Not Quite a Lady (24 page)

“Don’t stop yet,” she said. “Not quite yet.”

“No, not yet.”

He found the fastenings of her bodice and undid them one by one. He drew the bodice down and let his fingers graze the velvety swell of her breasts. He bent and followed the same path with his mouth. The warm scent of her, rich and womanly, filled his head. All the world seemed to swim in it, all of this small world of theirs.

Her hands came up and her fingers slid through his hair and she held him there, against her. He heard the hurried pounding of his heart—or hers—or both—and “Yes,” she said, her voice husky.

He lifted his head to speak, but she silenced him with a kiss, ferocious this time. She moved her hands over him, taking possession fearlessly: pushing under his waistcoat, roving over the back of his shirt, then down, to cup his buttocks.

His mind thickened and darkened.

He dragged her closer, crushing her against him. He pushed his knee between her legs. She should have recoiled then and made him pause, made him think.

Instead she pressed herself against his knee. If he’d had any last, desperate hope of control, that finished it.

He groaned against her mouth, then lifted her up and set her down on something—a table, a desk—he hardly knew—and stood between her legs. All the while their lips clung in an endless kiss, darker and hotter and wilder than before.

He grasped her ankles and slid his hands up her legs.

She made a sound in her throat, and broke the kiss. “Your hands,” she whispered, reaching down to cover one, to stroke it. “Your hands. Yes, touch me.”

She pressed hurried, hot kisses over his face, his neck, then she leaned back, her blue gaze heavy-lidded and dark.

“Touch me,” she said. She let go of him to catch up fistfuls of her skirts and pull them up over her knees.

He touched her. Yes, of course. As she wanted. As
he
wanted. He drew his hands up over the elegant curve of her legs and up over the knot of her garters. He caressed the silken skin above her stockings. She shivered.

She put up her arms, and he let himself be caught. He let her draw him down to her. She kissed him hungrily, and he answered the same way. He gave himself up to the longing and the promise of a kiss that felt like forever. He cast aside all else and lived only in the taste and scent and feel of her. He gave way to the heat inside and to the urgency of physical need.

He kissed her while he unfastened his trouser buttons.

He kissed her while he pushed his clothes and underclothes out of the way. He felt her hand move down the front of his body, and he kept his mouth on hers, to keep from crying out when she touched him.

Unbearable touch.

Tentative, her fingers so light. The tease of it was cruel. “Charlotte, please,” he growled against her mouth.

Her fingers curled round him.

Sweet Aphrodite and all the deities, major and minor.

This was…This was…

She clasped him, growing bolder. Her slim fingers slid up and down, exploring his length.

Maybe he could have stopped but for this.

He’d never know.

She stroked him, and he must do the same to her. He must arouse her to the same pitch of madness she’d brought him to.

He slid his hand to the miraculously soft triangle of down between her legs. He felt her readiness, and he stroked her, intending—if he’d any mind left for intentions—to pleasure her with his hand.

But she inhaled sharply at his touch, and squirmed against his hand. And “Yes,” she said. “I want you, yes.”

And there it went, his last, fragile tie to conscious thought and reality. There it went, his last, frayed bit of sanity.

I want you.

Yes.

He raised her legs, and she wrapped them about his hips. Her hands curled on his upper arms.

He caressed her, opened her, and pushed into her.

She gasped. He paused, gritting his teeth as he summoned the last vestige of his will. Her hold of him tightened.

Then she pushed against him.

Then he was done for.

He thrust, and she was warm and welcoming, her muscles pushing against him like a beating heart. His heart beat with her, harder and faster.

This was what he wanted, all he’d ever wanted.

She, his.

He wrapped his arms about her and held her.

She was his and he wouldn’t let her go. He held her while they moved together, pleasure pumping through them, driving them. He held her through the last fierce rush to the crest. He held her, tightly, so tightly, when he was spent and she still pulsed against him. He held her still, tightly, when at last she quieted and sank against him.

“That was demented.”

His voice was a low rumble against Charlotte’s head.

She was still floating in the afterglow.

She sat there, stupid with happiness, while he kissed her temple. Then he eased away, and his hands—his magical hands—were refastening her bodice.

Still she was dazed, stupid, floating.

“Charlotte,” he said.

She looked up at him, into his golden eyes. “Yes,” she said.

“We have to get dressed.”

“Yes,” she said.

He pushed his handkerchief into her limp hand. “Oh,” she said, and came back to earth. She looked about her, and down at herself, and at him, as he pulled up his trousers and tucked in his shirt.

Face hot, she cleaned herself and pulled her skirts down. She remembered pulling them up, offering herself like the most shameless of wantons.

“That wasn’t supposed to happen,” he said.

“I know,” she said. “But…” She swallowed. “I’m not sorry. It was…it was…” She hunted for words, but she had none. “I had no idea it could be like that.”

“Neither did I,” he said.

She looked up, afraid to search his eyes and unable not to. “Really? No, you’re saying that to make me feel better, but you don’t need to because—”

“This is different,” he said. “You and I. It is completely different. That much I know. I meant to stop us before it went so far. I never doubted I could. And yet, perhaps, I didn’t want to, because I didn’t stop us. I think…perhaps…” He frowned and she saw the flush appear, at the top of his cheekbones. “I have become…attached to you.”

She’d wanted happiness, and he’d given it to her. She’d thought—as far as she’d thought—she’d wanted physical joy, to be touched, kissed, as other women were. But he’d given her more than she’d expected, more than she’d hoped for. This had been furtive, yes, and perhaps hurried, like her few couplings with Geordie Blaine, but this was not the same, not at all the same.

“I have become attached to you,” she said. “In spite of my best intentions.”

“I doubt this would have happened otherwise.”

“Probably not.”

“But it did,” he said. “And I must speak to your father and tell him we mean to wed.”

A mad flurry within her now: a leap of joy, then a crushing sense of defeat, hopelessness. “You can’t,” she said.

“I must,” he said.

“Your father,” she said. “What about your father and your determination to prove yourself? You cannot let me ruin that.”

“I won’t ruin
you,”
he said. “Your honor is more important than my pride.”

“My honor,” she said, and she couldn’t keep the bitterness from her voice. “What honor?”

“You are—were—the innocent, not I.”

“I’m not innocent,” she said. “Didn’t you notice?”

“Are you saying you have no hymen?” he said. “Is that what you mean? I wasn’t paying close attention.”

“I’m not innocent,” she said.

Don’t make me say it.

“You’re twenty-seven years old,” he said. “The hymen can be quite fragile. And I do know that even gently bred girls do not always abide strictly by the rules.”

I ever was a coward. The same coward I was then, when I had a choice and a chance…

Charlotte had a choice now, and a chance.

To do what? Lie? Marry this man, who was prepared to sacrifice his pride in order to protect her so-called honor? What happiness could exist in a marriage founded upon a lie?

She slid down from the desk. “I mean,” she said deliberately, “you are not the first.”

A silence. She made herself meet his gaze, braced herself for anger, disgust. He only tipped his head to one side and regarded her quizzically. “Was it recently?” he said.

“N-no,” she said. She realized she was wringing her hands. She stilled them and held them, folded, at her waist. “It was a long time ago.”

“Ah.”

Another pause.

“Am I the second?” he said.

“What?”

“The second?” he said.

She could only blink at him. Good grief. He was thinking. Analyzing. “Yes,” she said. “You are the second.”

“Did you bury your heart in your lover’s grave?”

“No, certainly not,” she said.

“Or vow undying devotion, or some such?”

“No, of course not,” she said.

“Then we had better marry,” he said. “One may impregnate a girl who is not a virgin as easily as one who is.”

She took a step back. Not that. She hadn’t thought of that. She hadn’t thought of it the first time. Then she was ignorant. She wasn’t now. But how was she to think? She was all turmoil and confusion.

He drew closer and she saw the keen intelligence at work, the falcon gaze. “Tell me,” he said. “Tell me what it is. I know it must be something dreadful, else you’d tell me straight out. We speak our mind to each other, do we not? This day I told you what I’d tell no one else.”

She’d spoken to him as she’d speak to no one else, too. She’d done it not only today but so many times, perhaps from the very start. She’d tried to pretend with him as she did with others but she could never quite carry it out. With him she spoke her mind. She was easy with him, more so than she’d ever been before, with any man.

She could not be false now.

Her eyes filled nonetheless and her heart pounded and shame flooded through her, like a fever, hot and cold at the same time.

“I had a child,” she said.

Never in all his life had it cost Darius so much to appear calm. Even with his father he had not felt his heart pounding as though it would break through his chest.

He was ashamed of his loss of control, ashamed of destroying her prospects. But he wanted her.

He wanted her enough to bear the prospect of facing her father.

I’ve despoiled your beautiful daughter.

Now she has to marry me.

Yet Darius would do it. He’d bear Lord Lithby’s anger and disappointment and the loss of his esteem.

He’d bear his own father’s contempt.

What he was not sure he could bear was bringing her misery, making her regret what had happened…for the rest of her life.

Four words made the world shift, completely.

I had a child.

He simply put his arms about her and pulled her close.

Now he understood. Everything, it seemed. With those four words, all the puzzle pieces simply fell into place.

It was an appalling burden for any woman to carry, and she would have carried it alone, for the most part. She would have had help, certainly, in concealing the matter, for it had been amazingly well concealed. He hadn’t heard a whisper, and that was rare in country villages, where everybody knew everything about everybody, and the secrets of the great house were common knowledge.

Still, it was her secret, her sorrow, and a heavy burden it was.

He remembered the sketch of the mother and child, and the grief he’d sensed.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

She wept, quiet, fierce sobs that shook her body.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

He held her while she wept, and he held her while, gradually, she quieted.

“I’m not g-good,” she said, her voice muffled against his coat. “I have no honor. I’m a hypocrite and a coward. I g-gave my baby away as soon as he was born. I shall never forgive myself.”

“You said it was a long time ago,” he said, stroking her back. “You were young then.”

“I was s-sixteen when I met him,” she said. She drew away, and fumbled at her skirts and found a handkerchief, with a great deal of lace and a very little useful cloth. She wiped her eyes, her nose. “Geordie Blaine. He was an officer. So handsome in his uniform. So kind and understanding—or so I thought. But I was only a conquest to him. He had me and left me and eventually got himself killed. Meanwhile I was with child and I didn’t even
know,
I was that naïve—I, who grew up in the country. But Molly guessed, and she told Lizzie, and I wouldn’t let them tell Papa. They took me away to Yorkshire, saying I was sick and needed a change of air. I nearly died giving birth, they said. I don’t remember very much, except that I wished I would die. I was sick for a long time afterward.”

She’d been sick with guilt and sorrow, he was sure, which would have compounded any physical injury or illness. The so-called wasting sickness people talked of in her case was very likely melancholia.

He brushed a strand of silky hair back from her cheek.

“We need to talk more of this,” he said. “A great deal more. But now is not the time. We’ve been alone, behind a closed door, far too long for propriety. The workmen and servants will be gossiping as it is. I will say only this to you: We cannot change the past. We can only do our best in the present. For the present, the best course is for us to wed.”

“I can’t,” she said. “I won’t have you throw away everything important to you because we were careless once.”

“You are important to me,” he said.

“But I’m an heiress,” she said. “I have pots of money. You said before—”

“That was before.”

“But I want you to do what you meant to do,” she said. “I want you to restore Beechwood. I was so excited when I understood what a great challenge you’d accepted. I was so…proud. You cannot marry me—not at least until you’ve done what you set out to do.”

“This is absurd,” he said. “What if you’re breeding?”

“I shall know in a fortnight,” she said. “If I am—” She stiffened then.

He heard it, too. Voices, drawing closer now, recognizable. Lady Lithby. The housekeeper.