His Mistress by Morning (22 page)

“Ask me?” Her mouth went dry.

He held up one hand. “Please don’t refuse me this time until you’ve heard my reasoning as to why we should wed.”

Wed? He was going to ask her to marry him? If that wasn’t shocking enough, there was the other part of his plea.

Please don’t refuse me this time…

He’d asked her before? And Lottie had said no?

Charlotte moved her lips to say an emphatic “yes” before he changed his mind, before she made a cake of herself and let Lottie’s unpredictable nature do something unthinkable.

Like deny her heart. Let go of her wish.

Meanwhile, he’d turned from her and was leaning over the bed, fishing through his discarded clothes. Catching hold of his waistcoat, he slipped his hand into the pocket and retrieved something.

Dear heavens. He’d bought a ring for her. No wonder the sight of her in Rockhurst’s diamonds had sent him over the edge.

Charlotte took another deep breath. If they were to marry, there would never be any need to disavow her wish. They’d be together always. Yet a plaguing doubt nudged at her willful heart.

Whatever is wrong with marrying Sebastian?
she argued to herself.

And then to her horror, he told her.

“We won’t live with my family. My mother has made it clear that she will remove herself and my sisters to the Abbey if I choose this course.”

“She’d leave London?” Charlotte whispered. The Lady Walbrook she knew loved London, adored everything about town life. That she would cede her place in her home rather than live with Charlotte said much about her opposition to the match.

“Oh, aye,” he said. “She made a great cake of herself about it yesterday. Said that I was driving her from her home.”

Charlotte tried to breathe, tried to tell herself that eventually it would all work out.

Lady Walbrook would come around. She’d learn to love Charlotte as she had before in her other life. And eventually, she’d forgive the pair once she saw how happy Sebastian was, married to the woman he loved.

“Then she went on and on as to how I was ruining the girls’ chances at decent matches.” He heaved a sigh and shook his head. “What utter nonsense,” he said as he rolled over on his back, his hands tucked beneath his head.

Charlotte closed her eyes and tried to blot out the vision of Cordelia, Hermione, and Viola, growing old to
gether at Walbrook Abbey. The Marlowe sisters had nothing but their sterling reputation and their looks to recommend them to a good match. There was no significant dowry for any of them to attract a lofty catch—that is, unless…

“Sebastian,” she began, unwilling to give up, even as an image of the trio—unwed and unloved in their exile—danced about her mind. “You can have my money. It would provide the girls ample dowries. Perhaps it would go some way toward mending fences with your mother.”

He snorted. “She already told me she won’t take a farthing from you. ’Tis why she is leaving Town. She thinks the entire family will be tainted by your money.” He rolled again. “I told her that I didn’t plan on taking any of your ill-gained fortune.”

Ill-gained fortune.
So they were back to that again. Lottie’s temper roused and Charlotte did her best to tamp it back down. Besides, she’d thought that after the tender way they’d finally made up, perhaps Sebastian had changed his mind about her money.

Apparently not.

And as much as she wanted to marry him, spend every moment of her life with him, she now knew for certain that Lottie Townsend’s past was a wall between them that could never be razed.

The former lovers…the gold, jewels, and property Lottie had accumulated…the reputation that came with being London’s most coveted courtesan.

Everyone was right. She couldn’t just get married to Sebastian. There was no escaping her past. And it wasn’t just Finella and Lady Walbrook who had the right of it—Rockhurst had pointed out the futility of such a match as well.

Sebastian rolled toward her, reaching out to toy with a strand of her hair. “Mother doesn’t see why I just don’t marry Miss Burke and keep things between us as they are now.” He heaved another impossible sigh and gazed down at her with an innocence that surprised her.

How could this rakish, intelligent man not see the truth that was so evident to his mother?

To Charlotte.

“Your mother is right,” she heard herself saying.

“Oh, not you as well,” he groaned. “Lottie, I’m not going to listen to any more dire female prattle. I am going out today and secure a Special License and then you and I are going to be wed.” He bounded out of bed, as if that was the end of the matter, and began to get dressed.

“No!” The emphatic reply startled even her. But she knew one thing for certain: His proposal wasn’t the right thing to do. That he couldn’t see it told Charlotte that he loved her too deeply to look beyond his own heart. “Your mother is right. You should marry Miss Burke.”

Sebastian had already tugged on his smallclothes and had his breeches in hand. “You’d have me marry
her
?”

She pulled the sheet up over herself and nodded. “Yes.” Then she added, rather forced out, “Why not?”

“Why not?” He flung his breeches aside. “How can you even suggest such a thing?”

“I don’t see that there’s anything wrong with her.”

“Nothing wrong? Everything’s wrong about her. She’s never made me feel like this—”

He returned to the bed and caught hold of Charlotte, tugging her into his arms. His lips covered hers in a hungry, angry kiss. Immediately, that burning passion between them sparked to life, blazing quickly to a hot and needy bonfire.

His hand found first her bare breast, the nipple already tight and expectant. He spent little time, his fingers trailing downward until they reached their prize hidden beneath her nether curls, her reward—for he stroked her, teased her until she swayed against him, her body pleading with him to make love to her.

And even as an unbidden moan of pleasure escaped her lips, he released her and held her at arm’s length.

“Can you imagine me doing that to her?”

No, she couldn’t.

Charlotte struggled to catch her breath, gather her wits about her. She’d gotten her wish. For one marvelous, perfect fortnight.

Now it was time to let it go.

Slowly and deliberately, she chose her words. “Have you ever tried that with Miss Burke?”

His nostrils flared, and he dropped her back on the bed. “Of course not! She’s a…” His outrage sputtered to an impotent halt, realizing only too late the condemnation of his words.

Charlotte sat up. “She’s a what, Sebastian? A lady?”

“Demmit, Lottie, you know what I mean.”

“I know exactly what you mean,” she told him with the cool, icy tones of a woman insulted. “Now leave.” She pointed at the door.

He shook his head and tried to smile at her, that dazzling one capable of melting her heart. “Come now, Lottie my love, ’twas said in anger and you misunderstood me. I meant it not.” He leaned forward to catch her anew, but she slipped from his grasp and got out of bed. Tugging on her wrapper, she pointed again at the door. “It is time you left, Lord Trent. You were right before. I don’t love you. I don’t want this any longer.”

This life. This wish.

She didn’t know what she expected, that suddenly she would be Charlotte Wilmont again. Now she wished she’d listened to Quince the other day, but something told her it wasn’t any harder to undo her wish than it had been to make it. That all she had to do was disavow it and everything would go back to the way it was. Yet she’d done that and nothing had changed; the ring remained stuck to her hand and she still stood in Lottie’s house, in Lottie’s life.

All of it the same but for Sebastian’s regard.

His eyes held a flinty anger, his jaw set in a hard line. “And this is your response? I ask you to marry me. I offer you a respectable life and you refuse me?”

She didn’t dare open her mouth, for the lure of it all still held her heart.
Marry you? Yes, Sebastian. Yes, please.

Instead she nodded, her rebellious lips pressed together tight.

“Damn you to hell, Lottie Townsend,” he said, donning his clothes with all due haste. “See if you don’t regret this. See if you don’t.”

She already did.

He started to rush from the room, but he stopped and leaned over to retrieve something she couldn’t see. Then he held it up.

Rockhurst’s diamonds.

They glittered still, even in the poor light of the nearly guttered candles.

Without a word, he tossed them down atop the satin sheets, amidst the tangled wreckage of her bed that still held the warmth of their once entwined bodies. Then he stormed out.

Charlotte stood rooted in place, her body racked with
sobs that she didn’t dare give voice to until she knew he wouldn’t hear.

And when the front door slammed shut, she collapsed atop the bed, her hand unwittingly curling around the cold, wretched diamonds, and she began to cry. Sobbed until she could barely breathe.

It wasn’t until a few hours later, as the sun started to peek over the rooftops of London, that Charlotte sobbed her last and fell into a deep, exhausted sleep.

The sort that held no thoughts of wishes. No dreams of love.

Or what that tenuous, fragile notion cost one’s heart.

May 10, 1810
What Should Have Been an Ordinary Thursday

S
ebastian Marlowe, Viscount Trent, woke up oddly disconcerted, as if he’d been out all night on a bender. Or had gotten into a row. Maybe even gambled away the family fortunes.

Which was quite simply impossible for a sensible man like Sebastian.

Still, he couldn’t help but feel that something was just not quite right with his world.

“Good morning, my lord,” his valet, Wilks, called out from the dressing room. “’Tis good to see you finally up.”

There was a pinched set to the man’s words that gave Sebastian pause. “What time is it, Wilks?”

“Two, my lord.”

“Two?” Sebastian flung back the covers and got up. “Two? How can that be?”

“You were sleeping rather soundly, my lord,” the man said, as he chose a coat and cravat for the viscount. “But your bath is ready and your mother is holding breakfast for you.”

“My mother?” That didn’t bode well. Sebastian ran a hand through his hair and took a deep breath. How could it be two in the afternoon? Why, he’d missed his morning ride and a quiet breakfast without his madcap family about.

They were the ones who slept the day away, not him.

He hustled toward the tub and got in, soaping himself and making haste with his usually leisurely morning ablutions.

“Remind me, Wilks, what is on my schedule for today?” he called out, worried he’d forgotten something else other than getting up.

Wilks was busy examining a perfectly pressed cravat. “You are attending the opera tonight with Lord and Lady Burke and Miss Burke.”

Sebastian shook his head. “Are you sure there isn’t something else I’m supposed to be doing today?”

“I can check with her ladyship,” he offered.

“No! The last thing I need is my mother’s interference with my life.”

“Yes, my lord.”

Bathed and dressed, Sebastian went downstairs half an hour later and took his place at the head of the table. His paper held no interest to him, for how could one read over his sisters’ chatter?

“Sebastian?” his mother asked from her end of the table. “Whatever is wrong with you today? You look positively distracted.”

For that matter, he was, for he was digging around in
his waistcoat pocket, for what he knew not, but it seemed there was supposed to be something in there.

Something quite valuable.

He looked up and found all four pairs of eyes watching him.

Heavens, he was becoming as odd as the rest of his family.

Lady Walbrook, who apparently wasn’t expecting an answer, launched into her next subject. “Sebastian, Viola tells me you picked my orange blossoms for Miss Burke.”

He shot his little sister a dark glance, but she was too busy buttering a roll to notice. “And I forgot to thank you for them, Mother. Lavinia quite adored them.”

“Lavinia! Harrumph! I was going to use those for Hermione and Viola’s costumes. You’ve quite ruined their performance now. You and your Miss Burke.” She further sniffed her disapproval. “You mustn’t spend so much time with her, people are beginning to talk. Why, Lady Routledge is quite convinced you are on the verge of proposing. She positively intimated the other day that there would be a betrothal announcement at her soirée.”

Sebastian’s gaze snapped up. “Oh, demmit! The Burkes!”

“Yes, the Burkes. Presumptuous mushrooms!” his mother said. “Why, I don’t know—”

“Their Venetian breakfast. It was this morning!”

His mother blinked. “Oh, yes, I do believe you’re right.”

He rose immediately. He needed to get over there. He needed to apologize. This was disastrous. “Perhaps if we hurry—” he began, glancing at the clock, which betrayed the real truth.

“Why, it is well and done by now,” his mother said,
giving voice to what he already knew. “There’s no point in rushing over there—you’ll look the fool.”

He groaned and sat back down only to find his sister Hermione gloating like a cat over her plate. “You needn’t look so pleased,” he told her.

“As it is, I am quite pleased. Now perhaps Miss Burke will refuse your suit.”

“That would be a godsend,” his mother muttered.

Sebastian chose not to reply, which was odd in itself. Of course he was going to marry Miss Burke, but for some reason arguing the matter with his mother didn’t hold any appeal today.

Unfortunately, his silence only gave the lady another opportunity to add to her lecture. “Your father would not approve of such a match. He never liked Lord Burke, and I don’t think he’d hold a very high opinion of the man’s daughter.”

“Since my father is not here to give his opinion, madame, you will have to trust my judgment.”

She waved her hands about. “I think I can speak for your father. After all, we have been married for lo these last thirty years.” She frowned. “You are only marrying that girl for her money.”

“And the adjoining lands in Kent and the title she’ll be giving her firstborn,” Griffin pointed out.

“No,” Viola said, holding out her cup for Fenwick to refill with chocolate. “He is marrying her because she is as dull as he is.”

Sebastian straightened. “Miss Burke is not dull. And neither am I.”

His family, for once, diplomatically said nothing—for almost a minute, which, he reasoned, had to be some sort of record.

“You would do well to heed this,” Lady Walbrook announced with great flourish: “So wise so young, they say do never live long.”

Shakespeare
. Whenever a crisis arrived, his mother lobbed quotations from Shakespeare at her enemies like the French might fire cannonballs. And often with equally disastrous results. “Mother, I am of no mind to take advice from a dead playwright.”

“You would do well to heed the man, Sebastian. He knew a thing or two about love.”

“That would be well and good, Mother,” Hermione interjected, “but that quote is from
Richard the Third
.” She glanced over at her brother. “A tragedy, all the same.”

Again an uncomfortable silence reigned at the breakfast table.

Why couldn’t his family understand the very essential need for him to make an advantageous marriage?

“I have some good news,” Griffin announced. “I’ve been granted a presentation to the Royal Science Society. Sir Joshua arranged for my paper on time travel and future societies to be presented at the next meeting. A fortnight isn’t much time to perfect my theory on—”

“The twenty-fourth?” Lady Walbrook interrupted.

“Yes,” he replied. “The Thursday after—”

“Oh, no, that will never do,” she declared.

“Why not?” Griffin asked.

The countess heaved an aggrieved sigh. “That’s the night of Lady Routledge’s soirée. I need you for the girls’ tableaux. Cordelia has outright refused to come up from Bath, and I need a third to play—”

Everyone at the table groaned.

Viola slunk so far down in her seat that all that could be seen was the top of her dark head.

“What?” his mother asked, always oblivious to her family’s despair over her theatrical leanings.

“Mother, please don’t,” Sebastian asked. “Can’t the girls do something a little…a little less…”

“Embarrassing?” Viola muttered from beneath the tablecloth.

“Humiliating?” Hermione offered.

“Wretched?” Griffin finished.

“I’ll have you know my tableaux are highly anticipated,” their mother said. She shook out her napkin and shot a haughty gaze at all of them.

“By every gossip and old cat looking for a good laugh,” Griffin muttered under his breath.

His mother turned her attention back in Sebastian’s direction, an effort worthy of Nelson. “My dear boy, promise you won’t marry that dull girl. She will be the death of your spirit. Your delightful
joie de vivre
.”

Hermione choked on her toast. “Him?” she asked, jerking her thumb at Sebastian. “Mother, aren’t you putting on the brown a bit?”

The lady ignored her daughter, even if she had the right of it. No one would have ever called Sebastian the life and soul of a party.

The clock on the mantel chimed, and Sebastian knew that his first order of business, and the honorable thing to do, was to make his apologies to the Burkes for his, and his family’s, absence at their breakfast fête. And as relieved as he was to have an excuse to get away from his family, he found he wasn’t all that anxious to call on the baron and his wife, or even the lovely Miss Burke.

How could it be that overnight his conquest for the heiress’s affections no longer seemed as important as it once had, for there was some truth to his mother’s dire warnings—Lavinia Burke was a bit dull.

He shook his head. This is what came of sitting down for a meal with his family.
Joie de vivre,
indeed! Lavinia, dull? What utter nonsense! If he sat here much longer he’d start quoting Shakespeare and take to wearing a turban like his mother’s elderly cousin, Merlin.

“I must be away,” he said, rising abruptly.

“Oh, yes,” Hermione said. “Viola, Griffin, you promised to come with me to the park. We must hurry!” The three of them dashed out of the dining room ahead of him like a stampede.

His mother sent one last sally after him. “Oh, Sebastian, how I wish you would come to your senses on this matter and find someone to love. A Titania to ignite your passions.”

Sebastian paused at the doorway. “Mother, I will not make you any such promise. Besides, everyone knows wishes never come true.”

The morning dawned much the same for Charlotte. She found herself back in her old narrow bed in the house on Queen Street.

Apparently she’d found the way to dissolve her wish without Quince’s help, for nothing of it remained but the odd little ring still stubbornly affixed to her finger.

She pulled her pillow over her face and stifled the terrible wrenching sob that rose up from her broken heart. “Sebastian. Oh, Sebastian, what will I do without you?”

“You’ll go get him, that’s what you’ll do,” a familiar voice said.

She plucked the pillow off her face and looked around the room.

“Quince!” Charlotte cried out, starting to get out of bed, until she realized she was still stark naked from the night before.

The old lady smiled and tossed over an old nightrail.

Charlotte pulled on the prim and proper muslin gown and sighed at the high neck and lack of anything feminine—not even a single bit of ribbon or embroidery to make it more appealing.

“Now, now,” Quince told her. “All is not lost.”

“But it is. I let him go.” Charlotte closed her eyes. “I had to,” she managed to choke out before she started to cry.

“I know, my dear, I know,” Quince murmured soothingly as she came over to the edge of the bed and sat down beside her. “But all is not lost.”

“How can you say that?” Charlotte asked between sniffles. “I’m not
her
anymore.”

“Not who?” Quince asked, passing over the same worn handkerchief as before.

“Lottie,” she said, heaving another sigh and sniffling into the bit of linen. “I’m just Charlotte now.”

Quince laughed, the merry sound sparkling with sunshine. “You foolish girl, of course you are still her. Who else would you be?”

Charlotte waved her hands over her dull nightrail, her tangled curls. “Look at me, do I look like a courtesan?”

Quince’s nose wrinkled. “Not in that wretched gown. But it is what is underneath the muslin that matters. You have all the same curves, the same grace that made Mrs. Townsend the talk of London.”

Charlotte snorted, much as Finny had when Charlotte had protested that one of Lottie’s gowns was unseemly.

“Aha!” Quince said, pointing at her. “I see your time as Lottie wasn’t wasted entirely.”

Charlotte paused for a second, grasping at a bit of hope, but a second more fateful matter came into her thoughts. “But it is too late. Sebastian is most likely set to wed Miss Burke by now.”

The lady shook her head. “No more than he was when you left this life. ’Tis…oh, bother calendars,” she muttered as she counted on her fingers. “The tenth.”

“The day after I made my wish,” Charlotte said.

“Yes,” Quince replied. “Everything is as it was. Nothing has changed.” She paused for a moment. “Except you, and perhaps a few lingering memories in others, here and there.”

An odd thrill ran down Charlotte’s spine. She did remember—all of it. “Do you think he remembers?”

“With some help, he might,” Quince said softly. “But not as you do. His memories will be more like vague thoughts, odd recollections.”

Charlotte nodded. If he could fall in love with her once, then perhaps…

“But I must caution you,” Quince said. “You haven’t much time. After a fortnight, all of this, your memories, his feelings, all of it will be gone. You must hurry if you are to recapture his heart.”

Two weeks? Charlotte shook her head. “What good will a courtesan’s manners and knowledge do for me?” she asked. “Sebastian is set to propose to Miss Burke. What chance do I have against her?” She flung herself backward on the bed and covered her face with her hands as a sob slipped from her lips.

There was a loud sigh from Quince who sat patiently waiting for Charlotte to come to her senses.

She peeked through her fingers. “And what would you have me do?”

“What would Lottie do?”

Charlotte blew out a breath. “Put on her blue velvet gown, go to the opera, and flirt outrageously with Rockhurst in the plain view of one and all.”

“Then that is what you will do,” Quince said, gliding over to the wardrobe and throwing open the doors. She peered inside, then glanced back over her shoulder, her brows furrowed. “There isn’t much to work with here.”

“Exactly my point,” Charlotte said. “What you suggest is impossible. Why, I don’t own a single gown worthy of such a feat, never mind the fact that I have never even been introduced to the earl.” Charlotte paused. “At least not here. Not as Miss Wilmont.” She buried her face in her hands again and groaned. “Oh, Quince, it is impossible. I cannot compete with Miss Burke, not with my limited means and lack of social connections. Not in a fortnight’s time.”

“Then you have to stop thinking like Charlotte and use every wile Lottie possessed. They are still there—right inside you,” Quince told her, crossing the room and poking a bony finger into Charlotte’s forehead. “You know everything you need to know to win Sebastian’s heart—which is yours by right if only you will claim it.”