Page 93 of Impetuous

“I know.” He caressed her hair, admiring the shimmer of light on the pale strands. “I told her she can have as grand a wedding as she wants, as long as it happens no longer than a month from now.”

“A month! But, Philip, you cannot plan a grand wedding in only a month. Why, there would barely be time to get out invitations.”

“Believe me, Mother trotted out all the arguments.” Philip lightly trailed his fingertips down the sides of her neck, watching in the mirror. There was something fascinating in watching his movements and Cassandra’s reactions in the mirror, almost as if he stood apart from them and observed, both feeling what he did and seeing it as a stranger.

“She said that anything less than six months was simply absurd and, moreover, would give rise to all sorts of speculation and salacious rumors,” Philip continued. “I told her, not as many rumors as would be caused by the infelicitously early arrival of a babe three or four months after we were married.”

“Philip! You didn’t!”

“I did.” His hands moved down to caress her shoulders and upper arms, then spread out across her chest. “There is no hope that I could wait six months to have you in my bed again. Why, look at me. Three nights since my vow not to come to your bedchamber, and here I am, sneaking down the hall to your room.”

He grasped her shoulders and pulled her up unresistingly. Moving close behind her, he slid his arms around her waist and bent to kiss her shoulder. “You are so beautiful,” he breathed. “I cannot stay away from you. It seems as if all I can think about is you. All day I look at you and imagine you unclothed.”

He slid his hands up and down her bare arms, then moved to cup her breasts through the cloth of her chemise. He stared, heavy-lidded, at their reflection, and Cassandra did, too, leaning back against him and going limp at the exquisite sensations pouring through her. Her chemise was thin, and the dark circles of her nipples were visible through the cloth. As he gently kneaded and caressed them, the nipples hardened visibly, thrusting against the material.

Letting out a sound that was half sigh, half groan, he nuzzled into her neck, his hands roaming over her body hungrily. He breathed her name as Cassandra turned in his arms, pressing herself into him. They kissed, slowly working their way across the room to the bed, stripping off articles of clothing and letting them drop where they were. Philip lifted Cassandra into the bed and lay down beside her. They made love tenderly at first, their desire growing more and more fierce as they went, until finally they could wait no longer, and he thrust deeply into her. Trembling under the force of their emotions, they rode out their passion, climaxing finally in a burst of raw pleasure.

Collapsing onto the bed, Philip wrapped his arms around Cassandra, holding her close against him. Their eyes drifted closed and, exhausted, they slept.

It was a few hours later, in the dead of the night, that the coolness of the air on Philip’s skin awakened him. He opened his eyes slowly, pulled up out of a panicky dream in which he kept running from windmill to windmill, searching desperately for Cassandra. He wrapped his arms a little more tightly around her to reassure himself that she was safely here in his arms. Then he blinked, his mind clearing.

Suddenly he sat up. “Oh, my God! That’s it. Cassandra, wake up. I figured it out!”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CASSANDRA OPENED HER eyes sleepily. “What? What are you talking about?”

“I know why we couldn’t find the treasure. It’s because of the fens! They were drained after Margaret Verrere left England. At that time there were big areas of marshland that are now viable pasture. Don’t you see?”

“Of course!” Cassandra sat up excitedly, her mind clearing. “It must have changed the landscape drastically. Remember how the creek seemed closer on the map?”

“And I just shrugged it off as poor map drawing. But we might have been looking in entirely the wrong place.”

“How can we find out what the landscape used to look like?”

Philip was already out of bed, pulling back on his clothes, and Cassandra quickly jumped out and followed suit. “The library. There must be old histories of the area that might have a map. Or maybe some sort of record of how the draining of the fens changed the landscape. If worse comes to worst, we’ll have to go back to Aunt Liliane and ask if she remembers people talking about where things were before the fens were drained.”

Philip lit a candle, and Cassandra opened the door to peer out into the hall. Seeing no one, she stepped out, gesturing for Philip to follow her. They glided softly along the hall to the back stairs and down to the library. There they closed the door, lit the lamps and began to search.

Cassandra vaguely remembered having seen an old book that appeared to be a vicar’s reminiscences of life in the parish in the middle seventeenth century, so she looked for it on the second floor of the library. Philip went to a section of shelves that contained several histories. They worked steadily away for some time before Cassandra found the vicar’s recollections she had remembered and pulled the book out, calling to Philip.

Unfortunately, when they looked through it, they found no map anywhere in it. Philip set it aside. “Don’t put it back up. Perhaps if we read through it, it will describe the area around Saint Swithin’s so that we can reconstruct the way it must have looked. But, first, let’s look for a map.”

Philip found a history of the shire, but it was written after the draining of the fens, and the only map in it showed the area in its present state. They continued to look, even though their initial excitement was wearing off into sleepiness. The room was turning light with the dawn when Cassandra pulled out a narrow black book that she had almost missed at the end of one shelf.

“‘A True Account,’” she read, “‘of the Draining of’—Philip! This book is about draining the fens.” She opened it as he strode quickly over toward her. “Look! A map! A map of the area before it was drained. There are three of them, of different parts. See?”

“Yes. There’s Saint Swithin’s. And the road. But look.” His forefinger jabbed at a large shaded area on the left side the map. “That is a fen. That’s where we were today. That couldn’t have been the road Margaret drew on the map. This road makes a big bulge around the fen.”

Cassandra nodded. “No doubt, once the fen was drained, the way we went today was much closer, so the road shifted over here. We were on the wrong road entirely.” She glanced up at Philip, frowning. “Do you think that this old road still exists?”

“There might be traces of it. It’s probably overgrown, but we might be able to follow it to the wall and the peat-cutter’s hut.” He grinned at her, excitement effectively chasing away his weariness. “Well? Do you want to try?”

“Now?”

“It’s light outside.”

“All right. I’ll get my bonnet.” She turned and looked back at him. “Should we wake the children?”