Page 29 of The New Earl’s Convenient Wife

She chuckled. ‘I want to learn everything. Everything that gives you pleasure.’

‘You’re an excellent pupil. Though I believe your instincts are better than any tutoring.’

‘You would encourage me to…continue following my instincts?’

‘With all my heart.’

‘You are certain? I was… I was afraid I might have shocked you.’

Rafe sighed. ‘Oh, please, continue shocking me.’

She gave him another kiss. ‘Then I will.’

Gradually, as his thoughts slowly broke free from the fog of desire, with a niggle of discomfort, Rafe marveled at how freely they’d frolicked beside and in the river. Not that he expected someone to discover them. It was still too cool for local farm lads to venture here, seeking relief from afternoon heat. This stretch of the stream was bordered by woodland and a few open glades; there were no meadows nearby to feed cattle that needed human tending and Herdwick sheep, trained to their traditional high meadows, would never stray this far, requiring a shepherd to come in search of them. But…to make love openly, in the woodland, for anyone to see if someone had stumbled upon them…

Juliana appeared not to entertain any such concern. She rose calmly and walked back to the jumbled assortment of clothes they’d left on the blanket with no haste, seeming perfectly at ease. After he followed her over, she gave him a gentle kiss before she helped him back into his garments while he assisted her, but there were no teasing aftertouches to underline her sensual power over him.

She’d turned from siren back into assistant as if the change were completely natural, exhibiting no awkwardness at all in making the transition.

Indeed, already her attention had turned to musing about the possibilities for dinner and wondering whether the skill of their apprentice cook might extend to preparing a meat pie with roasted vegetables.

While Rafe wondered when his wife might suddenly turn temptress again. After their activities at the stream, he wasn’t sure he’d be man enough to respond if she did try to lure him into a tryst in one of the forest glades they passed on the way back to Thorne Hall, or in a conveniently empty stall in the hay barn. But tonight in the privacy of their bedchamber…

As he helped her remount, she gave him a luminous smile. ‘I hope our interlude relaxed and refreshed you. It certainly did me.’

‘I’m so relaxed I may doze off and fall out of the saddle,’ he retorted only half joking as he swung into the saddle.

She chuckled. ‘I’ll chatter to you, then, to make sure you stay awake. After your legendary performance at the stream, you are due some rest.’

‘A performance nowhere as legendary as yours.’

She made a wry face. ‘If I confess something, will you not take me to task?’

His curiosity piqued, Rafe had no idea what might be coming next. ‘That’s hard to promise, but as I’ve never yet known you to do something I would find worthy of chastisement, I suppose I can.’

‘Those years ago, when as a young girl I watched you swimming with your friends while I observed unseen… I imagined doing what we did today. Not the fulfillment part, of course—I had no inkling yet that such a thing was possible. I envisioned just…having you all to myself, being able to touch and caress you with the river as my assistant. Using the assets of the natural world to enhance and extend my embrace.’

Once again, she’d surprised him. ‘How old were you then?’

‘Fourteen, fifteen, perhaps. Old enough to have…urges and desires that were quite strong, though I didn’t understand them at the time.’

‘You’ve always been a child of nature,’ he said, marvelling anew at this further testament to how deeply sensuality was embedded in her nature. How could he have been ignorant of that for so long, thinking her a meek and girlish innocent?

‘I suppose I am. I imagined us splashing and playing like otters, even dozing as we drifted along, hands clasped together. They do, you know—otters. Though they usually return to their dens or caves for sleeping, I’ve seen them floating along, a mother on her back with her baby on her belly, or two adults, clasping each other with their paws so they could move together as they napped. Keeping each other close, as you held me close in the shallows today. And then, in the deeper water…’ She sighed. ‘It was even more wondrous than I’d imagined.’

She looked over to smile at him. ‘Perhaps you are a child of nature, too, and are only just realizing it.’

His brain stretched to try to accommodate that totally unexpected possibility. Did he, frolicking naked in forest glades, possess a hitherto hidden and more deep-seated sensuality?

Before today, he certainly would never have predicted he’d become an avid participant in an interlude like the one just passed. But for the still-simmering nerves in his sated body, he found it hard to believe the tryst had actually happened, that he’d not just awoken from some wondrous erotic dream.

Even in his army days, he’d not looked favourably on soldiers coupling with their partners out of doors. Not that he was shocked by it; such things happened regularly when soldiers were on campaign, bedding down in tents or wrapped in blankets on the ground. Even when billeted in buildings, stables, or the huts they constructed, true privacy was limited, but those with wives or temporary women were unwilling to refrain from claiming the comfort they offered.

To be truthful, he’d always found it coarse and a bit distasteful. But what had happened today at the river had been…magical.

She spoke of learning from him, but he was learning, too, from his ever-surprising wife. Learning to appreciate sensuality as natural, beautiful, somehow…pure. Unsullied by a man’s lust or a woman’s attempt to use a man’s desire to twist him to her will. An exchange of pleasure for pleasure, each partner intent only on fulfilling the other.

Teaching him to appreciate simple things of nature he’d looked at but not truly seen. The wonder of pollarded trees, where a single oak might provide everything from bedding to fodder to roof thatch to the decking for a warship and do so for hundreds of years. The tree serving its master as faithfully as a hound, but for much longer.