She tasted of brandy.

Slightly sweet yet incredibly rich—like the darkest red plums steeped in caramel.

Intoxicating, heady, and altogether irresistible to a man who’d been dying of his thirst for her for six long years.

“Claire,” he groaned against her lips, even as he tried to hold himself back from her kisses.

“Andrew,” she whispered. Then her tongue delved into his mouth once more, and he knew in his soul that this thirst for Claire would never be quenched.

Ah, Christ, he was lost. Lost to the intimate caresses of lips and tongues and hands. Lost to the sharing exchange of their very breath.

Lost…

“We shouldn’t,” he murmured, even as he pressed tiny kisses to the corners of her mouth.

He had to keep his head about him. Claire was his to protect, now.

“Too—” kiss “—much—” kiss “—has happened—” kiss, kiss “—tonight.”

He dragged his lips away with the last bit of self-control he possessed, and pressed his cheek against hers so that his lips were close to her ear.

“Too much has been said,” he whispered. “Too much brandy has been drunk. And the future is too uncertain. My duty is to the war, and when this mission is over, I’m going back there. You need time to—”

Claire pulled back from him and her eyes shone fierce and clear.

“I’ve wasted too much time already,” she said, and kissed him once more.

He groaned again, then gave in to the need that had been building for years.

Andrew pulled Claire to his chest, turning and lifting her as he did, so that she sat atop him on the settee. Without long skirts to tangle around her legs, her knees spread naturally around him, leaving her trouser-clad bottom pressed against the tops of his thighs.

Claire gasped into their kiss. With only her layer of kerseymere and his of buckskin between them, there was no way that she did not feel his hardness. Then she moved experimentally against him, and his own gasp echoed in the room.

She pulled away from him then, which only served to settle her more tightly against his groin. A seductive smile spread over her face as she looked down at him, and in that moment he thought he’d never seen anything so beautiful. The fire crackled behind her, its light wreathing Claire’s short red-blonde curls like a corona of flame on a goddess queen.

If a goddess queen wore a cravat and a waistcoat.

Andrew burned to see Claire in all her feminine glory.

He reached up and tugged at the half-tied strip of cloth that hid her neck from him, growling as his trembling hands fumbled at the task. “Damned knot.”

Claire chuckled, pushing his hands away and taking over herself. “Apparently, you tied it too well.”

He watched her deft fingers at work, and couldn’t help imagining those fingers on him, caressing, tugging…

At last the knot came free, and Claire started unwinding the cravat from around her neck. Her eyes never left his as she dragged the cloth slowly, slowly around her, revealing her skin bit by tiny bit.

The minx was teasing him, completely in control while he shivered with lust beneath her.

Well, that wouldn’t do.

His hands slid up her thighs and he gripped Claire’s hips, hooking his thumbs in her falls and sliding her over him as he pressed upwards.

A low moan tore from Claire’s throat and her head tipped back.

That was more like it.

Andrew’s whole body screamed for him to take her, to flip their positions and put her beneath him. To drive between her thighs and finally know what it was like to be inside her.

His arms shook with the effort to hold back. No. He wanted to savor Claire. When he’d left six years ago, he’d thought never to see her again, much less have her in his arms once more. And now that he had a second chance?

He clenched his eyes shut, willing himself to take things slow.

Claire was pulling at his cravat now. He joined her, yanking at the linen, not caring that it scraped his skin raw when he whipped it off of his neck too quickly.

“Tsk,” Claire murmured, her thumb brushing tenderly over the angry mark. Then she bent over him and touched her lips to it and he nearly came undone.

He cupped her face and brought her mouth back to his for a voracious kiss. Once their tongues had caught a rhythm of thrusts and caresses, Andrew let his hands drift down Claire’s chest and undid the fabric-covered buttons of her waistcoat. He slid it off of her shoulders, helping her slip her arms free, and then groaned as he slid his hands back up her still-too-covered chest.

He pulled back from their kiss, breathing hard as he glared at her remaining clothing. “What I wouldn’t give to have a bodice to yank down, or a skirt to ruck up.”

He needed her skin bared to him.

Claire gave a seductive laugh, her eyes heavy-lidded as she squirmed against him.

She needed it, too.

He gently lifted her from his lap, setting her on her feet between his spread knees. He reached for her falls, undoing the buttons before slipping the trousers over her hips and letting them drop to the floor.

The lawn shirt she still wore settled mid-thigh, and it was seductive as hell. Who would have thought a man’s shirt on a woman would be so arousing? But damn it all—it was.

Still, he couldn’t wait to get her out of it.

He grabbed the hem and pulled it upwards, almost laughing as he remembered her words earlier in the carriage. Perhaps he would make someone a good valet someday.

As long as that someone was her.

He peeled the shirt off with ease, anticipating the sight of a naked Claire before his eyes, finally.

And discovered all the padding that helped disguise her curves.

“Christ,” he muttered, then attacked her bindings with a vengeance. He turned her between his legs, unwrapping, untying, undoing, until at last…at last, Claire was revealed to him.

She was utter perfection. Longer and leaner than was typical of her sex, but uncompromisingly feminine still. Her hips flared prettily below her nipped waist, and above that—

“Andrew?” she whispered, and he lifted his eyes up to hers. Her bottom lip, pink and swollen from his kisses, was caught between her pearl-white teeth, and she ran a hand nervously through her shorn locks.

Did she worry he did not find her pretty?

“If I died tonight, Claire,” he murmured, encircling her waist and pulling her to him so that he could lay his cheek just below her breasts, “I’d consider myself lucky for having lived to see such beauty.”

Then he turned his lips to taste her skin.

For a long time after that, nothing was said between them. Not with words, leastways. Her sighs guided his mouth, telling him where she most enjoyed his kisses. His moans of pleasure encouraged her to explore his body fearlessly.

And when at last he bore her back down onto the settee, this time spread beneath him, her whimpers of need let him know she was ready for him to come to her.

Andrew held himself poised at the brink of making them one, and slid his hands up to entwine with both of Claire’s where they lay above her head.

She opened her eyes then, the cerulean-blue now cloudy with passion.

He joined them, then, his gaze locked with hers as he entered her, possessed her. She gasped, gripping him tightly at the invasion, then relaxing as they moved together.

Then they were kissing as they drove one another higher, their tongues mimicking the thrust and acceptance, the push and the pull, between them.

When he knew he couldn’t last much longer, Andrew released one of Claire’s hands and slid his between their bodies. He found her tight nub with his fingers and rubbed in rough circles, thrilling as she gasped and stuttered.

“Come for me, Claire,” he whispered harshly, his breaths coming hard and fast as he started losing his rhythm. His thrusts felt frenzied now, as did Claire’s cries. So close. So close…

And then she keened her pleasure and he knew he’d never heard such an incredible sound. Claire shook and quivered beneath him, and as she gripped him tightly in her release, Andrew let go, driving himself one last time into blinding release of his own.

* * *

Claire nestled back against Andrew’s chest as they sat on the floor before the fire some hours later. She’d donned her lawn shirt again for modesty’s sake. It barely came mid-thigh, but it was loose and comfortable without all the padding beneath, and she felt more at ease being at least somewhat covered after all she’d just done.

Which was silly, really. Andrew had seen, touched, and kissed every part of her in the three times they’d made love. Heat touched her cheeks as she imagined how she must have looked—and, dear God, sounded—as he’d driven her to completion. Liquid warmth spread through her at the very memory.

Andrew, for his part, remained gloriously nude. He wrapped his arms around her from behind and hugged her to his chest, while the soft hair of his legs tickled her skin where she sat cradled between them.

They’d been thus for some time, both keeping their thoughts to themselves in sated, if not completely easy, silence.

Perhaps he, like she, wasn’t certain what to say after all that had happened tonight.

“Was Rosalie able to tell you anything that might help us find Clarence’s killer?” Andrew’s breath brushed by her ear, causing a warm shiver.

“Perhaps,” Claire replied, grateful to have something to discuss other than whatever now lay between the two of them. “While she was Clarence’s lover, she was also his contact. She received tidbits of intelligence from France and passed them along to him. She said the night Clarence was killed, he’d only been at the Devil’s Den to be with her, however.”

Claire had been terribly disappointed by that revelation, until Rosalie had continued her tale. “But, a fortnight before that, she’d told Clarence that someone named San Carlos had been seen in Paris.”

She felt Andrew straighten at this news. “The Duke de San Carlos?”

“I believe so. I’d not heard of the man myself,” she went on. “Rosalie said he’d been the Spanish ambassador to Lisbon, London, and Paris, but that he’d—”

“—been imprisoned by Napoleon five years ago, along with King Ferdinand of Spain,” Andrew finished.

She half-turned in his arms to look at him. “Yes. She said rumor was that Napoleon had set San Carlos free.”

Andrew had released her, and now planted his hands behind him, scooted back and rose to his feet in a fluid movement that flexed long, lean muscles all over his body. Claire’s breath caught at the sight, quite unused to having a large, nude male in her library. One who was now pacing before her fireplace.

“Napoleon is up to something, then,” Andrew said. “He doesn’t set anyone free, not without a reason.” He stopped and turned to face her.

Claire did her best to keep her eyes above his waist—though, oh, it was tempting to let her gaze dip down in curiosity to the part of him that had brought her such pleasure. What did it look like when they were not—

“My sources have mentioned nothing about this,” he said, and Claire snapped her eyes up to his face guiltily. “Nor did I hear anything of the sort while I was in Paris. Which means whatever Napoleon is about, it’s being kept very, very quiet.”

Claire rose to her feet, Andrew’s heightened interest sparking through her as well. “If the French are going to such lengths, then they must be hiding something considerable,” she concluded.

Something worth silencing Clarence over?

“Have you decoded any messages that mention San Carlos? Or Ferdinand?” he asked. “Because I have to wonder…if Napoleon has freed San Carlos, he may be working some arrangement to release King Ferdinand as well.”

As he’d been speaking, Claire had moved to the settee and rustled through the pile of men’s garments to find his trousers. She tossed them to him now. They caught him off-guard, hitting him in the face before sliding to drape over his shoulder.

He blinked at her.

She blushed. “Sorry. It’s just…I can’t talk dastardly plots when you’re standing there—” She couldn’t bring herself to actually say the word naked. “—like that.”

A slow grin spread across Andrew’s face and she felt the pull of it all the way down to her toes. He slid the trousers off of his shoulder without breaking eye contact, shook them out, and slowly stepped into them—one leg, then the other—before sliding them up over his hips and fastening his falls.

Good Lord, he might be even more distractingly sensual in just the trousers. There was something incredibly arousing about knowing what those six little buttons on the front barely contained. And his chest was still on full display.

She shook her head. “You were saying?”

His grin spread a bit wider. “I said, if Napoleon has freed San Carlos, he may be using him to broker an arrangement to release King Ferdinand as well.”

“But why would he do that?” she asked. Admittedly, she knew little of military tactics, but… “Didn’t he conquer Spain and put his own brother on the throne?”

“Indeed. However, Spain allied themselves with Britain and Portugal, and together we recently broke Napoleon’s hold on the Iberian Peninsula—thanks in no small part to you,” he said, nodding at her.

She knew he meant her decoding of the troop movements that helped win the decisive battle of Vitoria.

“Napoleon can’t stand weakness. It’s rumored he blames Joseph for deciding to engage Wellington against his field marshal’s advice, and for fleeing back to France when defeat was imminent. I would not put it past Napoleon to betray his own brother if it served his ends.”

“How awful of him,” Claire murmured, hating that she could empathize with Joseph Bonaparte, even a little bit. Though Clarence’s betrayal was much, much different, she now understood what it felt like to be hurt by one’s brother.

“Particularly since Napoleon himself was also recently defeated in battle at Leipzig,” Andrew said. “Now that British and Spanish troops have invaded France for the first time since he started this bloody conflict, he has to be feeling cornered.”

Claire’s eyes went wide. “If Napoleon brokers some sort of treaty with Spain to put their own king back on the throne, he would want something in return. And I’d bet every shilling I won at Faro tonight that it would be for Spain to break her alliance with Britain and pledge it to France.”

Andrew’s eyes had darkened, any semblance of his suggestive smile given way beneath a clenched jaw. “It’s an idea.”

Claire stepped to him, raising a hand to his cheek and using her thumb to soothe the tense muscle there.

“It’s more than we had before,” she said. “Tomorrow, we start combing the coded intelligence for anything regarding Spain, San Carlos, or Ferdinand.”

She felt him relax beneath her touch, and then that half smile of his lifted her thumb as he brought his arms around her. “And tonight?” he asked, winging one brow in suggestion.

Claire swallowed. She knew what he was asking, and her body, at least, wanted to fall in line. Her mind, however, was still riddled with doubts. After all she’d learned tonight, she understood Andrew’s reasons for walking away from her six years ago.

But, her heart whispered, wasn’t I worth staying and fighting for?

An ache twinged in her chest, but she shoved the pain away. She’d think about that tomorrow.

“Tonight?” she repeated with a sensual smile of her own, and Andrew shook his head at her question-rather-than-answer.

Then she gave him her true answer by pulling his lips to hers.