Grace swept into the room ahead of Cleo, Trevor, and Desmond, the butler chasing her at nearly a most undignified run. “My lady,” he said in a labored, affronted voice, “you really
must
allow me to announce your entirely unexpected visit at this more than ridiculously early hour. You simply cannot be both unexpected
and
unannounced!”
Grace ignored him and came straight over. “Where’s Charity?” she asked Charity.
“Relax,” Gareth said in an amused drawl. “You’re talking to her. I take it you didn’t know she was spending the night.”
Grace’s face turned red, and she looked as though she might burst. Too angry to speak, she threw up her hands and turned to her husband, who, for once, looked grim instead of amused.
“No,” Trevor said shortly. “She didn’t tell us, nor did she bother sending a note around to keep us from worrying.”
Cleo thunked her cane loudly on the floor and pointed it
at Charity. “Someone should turn you over his knee, young lady.”
That
particular phrase only reminded her that Lachlan had said much the same thing. She pressed her lips together and counted to ten, then took a deep breath and said evenly, “I can explain everything.”
“I certainly hope so,” Grace burst out, finally finding her voice.
“What’s all the commotion?” Faith stood in the wide doorway, looking confused by the presence of nearly her entire London family in her breakfast room before ten o’clock in the morning. Her eyes settled on the one twin in the room. “Where’s Charity?” she asked.
“Oh, bloody hell,” Charity muttered. She’d finally had enough. “Why doesn’t anyone ever ask where Amity is?”
“Because Amity is a dear sweet girl who would never stay out all night without letting someone know where she would be,” said Cleo. She tilted her head to the side and watched Charity closely. “Or . . . would she?”
“She’s probably sleeping late,” said Trevor. “We saw her leaving a ball last night with Ashe not long after we arrived, and she didn’t look as though she felt terribly well.”
“Oh, no!” exclaimed Faith. “Maybe I should go check on her.”
“No!”
They all eyed Charity in surprise.
Her heart leapt into her throat, and she swallowed hard, silently wishing she hadn’t eaten those few bites of toast, since her stomach didn’t seem at all interested in retaining them. “Perhaps if we all just sat down,” she suggested. She stood and offered up her chair. “Aunt Cleo?”
While they all found places around the table, Charity walked to the doorway, nervously wringing her hands. She
turned back to face her family and said, “Amity isn’t exactly here for you to go check on, Faith.”
“Well, that’s just silly,” her sister said. “I stuck my head in last night when Imogen was up, to be sure she . . .” Comprehension dawned. “Oh. You were in Amity’s bed.”
Charity bit her lip and nodded.
“Well,” said Grace. “If she isn’t exactly here, where exactly might she be?”
“She’s run off with that handsome young doctor,” Cleo announced. “I’d bet my last dime on it.”
Gareth scoffed. “Meadows? Not a chance. Good man, good doctor.”
Faith nodded in vigorous agreement.
“I’m so glad you feel that way,” Charity said, her voice tentative, “Don’t you think he’ll make a good husband for Amity?” She winced, closed her eyes and waited for the verbal barrage. When she was met only with silence, she cautiously opened one eyelid and peeked at the table. Everyone was staring at her, a variety of expressions on their collective faces. Faith looked horrified, as did Grace. Gareth and Trevor looked amused. Aunt Cleo looked positively gleeful.
Feeling a desperate need to fill the sudden silence, she hastened to explain how the elopement had come about, her words tumbling over one another in her haste. “You see, Amity and Matthew fell in love almost as soon as they met, but he didn’t know how to tell her because the Marquess of Asheburton was so persistent in his suit, but Amity didn’t really like him, and who can blame her”—Charity paused and scowled—“since he’s such a wretched bounder . . . and . . . and . . . a-a cad.”
She waved her hands in the air in frustration, especially when she noted the broadening smiles on the men’s faces.
Even Grace and Faith were trying to hide traces of amusement, but Charity plunged recklessly ahead. “Anyway, we switched identities yesterday afternoon, and they’re on their way to Scotland, and they have enough of a head start that nobody will catch them now, so we might as well all be happy about it.” She ended her rushed speech, took a deep breath, and waited.
“Ashe
is
a cad,” said Gareth after a long pause, his lips twitching.
“And a bounder,” Trevor agreed with sham solemnity.
Charity looked from one face to another in confusion. “What is
wrong
with all of you?
Lachlan Kimball cleared his throat and stepped into the room. Charity, who had her back to the arched entryway, had been unable to see him appear just before her announcements, followed by Desmond, who looked less than pleased at the arrival of yet another unexpected visitor.
Charity froze at the sound but didn’t turn. There was no need. She already knew who stood behind her.
“Perhaps, Miss Ackerly, you can force yourself to tolerate my wretched presence long enough for a private word?”
Sixteen
Nobody
moved. Charity refused to turn, refused to even answer. Instead, she just stood, rooted in place, a shuttered, icy expression on her features.
Aunt Cleo was the first to react. “Faith,” she said, pushing herself up and out of her chair with her cane. “You haven’t even offered me a single look at that baby, and I’ve been here for at least thirty minutes.”
All at once everyone seized on the offered activity and began a mass exodus of the breakfast room. No one said anything. Faith and Grace each gave Charity a quick hug on the way past, while Gareth and Trevor each clapped Lachlan on the shoulder.
Aunt Cleo stopped in front of Charity, gave her a stern look, and then leaned around to include the marquess in her admonishment. “Don’t you two go and mess up a perfectly good elopement.” She patted Charity fondly on the cheek, then moved past to join the others, who had gone to the front sitting room to wait for Faith to bring Imogen down from the nursery.
Silence fell. Finally, Lachlan spoke. “Charity.”
She turned, a brittle smile pasted upon her face, and politely asked, “Have you had breakfast, my lord?” She moved toward the sideboard as if intending to prepare a plate for him.
His heart wrenched. She looked small and fragile and pale, and he knew that a great deal more was weighing on
her than her sister’s elopement. “I’ve eaten, thank you,” he replied.
At his gentle tone, Charity finally met his eyes. The protective look on his face was almost her undoing, but when he took a step toward her, she panicked and retreated to the other side of the breakfast table.
“I’m sorry you got caught up in our little family drama,” she began, and then stopped, uncertain where to go with that line of thought. After all, he’d been a victim of deception at her hand, too. She looked down and scuffed one of her toes along a line in the pattern on the lush Aubusson carpet.
Warmth filled Lachlan at the self-conscious little gesture, at her large and wounded eyes, and he stifled the urge to laugh. Charity looked just like a little girl who’d been caught doing something forbidden, and he imagined she must have been quite a handful as a child. Goodness knew she’d already turned his life upside down in the few short weeks since the Season began.
He walked toward her, hoping she wouldn’t look up and retreat again before he reached her. His luck held. He neared enough to reach for her chin, intending to tilt her face up to his, but she nearly jumped out of her skin and slapped his hand away.
“Good lord, Lachlan!” she exclaimed, taking a step back, not noticing in her agitation that she’d addressed him by his first name. “I see now why you reminded me of one of those predatory jungle cats I’ve read about.”
A jungle cat? “Interesting,” he said. “Would you like to know what
you
remind
me
of?”
“No,” she said, cross, and turned her back on him to look out the window.
He stepped up behind her, placed his hands on her
shoulders and leaned down very close to her ear. “A kitten,” he said. His warm breath tickled. “You remind me of a kitten that has been backed into a corner, ready to burst out, claws first, hissing and scratching.”
She shrugged her shoulders, trying to shake off his hands. “Then stop backing me into corners.”
They both stared out into the back garden in silence.
“I know it was you,” Lachlan said.
Charity’s stomach twisted. She knew he was referring to their first kiss, stolen in the very location at which they both stared, but she chose to purposely misinterpret. “Of course you do. I already admitted pretending to be Amity last night.”
“I’m talking about the first time I kissed you, Charity. Right out on that lawn. That time I mistakenly assumed you were Amity, and I apologize for that.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Her voice was low, almost a whisper, and he had to lean close to understand.
It
had
been Charity. He was right. He was sure of it. “No more lies between us, kitten. I’d like to start with a clean slate.”
“Start?” Charity tossed her head scornfully. “Start what? Have you suddenly decided that, since you can’t have Amity, now you’ll settle for me?”
Lachlan felt his patience begin to slip. “My courtship of Amity was based on a suggestion by Huntwick and on the memory of that first kiss—the kiss you deny we shared. Had you informed me of my mistake that morning, we’d likely never have come to this point.”
Charity spun around, her eyes spitting blue sparks. “I haven’t denied it.” She tossed her head scornfully. “There’s nothing to deny.”
Eyes stormy, Lachlan’s tenuous hold on his self-control abruptly snapped. Charity knew the instant it happened, and she gasped when she discerned his intent. Before she could move, he closed the distance between them in a single stride, snaked his arm around her waist, and hauled her against him. “Then deny
this
,” he growled, taking her lips in a bruising, punishing kiss intended to remind her of all that had already passed between them.
She reached up with trembling hands and pushed at his shoulders in a desperate attempt to escape. Her struggles were ineffective against both his strength and the burning glow of desire that began the instant their mouths touched. That warmth spread throughout her body, engulfing her with tingling, aching sensation. With a small sigh, she again gave up and melted against him.
Lachlan’s brief anger dissolved. Exerting supreme effort, he forced himself to let go of her, placed both of his hands on her rib cage until he was sure she was steady on her feet, and then he broke off the kiss, his heart pounding with the physical need he felt. He stepped away from her.
As Charity felt the warmth of his hands on her sides fall away and his lips leave hers, her eyes flew open. “No,” she whispered, “not yet.” She stood on tiptoe, took his face between her hands and renewed the kiss.
“Oh . . .
God
. Charity.” Lachlan struggled against the incoming tide of his arousal, trying to take another step away, but she followed his movement. He groaned and surrendered, suddenly slanting his mouth across hers, tracing the line between her lips with his tongue. She opened her mouth, tried to catch her breath, and he took full advantage, deepening their embrace.
For Charity, the world felt as though it had suddenly tipped sideways. She slipped her arms around his waist and
held on for dear life, shyly mimicking the movements of his tongue with her own. Her fingers spread on his back, the taut muscles there rippling beneath her palms, and when he began thrusting his tongue into her mouth in an ageless if primitive suggestion, she clenched her fingers and dug them into the thick material of his jacket.
“So sweet,” he murmured against her lips, and then slid his mouth down the plane of her neck to nibble the thin layer of skin above her pounding pulse. His hand moved up her rib cage to settle on the soft mound of a breast, and he felt himself stir and harden when his palm again encountered the stiff little nubbin that told him of her equal arousal.
When she slipped her hand around and tucked it inside his jacket, he realized that if he didn’t stop this now he would take her here on the floor of her brother-in-law’s breakfast room while her family waited just down the hall. “Stop,” he said, capturing her wandering hand in his own.
She lifted her lips again, seeking another kiss, and he pushed her gently back against the wall and then braced his hands on either side of her. Locking his elbows, he forced himself to maintain some space between their bodies. He rested his forehead on the wall next to her face.
“You have no idea what you do to me, kitten,” he said.
Hot shame flooded Charity as she realized how wantonly she had just thrown herself at him even after he tried to stop her. For a second time. “Oh, God,” she said in a broken voice. She covered her mouth with her hand and ducked under his arm, walked a few steps away and then stopped. She stared blindly out the window until the beauty of the garden scene blurred. Angrily, with her back to him so he couldn’t see, she wiped away the tear.
“Charity.” Lachlan took a single step forward and then stopped. He couldn’t trust himself to touch her again.
“Just go, please.”
“We should . . .”
She turned to stare at him once more, her chin lifted and her eyes cold. “No. We definitely should not. Please go.”
He searched her face for a second but then without another word spun on his heel and left the room, his long strides echoing sharply up the corridor. A scant moment later, Charity flinched as she heard the front door slam.
Seventeen
But
I don’t
like
him.”