Noble Destiny (18 page)

“That would be most magnanimous of you,” he said, his hand running up her calf. Her breath caught in her throat at his touch. She placed a hand on his chest. Even through his shirt and waistcoat, she could feel his heart beating madly, almost as madly as hers was.

“Charlotte,” he groaned, both hands on her legs now, above her stockings, his fingers teasing a trail up her thighs. “Oh, to hell with the brick.”

One hand tangled in her hair as he pulled her down onto him, his mouth waiting for hers, asking, pleading, then demanding she give herself to him. Vaguely, in the back of her mind, she remembered that she had wanted to be the one in charge, that it was rightfully her turn to seduce him, but the hot magic of his mouth and the fires of desire his fingers were building as they stroked up her back and around to her breasts drove every other thought from her mind.

“God's breath, how I want you,” he groaned into her ear as he kissed a lovely shivery spot on the side of her neck. “But we have to stop. Charlotte, you must stop. We can't do this here.”

She sat up on him again, pulled away from kissing the area she'd exposed by tugging off his cravat. “Hmmm.”

His chest heaved beneath her, his breath ragged and fast. That pleased her. “Hmmm what?”

“Hmmm, I agree that we can't do what I'd like to do here, but do you know, there was mention made in Vyvyan La Blue's
Guide
to
Connubial
Calisthenics
of an act that is recommended for those who find themselves in a closed environment such as this carriage. Would you care for me to demonstrate?”

“Demonstrate what?” he asked, shifting slightly, reaching beneath himself until he extracted a brick from the small of his back. “Vyvyan La Who?”

She eyed him. He was so large, he didn't look particularly comfortable crammed into the bottom of the carriage. “Blue. Sit up.”

“What?”

“Sit up.” She slid down his legs as he propped himself up, his back reclined against the wall of the carriage. She reached for the buttons on his trousers.

“Charlotte!”

“This is called The Alpine Shepherd Greeting The Dawn With A Song Upon His Lips. Vyvyan La Blue says if it is done correctly, you should emulate a Swiss youth calling down the mountain pastures to his sheep. Oh, my. I'd forgotten how very…
imposing
you are. But warm. Very, very warm. Now, let me see. If I recall the instructions correctly, I'm supposed to do this. I hope you don't mind…”

His reply was muffled by the loud echo of the horses' hooves as they entered a tunnel created by a building that sat atop a stone bridge over the street. As they cleared the end of the tunnel, the coachman cast a curious glance at the groom who sat next to him.

“Did you hear that, Jem?”

“'Ear what, then?” the groom answered.

The coachman peered around himself into the dark night. He shook his head and returned his attention to the horses. “Damned if it didn't sound like someone yodeling.”

***

Charlotte sat in her husband's bed and steamed.

She was alone.

She was frustrated.

She was
furious
.

After she had gone to all the trouble of seducing her husband with mouth and hands, after she had brought him such pleasure as to call up half the sheep in the county, after all that, all he had done was carry her up to her bedroom, give her a chaste kiss upon her forehead, and leave her there. He hadn't even stayed to help her out of her dress, and now here she sat, husbandless. He was probably down in the basement working on that horrid dirty machine of his. Well, she wasn't going to sit there and take such abuse! After she had suffered the trauma of having that old cat Lady Brindley tell everyone that her husband hadn't even bedded her, it was time she took matters into her own hands.

He was going to make love to her, and that was simply that.

She marched out of the bedroom in nothing more than her night rail, her feet bare. Down the stairs to the first floor she went, her head high, mouth set in a determined line. She continued down to the dark kitchen, empty of all but the cook's cat, then down further to the very lowest level of the house. She flung open the door to Dare's workroom and pointed dramatically at him, prepared to utter such scathing words as had never before left her lips.

The intended scathe turned to dust on her tongue as Dare, shirtless, a thick lock of blond hair falling over his manly brow, turned at the squeak of the door. Her finger, still pointing, wavered, as she drank in the sight of his bare chest, glistening with perspiration in the candlelight.

“Oh,” she said breathily, unable to think of anything else but the desire to wrap herself around that chest.

Dare was not likewise struck dumb. “What the devil do you mean parading around in your night things, madam wife?”

“Chest,” she murmured, her eyes huge.

“Have you no sense?” He set down a black, lumpish thing—some part for the engine, the lucid part of her mind guessed—and glared at her.

“Bare chest.”

He reached for a rag and wiped the oil and grime from his hands. Such an action caused his arms and shoulders and chest to move in a beautiful ballet of muscles and tendons. Charlotte grabbed wildly for the back of a wooden chair that stood nearby.

“Well? What have you to say to me?” Dare dropped the rag and started toward her. “God's teeth, woman, your feet are bare!”

“Not as bare as your chest.” She gasped as he scooped her up in his arms. “Oh. You're so…hooo! Isn't it hot for May, though? Did I disturb you at your work, Alasdair?”

“Catch your death wandering around the house in the middle of the night in nothing but a scanty bit of lawn and bare feet,” Dare grumbled as he started up the stairs. “Take that candle. Yes, of course I was working. What did you think I was doing?”

“But it's after two, and you really should be in bed.
With
me
.” She added that last bit just in case he wasn't clear on the situation.

He stopped at the foot of the stairs leading to the second floor and looked down on her, his face shadowed. “Charlotte, we've been over this.”

“Not to my satisfaction.”

He sighed, then bent and told her to set the candle down. She placed it a few steps above them as he sat down in the small pool of light cast onto the carpeted stairs, holding her firmly against his chest, his hands warm through the thin material of her night rail. She snuggled into him, stroking the sweat-dampened hair on his chest. Truly, such an act would have repulsed her on any other man, but Dare even sweated in an attractive manner. Could any man be more perfect for her?

“Charlotte, I don't know what more I can say to make you understand how I feel. I want something more than just a physical relationship. I think you do as well. At least I hope you do, but until you know that for certain, until you know what you honestly want from this marriage, it wouldn't be fair to either of us to engage in those activities a husband and wife normally engage in.”

“Arguing, you mean,” Charlotte said softly, placing a gentle kiss on the curve of his ear.

He chuckled. “You know what I mean, wife.”

Charlotte gave him a little smile. “You see, there is more to me than you had thought. I'm not just mind-meltingly beautiful. I can jest. I am interested in your machine, or I would be if you would explain it to me. I am economizing, and you'll notice that I have not once complained this evening about that sorry state of affairs. I am learned in the ways of connubial calisthenics. I have a good speaking voice, and a legible hand, and could be of great help to you in your business if you will just allow me. I am, in short, the perfect wife for you.”

He leaned his forehead against hers and smiled into her eyes. “I have never doubted your qualifications, Charlotte.”

“But you don't think I'm the perfect wife for you?”

His eyes were like blue fire burning on her tender flesh. “On the contrary, there is no other woman I would rather call wife than you.”

Hope, dampened by his refusal to be seduced, flared to life again within her breast. “Then you want me?”

He pressed his lips to her palm, sending heat skittering down her arm. He shifted his legs, then placed her hand on his groin.

“Wanting you was never in question.”

He was hard and long beneath her fingers, just as he had been in the carriage earlier. The heady knowledge that he truly did want her, that he reacted in this pleasing fashion to her, made the hope within her burn brighter.

“I don't understand what more I can do,” she whispered, searching his eyes for the answer. “I don't understand why it is you want me, and you know I want you, but you won't…won't…
do
it
. I don't understand what's wrong with me.”

He brushed his thumb across her lower lip. “Did you love your husband? Your first one, I mean.”

She blinked at him. “Love Antonio? I…I…he was very handsome.”

Dare said nothing, just watched her. She looked away for a moment, uncomfortable with what he might see in her eyes. “I liked him a great deal. To begin with. Once we arrived in his home, he…changed somehow. His mother was very domineering, you understand, and she wasn't pleased we had wed, and Antonio seemed far more interested in raising sheep than in me.”

“Did you love him?”

“He was very handsome,” she repeated. “He was tall like you, but much thinner, not nearly so broad, and he had very elegant hands and danced beautifully. I enjoyed it when he kissed me and had hoped that the other things would be as nice, but of course, we just had the once, and although it was nothing terrible, it certainly wasn't anything I would have written a sonnet about.”

She could feel him smiling into her hair. “But did you love him?”

“No,” she said miserably, her eyes on the fine gold hairs that lay on the top of his arms.

His lips caressed her temple. She sighed and leaned into him.

“I think you are confusing a desire for a physical relationship with deeper emotions.”

“Shouldn't one desire one's husband?”

“Yes, you should.” His hand slid up her arm. “But in our case, it's not enough. We've both had sexual relationships with partners we did not love—” He stopped her protest with a swift kiss. “Granted, in your case, it was a very brief relationship, but I'm hoping it was enough to make you understand that without something more meaningful, that without true affection, such a relationship can never be satisfying.”

She looked up at him, suddenly realizing what it was he was saying. “You want me to say I love you.”

He closed his eyes for a moment, his Adam's apple bobbing as he swallowed. “No. I want you to love me. There's a difference.”

She curled her fingers into the hair on his chest. “What if I said I already did? Would you believe me?”

The blue fire glowed deeply in his eyes. She knew at that moment that he loved her, had loved her ever since they had first met, and that his love for her gave her an infinite power over him. “Yes. If you told me you loved me, I would believe you.”

She could make him give her whatever she wanted. She could bring him to his knees. She could wring any confession out of him, demand any payment, and he would meet it, she could ask for any boon and be granted it.
He
loved
her.
If she lied to him, if she told him she loved him in return, he would bed her. He would believe that she loved him. Charlotte knew with a woman's knowledge of a man who had bared his soul before her that she could lift him up to heights of rapture he had never imagined or destroy him as easily as she could grind an ant under her heel.

Power flared brightly in her for a moment as he sat watching her, love filling his eyes, waiting to see if she would take the first step toward ecstasy or agony. She dropped her gaze and allowed the sensation of power to dissolve as she pressed a gentle kiss to the corner of his delicious mouth. “Good night.”

She left him sitting on the steps as she headed for her own room, confused and annoyed by the myriad emotions tangled up in a coil that resembled Dare's beautiful blue eyes. She wanted him more than anything she'd ever wanted, and yet his faith in her, his trust that she would cherish the gift of his love, awoke strange new emotions within her. She could not return such a gift with deceit. He deserved more than that. He deserved her love in return, nothing less.

Charlotte snuggled into bed aware that for the first time in many years, she had put someone else's feelings above her own.

Oddly enough, it was not an unpleasant sensation.

“When did you first realize you were in love with Captain Woodwell?”

Patricia hid any surprise she felt at the question and instead flashed her sister-in-law a warm smile. She knew things were not as they should be between Dare and Charlotte, but she could see the love in her brother's eyes when he looked at his wife, and she had every confidence that Charlotte would learn to love him as well. “I believe I fell in love with David the minute I set eyes on him. He was so kind and funny, and when he spoke to me, he made me feel as if we were the only two people in the world.”

“Kind…funny…only people in the world,” Charlotte mumbled as she stood with her back to Patricia.

Curious, Patricia set the novel she was browsing through back on the shelf and skirted her sister-in-law to peer over her shoulder. “What are you doing, taking notes?”

“Yes,” Charlotte answered, closing a small leather-bound memorandum pad, tucking it and a gilded pencil away in her reticule. “I have decided to conduct an informal study on the matter of falling in love. I'm not quite sure how to go about it, and this seems the best way to understand the phenomenon. I am particularly interested in those signs that indicated to you that you were about to, or had already, fallen in love. Was it any one thing, or a sum of smaller indicators?”

Patricia swallowed back a burble of laughter. Charlotte looked so earnest, it would never do for her to feel as if she were the subject of amusement. “I believe it was a number of things: the way David made me feel, the fact that I wanted to share every event of my day with him, the sense that something was lacking when he was not near, the manner in which he filled my thoughts…it was all those things, and many others.”

“Interesting,” Charlotte said, a puzzled frown between her brows. She strolled down the aisle of Hookam's with her arm in Patricia's, nodding to the small groups of people collected around the more popular book offerings. Once she was assured she was out of hearing range, she dropped her arm and turned to face her sister-in-law. “Dare wishes me to be in love with him before he…” She waved an arm about in an inarticulate manner.

“Beds you,” Patricia filled in.

Charlotte colored prettily. “Yes.”

“Is that a problem? Do you not love him now? I thought you were very fond of him.”

“I am. I am quite fond of him. I always have been. He is so very handsome, and we look so well together, I know we shall have children who will be just as attractive as we are, but he will not give me those children if he does not believe I love him.”

“Do you?”

Charlotte wrung her hands for a moment before she remembered she had on her last good pair of gloves, then sat down in a nearby chair with a
whoosh
. “I don't know. That is the problem! I desire him, in a connubial calisthenics sense, and I enjoy being with him, as you said you do Captain Woodwell, and I believe he is kind—although he might have told me he had run through his inheritance before we wed—and I know he can be funny, because he amused me very much five years ago, but as for the rest…”

Charlotte let her gaze wander down the long room. “I simply don't know. I do not feel as if I am in love, but I do want to be near Alasdair. I certainly want him to—” She looked up suddenly and remembered to whom she was speaking. “Oh, it is a tangle. If I am not in love with him, how am I to accomplish the feat?”

Patricia patted her shoulder. “I shouldn't fret over it, Char. I think if you're not in love with him now, you soon will be. Dare is very lovable.”

“I hope so.” Charlotte slumped in the chair as she sighed forlornly, then stiffened and rose to her feet. “Drat. There's that odious Mrs. Mead. She is Lady Bridgerton's sister and one of the biggest gossips in the
ton
. No doubt she is going to torment me with the happenings of last night. Smile, Patricia. As your brother says, it doesn't do to let them see you care.”

Patricia nodded and curtsied politely when the lady in question sailed up to them, her maid and a down-trodden companion in tow. “Miss McGregor, I am surprised to see you out only two days before your wedding. What can the earl be thinking?”

Charlotte knew to a very fine distinction the level of her abilities and charms. She was under no mistaken belief that she was the least bit bluestocking—she had never been a very deep thinker, unlike her cousin Gillian, and she had no intention of starting now. Being intelligent sounded exceedingly unpleasant. She knew that it pleased men to look upon her, and that many women were insanely jealous of her because of the circumstances of her breeding, birth, and appearance. Because of the last, she had often been the recipient of catty comments, snide asides, and slights that other less pretty women did not suffer.

She filed the cut she had just received from Neela Mead under the heading Jealous Acts and determined to ignore it just as she had ignored other such pettiness. With a lift of her chin that she knew would mark her as obstinate, she smiled. “My husband and I both feel there is nothing unseemly in the least in Patricia making an appearance in public with me. She is, after all, to be married, not bound for a harem where she will be secreted away from men's gazes.”

The older woman gasped and turned eyes the color of boiled steel upon her. “You dare speak in public of that poor man you wed? For shame, Lady Charlotte. Your mother would die of mortification if she knew what a scandal you have brought upon your family name.”

“I am now Lady Carlisle,” Charlotte answered, gritting her teeth just the tiniest bit. “I don't see anything the least bit shameful in my marriage.”

“A marriage in name only, or so I understand from Minerva Wentwater.”

Charlotte was unable to keep from flinching at the name tossed at her. It was said that Minerva Wentwater was an even bigger gossip than Mrs. Mead, and Charlotte knew from sad experience with the sharp side of Miss Wentwater's tongue that such a thing was indeed the truth.

Mrs. Mead leaned forward as if to say something privately, but spoke in a trumpeting voice that was well pitched to carry down the length of the store. “Do you fear he will annul the marriage, dear Lady Charlotte? I confess that were I in your shoes, I would very much worry about finding myself once again unmarried. One cannot help but wonder if the tragic circumstance is due to a failing on Lord Carlisle's part, or”—her cold eyes raked Charlotte from toes to crown—“due to a distaste of engaging in intimate acts with you. Do you know that they are taking wagers on which it is at many of the gentlemen's clubs? I'm sure it will please you to be the object of speculation of so many gentlemen; you always did strike me as a little
desperate
in your attempts to attract their attention.”

Patricia gasped at the insult. Charlotte ignored the gasp, laughing at the woman before her. True, her laughter lacked the quality of gaiety usually acquainted with such an act, but it was still laughter, and Charlotte was determined to work it for all it was worth. “Oh, my dear Mrs. Mead—if I were to procure a saucer of cream for you, would you pull in your claws and purr for us?”

“Well, really!” gasped Mrs. Mead, her eyes wide with shock.

Charlotte tipped her head to the side and tapped a finger to her lips. “Please do not discomfit yourself in such a manner, Mrs. Mead. If your eyes bulge any further, I am convinced they will pop right out of your head, and we should be obliged to tread carefully lest we squash them into pulpy little bits. Come, Patricia. I do not see any books here I want. I believe we will pick up your wedding gift to Captain Woodwell.”

Charlotte marched off down the aisle leading a giggling Patricia, ignoring the stares and accompanying whispers of everyone as they turned to watch her. She knew she shouldn't have ripped into Mrs. Mead in that manner, knew that she would pay a dear price for it, but the spiteful comments and digs were just too much for her to bear. She made it into the carriage before she started shaking with the aftermath of her fury and humiliation.

“What an odious old woman!” she snarled, unsure of whether she wanted to scream or cry. She decided on both. “How dare she say such cruel things about Alasdair!”

Patricia, climbing into the carriage behind her, looked surprised. “But, Char! She insulted you, not Dare!”

“Oh, pish,” Charlotte said, fumbling in her reticule for the handkerchief that she had confiscated from Dare's bureau that morning. “As if anything she could say about me could hurt my feelings. She's just jealous of me, jealous and spiteful. That I pay no mind to, but when she says cruel things about Alasdair…” Fury like none she had ever felt boiled inside her. “Well, I shall not stand for it.”

“What will you do?” asked Patricia, curious about the fierce look on her sister-in-law's face.

“I shall simply redouble my efforts to fall in love with your brother. If I concentrate on the matter, I should achieve my goal by nightfall at the latest, don't you think? Then he will bed me and all the terrible, cruel things they are saying about Alasdair will be untrue.”

Patricia's mouth moved as if she wished to say something, but no words came out.

“Yes.” Charlotte nodded, just as if Patricia had agreed with her. “Nightfall by the latest. It simply is a matter of turning all my attention to the task.”

***

Despite spending the remainder of the day attempting to fall in love with her husband, all Charlotte accomplished was an argument with him, the result of which was her banishment from his workroom.

“He said my mooning around him was distracting, Batsfoam. Have you ever heard anything so ridiculous? I never moon! I don't even know how to moon, and if I did, I'm sure I would do it in a pleasing and agreeable manner, not one that would annoy him.” Charlotte climbed the narrow kitchen stairs up to the main floor of the house, Batsfoam thumping his way behind her. She paused on the ground floor and glared up the carpeted stairs for a moment before starting up them. “And that's another thing, why did he insist on you accompanying me to my sitting room? It almost seems as if he does not trust me to do as requested, and thus I must have a gaoler! Really, it is too much. Much too much!”

“Indeed, my lady, your lord, my good and kind master, did seem to be a bit on the testy side this evening. Perhaps it is the weather. I myself feel the damp weather most strenuously in that portion of my limb which I left lying in a field in Poitiers. Indeed, I am sure that climbing the stairs to escort you will be beneficial and helpful to my unfortunate limb, as my master has only my happiness and well-being in mind. In God's truth, I would not be surprised if my limb should regenerate itself due to all the happiness and well-being I find from having the opportunity to escort your ladyship to her room, keeping from your person any and all dangers as you might expect to find as you move from the subbasement to the first floor. I am almost certain I can feel my toes returning to life on that poor, misbegotten limb.”

“Toes are vastly overrated. You are much better off without them,” Charlotte said in a distracted voice, being busy with the regrouping of her thoughts and plans. She paused at the landing and turned to her companion. “Batsfoam, have you ever been in love?”

“Love?” He staggered back a few steps, apparently surprised at her question. “I, my lady? In love?”

Charlotte pursed her lips and continued up the stairs. “Yes, I wish to know. As you are Lord Carlisle's personal servant, I shall bare my soul to you.”

The interested glint that always entered Batsfoam's normally melancholy eyes around Charlotte glittered brightly. “I am speechless with the honor you do me, madam. I am overcome. I am beside myself with joy. I am fair to bursting with pride at this most unexpected gift from your gracious self. I burn to know your thoughts. Pray, tell me now before my heart should burst from the expectation and anticipation, leaving me a lifeless husk, a shell of my former self, dead here upon these very steps.”

Charlotte stopped at the top of the stairs and raised an eyebrow at the servant following her. “Batsfoam?”

“Yes, my lady?” He bowed low as he clumped his way up the last of the steps.

“It is obvious to me that you read far too many flowery novels. They have warped your mind. It is most unbecoming to have a butler whose mind is warped. Therefore, I must insist that you limit yourself in the future to no more than one flowery novel per month.”

His lips twitched as he bowed again, his head nearly touching his knees. “It shall be as you demand, madam. I shall struggle to fill the many long hours of free time I enjoy every day spent reading flowery novels in some other, more productive, employment. Perhaps I shall take up blacksmithing instead.”

“An excellent suggestion.” Charlotte nodded and allowed him to open the door to her sitting room. “Now, about my soul—as you are his lordship's body servant and thus in his confidence, I shall reveal to you that I have made it my goal to fall in love with him. I am endeavoring to do so now, but you were witness to that sad episode below.”

Batsfoam's eyes opened wide with astonishment for a brief moment, before he veiled them in his usual manner. “Indeed, madam?” he murmured.

Charlotte paced the length of the small cream-and-green room, her brow furrowed. “How he expects me to fall in love with him if he won't allow me to be of assistance to him in his work is beyond me, utterly beyond me. I cannot see what I did wrong.”

“I believe, my lady, that Lord Carlisle found the fault not in your ladyship's intentions, but in the manner your assistance took.”

Charlotte paced past him, still frowning. “He overreacted. His objections to my doing a spot of cleaning on that filthy engine were most ungentlemanly, and only because I am most determined in my attempt to love him was he saved from having his ears boxed.”

Batsfoam bowed his head humbly, more so his mistress wouldn't see the unholy glee in his eyes than from any sense of subjugation. “I could be mistaken, but as I understand it, a certain amount of filth in the form of grease is needed to make the pistons move smoothly in their fittings. Without that substance present, the engine would not be able to work as it was intended.”