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He found he could mount just fine, but that standing up was the problem.

It took a dozen goes to finally stand and another half dozen to begin successfully paddling.

When he had done a complete circuit of the small lake without coming off, ending back where she stood watching him in the water up to her waist, she applauded wildly and then rattled the board, deliberately dislodging him into the water with a laugh.

Surfacing, he said with a broad grin, “You little wretch,” and lunged for her.

She danced back out of reach, swimming away into the deeper water.

He chased her and caught her. He could stand here, but it was too deep for her.

So, she clung to him like a monkey to a tree, and he wrapped his arms around her and kissed her again.

Her legs wrapped round his hips, her sex pressed against his through the layers of their wet breeches, her arms round his neck.

He kissed her deeply, slowly, with a sensuous hunger he hadn’t allowed himself in a long time.

She responded with uninhibited innocence and a pure passion that sparked a deep response in him.

She was the other half of him, he knew it.

How have I existed for thirty-eight years without her?

The pain of loneliness, the yawning emptiness inside of him, that he had been barely conscious of, so inured to it that he didn’t even recognize it for what it was, became suddenly replete. Because of her.

Their wet bodies pressed close, generating heat between them, warming their soaked clothing, her arms and legs clinging to him, her sex pressed against his hardened cock.

Hot, demanding need filled his groin. He wanted her fiercely.

The water lapped around them as they kissed, and he held her tight against him, lost to desire and a tender love he’d never, until this moment, known was possible.

Feeling her trembling with both heat and cold, he turned and walked them back toward the shore, holding her in his arms. She found her feet, and they stumbled onto the shore dripping water.

He let her go reluctantly and reached for towels in his satchel. She was shivering in the slight breeze. “Here.” He gave her the towel which she took gratefully, and he found the whisky flask and offered her that as well. He threw the blanket down on the ground.

“Thank you.” She took a generous swig and coughed. After a second swallow, he relieved her of the flask before she got drunk, there was little enough of her after all, and it was a strong spirit. He took a mouthful himself. It was good whisky, fiery but mellow.

Like that afternoon, he took his shirt off to wring it out and was about to drag it back on when she stopped him.

He’d had his back to her while he dried himself and hadn’t seen her strip and throw on a loose robe, that she got from her own bag.

She tugged him closer, and he said, “I’ll get your robe wet with my breeches. ”

“Take them off,” she said matter-of-factly.

“I can’t do that!” he protested, scandalized.

“Yes, you can. Wrap the towel round yourself, I shan’t look, I promise.

” She turned her back, and he hesitated a moment and then swiftly undid his buttons and shucked his sopping breeches.

Wrapping the towel round his waist, he wrung out the breeches.

They would be ruined, but it seemed a small price to pay for such a powerfully enjoyable evening.

It was madness, a mid-summer dream. He would wake eventually to sanity. He must. But not quite yet.

She turned back to him, her hair—still very damp, despite toweling it dry—hung in damp ringlets around her beautiful face.

“I should see you back to the house—” he said in last ditch effort to stave off the inevitable.

She shook her head and dropped to the blanket, patting it. Her eyes, dark and wide in her pale face, held his.

He knew he shouldn’t, but the temptation of her was more than he could resist. He dropped to his knees on the blanket.

She reached for him, and he kissed her, bearing her down onto the blanket.

She tasted of whisky now and smelled of damp lake and her own delicious scent.

Her skin, cold to touch initially, warmed rapidly under the assault of his kisses, traced over her cheeks and neck.

“Fenella,” he whispered. “God, you’re so lovely, but this is wrong.” He lifted his head, and she touched his cheek, a gentle stroke.

“Nothing that feels this good can be wrong,” she said.

He uttered a soft groan and buried his face in her neck. “I don’t deserve your sweet innocence, my love,” he murmured.

“Whyever not?”

“I’ve seen and done things you cannot conceive of.” He rolled sideways onto the blanket and she rolled toward him, reluctant it seemed to put any distance between them.

“Of course, you’ve been at war and served in the British Navy.

” She stroked his cheek. “You’re a man who has lived more years than me.

I’m not so silly as to think your life is innocent of things that would make a lady blush.

But have you killed anyone? Hurt a child or a dog? Broken a woman’s heart?”

“I’ve killed in war but not in peace, no I’ve not deliberately hurt a child or a dog, and yes I’ve broken a woman’s heart.” He said regarding her with bemusement. How could a woman so innocent have such wisdom?

“How did you break her heart?”

“I wasn’t there for her when she needed me.” He paused. He supposed he owed her the truth of his life. Bending an arm and propping his head on his hand, he spoke quietly, dredging up memories he’d tried to bury.

“Her name was Elena Romero. She was married to a brute named Juan Romero, from Cadiz, who used to beat her.” He grimaced.

“I was eighteen when I met her, and she was twenty-four. Her husband was a shipmate, and when we had shore leave, he invited me to his home. It was a boy’s infatuation for an older woman.

If I’d never seen her again, nothing would have come of it.

But Juan was killed in the conflict over Corfu in ’07.

I remembered her with fondness, so I took his things back to her when the ship made port at Cadiz.

” He paused again and swallowed, recalling Elena’s boldness.

He remembered how she’d fed him and after the meal sat in his lap and seduced him. Who could blame her? Or him? She was a desperate widow who’d been subjected to abuse since she was sixteen, and he was lonely. He was kind to her, and she knew he wouldn’t mistreat her.

“We became lovers. I would visit her when I had shore leave.” He closed his eyes a moment, transported back to the horrifying last chapter. “She was assaulted and killed by a French soldier in the conflict at Cadiz in 1810. I was there, but I couldn’t protect her.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” she said, low and fierce.

He tried to smile, but it was awry, he could feel it. “How can you know that?”

“I know you,” she said, stroking the damp hair off his face. “We have only just met, yet I feel as if I know you to your bones, your soul. If you could have done anything, you would have. I just know it.”

He stared at her, bemused by her faith in him on such short acquaintance. And yet, wasn’t that how he felt about her? As though they were two lost souls reunited at last, after decades, centuries, apart. Fantastical as it seemed, he knew it to be true.

He shook his head, forcing himself back to the thread of their conversation. “I arrived too late to stop him. He’d strangled her. I used the fact that he was French to justify killing him. I cut him down with my sword, but it didn’t bring Elena back.”

He took a breath trying to dislodge the lump in his throat and the tightness in his chest. As if she sensed where his pain lay, she placed a hand over his heart.

The little gestured eased the pangs of guilt he’d carried for four years.

He breathed more freely, and a small smile curved his lips.

How very intuitive she was. How in tune with him.

What in Hades have I done to deserve this good fortune?

He cleared his throat and resumed the last of the tale.

“I was about to retire, too. But I stayed on after that and only came home when my brother died. He had no sons, so I was his heir.”

“And now you’re a duke?”

“I am. I don’t feel like one. I’d much rather be on a ship than managing an estate.”

“I agree,” she said. “Perhaps we can run away to sea together?” She grinned that impish grin he loved so much. His heart melted further.

“Tempting,” he said softly. “But my duties are inescapable, I’m afraid.

” He cupped her face, throwing the last vestiges of caution to the winds, carried away by the conviction he had found her at last, the woman he had looked for, longed for, and despaired of ever finding.

Mid-summer madness indeed. He was drunk, not on whisky but on Fenella Eden: his heart’s desire. “Would you be my duchess?”

“Only if you promise me we can see the world together,” she said with sparkling eyes and an adoring smile. “I’ve dreamed of places like Jamaica and Barbados, Egypt and India, the Americas...”

“The Mediterranean, Polynesia—where we can surf with the native people...” he returned with equal enthusiasm.

“Yes! Oh, do say we can, please!” Her fingers speared through the hair on the nape of his neck, sending tingles down his spine.

“I’d give you the moon if I could, Fenella,” he said, his heart overflowing. “My beautiful woman,” he murmured sealing his proposal with a deep and tender kiss.

*

Fenella surrendered to his increasingly sensuous kisses, her heart full to bursting, her body ripe and burgeoning to the call of his, as he pressed her back onto the blanket, his body heavy, damp, and warm on hers.

She shifted her legs to accommodate his hips, her robe opening to bare her body to his.

The towel he’d wrapped round himself was dislodged and there was nothing between them now.

The hot hardness of his cock pressed against her needy flesh, and she arched herself up under him, instinctively seeking the joining her body craved.

Breaking the kiss, he said achingly, “Fenella, no—” His hot breath caressed her face as he rolled to the side, taking the heat with him.

She rolled toward him, mindless with need. “Why not?” She kissed his neck and wrapped a leg round his hip, pressing close again.

He groaned, and irresistibly he kissed her again and again, pushing her back into the blanket and sliding a hand down her body to cup a breast and squeeze it.

Delicious sensations shot to the place between her legs that throbbed with insistent, aching need, as his fingers found and teased a nipple, his lips running down her neck, hot breath warming her cool skin and giving her tingles.

She moaned, tossing her head and arching her body up, restless with an itchy ache she didn’t know how to slake. His mouth replaced his hand on her nipple and the hand travelled lower to touch her gently where she needed it most.

The slide of his fingers was an exquisite torture that made her gasp.

He stroked her gently and persistently for an age of pleasure that engulfed her senses.

Gradually the ache tightened into a hot ball that wound up and up until quite suddenly it shattered in a blissful wave of exquisite joy that made her groan out loud and suffused her body from scalp to soles.

A tingling delight ran up her spine and down the backs of her legs, radiating outward from the source of explosive sensation beneath his fingertips.

She lay gasping, slowly relaxing, as a tide of peace filled her body and made her drift, as if carried on a warm wave of water.

Coming back to herself, she blinked and opened her eyes fully. His eyes glittered in the dark, his features limned in the silver moonlight and the faint glow of the lamp.

She reached up to touch his dear face. “Beroald—”

“Call me Bear,” he said, his voice rough. “It was my nickname in the Navy.”

“Bear,” she said caressingly. “That was exquisite, thank you.”

He shook his head and levered himself up, rising to his feet.

The towel fell to the ground, and he turned away from her, but not before she took in the full glory of his body, with its rampant cock jutting from his groin.

He plunged back into the water and stroked away from the bank out into the center of the lake.

She sat up, pulling her robe round herself and watched him turn and stroke back to the shore. When he emerged, his cock had subsided from the assault of the cold water, and he reached for the towel to dry himself.

He pulled on his wet breeches and shirt and turned to face her, his expression in the dim light hard to read. He offered her a hand to help her rise and pulled her to her feet.

“You need to go back to the house now,” he said gently. He tipped up her chin, with finger and thumb and placed a soft kiss on her lips. “I’ll speak to your father in the morning.”

She swallowed, her heart thudding with excitement, and nodded. What will Papa say?