Perhaps. Perhaps not.

The thoughts tumbled through her mind in a confused jumble.

“I am not saying no,” she said. “I will not say no. I am not a tease.”

And thus were decisions of great moment made, she thought. Impulsively, without due consideration. From the heart rather than from the head. From impulse rather than from a lifetime of experience and morality.

He came down beside her and moved the cushion at her back so that it lay flat and she could set her head on it. He tossed aside her cloak and the two cushions beneath her right leg. He slid large, blunt fingers into her hair and tilted her face up and kissed her openmouthed. His tongue pressed deep and withdrew again.

He knelt beside her and drew her dress off her shoulders and down over her breasts, which were lifted into prominence by her stays.

He looked at her while she resisted the foolish urge to cover herself with her hands. But he did it for her when he spread a hand over one of her breasts and lowered his head to the other. She spread her fingers wide over the blanket on either side of her as he took her nipple into his mouth and suckled her, rubbing his tongue over the tip as he did so. With his thumb and forefinger he rolled the nipple of the other breast, squeezing almost but not quite to the point of pain.

An almost unbearably raw ache spread upward to her throat and downward through her womb to settle between her thighs. She lifted her hands and set one over his wrist, the other against the back of his head. His hair was damp and warm.

He kissed her again then, his tongue simulating the nuptial act with long, deep strokes into her mouth.

He was, she realized over the next several minutes, ten times, perhaps a hundred times, more experienced than she. She knew only kisses of the lips and the act itself.

He did not unclothe her fully, but his hands found their way unerringly beneath her clothes to unlace her stays and find places that gave him pleasure and were sweet agony to her. They were large, blunt-fingered hands whose gentleness she had discovered before. But they were more than just gentle. There was erotic seductiveness in them. They could and did play her like a musical instrument—and not just with competence, she thought with wry humor, but with sheer talent too.

And finally, when her body hummed with desire and need almost to the point of pain, he used one of those hands on the heart of her. It found her beneath the muslin of her dress and the silk of her shift, and his fingers made skilled love to her, parting, stroking, teasing, even scratching. One finger slid long and rigid inside her and she clenched muscles about it and both heard and felt her own wetness. The finger was removed and replaced with two, and then they were removed and replaced with three. They played inside her as she tried to capture them with her muscles, driving her to near madness. She clutched his shoulders and kneaded them with her fingers. At the same time the pad of his thumb was doing something that she did not consciously feel but to which she reacted by shattering about his fingers and hand, crying out as she did so.

He was right over her then, blocking the sunlight, his knees pushing her legs wide, his weight on his forearms, his eyes gazing intently down into hers.

“We can be satisfied with that if you wish,” he said, his voice harsh. “It is still not too late to say no.”

Some semblance of her virtue would remain intact.

“I will not say no,” she told him.

And she felt him against the sensitive area he had just been caressing, finding her, positioning himself, and then pressing hard and firm into her until he was deeply imbedded.

She had inhaled slowly, she realized, and was holding her breath. He was indeed large. But he was not hurting her. Quite the contrary. He had made very sure that she was wet enough to receive him without discomfort. She exhaled, relaxed, and then clenched her inner muscles about him.

She was glad. Oh, she was glad. She would never be sorry.

He had waited for her, she realized. He was still gazing down into her eyes, though his had lost some of their usual intensity and were heavy lidded and naked with desire. But he would wait no longer. He had given her exquisite pleasure even before entering. Now it was his turn. And he took it. He lowered his head until his forehead touched her shoulder, and worked her with deep, swift, powerful strokes, half his weight on her, the other half still supported on his forearms. She could hear the raggedness of his breathing.

She lifted her legs from the blanket and twined them about his thighs. She felt a momentary twinge in her right ankle but ignored it. She tilted her pelvis so that he could come deeper still. And she listened to the wet sucking of his withdrawals and felt the deep, satisfying penetration of his thrusts. Although she knew this was not primarily for her—he was deep in the throes of his own physical need—she felt again the heightened sensation of renewed passion and pressed against him, matching his rhythm with the clenching and unclenching of her muscles, moving her hips in a rhythmic circular motion.

She had no real experience. Ah, incredibly she had almost none. She mated with him out of pure instinct.

But she certainly had not done anything to dampen his ardor. He worked her with undiminished power until he stilled in her suddenly, rigid in every muscle, straining for greater depth, hot and slick with sweat, and she felt the hot gush of his release at the same moment as he spoke low against her ear.

“Gwendoline,” he said and relaxed his full, not inconsiderable weight down upon her.

There was no mattress beneath her back, only the sand beneath the blanket. Who would have guessed sand was so hard and unyielding? But she did not care.

She did not care.

She probably would. Perhaps soon.

But not now. Not yet.

He mumbled something after a minute or two and rolled off her to lie beside her, one arm flung over his eyes, one leg bent at the knee.

“I am sorry,” he said. “I must have been crushing you.”

She tipped her head to one side to rest against his shoulder. Was it possible that sweat could smell this good? She thought about lifting her dress up over her breasts and pushing down her skirt over her legs, but she made neither concession to modesty.

She slid into a relaxed state halfway between sleeping and waking. The sun shone warmly down on them. The gulls were calling again. Eternally calling. Sounding harsh and mournful. The sound of the sea was there too, as steady and as inescapable as a heartbeat.

She did not believe she would ever be sorry.

But of course she would.

The eternal cycle of life. The balance of opposites.

She came back to full consciousness when he got to his feet and, without a word to her, strode the short distance to the water. He waded in a little way and bent to wash himself.

Washing off the sweat?

Washing off her?

She sat up and set her dress to rights after reaching beneath it and somehow doing up her laces. She drew her cloak about her shoulders and clasped it at the neck. Suddenly she felt a little chilly.

They drove back to the house in near silence.

The sex had been good. Very good indeed, in fact. And all the more so because he had been starved of it for too long.

But it had been a mistake anyway.

A colossal understatement.

What was one supposed to do when one had bedded a lady? And when it was quite possible that one had impregnated her?

Say thank you and leave her?

Say nothing?

Apologize?

Offer her marriage?

He did not want to marry her. Marriage was not about beddings. Not exclusively about them, anyway. And the parts of marriage that were not the beddings were every bit as important as those that were. A marriage with Gwendoline was impossible. And, to be fair, that applied to both of them.

He wondered if she expected an offer.

And if she would accept were he to make one.

His guess was that the answer to both was a resounding no. Which made it safe to offer, he supposed, and somehow set himself in the right and appease his conscience.

Daft thought.

He took the option of saying nothing.

“How is your ankle?” he asked.

Idiot. Brilliant conversationalist.

“It is coming along slowly but surely,” she said. “I shall be careful not to do anything as reckless again.”

If she had been more careful a few days ago, she would have climbed safely past his hiding place, unaware that he was there, and he would not have spared her a thought since. Her life would be different. His would be.

And if his father had not died, he thought in some exasperation, he would still be alive.

“Your brother will send a carriage for you soon?” he asked.

It struck him suddenly that he could have offered to take her to Newbury Abbey himself and save her a few days at Penderris.

No. Bad idea.

“If he does not delay in sending it,” she said, “and I am sure he will not, then it may arrive the day after tomorrow. Or certainly the day after that.”

“You will be happy to be able to recuperate at home with your family about you,” he said.

“Oh,” she said, “I will.”

They were talking like a pair of polite strangers who did not have a whole brain between the two of them.

“You will go to London after Easter?” he asked. “For the Season?”

“I expect so,” she said. “My ankle will be healed by then. And you? Will you go to London too?”

“I will,” he said. “It is where I grew up, you know. My father’s house is there. My house now. My sister is there.”

“And you will want to look for a wife there,” she said.

“Yes.”

Good Lord! Had they really been intimate with each other on the beach in the cove less than an hour ago?

He cleared his throat.

“Gwendoline—” he began.

“Please,” she said, cutting him off. “Don’t say anything. Let us just accept it for what it was. It was … pleasant. Oh, what a ridiculous word to choose. It was far more than pleasant. But it is not anything to be commented upon or apologized for or justified or anything else. It just was. I am not sorry, and I hope you are not. Let us leave it at that.”

“What if you are with child?” he asked her.

She turned her head sharply and looked at him, clearly startled. He kept his eyes on the lane before them, looking steadily between the ears of the horse that trotted along ahead of the gig. Surely she had thought of that? She had the most to lose, after all.

“I am not,” she said. “I cannot have children.”

“According to a quack,” he said.

“I am not with child,” she said, sounding stubborn and a little upset.

He looked at her briefly.

“If you are,” he said, “you must write to me immediately.”

He told her where he lived in London.

She did not answer but merely continued to stare.

George and Ralph and Flavian must have been for a long ride. They were only just stepping out of the stable block as the gig approached. They all turned to watch it come.

“We have been to the cove,” Hugo said as he drew the horse to a stop. “It is always at its most picturesque at high tide.”

“The fresh air has been lovely,” Lady Muir said. “It is sheltered and really quite warm down on that little beach.”

Good Lord, even to his own ears they sounded like a pair of coconspirators being so overhearty in their enthusiastic simulation of innocence that they proclaimed themselves as guilty as hell.

“I imagine,” Ralph said, “that drawing room conversations today are loud with predictions of the dire suffering we are surely facing as punishment for today’s glorious weather.”

“No doubt,” Flavian said, “it will snow tomorrow. With a strong north wind. And we will never again be so foolish as to think of enjoying such an unusually lovely day.”

They all laughed.

“You do not have your crutches with you, Lady Muir?” George asked.

“Crutches are not much use on cliff paths and pebbles and sand,” Hugo said. “I’ll drive her up to the doors and carry her inside.”

“Off you go, then,” George said, giving Hugo a penetrating look. He had not been fooled, at least, and it would be nothing short of a miracle if Flavian had. Or Ralph, for that matter. “I daresay Imogen has seen us all arrive and has ordered the tea tray brought up.”

Hugo proceeded on his way to the house, a silent Lady Muir beside him.