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“I love you,” she said, cupping his jaw.
For just a moment, his body slacked against hers—except the press of his impressive erection—and he lowered himself over her.
“Wrap your legs around me,” he said darkly.
Entwined once more, he began moving within her, his face above hers, her hands gripping his stone-hard biceps…until his face twisted and he pulled out of her, moaning brokenly into the crook of her shoulder. Part of her was sorry he was pulsing over her womb instead of against its entrance, but she loved and accepted the warmth on her as the evidence of their love.
Afterwards, he held her atop and against him. The privacy wouldn’t last forever, but neither of them wanted to end this intimacy.
The rain lessened, and even before it ceased, bright sunshine pierced the clouds, casting bent rays of warmth and light into the temple and across their bodies. Knowing it was time to rise, Bea moved to sit up.
William’s arms tightened around her. “Just one more minute. Please.”
With soft laughter, she collapsed against him again. When she licked along a salty line up his throat, his hand tightened in her hair.
“Oh!” She wiggled against him, finding him hard against her again.
“I wish my great-grandfather had built something with walls and a door.” They both laughed as they sat up with reluctance, and William took her hand. “Holding you…well, for a moment I was overcome with dark thoughts, wishing nothing more than to go back in time and spend the last ten years having what we just did. But I can’t think like that.”
“No,” she agreed softly. “We can only hold ourselves to this higher standard now and going forward.”
His smile was at once confident and worried as he helped her up. “Did I measure up to your high standards, Bea?”
“Oh, William, you didn’t.” She smiled at his horror. “You exceeded them.”
He pulled her into his arms. “Wedid. Together.”
Bea spent the first half of their walk back to Candleton Hall wishing they could have stayed in that fantasy world for longer. But as they ambled hand in hand under a sky all the brighter blue for its recent darkness, she was glad they were returning home. She was determined that their newfound adventure persist, not that it be hidden and outside of time.
Moreover, they were both relieved they had dressed and left, for a reluctant Augustus was accompanying Miriam and Edmund, who were most eager, across the estate to look for them. Isabella and Ben were both asleep, they reassured her when they found her.
“I was worried about you! There was lightning!” Miriam said as Bea held her close.
“We sheltered in the temple. You know I would never let harm come to Mama,” William reassured.
Miriam was smiling when she stepped out of Bea’s embrace, but she frowned when she looked up at her mother’s hairstyle. Bea had done the best she could under the circumstances and without a maid, plaiting and coiling her wild tresses.
“Mama, whatever happened to your hair?”
Augustus tilted his head back to stare at the sky, and both children stared at their mother with confusion. Without so much as looking at her husband, Bea fought for composure, remarking eventually, “Oh, what a storm that was! It loosened my hair pins, I’m afraid.” Sighing inwardly when that seemed only to beget more curiosity, she brightened and clasped her hands in front of her. “Children, how would you like to go to the stables and help your father select a pup to bring back to London?”
“A dog?” William choked out.
Bea raised an eyebrow. “Indeed.”
Augustus laughed all the way back to Candleton Hall, though he and everyone else sobered when they found the housekeeper waiting for them in the garden with an unusually grim air.
“Lord Candleton, Lady Candleton, the Dowager Marchioness has just arrived.”
