Pleasure throbbed through her at the hot, urgent feel of his mouth. She shifted restlessly as he kissed lower. “You, sir, are insatiable.”
“Are you complaining, wife?”
He licked around her navel.
“No,” she managed.
“No?”
His head lowered, and his tongue flicked softly between her legs.
She moaned. “No. Why, it’s my duty to please you.”
She felt him smile against her. “That is right.” He rose over her, then settled his weight on her fully. “And this pleases me very, very much.”
She bit her lip when he pushed into her.
“Very much,” he repeated, and his eyes lost focus.
She raised her knees higher, allowing him closer, and he gave an appreciative groan.
He rocked into her and it was not long until their cries mingled and he fell against her, his heart hammering against her breast.
She lay still beneath him as the rush of his breath against her neck slowed. Her fingers stroked aimless patterns on his sun-warmed back. High above, the sails were snapping in the breeze.
She tightened her arms around him.
How she loved him.
She had been worried that the price for being with him would be her hard-won slice of independence, but he had continued to be open to her needs and ideas. He had resigned himself to a two-month engagement to let her finish her term at Oxford after he had managed to have her place reinstated. If he had installed a protection officer against her objections, she never saw the man. His many letters from Brittany had the brevity and efficiency of estate reports, but that had made it all the sweeter to finally be in his bed again on their wedding night, where the intensity of his passion had told her more than words ever could.
He stirred and raised himself onto his elbows, his light eyes searching. “Are you sure you do not want to sail on to Persia tomorrow?”
She grinned. His hair had half-dried and stuck up rakishly.
She smoothed her hand over the ruffled locks. “I like it here,” she said. “It’s lovely, not having to do anything or be anywhere.”
“Hm.” He turned his cheek into her palm, and she felt the scratchy beginnings of a beard.
“Also, your brother enjoys meeting us for dinner.”
Peregrin was two bays away, helping Professor Jenkins with his excavation work on the battleship. Unlike Sebastian, who had to stay in the shade or become pink like a shrimp, Peregrin had turned bronzed and wheat-blond like a Viking in the sun. Being outdoors, digging and coordinating, suited him infinitely more than sitting behind a desk, and Jenkins seemed pleased enough with his unlikely apprentice. Pleased enough to recover somewhat from losing his prospective assistant bride to a duke.
“How about we stay for another week,” Sebastian said as he rolled off her, “and then sail to Persia.”
She was quiet for a moment. “Will you go hunting with Prince Albert in autumn?” she then asked.
He arched a brow. “Are you asking whether we are going to avoid England forever? We won’t. I believe your next term begins in May.”
She frowned. “You think our scandal will have died down by then?”
He gave a short bark of laughter. “No. Next year, perhaps.”
Sebastian surveyed his wife, looking rosy and tousled and ponderous, and a surge of love made him mount her again.
Her green eyes gazed back at him with a soft welcome. A smattering of golden freckles had begun forming on her nose. He dipped his head and kissed them.
Their scandal would probably never die down. He had changed his place in history for her.
It was his best decision yet.
Besides. He had a feeling that one day, history would squarely side with them, and he was usually correct about these things.
Author’s Note
Oxford University opened its first women’s colleges in 1879: Lady Margaret Hall and Somerville College. The universities of Cambridge and London had already been admitting female students for years at that point, but when Emily Davies, founder of the first women’s college at Cambridge, had scouted Oxford as a possible location in the 1860s, she found herself dissuaded by a strong “monastic tradition, rowdy undergraduates, a lively interest in gossip, and a large population of prostitutes.” Gilbert wasn’t wrong when he warned Annabelle that Oxford was a place of great debauchery. Nevertheless, the first female students thrived, though it would take until 1920 before they were allowed to fully matriculate and sit final exams like the male students.
Winning voting rights for women would take equally long: the Married Women’s Property Act was amended in 1882, two years