Read Online Hugh and Bess by Susan Higginbotham - Free Book Online Page B

breast. Emma made no protest; to the contrary, her hands were now moving over him as eagerly as his were moving over her. Only when their mutual ardor caused the stool to tip precariously did she draw back. “Take me to your bed, Hugh.”
      “You mean your bed?”
      “Don’t quibble.”
      He picked her up, carried her through the curtain and set her on her bed, then took her into his arms once more. Hugh was by no means a virgin, but up until now he had been only with prostitutes. Mindless, brisk, and businesslike pleasure was nothing new to him, but touching and being touched with affection was new. The interval that followed, as he and Emma uncovered each other's nakedness and tenderly, leisurely explored each other's bodies, was perhaps the happiest he had experienced in his young life. So moved was he that when he lay spent against Emma some time later, he was astonished to find himself almost in tears. “Thank you,” he whispered.
      “’Twas my pleasure.” Her voice had a catch in it too.
      He eased himself off her and draped his arm around her shoulders. They had been lying together in contented silence for some time when she shivered. Hugh sat up to pull the coverlet over Emma and saw when he did that there was a bit of blood on her thighs. “Your monthly course?” he asked with some distaste. Intercourse during that time was forbidden by the Church, though of course what he and Emma had just been doing was not smiled upon either, so who was he to complain? Emma shook her head. “My God! You were a virgin?”
      She kissed him and pulled him back against her. “Whom better to give my maidenhead to?”
      “But you were married—”
      “Sir Alan was incapable, at least for this. There were ways I could please him, but this was not one of them.”
      “Emma, forgive—”
      For an answer she kissed him again. “I have always loved you, Hugh,” she said simply. “I fretted about you—secretly, of course—all the while you were in prison. I cried back there because I could not stand to think of you being unhappy. I never planned to lie with you, but now that I have I cannot regret it. I was faithful to my husband, and would still be so if he were alive, but I cannot be now that he is dead. Not with you here before me.”
      “What if I’ve got you with child?”
      “Then I’ll call him Hugh if it's a boy, what else?”
      He laughed, and in due time they were making love again. Afterward, she dozed in his arms. Hugh, exhausted from the morning's activity and his dissolute evening, fell fast asleep. There was nothing in his present situation that should have caused the nightmare that had plagued him since his father's death to recur, but it did, and his scream roused Emma from her own half-sleep. “Hugh! What is the matter?”
      He was so disoriented and shaking that he could not answer her for a time. Finally, he came to himself. “A dream. You must think me a weakling,” he muttered.
      “No, I don’t think that at all. Come. Sit up and let me give you some wine. You are deathly white.”
      She rose from the bed, squirmed into a shift, and padded away through the curtain, barefoot. By the time she returned with a cup of wine, he had recovered enough to admire the contours of her body under the shift. “What were you dreaming of?” she asked gently.
      “My father.” Hugh took the wine but did not sip it, instead staring off into space. “They did horrible things to him. Did you hear?” She nodded and squeezed his hand tightly. “And I dream of all of them. I thought that when I was free, the nightmares would go away. I didn’t have one last night.”
      “I doubt you would remember if you had. Hugh, they will get better in time. You have been free for only a short time, after all.”
      “I think sometimes I should have died with him, Emmy.”
      She wrapped her arms around him and rested her head upon his shoulder. “Hugh, you know that is not so. He