternation into the grave face and smiling eyes of Aunt Foxe.

Her aunt righted the volume and closed it carefully. ‘A fine, plainly written explanation of the intimate workings of the body. How I wish such information, so readily available to men, could be disseminated as widely to girls! It would make the passage from maiden to matron much less mysterious and frightening for many a bride. Did you find it illuminating?’

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