Whimpering, Penelope tried to push downwards, towards his questing fingers, but his hands closed around her thighs, holding her poised in all the inarticulate irritation of suspended desire. She could feel his thumbs at the soft junction of her thighs, maddeningly close to, but not quite touching the area she so ardently wanted him to reach.

Well, two could play at that game. With unsteady hands, Penelope scrabbled at all the excess fabric, prospecting through a wilderness of bunched-up blue wool for the front of Alex’s breeches. It didn’t take his quick, indrawn breath or the constriction of his hands around her thighs to let her know she had found the right place. Penelope gave a husky laugh of triumph as she yanked at the front flap with a fine disregard to buttons and stitches.

Raising the stakes, his thumb brushed against the swollen place between her legs. Penelope delicately curved her fingers around his shaft and applied the just right amount of pressure to make all the blood travel from his brain to another location entirely.

“Christ!” Alex groaned, with what was left of his verbal faculties. “You’re wicked.”

“I try,” Penelope said, then gasped, her back arching as he did some rather wicked things of his own, revealing that while he might not have had much experience with corset ties, he did have a healthy working knowledge of the female anatomy. Penelope emitted a little mewing noise, as her body contracted of its own accord. Lord. It had taken her weeks to teach Freddy to find that spot. Her knees were feeling wobbly. They didn’t want to hold her up anymore. There were black spots in front of her eyes and her swollen nipples rubbed painfully against the lining of her corset. She felt like a ripe fruit, about to burst out of its own skin. Every inch of her was overripe and aching, bursting for completion.

She squirmed away, out of the reach of his teasing fingers. She wanted him inside her and she wanted it now.

“No more games,” she rasped, her knees tightening around his hips. Holding his shaft in one hand, she lowered herself slowly down on top of him, her lips parting in an involuntary gasp as she felt him inside her.

“No games,” he agreed, and there was a wild note in his voice that matched her own, as his hands closed around her bare buttocks, pulling her down as he drove up into her, hard and fast.

Penelope felt herself convulsing around him, the waves of pleasure coming one on top of the other, all the stored-up desire of the past few days pulsing out between them. She could barely hear the echo of her own hoarse cry in her ears for the thrumming of her blood. Still caught in a dizzy spiral of pleasure, she was only vaguely aware when Alex’s hand closed desperately about her waist, lifting her unceremoniously off him as he rolled over to spill his seed in the grass.

Flushed, disheveled, they lay gasping like pugilists who had just fought a difficult bout, each in his own corner. Penelope sprawled in the center of the blanket where Alex had dropped her, propped up on her elbows, feeling her chest work up and down against her corset as her breathing returned to normal and some of the hectic color faded from her cheeks.

Across the blanket, Alex rolled to a sitting position, his hands going self-consciously to the flap of his breeches. His shirt was untucked, his breeches’ flap flopping, his hair rumpled, and there were angry red patches at the open neck of his shirt where she might just have gotten a little bit carried away in the heat of the moment.

Penelope suspected she didn’t look much better. Her hair was scraggling down on one side of her head, her jacket was still open, and she was sitting in a patch of wet. Why was it that the act itself was so wonderful, but the sequel invariably so awkward?

“Well,” she said brightly. Licking her sore lips, she surreptitiously stretched the muscles in her thighs, feeling the stickiness between her legs.

“Well,” Alex echoed uncertainly, watching her with obvious concern. She could see his eyes go to her open jacket, then the rumpled blouse underneath, and a mottled red flush spread slowly beneath his tan.

She could tell what he was thinking, that he might at least have had the courtesy to wait to remove her clothes. Penelope could have told him she didn’t mind. In fact, the extra layers had added a certain spice to the whole adventure. Like the bit of clove stuck between her back teeth. Hmm. How had that gotten there?

Struggling to her feet on legs that weren’t entirely steady, Penelope shook out her skirts. “Oh, Alex, don’t look so Friday faced! I’m not going to call you out to defend my honor.”

After a startled moment, he grinned back, levering himself up off the ground. “A good thing, too. You’re the better shot.”

Reaching for her, he helped her do up the last two buttons of her habit. His fingers, so deft on the reins, fumbled with the tiny, cloth-covered buttons. He had not, Penelope surmised, had a great deal of practice with ladies’ clothing, unlike Freddy, who could get a lady out of her corset in about five seconds flat. Looking at the bowed top of his dark head as he squinted over her buttons, she felt a painful wave of fondness. Or maybe that was just the pressure of the close-fitting jacket around her ribs.

His fingers lingered on the last button, his knuckles brushing her chin. Glancing up, she found he was looking at her searchingly. “Are you sorry?” he asked.

Penelope raised both eyebrows. “Are you?”

His hands shifted from her stock to her shoulders, smoothing the woolen fabric. “Only if I’ve done anything to cause you distress.”

This conversation was causing her distress. Penelope wished he would just kiss her again. She didn’t want to have to talk about it all, parsing emotions and meanings; she just wanted to enjoy it. But she had some respect for Alex’s tender sensibilities, so instead of just shrugging and yanking him down for a kiss, she smiled reassuringly up at him.

“Those were not noises of distress you were hearing,” she said provocatively. “In fact, quite the contrary.”

Alex dropped a kiss on her nose, presumably because it was there. “That wasn’t what I meant.”

“I know. But it is what I meant.”

“So you’re using me for my body, then.” He tried to make a joke out of it, but didn’t quite succeed.

“What’s the use of pretending to anything else? We both know how this has to end.” Penelope rested her palms against the light material of his shirt, feeling the rise and fall of his breathing beneath her hands. “Can’t we just enjoy it for what it is?”

“What about your husband?”

“He doesn’t matter,” said Penelope, and meant it. Freddy could go hang. It wasn’t about revenge anymore. What it was about, she wasn’t quite sure. All she knew was that she wasn’t ready for it to end. “How long do we have until we reach the others?”

“About four days. Perhaps less.”

“Can we — would you — ” Penelope cleared her throat. “Can’t we just take these days as our own? No strings, no reproaches, no regrets. Just this, nothing more.”

“I don’t like it.” Penelope could feel his chest rise and fall as he dragged in a deep breath. Looking down at her, he managed a wry sort of smile. “But I’d rather have a little bit of you than none of you at all.”

Light-headed with relief, Penelope beamed giddily at him. She hadn’t realized she was holding her breath until she let it out. “You won’t regret it,” she assured him. “But there are rules. No mentioning Freddy. No talking about what will happen after.”

“No future,” finished Alex grimly.

“You,” said Penelope reproachfully, “think far too much. Don’t. Wouldn’t you rather be in the present? The future is only a series of possibilities, the majority of which may never come about. But this — this is here and now and sure.”

Alex took her hands, his thumbs stroking against her palms. “You might tell yourself this now, but how will you feel four days from now?”

“That’s still four days from now. If there were a future,” said Penelope, as much for herself as him, “there would be all sorts of other things to worry about, like where we were to live and who wants the window open and whether we ought to send the children back to school in England or keep them here.” It was unnerving how quickly hypothetical images could become concrete in one’s head. Penelope shook them away and went resolutely on, her voice shriller than usual, “Marriage isn’t all the sentimentalists claim it to be, you know. You would worry about my spending and bemoan my flightiness and deprecate my low relations — ”

“In this case,” broke in Alex calmly, “I believe I’m the one with the low relations. And you’re not flighty. Impulsive, certainly, but not flighty.”

Penelope blinked. Freddy had said . . . But that didn’t signify. By her own rules, she wasn’t allowed to think of Freddy. “Oh. Well. But you do see my point, don’t you? This way, we can just appreciate each other for what we are, without having to worry about all those other bits. It’s really the best of all possible worlds, when you think about it.” She smiled up at him, her hands smoothing upwards from his chest to his shoulders. “Just us, just here, just now.”

Alex’s limber mouth twisted into the sort of smile a man might wear as he gallops knowingly into the cannon’s mouth. Rueful. Resigned.

“Do you have any apples to offer while you’re at it?” he said wryly.

“Does that mean you’ll be a fallen man with me?”

“If we’re going to be thrown out of the garden, we might as well enjoy it while we’re in it,” he said philosophically, as his head dipped again towards hers. A breath away from her lips, he added, “But I draw the line at fig leaves.”