Catherine moved the tiniest distance away from him. ‘Clem, my brother and sister-in-law are at home. What if they hear us?’

‘What if they do?’

He was nuzzling behind her ears, his breath inflaming her skin and her inner regions, distressingly so. Catherine was elated that his thoughts and desire were for her. She desperately loved this good-looking man of the lower orders, who sometimes liked to tease her with his roughcast ways, but she was a creature of right, of etiquette, of modesty.

‘Well, I—’

Clem took her to the bed.

‘Clem, don’t you think we should wait?’

Smiling, he threw his riding coat to the floor, having no care for the finer clothes he wore from the elevated state of this second marriage. ‘I want you now, Cathy.’

His hands were on her and he was kissing her mouth.

Dazed by his intensity, she allowed him to position her on the bed and lie over her and lift her skirts. While he was freeing himself and seeking her, she was praying the bed would not creak and incriminate them. The moment they were joined as husband and wife, when she indeed had all of him to herself, she gave way to his dominance and set her passion for him free.

‘You are going abroad, Clem?’ Olivia Lanyon enquired, having followed him to the parsonage stables.

‘I am. If it’s agreeable with you. I thought t’ look at Trecath-en Farm, spy on the new tenant, see what he’s doing with my old fields.’

‘You’re perfectly free to go where you will. I am concerned only that you are comfortable. With Catherine still resting, I’m unable to ask her.’

Clem viewed Olivia with impatience while enjoying the spectacle of her standing quite still, allowing the wind to catch her red hair. She was so much like her mother in colouring and femininity, but the resemblance ended there. She had Pengarron’s overbearing stance and disdain in almost every gaze. He had heard her giving orders to the staff in a curt manner, flustering the housekeeper, Nancy Wills, who was a nice little body. Catherine thought her selfish, she complained after every letter of Timothy’s that it seemed all Olivia wanted to do was paint – hardly a suitable pastime for a vicar’s wife.

Giving her a short bow, Clem mounted the black stallion – a superior piece of Pengarron horseflesh – brought to him by the parsonage groom. He was allowing his own mare, Tally, to graze in the parson’s paddock.

Nearly two miles on and he made the border, a high hedgerow of earth, rock and hawthorn which ran between Trecath-en and Ker-an-Mor, the Pengarron home and stud farm. Honeysuckle weaved in joyful disorder through the long grasses, as did cow parsley, pink ragged robin and nettle flower. He felt unemotional to be back on his old land, this wasn’t what he had been loathe to leave behind.