His Mistress by Morning (15 page)

“And I you, Sebastian,” she whispered back. “I you.”

The candles glowed low in their holders the next time Charlotte looked around. Sebastian had made love to her again, holding her gently and bringing her to her release slowly and skillfully.

Now as he slept beside her, she smiled softly.

So this is why one never sees a rake before two in the afternoon, she mused. Their real labors kept them up very late indeed.

Yet she felt anything but tired. Given the past day, she should be exhausted, having found herself in this shocking life, but Charlotte had to imagine she’d never felt more alive.

Here in Sebastian’s arms, the trifling matters of the world, of manners and invitations, of new gowns and proper connections, gave way to a world that belonged only to lovers. A world of passion and exploration. Of the
faraway shores that could be a lover’s body, a lifetime of discovery and desire.

She glanced over at him and found him studying her.

“I’ve always loved this house,” he told her, reaching over and trailing his finger along the edge of her face. “Loved being here with you. Just us, like tonight. Dancing, playing cards—well, perhaps not cards because you always win—even reading those horrible French novels you love, and I thought I knew all your moods, all your secrets, until tonight…”

His voice trailed off, and Charlotte found herself biting her lip. Oh, dear, what had she done?

He gazed at her intently.

“For a moment there, when we were…” He shrugged. “You know—”

“Yes, I know.” Oh, how she did.

“As odd as it sounds, for a moment there, I didn’t recognize you.”

“How so?” she breathed, almost afraid to ask.

“This sounds funny,” he said, reaching out to pull a strand of her hair. “You looked so innocent, so…so surprised.”

I was…
“I did?”

He reached out and tousled her hair. “What has come over you? You funny girl, you seem so different suddenly, you even sound different.”

“I-I-I…,” she faltered. Oh, heavens, how could she explain? He’d think her mad. Not that it wasn’t a possibility. Hadn’t Mrs. Kingston at No. 15 on Queen Street woken up one morning and thought herself the Duchess of Kent?

“Of course your little flirtation last night with Rockhurst
contradicts all that,” he teased, but she could hear the testing in his voice.

“I wasn’t flirting with Rockhurst,” she protested.

He snorted and rolled on his back.

She clambered atop him, her hands splaying over his bare chest.

“I was not flirting with the earl.”

One aristocratic brow arched.

“I was not,” she continued to protest. “Whatever would I want with him?”

“He’s rich,” Sebastian offered. “Don’t think I haven’t heard Finny extolling his virtues and his pocketbook.”

Now it was Charlotte’s turn to snort. “She has no right to interfere.”

“She has your best interests at heart.”

“But that’s just it,” she told him. “’Tis
my
heart. And I want you. Only you. And I wish—”

She came to a stop. She wished so many things, but how could she say them? She’d used her one wish, and there was nothing else she’d ever want more than Sebastian’s love.

“What, Lottie?” he asked, sitting up and gathering her into his arms. “What do you wish?”

“I already have it,” she told him, cupping his face in her hands. “I have you and that is all I could ever want.”

He sat back a bit and stared at her. “You truly mean that.”

She nodded, unable to get another word past the lump in her throat.

“But what about the last few weeks—I thought you were—”

She pressed her finger to his lips and stopped him. “Forget what you thought…what you knew of me. If I haven’t
told you how much you mean to me, then I’ve been a fool. There is no other man for me but you.”

He studied her again, searching her features. This time she didn’t look away—she let him survey her to his heart’s content, until a slow smile spread across his lips.

“So we’ll make a go of this?”

She nodded. “Oh, yes. Please. I would be ever so grateful.”

He laughed and tousled her hair. “Wherever did you find these Mayfair manners? If I didn’t know better, I’d say you hit your head harder yesterday than we thought.”

“Something like that,” she whispered as his mouth swooped down to cover hers and his hands began seeking out her body in a quest she knew now would end in rapture.

I
f she had ever wondered why women like Corinna Fornett and the other infamous fallen women of Society always looked so well pleased with themselves, Charlotte now knew why.

After a night, and a good part of the next morning, spent in Sebastian’s arms, Charlotte counted herself as one of them. It was easy to see why the Lottie-in-the-painting smiled so smugly.

Now as Sebastian strode about her room indecently naked, instead of averting her gaze and sneaking peeks, she watched him openly, admiring his form and shape and wishing she knew a few more of Lottie’s tricks to keep him with her thusly, always.

“Oh, Lottie, my girl,” he said, tossing on his clothes, a rakish glint in his eyes. “I’ll be back tonight…if you’ll let me in.”

Charlotte scrambled up from the sheets, gathering up her wrapper as she went. While she didn’t mind his
nakedness, she still wasn’t all that comfortable with her own in front of him. “Tonight? So long?”

And here she’d been spinning fancies about a day of idleness, of picnics and cool breezes and horse races and all kinds of things that spinsters from Mayfair never did.

“’Fraid I must. Got business to attend to,” he said, a dark shadow passing over his features. He turned and tugged on his trousers.

He needn’t have avoided her gaze. She knew exactly what his business might be.

Miss Burke.

Drat that wretched heiress! Charlotte glanced down at the ring on her hand. If only she had one more wish!

For a few moments, she gave into gleeful fantasy of Quince arranging a spectacular display of warts about Lavinia’s fashionable and much lauded face.

“But I will be back tonight, so don’t make any plans,” he said over his shoulder as he bent to retrieve his boots from under a chair. “I have a surprise for you.”

Charlotte looked up. She’d been adding to her wish for Lavinia the additional boon of a severe case of head lice and a dreadful, seeping rash. “A surprise?”

“Yes, but get that look off your face.” He wagged his finger at her. “You won’t wheedle it out of me, so don’t even think of trying.”

Charlotte nodded. No one had ever given her a surprise before, and from the teasing glint in Sebastian’s eyes she had to imagine it was going to be delightful.

Dressed, though more rumpled than sharply clad Corinthian, Sebastian strolled back to the bed and gathered her up into his arms. His green eyes turned serious and his brow drew into a hard line. “You stay out of trouble
today. No gambling, no drinking, no forays out with that questionable friend of mine. Just be dressed and ready for me. I’ll call for you after eleven.”

“Yes, my lord,” she replied, ever the dutiful miss.

He leaned back and looked at her. “That was terribly easy. What’s come over you, Lottie?”

“You,” she said quite honestly. “You, Sebastian.”

He grinned and leaned down to kiss her. From the moment his lips covered hers, she sighed and opened herself to him, didn’t mind that her wrapper slipped from her shoulders and left her bare and quivering in his arms.

Much to her chagrin, he pulled back and laughed. “I should have known you’d use that innocent act to try to lure me back into your bed.”

“I did not—”

He snorted and strode from the room. “Lottie, you are a good liar, but not that good.” Then he blew her a kiss from the doorway and was tromping down the stairs. “Be ready at eleven,” he called up to her. “I think you will find my plans quite…edifying.” There was more laughter and then the slam of the front door.

She flopped back down on the bed and crossed her arms over her chest. “Now whatever am I to do until then?”

And as if on cue, there was Finella bustling into the room, tossing the draperies open to let in the afternoon sunshine. “I feel like a bit of shopping.” She turned to Charlotte with her hands on her hips. “What say you?”

Shopping when one had money to part with, Charlotte discovered, was quite fun.

She and Finella had marched up one side of Bond Street and down the other, filling their carriage with hatboxes and packages until there was barely room for them.

And now, all these hours later, Charlotte stood dressed in a blue satin evening gown. White ribbons crossed over the front of the bodice and over the tops of the sleeves, giving it a Grecian air. To add to the theme, she begged Finella to do her hair up like it was in the portrait—though Finella saw no reason to go to such trouble when Sebastian’s heart was secure and his pocketbook empty.

But Charlotte’s pleas finally prevailed, and Finella worked her magic, adding a gold headband studded with sapphires to her creation and pulling from a locked chest an elegant pair of hoop earrings and a tiered necklace that matched the headband.

Finally, when the lady tucked a white plume and gold-tinged feather into the side of Charlotte’s hair, even Finella had to smile, pronouncing Lottie “utter perfection,” as well as “an utter waste of time.”

Then she sighed, complained a bit more, and with Charlotte too entranced with the notion of Sebastian’s surprise to care, departed: It seemed a night of gaming with the young Earl Boxley was more tempting to Finella than continuing her laments about her charge’s favorite.

But eleven came and went, and at half past one, Charlotte paced about the small front salon in her house, pausing every time she heard a carriage. She’d race to the window and wonder aloud, “Wherever could he be?”

Two and a half hours late! She knew she should be furious with him, but at the same time, well, this was Sebastian, and she’d waited so long to have his affections that she supposed she could forgive him a bit of tardiness.

Meanwhile, her feet throbbed from the new shoes, a pair of high-heeled, embroidered satin creations, that Charlotte had thought divine when she’d purchased them. Now with her toes pinched and the makings of a terrible
blister on her heel from the gold thread, she teetered over to the settee and kicked them off, wiggling her stockinged feet.

She blew the enormous plume out of her eyes and glanced at her reflection in the mirror. Her curls appeared to be drooping, and the kohl Finella had insisted on lining her eyes with was making a determined march down her cheeks like a pair of black caterpillars.

Some courtesan she was turning out to be.

“That’s because you are a fool,” she told herself as she went to the mirror and began to wipe away the layer of cosmetics.

“A fool?” came a quiet, but very masculine, question from the doorway.

“Sebastian!” she said, spinning around. “I didn’t hear the bell—”

“I didn’t ring it.” He dangled a key on a ribbon. “I let myself in.”

Charlotte nodded. Of course he’d have a key. He owned the one to her heart, why not her front door? “You must think me a fool, standing about nattering on to myself.”

“Never.” Pocketing the key, he strode into the room, confident and handsome and dressed tonight in plain dark jacket and dark breeches. When he paused before her, instead of hauling her into his arms and carting her upstairs for a night of ruin (as she half-expected, half-hoped), he studied her, as if caught by the sight before him.

Then he took the handkerchief from her hand and finished wiping up the errant liner. Tipping his head to one side, he studied her. “Now, there is the lady I adore. Absolutely perfect.”

Charlotte didn’t know what to say, mesmerized as she was by his smoldering gaze, his softly spoken praise.

“I fear I
was
being foolish, with all this finery, with all this,” she said, waving at the plumes and the jewelry.

“You, a fool, Lottie?” He smiled again, his hand coming out to touch one of the ornate curls Finella had tortured her hair into. “Some might say so.” He affected a funny pose, like a crotchety old matron, or ancient Corinthian. “Mrs. Townsend? A fool? Look at her madcap, spendthrift, ruinous antics. Why I hear tell she bet two hundred pounds on that crazy nag of Rockhurst’s. She’s a foolish, wicked lady.” He grinned, then with a single finger tipped her chin upward so she looked directly at him. “But I know better. And I intend to prove it this very night.”

Charlotte gulped.
This very night.
Those words sounded so ominous. “How so?” she managed to whisper, almost afraid to ask.

Almost. For his dark green eyes glittered in a dangerous invitation that she found spellbinding.

“I intend to give into your most secret desires,” he told her as he stroked her cheek.

“M-y-y desires?” Oh dear, she hoped this didn’t venture into those shady regions of Continental habits that Finella had intimated at. Lord only knew what a woman like Lottie Townsend would hold locked away in her devious heart.

“Yes, yours. I intend to indulge you utterly tonight.” He drew her into his arms and started to nuzzle her neck. “Will you come along with me, Lottie, my love?”

She nodded, for she couldn’t get a reply past her trembling lips, past her beating heart. As he swept her from the room, a breathless sort of anticipation and panic spread through her. But when they got to the hall, instead of turning right and up the stairs to her room, he towed her to the left and toward the front door.

Not going upstairs? Now wait just a bloody moment,
a very Lottie-esque part of her clamored.

She dug in her heels and plowed to a stop. “Sebastian?” Charlotte tipped her head in the other direction. Toward the stairs…her room…her bed.

He threw up his hands. “Of course. You need a wrap.”

A wrap? He truly wanted to go out? At half past one? The time wasn’t so much the concern, rather his intent. He wasn’t dressed for a ball, or even a card party. Why, he looked like he was out to set up shop as a highwayman.

“Where are we going?” she asked, trying to keep the chill of disappointment out of her words. She still held out some hope that if he was going to give her Lottie’s heart’s desire, they’d need to go upstairs to accomplish the feat.

Before she could prod him again with another question or even gain answer, he found the shawl she’d dropped on a chair earlier and threw it over her shoulders. Then with a contagious enthusiasm, Sebastian pulled her once again toward the door.

“Sebastian?”

“Yes?”

“I haven’t any shoes.” She held up the hem of her skirt so he could see her stocking-clad feet.

He raced back in and retrieved her new pair, the ridiculously decorated ones, the gilt embroidery and feathers now looking all too foolish. Holding them, like one might something picked out of a horse’s hoof, he studied them. “Shopping again?”

“I couldn’t resist,” she said as she retrieved them and bent to pull them back on.

“You should have,” he told her. “Resisted, that is. They look dreadfully uncomfortable.”

“They are,” she confessed.

“Then they will never do.” He bent down, and before she knew it, he’d reached under her skirt and plucked off first one, then the other.

Charlotte teetered this way and that before she caught her balance by catching hold of his shoulders. Meanwhile Sebastian started digging under the bench and fetched out a sensible pair of boots. He held them up with a triumphant gleam in his eyes. “These will do,” he told her.

She studied them with nothing but disdain. They were something a Miss Wilmont might wear, but never Lottie Townsend. “They belong to Prudence.” Staring down at the plain brown leather, she tucked her feet back under her skirt. “And they don’t go with my dress.”

Instead of arguing with her, he shoved them into her hands, and before she could sputter another protest, he swept her up into his arms, so he held her face-to-face. “They’ll do. You can put them on in the carriage,” he said, grinning wickedly.

And with that, he carried her outside and into the night.

They rode through Bedford Square and then down along Great Russell Street into Bloomsbury. At first, Charlotte hadn’t a care where they were going, for it was like magic being out like this. London was nearly silent, clothed in shadows and oddly comforting in its state of slumber. So oddly out of character with the bustling, sharp-edged city she’d known all her life.

Then again she’d never been out like this, in the middle of the night, alone with a man.

But as they drove along, her curiosity started to outweigh her sense of wonder.

“I know I don’t shower you with jewels, or stock your
cellars or pay your modiste bills, like your other admirers have,” Sebastian was saying. “However, this is something I can do for you.” He pulled the horses over toward the curb and nodded toward the building before them.

“I give you the British Museum,” he said, waving his hand grandly at the stately building that had once been Montagu House, the London home of the Duke of Bedford. Sebastian’s eyes crinkled at the corners, his amusement, nay, glee, turning his strong sensual lips into a devilish smile.

Charlotte shook her head. And here she had thought, well, hoped, that they had been headed toward some gambling hell, or other disreputable party that Miss Charlotte Wilmont should never see, let alone know about. Mayhap some Cyprian’s ball, filled with incognitos and their beaux.

Something scandalous, something unholy.

Instead, he was teasing her with the very secret she’d revealed to him yesterday. She might have been hurt if it hadn’t been for this niggling suspicion this wasn’t the end of his surprise.

“You don’t look properly pleased,” he said, stowing the reins and turning to face her. “I’ll have you know, I went to great pains to manage this. What with my immeasurable charm and a bit of my winnings from Merrick, I find myself able to give you the British Museum, my unlikely bluestocking.” He waggled his brows at her.

“You are giving me the museum?” She laughed. “Now that is a gift.” She held out her hand, only too happy to play along with him. “My keys, if you will.”

He made a great show of fishing about in his pockets, and then when the light of discovery sparked in his eyes, he pulled out of his waistcoat a dull-looking key, which
he dropped into her hand. “Shall we go explore your new palace?”

She looked down at his gift, ever-so-warm from his body, and it sent a little thrill down her spine.