Rules of Surrender (25 page)

Orford sank back into convenient unconsciousness.

Wynter looked around. ”Now. Someone will ex-plain everything, for still I do not understand.“

He cast a commanding glare around the room.

Adorna said, ”A governess’s reputation must be sacrosanct. Charlotte was seen kissing you this morning. This is not the first time she has kissed a man without benefit of matrimony, and since her reputation was already besmeared, she must be dismissed.“

Wynter looked to Charlotte.

She nodded. ”I’m afraid that’s true, my lord. Our affectionate display was unacceptable, and cannot be forgiven.“

Wynter frowned in bewilderment. ”Still I am puzzled. Mother, you will explain to me. In English society a kiss on the hill will ruin Lady Miss Charlotte?“

Adorna wrung her hands. ”That’s right.“

”Yet it is acceptable for her to be in my bedroom alone at night while I’m undressing?“

CHAPTER 22

”You couldn’t keep that tidbit to yourself, could you?“ Hot with rage, Charlotte hurried along the corridor and away from the fainting women and shocked whispers in the gallery. ”You had to tell them I was in your bedchamber while you were undressing.“

Wynter strode behind her toward the stairway. ”I shouldn’t have told them I was undressing?“

Taking one step up, she turned, gripping the newel post to keep from flailing at him. ”You should have said
nothing.
Before you arrived, I feared I would have to leave England to find a position. Now I fear I will have to leave the continent.“

”You do not need another position. I told you you could be my wife.“

Standing on a higher step, she was eye-to-eye with Wynter. ”I don’t want to be your wife.“

”When I announced I had proposed, all of the people in the long gallery were most impressed by my gallantry.“

”And your charity.“ Hot rage faded, to be replaced by cold mortification. ”Except, of course, for your mother, who couldn’t have been more appalled.“

”You exaggerate.“ He coaxed her with his smile. ”I have frequently seen her more appalled.“

Suspicion grabbed her by the throat. ”This artlessness is artificial, sprung from the same guile that leads you to ask foolish questions when you know the answers and make social mistakes when you know how you should behave.“

”Ah.“ He spread his hands. ”Sometimes a man can learn many things by allowing others to believe him imbecilic and inept.“

Her suspicions confirmed, she flared with indignation. ”You think this is amusing!“

His smile faded. ’That my future wife does not wish to wed me? No, I do not think it amusing at all. I did not wish to ruin you so thoroughly, Lady Miss Charlotte, but instead of telling those people I would do you the honor of making you my wife, you talked about leaving. I had no choice.”

“You
did
understand what you were doing.”

“I admit, I think like a desert man, but, in English parlance, I am not a dunce.”

“No. I’m the dunce.” Passing her hand over her damp forehead, she fought this sense of entrapment. She hadn’t really believed Wynter meant marriage. “Why? Why do you want to marry me? I have no money. I’m not a beauty. I’ve been on the shelf so long I’m dusty. Why
me?

”We have passion,“ he said simply.

”All men and women have passion!“

He chuckled. ”There you do reveal your ignorance. Passion such as we have is rare, and that, added to the fact you love me, makes you the most suitable of wives.“

When he talked like this, revealing how clearly he valued her as a
thing,
a possession, she could scarcely breathe. ”I
don’t
love you.“

”No. You only love my children.“ He chuckled again.

He frustrated her so much. He controlled every situation, and those situations he didn’t control he turned to his advantage. It never occurred to him to think what she wanted was important; his belief in himself was immutable. She had to do something,
say
something that would shake that execrable confidence. Any mad accusation would do, if only it would wipe that grin off his face and give him a taste of his own medicine. ”You pursue me. You steal kisses from me. You“—she pointed her shaking finger at him—
”you
must love me.“

He sobered, and his eyes narrowed as he studied her. ”Charlotte.“

She knew at once her volley had gone astray. His kind tone and the way his hand came up to frame her face warned her.

”I could tell you a falsehood, Charlotte, but that is a poor way to begin a pledging, and you are intelligent. Soon you would acquire the truth. Then you would truly be hurt.“ His fingers slipped around behind her neck to hold her in place. ”It is a fact I learned in the desert which seems to be lost in this society of England. This talk of romance and true love between a man and a woman. It is nonsense.“

”That is your fact?“ she asked incredulously.

Several spectators had sidled from the gallery and stood watching. Her aunt. The vicar. Lord Howard.

Charlotte ought to be mortified, but she wasn’t. A bubble of something, she didn’t know what, had come to life and was rising inside her. ”Men and women don’t love each other?“

”Women
do
love. That is what women are good at.“ His fingers massaged the tense cord between her neck and her shoulder. ”And a true man cares for his wife.“

”Cares for his wife.“ The bubble expanded, choking out her remaining good sense.

”Cares deeply.“ His voice reverberated with earnest goodwill. ”Barakah, my desert father, explained it best. A woman loves her man. Her life revolves around the sun that is her man. But a man, like the sun, does not love a woman. He shines on his woman, he warms his woman, he shelters his woman, but the sun does not love as a woman does.“

”So to be warm and sheltered and shone on, I should wed you.“

He looked delighted, and he gave her shoulder a little squeeze. ”Now you understand!“

She would have done anything, paid anything, to scoff at him. But she’d lived in too many different households. She’d observed too many married couples. She’d seen the husband’s indifference, the wife’s disillusionment. ”Do you think I don’t know that a man cannot love a woman? That you not only don’t love me, but can’t love me?“

”You said—‘“

”I know what I said. It was as nothing, the wisps of a melancholy fantasy tearing apart and floating away.“ The bubble within her had burst, and all the pent-up years of cynicism and bitterness poured forth.

His accent grew crisp. ”I do not understand.“

”Of course you don’t. You don’t have to. You’re the sun, and I’m a floating particle of dirt.“

”This is not what I said.“

”I apologize if I misinterpreted your golden pronouncement, Lord Sun.“ She swallowed, trying to rid her voice of that desperate tremor. ”But even sorrier because I think I interpreted your words all too well.“

”Your excessive distress is unacceptable.“ He took both her shoulders in his hands, held her and looked right into her eyes. ”You will explain it to me at once.“

”For that, Lord Sun, you will have to imagine yourself down on my level. Down on the level of a lowly woman. A woman who has no choice in her husband, who is forced to marry because of ludicrous circumstances and who is expected to love a puffed-up, overgrown, oafish boy like you.“

Wynter didn’t respond to the insult. Maybe he was just astonished at her wondrous flow of words.

The speech had rather amazed her, too, stored up in her brain as it must have been. ”But! Love will never live between us. The passion you feel for me is not in your heart, but in a different organ entirely. And when that organ is satisfied, I no longer have any useful function in your life, except as the mother of your children and perhaps as your hostess. You will not look forward to seeing me at the end of a day. I am supposed to pine for you during your business trips, but not burden you with excessive emotion. And certainly we must not embarrass proper English society by adoring each other in any manner, or even, God forbid, conversing with each other for any reason other than to pass the vegetables and complain about finances. Yes, my lord, surely I, like every woman, must look forward to the privilege of marrying a creature such as you.“

He was blinking at her. ”You’re mad.“

”Crazy or angry?“

”I don’t know.“

”Neither do I.“ She couldn’t stand here looking at him any longer. He’d admitted he knew what he was doing when he compromised her, that he knew the harm he would cause when he spoke so disingenuously. The spectators stood listening to her impassioned speech with their mouths hanging open, and worst of all, pain was unfurling inside her, roiling in her blood.

Why? She should be inured to disappointment. She never should have had hope.

No. No hope. Of all the illusions a governess couldn’t afford, hope was the shiniest and most tempting, and the one dream she could never, ever afford.

Apparently Charlotte’s heart had forgotten that truth.

”History repeats itself.“ She pushed his hands off her shoulders and walked with an excess of dignity up a few steps.

Wynter caught her skirt. ”What history? Whose history?“

She staggered to a halt. ”Mine. I have to marry or I’ll be a pariah. But yours, too. You’re marrying a woman who won’t have the right to demand anything from you, because you saved her. Never mind that you ruined her in the first place; you saved her when you could have let her sink, so all will admire you. You can pat yourself on the back for being so generous“—she looked down at his hand wrapped in her skirt—”oh, wait, you’re already doing that! Ah, well, munificent, lucky you never have to waste another thought on your wife and her happiness. The privilege of being your wife and warming herself in your rays should be enough.“

People were getting bold, stepping closer to hear every word. Charlotte saw her aunt leaning against the wall as if overcome by her niece’s outspokenness, her uncle looking between his wife and Charlotte in button-bursting astonishment, Adorna with her hand over her mouth, Howard red-faced and wiping his brow.

In a distant part of her mind, Charlotte was aware she was making the kind of scene that would go into the annals of inglorious English gossip. She didn’t care a bit. There was some facet in her, in fact, some part normally shackled and confined, that seemed to be reveling in it. ”I find myself thinking I have wasted the last nine years. I would be better off if I’d married Lord Howard in the first place!“

She saw at once she’d struck a chord.

Wynter bounded up the stairs to her side. His fair hair and his earring glittered almost white with his wrath. ”You do not think that.“

”I do think it.“ Charlotte tasted the gratification of a dramatic exhibition well done before an appreciative audience, and she now allowed herself to get carried away. At least, that was what she told herself later, because there was no other explanation for her reckless pronouncement. In a voice that projected over the crowd, she proclaimed, ”I tell you this, Lord Ruskin, and I mean it—I will stand up with you before the vicar and speak my wedding vows, but I will never share your bed.“

The white heat of Wynter’s ire gradually faded. He didn’t react to her challenge. Not by a word, not by an expression, not by a twitch.

His inaction drove Charlotte to greater histrionics. ”Do you understand me? I do choose to wed you, but I will never become your wife in the full sense of the word.“

Still he stood motionless.

Except for a faint twitch of his upper lip.

Once long ago her parents had taken her to London to see an exhibition of wild animals. The great maned lion had not moved while she watched it, yet it reverberated with intent. The intent to hunt and stalk the prey which dared to tweak his tail.

The same intent now sprang to life in Wynter. She had become a
fete champetre
for the great beast.

Too late she realized what she had done. Too late she wished she could recall the words.

Miss Priss had just lost her temper. Taking one step up the stairs, then another, she kept him in sight.

The crowd in the corridor murmured, their faces upturned as they watched Charlotte retreat before the stone-still Wynter.

When she thought herself out of his immediate grasp, she took a chance and turned her back. She didn’t waste time on dignity; she fled with unashamed terror down the corridor and away from their audience.

She couldn’t hear him following. A glance from the top of the stairs proved he still stood and watched her. She hurried toward the nursery, changed her mind, swerved toward her bedchamber. She didn’t hear anything behind her, but she knew that somehow, sometime, he would catch up with her and—

He caught her arm and swung her around, trapping her against the wall. His hands slapped the wall on either side of her head. ”You have until our wedding night to resign yourself to being mine.“

He infuriated her with his invidious confidence and overwhelming size. He frightened her for the same reasons. She challenged him with her stance, her upraised chin, her incensed gaze. ”What will you do, rape me?“

”No.“ He bent his head so close his breath brushed her face, and he almost crooned. ”Lady Miss Charlotte, I do not need to rape you. You forget, I have kissed you, and beneath your sturdy corset and rigid propriety lives a woman with rich red blood pulsating through her veins. Your lush mouth softened beneath mine, and opened on my command. You were eager as ever I was, and I wonder how many other men you have kissed to gain such experience.“

He made her so angry. Angry for throwing her folly in her face, angry that he spoke so about a moment she would have treasured, if not for its dismal results. ”Except for Howard, I have never kissed another man.“

”Ahhh.“ He held her cheek in one hand. ”A babe in the ways of men.“

Had he trapped her into a confession she shouldn’t have made? Surely not. He was crude, obvious, not subtle at all—or so she had always thought. Wrenching her head away, she sidled under his arm. The movement only brought her up against a small round table, a stand for a delicate porcelain vase of vibrant azure hues.