One Night Is Never Enough (18 page)

It only took one second for the words to form and emerge. “Consider the debt of the night wiped free.”

He saw her blink. Stunned.

Watched the disappointment form. He felt nearly
giddy
as her disappointment formed.

“What, but—”

“But what?” He smiled, loving the look on her face, even the desire that was slowly shuttering—for he would obliterate those shutters with his next words. “You think I am freeing you?”

Uncertainty. Delicious uncertainty. She pulled her bottom lip in. “Aren’t you?”

“No.” He leaned forward, pressing on his elbows, until his lips were so close to hers that he could feel the heat of her, soft and delicious. “I am a selfish man.”

“A selfish man takes what is offered to him.” Was that doubt in her voice, doubt of her charms?

“No, a selfish man destroys what is offered to him and demands more. He demands
everything.
”

He touched her chin, pulling his finger beneath it, bringing her lower lip to brush against his. “I am a selfish man, and
all
of you, Charlotte . . . that is my demand.”

Chapter 12

I
f she thought it had been a hell of a week, it had proven to be a crazed monster of a morning. Confusing, overwhelming, unnerving. Giddy with desire, knots of tension overtaking rational sense.

“Charlotte, come into my study.”

She stiffened when her father imperiously waved her forward. What was he doing home so early in the morning again?

As a child she had entered the room to a myriad of warm accents and plush fabrics, beautiful, leather-bound books, and lovely paintings. But like everything in her world, it had been stripped and bared. They should have sold the house last year and rented a smaller home in a less prestigious section of town, but appearance was everything to her father, and they would cling to these crumbling walls until the bitter end, when there was nothing left.

“Where have you been?” he snapped.

That Charlotte had been out wasn’t the issue. That she had been taking an early-morning walk in the park down the street wasn’t either. That she had left Anna behind, and that someone had obviously gone looking for Charlotte and had not found her
was.

She assumed the proper demure stance behind one of the uncomfortable, upright chairs in front of his overly grand desk—the last piece he would ever part with. “I was out for a walk in the park and took the long way around. I needed to clear my mind.”

He was prowling behind the desk, lifting papers and discarding them as was his recent habit when agitated. “Don’t do it again. Do you want us ruined?”

“Of course not. But a walk in the early hours is not a social crime. The
ton
isn’t even awake yet.”

“Any breach of protocol is detrimental for us right now.”

“I will remember that.” The best time to remember would be when her lips were about to be pressed to Roman Merrick’s, and yet that was when those thoughts were farthest from her mind.

“Foul rumors are making the rounds.”

She kept her breathing even. “Oh?”

“And you do
nothing.
”

Had someone seen them? Finally? In the shadows, the devil seducing the virgin? Hades seducing Persephone?

“Your mother is working against us.” He clenched his fists. “Someone remarked about her fading looks. Her lack of status. That
you
only have another good year or two in you. That you are aging quickly. And they are right.” He slapped a hand against the desk.

She stood perfectly straight and unmoving. The relief when she didn’t hear Roman’s name quickly falling to cold emptiness at her father’s words.

“Scandal looms upon us, girl. The walls are closing in. And we must play the hand we have
now
.”

She loosened her jaw enough to say, “I have heard nothing concerning your bet. And there are those who would not remain silent if they knew.”

His mouth twisted. “Don’t be a fool.” His eyes went to the scattered papers on his desk.

She pushed the feelings down into the pit, concentrating on her father’s bills and credit notes instead. “What do you have there, Father?” she asked.
Breathing room.
What had Roman done? “It looks like a bill that has been paid.”

Paper crumpled in his fist. “
It is none of your concern.
”

Frightened that it had been paid? Or was there something more . . . something worse?

“If it isn’t that night, then—”

He slammed a hand on the desk, scattering the papers. “Your concern should be
working your wiles and securing a title.
No more drifting through ballrooms and pasting on smiles. You show no
urgency.
”

She pasted on her
calmest
smile. “My apologies, Father. But it seems beyond vulgar to show our
desperation.
”

His eyes narrowed dangerously. “Don’t get impertinent with me.”

Her eyes locked with his, volatility shifting the cold. “How many offers have you turned down in the past two and a half years?”

“They weren’t up to par!”

“I
will
marry well.”

“I have seen no evidence of this!”

“Just last night I danced with—”

“Dancing! What difference does that make?”

“Dancing isn’t purely a physical and joyous pastime, Father. And it doesn’t simply entail moving across a floor.” She took a breath, controlling herself. “But you know this.”

“I don’t see any
progress.
Any urgency on your part. Even now.” He swiped a hand toward her. “You stand there as if you have no life within you.”

“I assure you I have a heartbeat.” And that it far outstripped his.

“Then show it,” he said viciously. “Get them panting at your skirts instead of admiring you from afar.”

She stood rigidly. “I think you unsure whether you want me to be the trophy or the vixen.”

“Be both!”

A smile twisted her face. “Perhaps you should encourage more card games to teach me the other side.”

He advanced rapidly around the desk and grabbed her chin in his hand. Anger underlined the embittered anxiety she could see in his eyes. “You will hold your tongue.”

His hand shook. Nothing to drink yet then. She held herself stiffly.

His fingers gentled. “You are superior to every woman in society. My prize. I knew it when you were thirteen. Nurtured it. You have the makings of perfection. Flawless.”

She didn’t reply, just stared at him.

“Do this. God knows your sister is useless.”

She wrenched her chin away. “Emily is far better than you—”

He grabbed her arm, though he was careful not to mark her. Her father knew better than to mark his art. “I’ll marry her to Lord Kinley.”

“You wouldn’t.” The distention hardened into something dark and deadly.

He narrowed his eyes. “He offered for you once. I could talk him around. He likes them young.”

The darkness reached up. “I’d make sure she was widowed the night of the wedding.”

Her father laughed without humor. “Then maybe it should be done posthaste.”

Charlotte mourned as the last warm feelings for her father slipped away. For the softer father he had been before debt and drink had turned him to the edge of anger and despair.

“Trant will make an offer soon,” she said evenly, bitter cold and heated fury mixing, leaving numbness behind. “And I’m sure it will be a generous one. I wouldn’t even need to
work my wiles
on him.”

His lips tightened.

She shook her head, a cheerless laugh upon her tongue. “Trant’s not enough for you, even now, pressed and desperate. Even now you look toward a bigger pot.”

“You could be a duchess, given time and opportunity.” He reached out to touch her cheek, but she slowly, deliberately pulled back. “My grandson, a duke. But Trant has made subtle threats. I made a mistake not wrestling Downing to the ground immediately your first season. Our timetable must be advanced. We do what we must with the hands we have been dealt.”

No. Her father had dealt himself—and her—their hands.

He released his grip and retreated behind his desk. “I talked Trant around to wait to offer for you until the end of the season. But . . .” He quickly pushed a paper beneath others littering the desk. “Events have occurred that give us time and yet choke us with the same. You have six weeks to find a better prospect.
Work your wiles,
girl. We have been hoping for the Duke of Knowles, but the blasted man hasn’t shown his face. We might have to push and invite ourselves to his home, get you compromised.”

Bitterness drifted through her that he was even thinking of engineering such a plan.

“Until then, the Earl of Tewksbury. Marquess Binchley. Net one, and we will hush up any gossip that emerges from Trant’s mouth.”

The Duke of Knowles, an extremely wealthy and reputedly handsome, man, had disappeared into the country four years before—the phantom crown of the marriage mart. The Earl of Tewksbury, not a day under sixty. And the Marquess, an inveterate drunk.

The cavity had never been deeper or more empty. Desperately needing something to fill it.

Something that could give her . . . relief. She swallowed, feeling the tiny ivory crown of the chess piece as if she were stroking it in her fingers.

“Six weeks.” She grasped the time as if it would somehow knit her family into an affectionate whole. As if the answer to everything lay at the end. As if she could find freedom in the ticked calendar squares. “Not a day less.”

His fist thumped against the desk. “Do it.”

She usually loved Vauxhall. The spectacle, the lights, the merriment, the people from all walks of life. The ease with which one could enjoy the festivities.

But with her father’s words ringing in her ears and stuck in a dining box, the cloth walls felt like they were closing in on her. The supports bending, ready to break. Marquess Binchley belched next to her.

She could feel the eyes of the crowd watching her movements as if the king himself had entered her theater box. She was an actress playing a role in a cloth tomb, fragments of remembered lines upon her tongue.

She touched her napkin, creasing the fabric, and maintained a cool smile about her lips. The papers would praise her for it.

Sudden pleasure slipped over her like a shift warmed in front of the fire, sliding heatedly down her bare arms, her breasts, her hips, brushing her ankles.

She tensed. Only one man elicited those feelings. She looked into the densely mixed crowd, scanning each group, until her gaze fell upon golden hair. Even surrounded by masses of people, he dominated his own space. She recognized the two men who were earnestly speaking to him. At him, really, for he didn’t seem to be paying them much attention. When her gaze locked with his, he slowly smiled and turned his attention back to the men, speaking as if he had never glanced her way.

Charlotte, however, was incapable of looking elsewhere. The urge to vault from the box, to embrace the night shadows, nearly drowned her in its intensity.

“Like a frog. Without those . . . those flippers!” the man next to her said.

She could feel the slip of paper she had found that afternoon after her chat with her father. A bit of parchment tied around another spiked, red-veined flower. She could feel it as if it were still in her fingers—bare digits crinkling the page—instead of tucked inside her gown, next to her breast. The feel of something exotic and forbidden in the scrawl.

She swallowed and turned to Marquess Binchley, whose eyes were already reddened in drink. A familiar sight. “My apologies, my lord,” she said softly. “What were you saying?”

She could feel those other eyes on her though. Amused. Possessive. Forbidden and desired. Stripping her bare. Pausing on the line of her neck and the underside of her chin.

“Wash it,” the marquess said, startling her, waving his arms—a whirligig motion that caused her to pull back lest she be whacked. “Then when it finds the worm it drowns in the puddle. Like a toad.”

“How true, my lord.”

For the crowd, she had made sure to react for the last thirty minutes as if every utterance concerning toads and frogs had the makings of a glorious sonnet.

The moment Roman Merrick disappeared from the crowd, though, her smile started cracking. She knew he had disappeared because she couldn’t
feel
him anymore. The thought made her slightly hysterical.

But the shadows of the gardens reached toward her all the same. Whispering of escape. Of finding him.

There was no easy way to extricate herself from Binchley, though. Even if, drunk as he was, he would take no notice of her leaving, others would. And there were definitely people watching. Avidly. She had carefully cultivated it to appear as if the two of them were having an involved conversation. She’d seen her father’s pleased nod and Trant’s narrowed eyes.

Binchley took another drink. “Can’t find toads in the sky.”

“It is not known to be their natural habitat,” she answered, trying to keep her attention on Binchley instead of searching the crowd—or thinking on the repercussions of the always full glass in the marquess’s hand.

And it only made the whisper of words uttered in the dark of night that much more potent. That Roman read her desires so correctly and said all of the right things.

But were his words true?

She could stay here, on this path, or she could embrace the opportunity to find out. So when Miranda peeked into the box, she grasped onto her like a dying woman given a last request. “Lady Downing!”

Miranda’s brows shot straight up. Which meant that Charlotte had successfully convinced her friend that they were having a grand time as well.