His Mistress by Morning (26 page)

“Yes, ’tis only a jest,” Rockhurst said, trying to pull her back. “Good laugh, eh, Battersby?”

“Not at all,” the man said, smoothing out his ill-cut jacket.

“I’m not joking,” she insisted, tugging herself free of the earl again and setting herself front and center before Battersby. “I want to buy your shares.”

The poor man blinked and stared, having probably never seen so much female attributes right in his face. “Well, I…that is to say…”

Sebastian leaned over her shoulder. “Miss Wilmont, you are making a scene,” he advised her. “Those shares are worthless.”

“Not to me,” she whispered back. “I have fourteen hundred pounds.” She paused for a moment. “Oh, dear, make that thirteen hundred. I must keep back a hundred pounds for Herr Tromler.”

Sebastian knew better than to ask. “Herr Tromler?”

“Yes, the violinist for Lady Routledge’s soirée. He’ll need money for clothes, I have to imagine.”

Both Sebastian and Rockhurst groaned.

Battersby glanced up from Charlotte’s bodice to shake his head. “Thirteen hundred? Oh, no, that will buy only a third of them, miss, and I can only sell them in their entirety.”

Charlotte heaved a sigh. “But that is all I have.”

“Sorry, miss,” the man replied.

“Too bad,” Sebastian told her, “but I assure you there will be a better investment for your money than those shares.”

She glanced over her shoulder at the departing
Battersby, and then back at Sebastian. Her blue eyes held a wild, desperate light that tugged at his heart.

“I must buy those shares. Please, help me convince him to sell them to me.”

“But they are worthless,” he argued. “It is wishful thinking to believe that ship will come to port now, not after so many months.”

She paused and looked at him. “Sometimes, wishes are all we have.” Her hand came to rest on his sleeve. “Please, help me make this one come true.”

Sebastian would never understand what it was that made his sensible world turn completely upside down at that moment—the desolate, plaintive light in her eyes or the touch of her hand, which sent a rare shiver down his spine.

“Battersby, hold up there for a moment,” he heard himself saying.

The man turned around. “What, you as well, Trent? Making sport of me like Rockhurst?”

“No, nothing like that.” Sebastian swallowed and took another breath. This was madness, insanity, and yet for a wild moment he could only hear her plea.

Sometimes, wishes are all we have.

“I’ll take the other third,” he said, calculating it would take every bit of ready cash he had to buy them. “’Tis all I can do, but you’re better off with two-thirds sold than none, I’d imagine.”

Battersby eyed Sebastian and then Miss Wilmont, his narrow lips pursed into a thin, wary line. Then he shook his head. “No. The contract for the shares stipulates that I can only sell the lot of them. All or nothing.”

Sebastian looked down at Miss Wilmont. “I can’t do anything more.”

Expecting to find disappointment on her face, instead
she smiled up at him. “You’ve done more than you can imagine.”

“Trent, are you out of your mind?” To Sebastian’s horror, Miss Burke and her father had come up behind them. The baron spoke again, his voice rising with each word. “Tossing good money after bad. No wonder your family is in such dire straits.”

It wasn’t the first time the newly elevated merchant had thrown that fact into Sebastian’s face—and up until now he’d done his best to ignore it. After all, it was the situation shared by many an impoverished noble family—enduring the slights of the newly rich.

“It is none of your concern, sir,” Sebastian told him.

“Good money tossed in the gutter is always my concern. I hope you aren’t expecting me to pay this debt.”

Sebastian pulled himself up to his full height and faced his future father-in-law. “My finances are none of your concern.”

“Rightly so,” Rockhurst chimed in. “Won’t let you horde in on the opportunity, Burke, you sly fellow, you. Think you can talk us out of Battersby’s shares when you want them for yourself?”

Burke turned a brilliant shade of red. “Why, I never—”

“Good,” Rockhurst said, turning to Battersby. “I’ll take the other third, my good man. There you have it, the entire lot sold.”

Battersby’s owlish eyes blinked and quivered. “All of them?”

“Yes,” Sebastian said. “A partnership of sorts. That ought to satisfy the shareholder’s contract.” He shuddered to think of such a thing—in business with a headstrong and most likely mad spinster and the worst gambler and rake in London.

In truth, he agreed more with Mr. Burke than he did his own judgment.

“Certainly,” Battersby said, recovering from his shock and then grinning from ear to ear. “A partnership can be arranged. Yes, indeed. They are yours.”

With the deal struck, Rockhurst volunteered his solicitor to handle the papers—on the morrow, at Miss Wilmont’s insistence.

“Oh, madness! Utter madness, I say,” Lord Burke declared. “I’m rethinking my opinion of you, Trent. Indeed I am!”

And before Sebastian knew it, the bell was ringing for everyone to return to their seats, and he did so in a daze, with a glowering Lavinia at his side. The second act proved a poor substitute for the drama that had played out in the hallway, and Sebastian found himself the subject of curious glances and speculative looks.

Worse yet, all too soon he found himself inside the Burkes’ carriage, where a stony silence reigned. When they got to the fashionable mansion, the baron and his wife hurried inside, while Lavinia uncharacteristically lingered behind. “Well, isn’t that Miss Wilmont remarkable!” she announced.

“Yes, indeed,” Sebastian replied a little too enthusiastically.

His almost betrothed sniffed. Clearly, Lavinia wasn’t about to let this upstart spinster take her spotlight. And certainly not Sebastian’s affections. “How entirely vulgar of her to purchase those shares. And at the opera! Why, she looked like a fishmonger’s wife chasing poor Lord Battersby down like that.”

“I don’t think it was as bad as all that,” Sebastian replied.

Her perfect brows rose. “Did you notice her gown? Really, at her age, it was shameful. I am sure you and I are of the same mind on that point. I daresay, you wouldn’t want a lady who held your esteem to dress in such a showy fashion.”

Sebastian wasn’t about to reveal his opinion of Miss Wilmont’s display—the blue of her gown against her hair and sparkling eyes, her proud carriage and secret glances. Oh, he’d noticed those. How could he not have, when every time she’d looked at him his body had reacted like that of an untried lad?

The only shame of it was that every man in the Opera House had noticed her as well.

Miss Burke, completely unaware of the direction of his thoughts, continued unabashedly. “I think it is mortifying when ladies who have certainly passed any matrimonial hope come out in Society. They are such depressing creatures. I daresay Miss Wilmont—”

“Don’t!” Sebastian shot out.

“Don’t what?” Miss Burke replied, looking up at him with a bit of angry disdain so at odds with her usually perfect composure.

“Don’t say another word about her. I won’t hear it.”

“Lord Trent, you might as well get used to hearing about her. After tonight, everyone in the
ton
is going to be talking about her.”

“Then I expect you to refrain from joining such poor company.”

“Whyever not?” she asked, sounding as askance as if he’d asked her to go out in public in her chemise. “We just witnessed the finest
on dit
of the Season, and everyone will want to hear about it. Of course I will do my best
to lessen your role in it.” She paused for a moment. “You should know that I entirely forgive you for your moment of weakness in all this.”

Sebastian stepped back from her. “You forgive me?”

She seemed utterly unaware of the anger behind his words. “Of course, you dear man! You were only helping that odd Miss Wilmont because of her close association to your sisters. I will make sure people understand that you felt it your duty to—”

“Miss Burke, I will repeat my earlier order. You will say nothing ill about Miss Wilmont. Is that understood?”

The mutinous light in her eyes surprised him, and he suddenly saw his well-made and fought for match begin to sputter.

And with it, his family’s future. He thought of the long-owed mountain of debts on his father’s desk, of the merchants who were at the end of their patience and willing credit. His family was in dire straits, and it was up to him to save them with this bride-to-be.

Swallowing a bitter pill, Sebastian demurred, at least for the moment. “Come now, Miss Burke, you had the right of it earlier, I am only thinking of my sisters’ welfare. I would hate to see any hint of scandal touch them, and you in turn, if you were ever to call them by that name as well.”

Miss Burke smiled up at him so sweetly that Sebastian swore he must have imagined that flash of anger before.

Hadn’t he been wrong about so many things today?

Miss Burke turned and went up the remaining steps to her door. “Is that the only reason, Lord Trent?”

“Only reason for what?”

“Why you do not want me to say anything about Miss Wilmont’s scandalous conduct tonight—for your sisters’ sake, that is?”

He straightened up. “Yes, of course. What other reason could there be?”

“What other reason, indeed,” she replied.

“T
here you are!” rose the deep, menacing greeting from behind Quince as she stood in a moonlit corner of Hyde Park.

After fourteen hundred and forty-three years, she had become quite adept at avoiding Milton. Amongst the brick walls, cobbled streets, and smoky confines of London it was even easier to escape detection, but Quince now knew just how determined Milton was to retrieve his ring.

This time, she mused, as she came to a twirling stop on the grassy knoll atop which she was dancing. “Where are your manners, Milton? Sneaking up on a lady like that.” She eyed him warily, stepping slowly and cautiously out of his reach.

Dressed like a gentleman, he conveyed the very commanding and elegant presence of a duke. No matter that he couldn’t be seen by anyone but her, Milton’s vanity wouldn’t allow him to turn up as anything less than a grand lord.

“I knew if I waited, you’d eventually come to the park,” he mused, circling around her, moving like a menacing cat.

Quince muttered an ancient curse. Of course she’d come to the park. After what had seemed like an eternity in this dirty, wretched city, she’d needed to wiggle her toes in a bed of moss, feel the bark of a tree beneath her touch, let the soft murmur of the wind as it danced through the leaves whisper its secrets into her ears.

It had been a risk, but she’d only meant to come bask in the moonlight for a wee bit before she fled back to her hiding spot.

Apparently, she’d danced in the silvery light a moment too long.

“Come join me, Milton,” she said, holding out her hand. “Wouldn’t you like to dance with me again?”

“No.”

Undeterred, she stretched her hand out further. “Come, Milton, the moonlight is magical tonight. Don’t you remember that night in Wales when we—”

“Quince, my ring,” he said, his arms crossing over his chest, leaving nothing but icy disdain between them. “I want only my ring.”

“Churlish scullion,” she muttered, bringing her hand back and making one more absentminded twirl before she came to a stop. “As for your ring, if I had it, do you think I would be out here dancing?”

“The only place you should be is retrieving it.”

“It’s still on her hand,” Quince said, smoothing out her skirt as she awaited the explosion.

It came.

“How can that be?!” Milton’s usually cool features mottled with rage.

“How should I know?” she told him, considering how she was going to escape his wrath this time. Perhaps she could brazen it out and hope he’d just depart. “But it is still there and there is nothing I can do about it.”

“But she disavowed her wish.” His eyes narrowed. “Therefore the ring should have fallen free.”

Quince didn’t even bother to ask how he knew about the change in Charlotte’s wish. It only meant he was paying close attention to the ring and more determined than ever to regain it. “Not necessarily…”

“Not unless you meddled,” he said. “You interfered with the wish, didn’t you?”

“What a terrible thing to suggest when I have—”

“Terrible? Hardly,” he shot back. “Lo, you’ve gone too far this time, Quince. Shifting the timelines back and forth. Don’t think it hasn’t gone unnoticed.”

Quince tipped her nose up in the air, even while her toes curled inward.
Be brave, lass,
she told herself.
Don’t let him see your fear.
Still, she couldn’t resist prodding him just a little. “It will all come to rights once he falls in love with her again.”

Milton circled her. “You’re betting my ring on human love? Have you gone mad?”

Quince felt that odd magic of his start to ensnare her. “She loves him so, and if he could just see past—”

This was no longer about Charlotte and Sebastian, and they both knew it.

He threw up his hands. “I am not listening to this.” He started to storm away, then stopped and turned around, wagging a finger at her. “I am going to do what I should have done to begin with.”

“Milton!” she called out, hurrying after him. “Whatever do you mean?”

“You know exactly what I mean. What I should have done in the first place. End this wish.”

And before Quince could stop him, he disappeared into the night and into places not even she dared tread.

Charlotte stood in the Marlowe library, her finger tracing the titles on the spines as she searched for a specific volume of poetry.

“Just in case you can’t find someone for Lady Routledge’s soirée,” Hermione had said, “you must have a piece memorized to perform.”

Stretching up on her tiptoes, Charlotte continued her search. French novels. Shelley. Blake. Shakespeare. More Shakespeare. Oh, where was the volume she sought?

Behind her, she heard a door open and close. “Blessed saints, Hermione, I can’t find Coleridge.” She rose up a little higher. “You’d think it would be front and center, considering how much your—” she said as she turned around.

In the doorway stood a stunned-looking Sebastian. Suddenly Charlotte forgot entirely what she was saying, what she was searching for, feeling as tongue-tied as she’d always been around him.

That is until he said—well, demanded really—“What are you doing here?”

It was enough to dislodge the lump in her throat. “’Tis nice to see you too, Lord Trent,” she replied, doing her best to keep the elation she felt out of her greeting.

Whatever was he doing home so soon? Obviously he hadn’t lingered overly long with Miss Burke.

Unfortunately, she couldn’t help but smile at that.

“I said, what are you doing here?”

“Spending the night with Hermione,” she replied.

His jaw set with a firm line.

Must have been some ride home with the Burkes, she mused.

Sebastian came a little further into the library, looking to his left and right. “Where is she?”

“Upstairs,” Charlotte told him. She nodded toward the shelves. “You wouldn’t happen to know where the volume of Coleridge is, would you?”

“Top shelf, third row over,” he said. “Whatever do you want with him?”

“Hermione wants me to learn a poem for Lady Routledge’s in case I can’t find Herr Tromler.” She glanced over her shoulder at him. “I thought Coleridge would be so…so…edifying.”

Sebastian’s eyes widened. “You don’t mean to tell me that you intend to read
Coleridge
at Lady Routledge’s soirée?”

“Whyever not?”

“Well, for one thing, it’s not done. He’s hardly proper, if not outright—”

“But you like his work,” Charlotte interjected, recalling the afternoon they’d spent in the countryside, taking turns reading from that very same book of verse…and making love in turn.

“I-I-I—” He paused and stared at her. “That is beside the point.”

She glanced up at the lofty reaches. “You wouldn’t mind reaching it for me, would you?”

“Yes, I would.”

Charlotte thought of another strategy. “I wager I could guess your favorite verse. If I’m right, you must get it down for me.”

“Oh, so should I add soothsayer to your list of charms?”

“You think I’m charming?” she said, turning from the shelves and crossing the room toward him. For a moment she thought he was going to meet her halfway, catch her in his arms and ravage her.

At least that’s what she wished for, so fervently that it was almost possible to believe it could happen.

But at the last possible second, he took a deep breath, sidestepped her, and went to the bookshelf and reached up for the volume.

Even as he passed her by, she inhaled deeply, filling her senses with the very scent of him—bay rum and that dangerous, masculine air of a rake.

She teetered atop her shoes for a second, lost in the memories that seemed both so close and yet so very far away.

“Which poem?” he asked.

“Wha-a-at?” she managed, returning to the world where she was simply Charlotte.

“You said you could guess my favorite poem, so I want to know which one you think is my favorite.”

Charlotte’s eyes closed. “Page twenty-seven.” She listened as he thumbed through the pages. When it seemed he’d found it, she finished, “‘Recollections of Love.’” She turned around and opened her eyes to find him gaping down at the open book in his hands and then up at her.

“How did you know that?”

There isn’t anything I don’t know about you,
she wanted to tell him.
You like coffee not tea in the morning, but with three lumps of sugar and lots of cream. You hate green waistcoats, and you love playing whist but only when I let you win. When we make love, you get this certain
look on your face when you are about to find your—

“How did you know that?” he repeated.

“A lucky guess,” she said, wondering just how mad he would think her if she told him the truth.

I was your mistress, Sebastian. And we loved each other, so deeply, so thoroughly that if you would but try to remember, try to recall, we could be in that delirious place yet again….

“Luck, indeed,” he said, shoving the book out toward her.

She took it, and for a moment they stood there, connected by these pages that had one afternoon inflamed their passions.

He glanced down at her, and for a moment she swore he remembered, felt every bit of the desire coursing through her body.

“I should go,” he stammered, turning and heading toward the door. But once there he stopped, muttering something she couldn’t quite make out.

She watched him, his hands fisted at his sides, his shoulders taut and set. “Is something wrong?” she asked, not daring to step closer for fear he’d flee all the way to Scotland.

“Yes,” he ground out. “I mean, no.”

“Oh,” she whispered. “Did you quarrel with Miss Burke? Is that why you are home so early?”

He turned around. “No, certainly not. She isn’t the type to—”

“No, I suppose she isn’t,” Charlotte conceded. What if Quince was wrong? What if she had just gone mad and all of her memories of Sebastian were merely dreams and fancies?

Walk away now, Charlotte,
her sensible side warned her.
Before you make an utter fool of yourself. Before your heart breaks completely in two.

For it was tearing her apart right now to stand here and not to be in his arms. Not to be kissing him. With her clothes still right and proper and perfectly in order…

Charlotte trembled. Oh, this was pure torture.

Then she looked at him and remembered the times he’d been so passionate, so fiery, so close to her—when he’d been piqued and jealous and angry with her.

Yes, that was it! Why hadn’t she thought of that before? She needed to rouse him.

“Truly, I can’t see Miss Burke ever saying naught,” she added quickly. “You’ve most likely chosen very wisely.”

His brows furrowed. “What does that mean?”

“Oh, nothing,” Charlotte said, ignoring his suspicious tone and strolling to the large chair near the fireplace. She draped herself in a most unladylike fashion on the arm. “She seems so amiable.”

If one could consider a viper in muslin amiable.

“Exactly,” he said. “Miss Burke is a lady, and she would never contradict—”

“Of course not,” Charlotte interrupted yet again, though she was paying him little heed, instead taking her time by examining her nails. She heaved a bored sigh. “She’s entirely proper, quite staid in her affections, I have to imagine. Some might call such a paragon terribly dull, but I suppose you’d find her lack of passion perfectly satisfactory.” She let her words settle down into his imagination and then looked up at him and shifted ever so slightly, like Lottie might have, subtly lifting her bosom so it strained at the top of her bodice. She let her lips tip
in a sly, secret smile. “But is that what you really want, Lord Trent? A man who secretly reads Coleridge?”

She sent him the exact same look that Arbuckle had claimed gave her portrait as Helen of Troy the perfect expression—the kind of come-hither glance that could entice a man to leave hearth and kin, to launch a thousand ships, to breach a hundred defenses to claim her heart.

Claim her as his own
.

She must have captured it perfectly, because Sebastian’s mouth fell open in an expression of shock and amazement. “Lottie, I—”

Lottie.
Charlotte sat up. Hearing her name on his lips was a heady lure. She rose and took a few tentative steps toward him.

But this wasn’t the same rakish man who’d opened her eyes to love…at least not yet, she reasoned as she mused how best to awaken him.

Rouse him.

Memories assailed her—of him sweeping into the house on Little Titchfield Street hungry for her kiss, of him naked—gloriously so, of all those nights he’d claimed her. She let that passion bubble up inside her, and she shot him a hooded glance that promised passion and danger.

Sebastian reeled back, bumping into the door, closing it and making it so they were all alone and secluded in the cozy room. “Forgive me,” he stammered. “I don’t know why I keep calling you that. Highly improper.”

And while he might appear flustered and ready to take flight, Charlotte knew this man well enough to know that he was tempted. Despite his honor, despite the complete
impropriety of this scene, Sebastian Marlowe found her tempting.

And that was all she needed.

As his hand went to the latch, she took a few more steps. “I suppose so. But is it wrong if I don’t mind?” She smiled again and moved closer still, feeling with each passing second like her Cyprian twin.

“Lottie,”
he managed again. “I don’t know why, but it fits you.” He stood stock still, poised and taut. The tension between them, those ethereal memories, leaving them both transfixed…

“We shouldn’t be down here alone,” he finally said, as if he was warning her. “It isn’t proper. It isn’t done. Why, someone might think I was…well, that I was…”

“Trying to ruin me?” Charlotte smiled. “Would you ruin me, Lord Trent?”

Sebastian repeated Miss Wilmont’s question over in his mind.

Would you ruin me, Lord Trent?

His gaze moved quickly from the swell of her bodice to the curve of her neck to the full line of her lips, pursed and ready to be devoured.