Captive (30 page)

“What about James?” he asked.

“Nothing,” she said. “It is nothing.”

Reeve felt confused. He finally had revenge for James’s death within his grasp. Why did he not feel more satisfaction? Why did he, instead, feel almost sick inside?

“Why aren’t you more upset?” he asked. “Why aren’t you furious with me for deceiving you?”

“Because I don’t believe you will go through with it,” she said simply. “You do love me, you know. I could not feel the way I do about you unless you had some feeling for me in return.

“And you made love with me last night. Not
to
me.
With
me,” she said, emphasizing the difference. “If you had only desired revenge against my brother, you would not have loved me. You would have raped me.”

He stiffened as she reached out to caress his chest as she spoke. “I know my brother. Lion would not have challenged your brother to a duel—and shot to kill—unless he had suffered a deadly insult from James. All I ask is that when you see Lion, ask him what happened between him and James. And listen to his answer.

“If you still feel compelled to challenge my brother to a duel, I won’t stand in your way.” Her hand stopped in the center of his chest. “But I won’t stand by your side, either. Revenge is an empty, hollow thing, Reeve. I won’t aid you in seeking it. You can have me or vengeance. You cannot have both.”

She leaned over and pressed her lips against his in a caress that was both sensuous and loving.

He had been the seducer. But he would swear she seduced him. He had no other explanation for why he found himself making love to her yet again, when his only intention had been to inform her that he had betrayed her and begin the final leg of their journey to his home.

It was noon before they left the hunting lodge
for the one hour trip to Somersville Manor. He kept his arm around her the whole way home.

Charlotte did not know her own mind. Or perhaps it was simply that her mind had two opinions on how to deal with Denbigh. One Charlotte wanted nothing to do with her dictatorial guardian, a man who wanted to change her into someone else instead of appreciating her as she was. The other Charlotte wanted to make love with him—and had just told him so to his face. And been refused.

What had she been thinking? Charlotte sighed. She had always leaped before she looked. Denbigh had simply been smart enough to get out of the way.

She was lying on the lumpy mattress in the room connected to Denbigh’s, wishing she were somewhere else. Anywhere Denbigh wasn’t.

“Charlotte?” Denbigh called through the door.

“Go away.”

“I want to talk to you.”

“I don’t want to talk to you.”

“Please open the door,” he said plaintively.

“No.”

“Open the door, Charlotte.”

That was an order, not a request
.

She ignored it. What could he do? The door was locked from her side.

He pounded on the door with his fist. “Open
this door, Charlotte. I’m not going to ask nicely again.”

That was asking nicely?
She sat up in bed, gauged the sturdiness of the door, and lay back down again.

A moment later she heard a distinctive thump against the door.
Denbigh’s shoulder?
Followed by a muffled groan.

“That does it, Charlotte,” Denbigh called through the door. “Now you’re in trouble.”

Not until morning
, she thought.
That door is staying locked until dawn
.

Unfortunately, she could not sleep. She was worried about Livy. And about what Denbigh would do when he met Braddock. Which is when she came up with her brilliant idea.

She would leave the inn, go to Somersville Manor, and sneak inside to wait for Braddock and Livy to arrive. They might even show up in the middle of the night, and there she would be to greet them!

She went to the hall door and turned the knob, only to discover it was locked—from the outside. A captive again! How dare he lock her in!

She marched over to the connecting door and banged on her side of it with her fist. “Lion? Are you there?”

“Where else would I be?”

“Why am I a prisoner in this room? Why do
you have the door to the hall locked from the outside?”

“How do you know it’s locked?” Denbigh asked.

“Because I tried it!” she shouted.

“Where were you going, Charlotte?”

“That does not concern you.”

“If you were trying to leave in the middle of the night, I think that is my concern. A young woman of seventeen should not be gallivanting around the countryside by herself.”

“Stubble it!” Charlotte said.

Someone banged a shoe on the opposite wall and shouted in a drunken voice, “Stop the racket. I’m tryin’ to sleep.”

She went over to the wall and pounded it with her fist and said, “It’s not polite to yell at ladies!” She crossed back to the connecting door and said, “Unlock the door, Lion.”

“The key is on your side,” he replied.

“I’m not letting you in.”

“Then you’re not getting out,” he said implacably.

A knock came on the outside of Charlotte’s door. “Who is it?” she asked.

“The body next door, who can’t sleep ’cause of all your bangin’ and clatterin’,” an angry voice said.

“Oh, sir, it isn’t me,” Charlotte said in her
littlest girl voice. “It’s my guardian in the next room. He’s threatening to
beat
me!”

Charlotte heard Denbigh’s door being pounded on.

“Open up,” a voice said.

She heard the sound of irate voices and then a thump. If she was not mistaken, that was Denbigh hitting the floor!

She quickly turned the key in the lock and opened the connecting door—and came face to face with a furious man.

Beyond him, stretched out on the floor with only his stocking feet showing through the doorway, lay a big brute dressed in his smalls. Denbigh was shaking his fist painfully in front of him, and the knuckles looked scraped and raw. He closed the door on the man, locked it from the inside, and headed for Charlotte.

“What happened?” Charlotte asked.

“Someone tried to interfere between me and my ward,” he said in a dangerous voice.

“Oh.” Charlotte tried to slam the door between their rooms closed again, but Denbigh stuck his foot in it.

“We need to talk, Charlotte.”

“I’m not speaking to you,” Charlotte said, leaning her entire weight against the door to keep it closed.

Of course, it was no contest. Denbigh straightened
up and the door opened wide. She retreated to the other side of the bed, her arms crossed defiantly—protectively—across her chest. “All right, say what you have to say and get out.”

“It isn’t that I’m not attracted to you, I am. I think that has been obvious. But you have to remember what my role is in this relationship. I’m the guardian. I’m supposed to be watching over you and protecting you from rakes and rogues and roues.

“When you tempt me like you did just now … it isn’t as easy for me to say no as you might think.”

“It isn’t?” Charlotte crawled onto the bed and stopped halfway across it to sit Indian fashion and stare up into Denbigh’s face. “What is it about me you find hard to resist?”

“Your freckles, for one thing,” he said, reaching out a tentative finger to brush it across her nose.

She swiped it away. “Children have freckles,” she said disdainfully. “What else?”

“Your hair.” He sifted his fingers through the short curls, brushing them back from her forehead in what was almost a caress.

“It’s too short,” Charlotte said. And then, in case he hadn’t noticed, “but it’s growing back.”

“It’s soft and sleek and …” His hand slid into her hair to make his point, and she felt tingles down her spine.

She bobbed out of his way like a boxer in the ring and said, “What else?”

“You. In my shirt.”

She looked down at the shirt. It hung on her almost like a nightshirt, it was so big. She had folded the arms up and tied the tails in a knot at her waist so her breasts created two delicate mounds in front.

He captured the long, wilted shirt points with his hands and tugged her toward him. “It makes me feel like you’re wearing my skin, like you’re somehow inside a part of me.”

Charlotte gulped. “It’s only a shirt.”

One hand slipped down and he undid a button. And another. He placed his palms flat on the bed on either side of her knees, leaned forward and nudged the shirt aside with his nose, then latched on to her breast through her chemise, sucking on her nipple through the cloth.

Charlotte grabbed at his head and held him where he was. But as he bumped against her, she slid backwards. He straightened her legs out and laid himself over her on the bed, nudging her legs apart with his knees, something she realized would have been virtually impossible if she were wearing a dress. Like most girls.

But she wasn’t the least bit sorry when he pressed himself against her, with only a few layers of cloth between them. Her body naturally arched upward
toward his, and moments after that, she wrapped her legs around him.

He sucked on the flesh at her neck, sending a frisson of feeling scattering across her shoulders, then kissed her chin and her nose and her eyes and her cheeks, before finally finding her mouth.

Charlotte groaned.

She had not even known she wanted this. Or needed it. She loved the weight of him, the feel of his hard body next to her soft one, and his tongue inside her, mimicking the natural thrust of her hips.

“Charlie, Charlie,” he murmured. “I can’t stop. Make me stop. I don’t want to stop,” he said, his lips nibbling hungrily at hers, his hands roving voraciously over her body.

“Lion,” she murmured. “Love me. Love me, please.”

It must have been that word,
love
, that brought him to his senses. He came off of her as though she was a bucking horse and he had lost his seat in the saddle, his feet had come completely out of the stirrups, and he had lost his hold on the reins. He was gone.

When she opened her dazed eyes and sat up to search for him, she found him using the connecting door as a shield between them. He cleared his throat and said, “We will need what rest we can get before we confront the duke tomorrow. Good night, Charlotte.”

He closed the door before she could answer him.

Charlotte was furious. She clambered off the bed and ran to the door and kicked it with her boots and hit it with her fists. “Coward!” she called through the door. “You’re a coward, Lion. I’m not afraid of love, but you are. Keep running,” she said angrily. “See if I care. I’ll find some man who isn’t afraid to love me, and you’ll be sorry.”

She ran for a pillow and pressed it against her mouth to keep him from hearing her sobs. She had to get out of here. She couldn’t stand to be locked up in this room one more second!

Charlotte looked for another way out and spied the window. A large oak grew right outside, with a convenient limb to climb on. She quickly stuck her leg out onto the sill and began shimmying down the tree. She was grateful for the trousers that made her work easier. She supposed Denbigh would say ladies never climbed trees.

Too bad, Charlotte thought as she swung from a limb like a monkey. They didn’t know what they were missing!

She went directly to the stable, saddled the large bay gelding Denbigh had provided as her mount in London, and headed down the road to Somersville Manor, which was clearly visible in the moonlight. She would be there waiting for Livy and His Grace, the Duke of Braddock, when they arrived.

Charlotte was long gone when Denbigh said through the door, “I’ve been thinking, Charlotte. I … I wanted you to know that despite the things I say, I do admire you. More than you know.

“And I admit that although I’ve asked you to change, I’ve been unwilling to try any changes myself. But I’m willing to try, Charlotte. If you are. Maybe we could … maybe we could each give a little.

“Charlotte? Are you hearing a word I’ve said? Or are you too stubborn to give an inch!”

He paced in front of the door, listening for any sound on the other side. But she wasn’t budging. She was as stubborn, as mule-headed, as intransigent as she had ever accused him of being!

“Fine, Charlotte,” Lion said at last. “You have it your way. And I’ll have it mine. But never the twain shall meet, Charlotte. Do you hear me? Never the twain shall meet!”

It was only when he had finished his tirade that it dawned on him it was
too
quiet in the next room.

“Charlotte? Are you in there?”

Nothing.

He tried the connecting door and discovered she hadn’t bothered to lock it. He did a quick search of the room with his eyes, but he didn’t need a second look to tell him she was gone.

The curtains blew in through the open window. He hurried over to it and peered out.

“Charlotte!” he roared. But there was no answer.

Charlotte was long gone.

From the room next door came a thump on the wall, a raucous shout, and the plea, “I’m tryin’ to sleep!”

It was hard to feel sorry for the man. Lion doubted he would ever get a full night’s sleep again. Not with Charlotte around.

It was then Lion realized the truth. He was going to marry her. Oh, Lord. His life was never going to be peaceful again. That thought should have worried him more than it did.

Denbigh headed down the stairs to search for his future bride. Heaven only knew what trouble she was up to now.

The sun was slipping over the hillside on its way to the sky when Charlotte knocked on the door and introduced herself to the Somersville Manor servants as a friend of the future bride of His Grace, the Duke of Braddock.