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In between their lovemaking, the two of them talked and talked. Josie whispered to him about the horrors she had gone through with the Earl and his sisters. That roused him to anger, and she had to soothe him and remind him the Earl would eventually get his punishment.
Ace talked to her about his thankfully brief experience in the Royal Navy—about the odd fellows who had been picked up by the press gang at the same time as him, about the beefy old Captain ofThe Valiantand about the Lieutenant who had oddly felt like a true friend.
He talked about his escape, and his travels on the Continent. “It took so long,” he remembered. “I kept worrying that I would not get back in time to save you from that man.”
He even told her about his unexpected encounter with the man who turned out to be his father, how he didn’t like the man and why. That led him to talking about his mother and his childhood—the brutal life they led in the Rookeries and the struggle of raising his brother, Ted, when Ace was just a child himself. He told her things he had never told another living soul. All his shame and guilt poured out of him, and he felt cleansed by her, like a new man.
* * *
One memorable day, when the sun was already low in the sky, they bought themselves a dinner of Cornish pasties—meat-filled hand pies—and went to have a picnic on the beach. They had to scramble down a long way to get to sea level. But Ace held Josie’s hand, and they made it.
They found themselves in a cove overhung by the rocks above, which formed a completely isolated little area of beach. They could see no other human for miles, and the only sound was that of the lapping waves and the screeching seagulls.
They built a fire from brushwood, and they ate their pasties sitting close to it. It had been an unusually hot summer, but down by the sea the cool breeze could be sharp as the sun set.
Ace reached for Josie and pushed her down gently onto the sand. He began taking her clothes off, nibbling at her neck and her breasts as he went. “Ah, Josie girl, I can’t get enough of you,” he murmured. Before long, she had his clothing off as well.
They rolled playfully in the sand, until Josephine slid down his body and took him in her mouth. He groaned with pleasure. Remembering how he had taught her to do this, she used her hands and her tongue as well. Just before climaxing, he pulled out of her mouth, lay on top of her and entered her. As he came, it was so powerful that he saw stars before his eyes, and he wondered if some men had ever died this way. “They’d be lucky,” he said out loud to himself.
“What did you say?” Josie asked.
“Nothing, really. Just that other men would be lucky to have a woman as full of fire as you are.”
She smiled. They rested a bit. Then he picked her up and carried her to the water’s edge. Lady Josephine panicked. “Put me down, Ace. I can’t swim!”
“You can’t swim? Haven’t you ever been to the shore in the summertime?”
“Yes, but—you don’t understand. If a lady goes to Bath or Brighton, for example, she’s made to wear a bathing costume that covers her from neck to ankles. Then she sits in a ‘bathing machine’ to experience the sea, but she can’t move too much in there, and no one can see her in her semi-undressed state.”
“Good God,” Ace said. “No wonder you never learned how to swim, if you had to go through all that rigmarole just to get into the water. I’ll teach you, though.” He lowered his arms to put her in the water.
“Ace, don’t, don’t. I’ll drown.”
He laughed. “The water’s only up to my ankles. I’ll protect you. You won’t drown.”
He stood her up in the shallow water, then began to lead her in deeper. “Ace, it’s getting deep—”
“Hush, my love, it’s fine. I won’t take you beyond where you can stand up.”
So they walked deeper in the sea together, till the water was up to her neck. “Put your legs around my waist, and keep your arms around my neck,” he said.
She obliged him. As her body rose against his, she found that he was rock-hard with desire again. Keeping her legs around him, he entered her underwater. They rocked back and forth in the surf until they both had sated themselves. Then he led her back toward the beach.
She felt like they were the very first man and woman, all alone on the planet, climbing out of the sea after mating.
“There,” he said to her. “Wasn’t that fun?”
“You never taught me to swim, though.”
“Ah, that,” he said, in mock regret. “I fear, Madam, that I got quite distracted from my original plans.”
They lay naked on the sand, watching the thousands of stars above them. That was the night he asked her to marry him.
* * *
During the second week of their stay in Cornwall, Lady Josephine got a letter from Lady Hermione. Paddy, apparently, had shared the cottage’s location with her.
Dear Jo,
