Hugh was feeling decidedly guilty when he stopped to greet Phoebe under a pear tree, having seen her alone as he’d brought his horse up the road by the bend near the river on his return from the village. She was wearing the new dress she’d just bought. It was simple and becoming, but when he drew closer and could see the signs of wear proclaiming it was so obviously secondhand, he felt a pang of remorse for the cavalier way he’d dismissed her when his sister had arrived earlier than expected.

He glanced about him and was glad to see no sign of Ada. No doubt she was devouring her romance novel by that Jane Austen woman she seemed so infatuated with. If Hugh took Phoebe into the woods, Ada would not miss him if he were gone another twenty minutes.

The need to atone was very strong.

“I’m sorry for this morning, Phoebe,” he said when he drew level, leaning down from the saddle and stroking her cheek. “I slighted you and that was wrong.” He smiled, indicating the thickening forest on the other side of the hedge with a look. “Come with me?”

She took a step back at his approach, jutted out her chin and ran her hands down her dress. “I suppose you feel that my accompanying you to the woods is the least you deserve in view of your generosity.”

His dismounted, taking her hands, feeling the cad he knew he was.

“I was too quick to say the things I did in front of my sister and, it’s true, I’m too eager to enjoy your company now that I see you on your own.” He hoped his smile conveyed the forgiveness he craved. “You drive me wild with desire, Phoebe.”

The look in her eye did not soften. “You were indeed quick to remind me of my inferior station, sir, and you are very quick to reinforce the gratitude you expect from me.”

“Phoebe, I truly am sorry.” And he was. “I was a boor. I admit it. A thoughtless boor.”

“But now you think your honeyed words can make everything all right. I’m not good enough to be in the same room with your sister, but you can have me at will. It’s true you’ve bought me dresses and given me food to eat in return for what I’ve given you. But…what security do I have?”

He shrugged. “I will look after you, I’ve told you. I’m sorry I offended you. Would you like another new dress? I shall send a message around to the village dressmaker—”

“Stop! I’m not a lightskirt, a Cyprian, or whatever they’re called. You cheapen me to say such things, when the truth is that I would never have given myself to you had I not felt a strong desire to enjoy that which you enjoy. Even if my very life depended on it. I am not that sort of woman.”

He seized her hands and brought her knuckles up to his lips. “You really had feelings that matched mine? I’d never have guessed! Well, that’s music to my ears, even if I’m not the first.”

“Do you want me to slap you?” She shuddered, and to his astonishment, raised a pair of eyes that shone with tears. “No, you are not the first, but you are the first to whom I’ve given myself with little in the way of cajoling. There! Perhaps that massages your pride.”

She glanced over her shoulder at the house as he took her hand, saying, “Come, Phoebe, walk with me.”

“To the woods?”

“To somewhere you and I can be alone. Nothing more.”

“I have little choice since you’re already marching me there.”

He squeezed her hand tighter. He liked her spirit. She was unlike any young woman he’d ever met.

When they were deep amidst the spreading oaks, he suspected a more gentle mood had overtaken her. She was gazing at the spreading branches above their heads, her expression thoughtful. The pale sun that penetrated the dense canopy highlighted the softness of her features. She was beautiful.

“Tell me about yourself, Phoebe,” he coaxed. She’d mentioned she came from a harsher part of the country. Her accents were so contrived it was impossible to place her. “We’ve not spent enough time getting to know who we truly are. I’ve thought long and hard about that this morning after I realized how unbecoming my conduct was toward you.”

Her hand in his did not stiffen as she walked, but her tone remained distant. “I come from by the sea where the cliffs plunge into the waters, and smugglers ply a healthy trade. This is a gentler part of the world,” she remarked.

“Yet it has not been so kind to you, has it?”

She stopped and turned. “It has not.”

“I will protect you, Phoebe,” he promised, drawing her into his arms and meaning what he said. “I’ve been many things I should not have been, but one thing I do promise you is my protection.”

“You do?”

He drew back to look at her, offended by the skepticism in her tone. “Have I not promised it from the moment I rescued you? And I have followed through. You will accompany me to London, as we agreed when we spoke of it. I thought you were excited at—”

“The prospect of being your mistress?”

“Better that than the maidservant in danger, surely?”

She shrugged. “You think I’m giving up nothing to be your…paramour?”

He considered this. “You’ve told me you have no family. You fear discovery. I thought you considered my proposition with no misgivings. Particularly since you gave me reason to think you cared for me.”

He couldn’t make out the look she sent him and then realization struck. “You’ve been disappointed before, haven’t you? That’s why you don’t trust that my word is good?”

She gave a small nod. “It’s true; I have been disappointed before, but I do trust your word.”

“Who was this man who let you down, Phoebe? You’ve never said his name. This protector of yours…he promised to protect you and then didn’t?”

“He promised a great many things.” She shook her head, then raised her arms and twined them around his neck, wordlessly resting her head against his chest.

He stroked her hair, the comfort he felt suddenly making him realize how ill at ease he’d felt until now. Having her forgiveness meant more to him than he’d believed. “You can feel safe with me, Phoebe.”

The ground beneath them was soft, and he drew her down beside him, sitting with his back against the trunk and one arm around her shoulders. Gently he kissed her brow. Her eyes were closed, but when she smiled, a great spreading happiness seemed to infect his veins. He turned a little, and she opened her eyes, her lips parting so that instinctively he drew closer and kissed her.

Her mouth flowered beneath his, and he deepened the kiss, stroking her cheek with one hand while his other slipped beneath her bodice to cup her breast. He expected her to open her eyes in outrage and push his hand away, but instead, she yielded to him, her body shifting to accommodate him in the soft hollow of earth beneath them while her mouth grew hungrier.

The lust he’d felt earlier raised its nagging head, and he checked himself once more, not wanting to proceed if there were any hesitation on her part, but she seemed under the same spell. She didn’t protest when he took the hem of her dress and slowly raised it, watching her carefully to gauge her reaction.

Above them, the sky winked blue, glimpsed beneath the dense canopy of the forest.

Hugh broke contact to shrug off his coat. He laid it down, drawing Phoebe up and onto her knees. “You don’t want to spoil your new dress,” he whispered. “Perhaps you’d better take it off.”

Her eyes widened. “But then I’d be…”

“All but naked,” he supplied. “That is, unless we remove your petticoats and chemise and corset.” Just saying it made him as hard as a rock. The idea was as intoxicating as it was novel. Imagine! He would see her naked. In the daylight. He’d never seen a woman in all her glory quite like that, but now he wanted Phoebe ‘just like that’ more than he’d wanted anything before.

“I’ll help you.” He was already shimmying the garment up over her body by the time her smile popped out, her eyes shining at the wickedness of it all. That was good. He didn’t like to think she might not be an equally willing partner when it came to pushing the boundaries quite so far.

“And what of you, my Lord?” she whispered with an impish look at his nether regions.

“Oh, my pleasure will be seeing you revealed, layer by layer, like some tasty morsel. My ultimate pleasure can wait.”

The undergarments she wore were not the fine linen of a lady. Somehow the utilitarian petticoat, gleaned from the miller’s wife’s trunk, rough and coarse, struck him with guilt.

“I shall buy you the finery you deserve, Phoebe. Without the expense of a wife, you shall be clothed as you’d wish.”

“And when you take a wife I’ll go naked?”

He laughed. She was smiling, teasing him for she knew how it was. “I’ll always want you, Phoebe.”

“Always?”

“And how do you know that?” she asked. But when he pulled her final layer over her head—her chemise, having just unlaced her corset—he could not speak. She was exquisite. Her soft, pert breasts were revealed for the first time, unbound and in all their glory, their small pink buds an invitation for him to swoop and take into his mouth. But equally in evidence was the gentle undulation of her belly, which tapered into a pair of creamy thighs at whose juncture a thatch of dark hair hid a world of hidden delights.

“Because I’ll never get enough of this, my darling,” he murmured at last, sliding down to take her right nipple into his mouth while his other hand contoured her belly before sliding between her legs.

She was already wet but she gasped when he touched her, and he could hear the smile in her voice as she stroked his head. “Music to my ears, of course, Mr Redding, but that is what gentlemen say when they want a lady, is it not?” She shivered as he got to work pleasuring her, adding, “You’ve not had too much of a struggle to get me where you want me, so you needn’t say things you don’t mean.”

“I should be hurt, Phoebe.” He chuckled as he sucked at her nipple, rolling it over his tongue, loving her small, involuntary gasps and jerks as he found just the place to tease her. “You seem to think I don’t mean what I say. It’s clear that you more than just like me. If you hadn’t said it so plainly, I don’t need any more evidence than this.”

He rose above her for a moment to meet her eye while he unbuttoned himself. “Tell me again. I want to hear you say that you want me as much as I want you.”

“Only if you keep doing to me what you were doing before,” she groaned, relaxing back against the tree and closing her eyes.

“There, see what you do to me.” Hugh kissed her mouth as she positioned his long body against her curves, guiding her hand to his member. He gasped again, then growled, “I’m ready to explode…but only when you’ve had your pleasure. I want you to want more, Phoebe. I want you!”

It was pure delight. A wicked, sensual, carnal encounter spontaneously taken beneath the trees, and into which she entered with as much enthusiasm as he, despite the morning’s poor start.

Carnal delights with Phoebe were greater than any pleasure he’d ever experienced.