Potent Pleasures (22 page)

Suddenly Alex paused. They were sheltered from sight, standing in a line of apple and plum trees leading to the front gardens. He dropped her arm and simply stood next to her.

“Do you know,” he said conversationally, “I don’t think I can go back out there in the light for a few minutes?”

Charlotte looked up at him, her eyes confused.

“Why ever not?” Instinctively she swayed a little closer to him. He swiftly grabbed her wrists and pushed her back, giving a bark of laughter. Charlotte felt consumed by embarrassment. He thought she was a trollop. She swallowed hard.

Alex looked at her downcast head and cursed silently. Then he reached out and pulled her into his arms. Why not? It’s what he had wanted to do ever since he saw Charlotte that evening. Her soft body melted into his. He could feel every curve, from the luscious weight of her breasts pressing against his chest to the slim flatness of her waist. God. This was doing nothing for his ability to rejoin the party.

“Charlotte,” he whispered into her small ear. She was still holding her head down, but she must be able to feel his body as clearly as he felt hers. But did she know what she felt?

His tongue ran around the delicate pink whirl of her ear and her whole body trembled in response. Alex let his hands slide down her back.

“Charlotte,” he said again, lingeringly. “Do you know what you are doing to me? I feel like some kind of satyr from a classical play—the kind of play they never let you read in school.” His hands had reached that delicious spot in her back where her bottom swelled gently. “There was a good reason for not reading those plays too. Satyrs are hairy, lusty beasts, after all, and there’s no telling what young women might think, reading about them.” He couldn’t help it; he pulled her against his body again. “They might even run into the woods looking for them….” His tongue traced a burning path down her neck. “Oh, God!” he said aloud, putting her away from him.

Charlotte looked up, totally bewildered. His eyes were black as ebony as he stood back, running his hand through his hair. In the moonlight the silver gleamed coldly. Charlotte reached up and touched a strand.

“Has your hair always been this color?” she asked.

“It turned this way when I was seventeen,” Alex answered, staring down at Charlotte. Was she untouched by the desire he felt? He grabbed her wrists, roughly. “Don’t … don’t look at my hair, Charlotte.”

She was looking at his hair because she felt too shy to meet his eyes. And when she did, what she saw there made her feel dizzy with excitement. Alex smiled a little, to himself. His girl wasn’t unaffected, no. He was right about her. She would be wild in his bed and intelligent at his table. He couldn’t do better for a wife. She wasn’t at all like Maria, although … he looked closer. She did have a triangular face, as did Maria, and her lower lip was wide and generous, just like Maria’s. But that means nothing, his mind hastily assured him. Hundreds of women have those features.

Now he had to calm them both down so that he could saunter out there under the lanterns and tell the party to expect fireworks. He moved farther back and leaned against a tree. He could tell she had no idea what was going on.

“My lord,” she said tentatively.

Alex crushed a pulse of disappointment. What had happened to “Alex”?

“Shall we join the others?”

He stayed perfectly still, leaning easily against the apple tree. “I can’t,” he said simply.

She looked at him, her eyes wild with speculation.

He sighed inwardly. For one thing, this meant she probably had no idea why he was an ineligible marriage partner. Her mother seemingly hadn’t got around to explaining it to her yet. But he didn’t want to think about that particular problem.

“Charlotte,” he said, his voice velvety smooth and deep. “Come here.”

She looked at him and did nothing.

“Charlotte.”

She walked over and stood just before him. Deliberately he reached out and put his hands against her cheeks. Then he slowly allowed them to slide down her body, over the swelling mounds of her breasts, down to her slim waist, right down to her thighs … as far as he could go without stooping. She shivered and he saw her tongue nervously touch her lips, but she didn’t move.

“Why did you do that?” she asked, finally.

“Because it was fair,” he answered obscurely. “Now”—he took her hands in his and placed them on his cheeks—”you do the same.”

Charlotte stared at him, her green eyes large. She won’t do it, he thought. She’s a gently bred lady, for God’s sake. She’s probably about to run back to the house screaming. But there was something scornful about his look that steeled Charlotte’s backbone. Just as deliberately as he had, she drew her hands down over his cheeks. They were prickly with a growing beard, his face shadowed by small hairs. Her fingers drew slowly over the tiny hairs’ sharp edges; she wondered what they would feel like against her lips. Watching her, Alex felt himself growing even harder, if that was possible.
This
was a great idea, he thought, remaining absolutely still.

Charlotte’s fingers trailed down, down the strong brown column of his neck, down over muscled shoulders and chest. Then she pulled her hands away.

“Oh, no,” Alex said in a curiously deep voice, recapturing her hands and returning them to his chest. “You have to keep going.”

Charlotte blushed. He kept his hands on her wrists, flattening her hands against him, and slowly, slowly drew them down his body. Charlotte felt herself flushing scarlet. Her heart was racing. When he reached his crotch, he stopped. Charlotte gasped. Under her right hand was a huge, swollen … It pulsed slightly against the palm of her hand. Alex looked down at her, his eyes an enigmatic black in the moonlight. She pulled her hands away from his, turning away. As she was about to run back to the house Alex grabbed her shoulders from the back, pulling her against his chest.

His lips were warm on the back of her neck. “You see,” he said so softly that his breath hardly lifted the tendrils of hair on her neck. “You are driving me around the bend.” He punctuated each word with a kiss. “I don’t remember ever feeling this … mad.”

Despite her embarrassment, Charlotte felt a little smile lurking at the edge of her lips. She relaxed against him. He crossed his arms over her chest and rested his chin on the top of her head.

“Alas,” he said with mock seriousness. “Even this prudent embrace is not going to help me. Why don’t you go warn the group that the fireworks will arrive soon? I shall make my way back to Mr. Glister and offer him some more help.”

He didn’t say it, but obviously if he stayed with Mr. Glister it provided an alibi for their time in the fruit arbor, Charlotte thought. Her heart felt curiously light. She skipped forward, out of his arms, and turned around. Alex looked like an enormous dark shadow, leaning against the tree. She took a step, leaned forward, and pressed her lips against his.

“I knew that all those classical plays had much to offer,” she said softly against his lips. “I could become quite interested in reading … about satyrs, for example.” She turned in a flurry of black ribbons and half flew back to the lights of the house.

Alex cursed again, out loud this time. Damn but these pantaloons were uncomfortable! He grinned and strode back toward Mr. Glister. She was
his
now. Tomorrow he would go to her father and tell him so.

Thirty minutes later Alex loomed up at Charlotte’s left shoulder as glorious bursts of light cracked and scattered, drifting with the wind in drops of green and gold light. His hands rested lightly on her shoulders and he pulled her back against him. Charlotte snuggled there, feeling curiously content after all the fierce emotion of the past few hours. Up at the window a lean white face watched as a red poppy formed and seemed about to be eaten by a rearing stallion.

Sophie, standing in the circle of her three gallants, peeked at Charlotte. She looked so happy, so glowing. Sophie hoped the viscountess didn’t notice Alex’s hands on Charlotte’s shoulders.

For her part, Charlotte was content just to lean against Alex. She didn’t give a thought to Viscountess Dewland, or the footmen, or anyone else who might see them. She had just discovered that her bottom was snug against the top of Alex’s legs, and although there had been nothing disturbing there a minute ago, even as the poppy flew into a hundred brilliant scarlet sparks she felt … well, she felt. She grinned happily.

Chapter 11

T
he next morning Chloe van Stork sat up straight in bed at seven o’clock and rang her bell vigorously. Today she was going to begin sitting for her portrait! After her bath she looked dubiously at the row of drab gowns hanging in her wardrobe. Finally she chose a simple white morning dress. Probably it didn’t matter anyway. Her school friend Sissy had had her portrait painted in costume, as Cleopatra. And when Chloe admired it Sissy told her that the costume didn’t really exist, and her mama would never allow her to wear something like it until she was married. Chloe had stared at the gold snake curled around Sissy’s waist, whose head ended somewhere just under her right breast, and heartily agreed with Sissy’s mama, although she would never have said so.

“Well, miss, so you will not be helping us finish the collar bands today?” her mother said ponderously. But Chloe could tell she was pleased. After all, why did Katryn send her daughter off to an enormously expensive school if she didn’t want her to move in high circles?

In fact, her mama was well near ecstatic, although she would never exhibit such an extreme emotion in front of her husband, who emphatically disliked the idea of Chloe joining the aristocracy. But from the moment Katryn van Stork realized that their only daughter was going to be very pretty, if not beautiful, she had been planning and scheming for that very thing. So she beamed at her buttered muffin and kept her mouth shut.

Just then their starchy footman entered the breakfast room and bowed. Mrs. van Stork jumped. He moved like a snake, this Peter.

“Flowers for Miss van Stork,” Peter intoned.

Just as if he were announcing a funeral, Katryn thought crossly.

Chloe’s eyes widened. Peter was holding what appeared to be five or six bunches of violets, fresh with dew. They looked as if they had been picked no more than ten minutes before. Peter paced around the breakfast table while Chloe waited impatiently. He bowed again, at her chair, and she finally snatched them from his hands.

Peter left the room, his eyes searching the ceiling for an answer to why he was working for a wealthy cit instead of a great lord. Because they pay more, he thought practically.

Chloe plucked the card from among the violets, her fingers trembling a little. Then she half laughed in surprise. They weren’t from Will—or Lord Holland, she hastily corrected herself. Instead she was holding an elegantly printed card that read
Charlotte Daicheston
across the bottom. Written in handwriting that looked almost male was a note:
I am very much looking forward to our appointment. Do let me know if another time would be more convenient
. And it was signed
Charlotte
, in a sprawling, confident hand.

“Who is it from?” barked her father from his end of the table. “That jackanapes who ate here last evening?” He had missed all the implications of Lord Holland’s brief attendance of Lady Charlotte at the theater, but he thought he knew the smell of a fortune hunter when he saw one. Although he had to admit that the baron was a good deal more bearable than most of the dissolute, useless aristocrats he saw wandering down the Strand. He seemed to know
something
of commerce, for example, which is more than one could say of the majority of Tulips his daughter met.

“No, Papa,” Chloe said, her eyes dancing. “It is a note from Lady Charlotte Daicheston.”

“Humph,” her father said. “That woman’s got herself into the papers again.”

“Oh? May I see, Papa? That is, if you are quite finished.”

“Finished? I don’t read the gossip pages, miss!” His family tactfully ignored the issue of how he knew about Charlotte Daicheston’s presence in the papers as Chloe scanned the gossip pages.

“Oh, Mama,” she gasped. “Apparently Charlotte and her friends arranged to have fireworks set off for a poor sick man last night, after we left Vauxhall.” Chloe didn’t even notice her use of Charlotte’s first name, in her excitement. She read aloud the entire article, which was agreeably detailed about exactly which fireworks had been shot off and the reactions of all concerned, particularly the driver of a phaeton whose horses had been startled by the sudden blooming of a large rearing horse in the sky. The driver’s tart commentary was, however, treated as sour grapes by the journalist, who finished by remarking how few people these days bother making kind gestures toward the sick and invalid. Mrs. van Stork smiled hugely. She herself spent most of her time making up clothing for London’s poor population; Lady Charlotte promptly moved into an honored place in the galaxy of those people she knew—or knew of—in London. Even Mr. van Stork grunted approvingly after Chloe finished reading the article.

Just before leaving, Chloe pinned some of the violets to her white dress. She was going to Charlotte’s house … and perhaps, who knows? She might even see Will there. Unlike her father, she had no illusions about what Charlotte’s beckoning nod to Lord Holland had meant the night before. Perhaps, she thought, gasping at her own temerity, they are
lovers
! Chloe’s common sense intervened. It was unlikely. Charlotte was simply so beautiful that no man could resist her summons. Well, Chloe thought, she would just have to hope that Charlotte turned her eyes away from Will. It sounded from the gossip column as if Charlotte might marry the “Ineligible Earl,” whoever that was. Her mother’s lips had folded tight as a steel box when Chloe asked who he might be and why he was ineligible.

She arrived at Calverstill House jittery with excitement. Perhaps Charlotte had changed her mind? Why on earth would she want to paint Chloe anyway? Her large eyes grew larger as she was ushered into the entranceway of the Calverstill town house. She had visited houses of the aristocracy, of course. Her friend Sissy Commonweal had invited her home for several vacation breaks from school. But this house was different. The floor of the hallway seemed to be made of four or five different colors of green marble, and the ceiling arched over her head in a wild profusion of cupids and reclining gods. She was so overcome when the butler ushered her into an elegant salon that she fixed her glance rigidly on the floor. Surely there must be some kind of mistake! People who lived in houses like this didn’t paint portraits.

But then she heard slippers running lightly down the stairs and Charlotte Daicheston entered the room.

“I’m so glad you are here!” she said.

Chloe looked at her the way a drowning man looks at a lifeboat. She was incredibly beautiful, but more than that, she was so
warm
. Chloe rose to meet her, stumbling a bit.

“Are you certain—”

“Of course I’m certain! I’ve been working for an hour or so already, getting everything set up. Let me introduce you to my mama first.”

Chloe paled. She hadn’t thought about meeting grand personages such as a real duchess. But Charlotte led her nimbly up the grand flight of stairs and off to the left.

“This is the morning room.” Charlotte threw open a pair of delicate, tall doors. Chloe found herself on the threshold of a pale gold chamber, hung with chintz curtains that swayed in the light breeze. Sunshine was pouring in and the furniture was comfortable rather than elegant. Six or seven women, some clearly servants, were seated around a large table, sewing. Charlotte’s mother rose and moved toward them. She was a surprisingly tall woman with a very sweet smile, who took Chloe’s hand and asked about her parents. Then she begged them to excuse her.

“We are trying to finish a score of boys’ shirts that are desperately needed at Bellview Orphanage,” she said apologetically. “Otherwise I would accompany you up to Charlotte’s studio. But I am sure you will be fine.” She gave Chloe a distracted smile.

Chloe smiled back. “I left my mama finishing a set of shirts—for adults, not children.”

“It
is
endless,” Charlotte’s mother said rather helplessly. “I feel as if we sew and sew, and everywhere I see people wearing only rags.”

Charlotte and Chloe curtsied and they continued up the stairs. The stairs got suddenly smaller and steeper, going up to the next floor.

“This is really the nursery floor,” Charlotte said over her shoulder. “But there aren’t any children now, obviously, and so my parents turned the nursery into my studio.”

They paused in the door of a large room, painted white. All around the walls were candelabra, large ones, small gilt fragile-looking ones, a pair covered with sea-shells. Chloe’s mouth fell open. There was a hideous, large candelabra designed to look like tree branches, and even one that must have been in the original nursery because it depicted Noah’s Ark with candles sprouting from several of the animals’ heads.

“Oh,” Charlotte laughed. “I completely forgot how odd this room must look. You see, I need light more than anything else. So we put up all the extra candelabra we had in the attic, and then we sent one of the footmen down to the Strand with instructions to buy anything he could find. And this was the result.”

Chloe looked around slowly. The lights had been affixed to the walls every foot or so, and each one had stark white candles in its holders.

“The footmen put in new candles every morning,” Charlotte continued. “I get hideously irritable when they burn down, because if one goes out it changes the light, and finally Mrs. Simpkin—our housekeeper—decided that the candles burn first here. They are changed every morning and then they go into other rooms, like the bedchambers. London is so dark with coal dust that I can work only until around eleven o’clock in the morning with natural light, and often not even then.”

Chloe nodded. She had never seen so many wax candles in one room. Her mother was no nip-cheese, as she said, but even so they used wax sparingly and tallow dips in all the bedrooms. She walked slowly into the room. Posed before a large set of windows was an easel. When she walked around and stood in front of it she was transfixed. The picture was a laughing version of the young woman, Lady Sophie York, whom she had met the night before at the theater. Sophie was so
alive
, as if she might dash off the canvas. She didn’t look at all dreamy or posed, like the portraits exhibited in the Royal Portrait Gallery each year.

“I brought it out,” Charlotte said, “so you could see my work. Ah, do you like it?” Chloe’s little face was like a barometer, Charlotte thought. You could see each expression register clearly. At the moment she looked appalled, hopefully not because of the painting.

Chloe turned her head quickly. Charlotte actually sounded a bit anxious! “It’s splendid,” she said stumblingly. “But … why would you want to paint me? She’s so dazzling, and I am quite ordinary.”

“That’s nonsense, of course,” Charlotte replied. “You are very lovely, as you probably know. But that doesn’t matter. If you hadn’t agreed, I was thinking of painting Campion, our butler. What I want is a look, not a face. See—if you look at Sophie here, what I tried to do was catch
Sophie
herself, not just a beautiful set of features.”

Chloe looked hard at the painting. “Oh,” she finally said. “She’s very, um, alluring, isn’t she?”

Charlotte beamed. “Yes. And that’s Sophie too, in person.”

Chloe thought about the hungry eyes of the men surrounding Sophie York the night before. “Yes,” she said. “But there’s something more….”

“It’s a joke to her,” Charlotte said. “She is provocative, but not
really
seductive. What I mean is, she’s untouched, herself.” Charlotte strongly wondered if she should be so explicit with a young, chaste girl. But Chloe was only the third person to see the painting, not counting Sophie, and the first who had bothered to ask her anything about it.

“I see,” Chloe said slowly. “It’s around the mouth, isn’t it? She looks—well, like the goddess Diana. Not that I know what Diana looks like,” she added in some confusion. “But as a goddess, she’s supposed to be incredibly beautiful, but rejected all men, isn’t that right?”

“I never thought,” Charlotte replied with interest. “I’m not sure I’d agree … I thought of the picture more as someone who plays with fire she doesn’t understand
—yet
.”

“Ah,” Chloe said. Now she understood perfectly. Only two days ago she would have unhesitatingly classed herself with Sophie, except she didn’t even play at being seductive. But last night an emotion she didn’t know she had blazed into life when Will Holland kissed her.

She turned back to Charlotte without saying anything, but Charlotte instantly realized that Chloe was no demure, unawakened maiden. Chloe said so little that one was in danger of classifying her as naive. Charlotte was growing more interested in this portrait every moment.

“What would you like me to do?” Chloe asked politely.

Charlotte led her over to a comfortable divan. “I should like you simply to sit. There is no need to fix your head in one position, or not move. I am going to spend the next couple of hours making a whole series of sketches of your head in profile and from the front. Then, as I told you last night, I will work on it myself for a while, and hatch a plan. And then I will ask you to come back for another sitting, probably next week.”