“Where? Under a bridge?” Bettina’s laugh was short and mean. Setting her wine aside with an uncharacteristic clatter, she turned her full attention to Gavin. “I blame you for this, you know.”
“I know,” he said with indifference.
“You swooped in like a vulture after a poor, witless rabbit and charmed it with your looks and smooth tongue. Well, soon enough my daughter will realize what you truly are: a money hungry scoundrel with nothing more than a pretty face and empty lies!”
Enough, Charlotte thought wearily as Gavin and Bettina exchanged glares of mutual dislike. This has gone on long enough.
There was nothing to be had by continuing the conversation. Nothing to be gained. In truth, she probably never should have come. She was expecting something of Bettina that her mother was incapable of giving: love and acceptance. Charlotte might as well have asked the sky to turn purple or the grass to bleed blue. Bettina couldn’t overcome her bitter contempt. She’d never be able to, and the sooner Charlotte accepted that, the better.
“Gavin did not marry me for my money, Mother. You don’t know of what you are speaking, and your ignorance is in poor taste.”
“I suppose he has told you he has money, then?” Bettina sneered.
“An embarrassing amount, really,” Gavin drawled.
“You’re lying,” Bettina said, but there was a brief hesitation in her voice and–far worse than that, to Charlotte’s mind–a sudden spark of interest in her eyes. “How much wealth could an untitled man of your unfortunate background have accumulated?”
Charlotte interceded before Gavin could reply. “Enough to pay off whatever debts you owe to Paine and to allow you to live in comfort for the rest of your life.” She walked ot her mother and took her hand. Bettina’s fingers were limp and lifeless. “I knew you would be furious, but I had hoped for once you would be able to see past your constant disappointment in me and realize that I am happy with my decision. But you’ll never be able to do that, will you?”
“Why would I?” she said, meeting Charlotte’s gaze without blinking. “You are no longer a daughter of mine.”
Charlotte thought she could not be any more devastated than she already was, but her mother’s words cut through her like a knife, thrusting through flesh and bone to stab straight into her heart.
“Mother, p-please…” Her voice broke. She felt a gentle pressure on her shoulders. Gavin circled his arms around her and drew her against him, holding her protectively against his chest.
“That is enough,” he murmured into her ear. “There is nothing else you can do. Let’s go home now.”
“Yes,” she said, blinking furiously against the tears that threatened to fall. She wanted to say more, to reach out towards her mother one last time, but a glance at Bettina’s unforgiving face told her everything she needed to know. Clinging to Gavin’s arm, she let him usher her out of the drawing room.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Charlotte burst into tears the moment they climbed into the waiting phaeton. Gavin watched her helplessly, not knowing what words to offer that would ease her suffering. He might have lost his mother at an early age, but she had never spoken to him with anything other than love and kindness until her dying day. He did not understand how a parent could be so cruel to their child, especially when that child was Charlotte.
His wife may have been stubborn and hard headed, but she was also gentle, sweet, and giving. How could someone so selfless be born of someone so selfish?
Darkness settled around them as the buggy plodded forward at a methodical pace, slowed by the evening swell of traffic. All the while Charlotte cried, her tears shimmering on her face like diamonds under the street lights. Feeling as though he should do something, even though he was not sure what that something was, Gavin wrap his arm awkwardly around her hunched shoulders. She went still, so still he feared she may have stopped breathing, before she launched herself against him with enough force to knock the air out of his lungs.
She curled into his body, grabbed the lapel of his coat, and blew her nose. “I am s-s-sorry,” she choked out, “but I forgot my handkerchief and my n-nose will not stop r-running. Dianna was r-right,” she said, and for some reason that made her cry all the harder.
Gavin rubbed her back in gentle circles, murmuring nonsense words meant to calm and soothe. Eventually he felt more so than heard her sobs subsiding, and she used this coat again, this time to dry her face.
“Feel better?” he inquired gruffly.
“Yes,” she sighed.
He waited for her to stiffen and draw back, to return to her side of the seat, but when she stayed nestled in the crook of his arm it only felt natural to keep her there.
By the time they reached Shire House the hour was quite late, and Charlotte was sound asleep. As Gavin stared down at her upturned face, he smoothed a curl from her cheek and softly kissed her temple. The moment his lips touched her ivory skin he felt a shift deep within him, like a chord being struck. Brow furrowed in thought, he carefully lifted her out of the phaeton and carried her all the way up to her bedroom.
She stirred when he laid her gently across the mattress, and woke when he began to untie the laces on her boots.
“Gavin?” Her voice was drowsy. Disoriented. Leaning against the wooden headboard, she blinked owlishly at him. “What are you doing? What-what time is it?”
“After ten, and I am undressing you.” Concentrating on his task, he remained crouched at the side of the bed and, once her boot was loosened, pulled it gently off and set it down on the floor before going to work on the other.
“But…where is Tabitha?”
“I sent her away,” he said matter-of-factly.
“You sent her away? But…why?”
The second boot joined the first and he began to unroll her stockings, taking care not to rip the delicate fabric. “These are lovely.”
Charlotte sat up straighter and drew her legs to her chest. She frowned at him over the top of her knees, her countenance vaguely suspicious in the light afforded them by the silvery glow of the moon streaming in from an open window. “Are you being nice to me because I cried? I do not want your pity.”
“And you do not have it.” Pushing to his feet, Gavin walked around the massive four-poster bed and closed the window halfway, mindful of the strong winds that had been begun whistling through London in the early hours of the morning. “I wanted to see you settled in your bed. Now that you are, I will take my leave.”
Her felt her eyes upon him as he traced his steps back to the door, and just as he lifted his foot to step over the threshold she called for him to wait.
“Yes?” he asked, turning in a slow half circle.
“Could you stay with me?” she implored, hazel eyes heavy-lidded with sleep beneath thick lashes. “Just…just for a little while.”
How could he possibly say no?
Selecting a chair–he didn’t trust himself to sit beside her on the bed–he kicked off his boots before propping his feet on the edge of the mattress. How odd it felt, he reflected, to be in his wife’s bedchamber. Odd, and yet strangely comforting. As he shrugged out of his coat and loosened his cravat, he imagined this was how it could always be between them. And for the first time there was no pang of fear to accompany such an intimate thought.
“What was your opinion of my mother?” Drawing her quilt up over her knees, Charlotte sat with her arms folded and her chin propped up, like a child ready to listen to a parent’s bedtime story.
“I did not see any of you in her,” he answered honestly. “She seemed very...caustic.”
“She is. She always has been. My father was the one who used to laugh.” Charlotte smile was wistful, and heartbreakingly sad. “I inherited my stubbornness from her, I am afraid.”
“Regardless of where you stubbornness came from, it was wrong of her to say those things to you.” When Gavin’s throat thickened with emotion, he coughed to clear it. “I’m sure she didn’t mean them.”
/> “She meant every word.” Charlotte plucked at a loose thread on the blanket. “I should not have gone to see her, but some part of me hoped…well, it does not matter now. What’s done is done. I must thank you for accompanying me. She said horrible things to you, as well.”
Gavin shrugged. “I have heard worse.”
“Could you…could you tell me about your family?” she asked hesitantly.
“My family?” he repeated, taken aback.
“Yes.” Charlotte pulled hard enough on the thread to snap it, then began to wind it around her finger. “I know we agreed not to delve into the personal. But now that you’ve met my mother…it does seem only fair.” but I want to understand where you come from. It is only fair, after all.”
Gavin leaned back in his chair. He wasn’t opposed to telling Charlotte more about his past. But nothing without a price. He was a bargainer at heart, and saw no reason not to use those skills inherent to him for his own benefit.
“I already granted you a favor when I went with you to visit your mother.” Of its own accord, his hand wandered to the edge of the bed and splayed across the top of the mattress within inches of her small foot tucked beneath the blankets. “Don’t you think it would be fair of you to return it before you ask me for another?”
She gave an adorable little huff of breath. “That was not a favor. We’re married, in case you forgot. And marriage involves family. You may neglect your other husbandly duties, but you cannot get away with ignoring them all.”
“And what other husbandly duties have I been…neglecting?” he inquired.
Charlotte blushed. “We have discussed this at some length. I shouldn’t have to–to spell it out for you.”
He stood up easily from the chair and shifted his weight forward, moving with the sinuous grace of a panther as he braced both arms on the mattress and leaned towards her.
“I’ve always been bad at spelling,” he said silkily as lust shot through his bloodstream like laudanum.
“You are mocking me.”
“No, never that.”
“Then you trying to d-distract me,” Charlotte gasped when he pushed her hair away from her neck and then leaned in to kiss the skin he’d exposed.
“Yes,” he murmured, a wicked grin curving his lips before he took her earlobe between his teeth and tugged. He hovered above her, one knee on the bed, the other pressed hard against it. Charlotte’s eyes were wide beneath his, her brow furrowed, her lips slightly parted.
“Gavin, I do not think—”
“Precisely,” he said hoarsely. “Let’s not think.”
He sank into her by degrees. She was hesitant at first. Stiff. He softened her as an artist would soften clay, bringing his hands up to cup her shoulders before working his way down her arms, rubbing her tight muscles until, with a moan and a sigh of surrender, she relaxed into him.
Their first time together had been fast, impatient, even desperate. This was slow, soft, and unbearably sweet. He tasted her mouth, her tongue, the heavenly nectar of her skin. She turned her spine to him, exposing the line of buttons that ran the length of her gown. Still kissing her neck, he undid them one by one, freeing her from the dress and the undergarments beneath until she wore only moonlight.
“You are beautiful.” His voice was ragged. His body pulsing with need. Though it killed him, he remained still while she divested him of his clothes in turn, interrupting only when her fingers went to the laces of his trousers. “Lay on your back,” he instructed. She did as he asked, propping herself up on her elbows and, whether by accident or design, thrusting her perfect breasts upwards.
Gavin kicked free of his pants and stretched out beside her, idly pulling pins from her hair as they kissed, their tongues lazily entwining. When her curls tumbled across the pillows like fire he moved down her body in strokes, lingering and licking whenever she gasped and arched.
When he reached the heart of her, she was wet and waiting, and sobbed his name as he suckled. Her fingers clutched his hair, her nails digging into his scalp, and when he brought her to the brink of release before working his way back up her trembling body, her eyes were wide and wondrous and wanting.
When they came together, it was perfect.
He slipped into her and she welcomed him, her arms winding up around his shoulders. They met each other thrust for thrust, establishing a rhythm punctuated by gasps and groans and breathy laughs born of mindless pleasure. The tempo changed. It grew faster, needier. She bucked underneath of him, her breaths frantic, her head thrashing.
As one being, they tumbled into oblivion.
“Tell me about your mother. What was she like?”
Dawn found Charlotte curled in Gavin’s arms. She was facing him, her knee burrowed between his thighs, her hand snug against his chest. She felt his heart beat beneath her palm and the steady rise and fall of his ribcage as he breathed. He stroked her hair, combing his fingers mindlessly through the tangled curls. The bed was in disarray, the covers twisted this way and that. The top quilt was gone completely and a sheet rode low on their hips, leaving their top halves bare.
When Charlotte glanced up at Gavin’s face to see if he had heard her quietly spoken question, she saw he was looking past her to the window where light streaked in through the glass.
“She was always, always kind,” he said after a long pause.
Charlotte exhaled the breath she hadn’t even realized she was holding.
Upon waking and discovering Gavin had not left her during the night, she immediately determined that their lovemaking was no fanciful dream. Hope had blossomed in her chest, followed quickly by fear. If he shut her out again, she didn’t know how she was expected to bear it…but here he was, still holding her, still talking to her.
She burrowed more firmly into his arms, resting her head on his taut bicep and closing her eyes.
“Go on,” she coaxed gently. “You can tell me.”
He shifted, but it was only to wrap his arm around the slender curve of her spine and tuck her against him. When he began speaking his voice as low, and all the more intense because of it.
“My father was a drunk who made a living with his fists. My older brother followed in his footsteps and was killed before his sixteenth birthday. He went up against someone he shouldn’t have in the ring, and he paid the price for it.”
Charlotte’s eyes flew open. It wasn’t the death that startled her, but rather the matter-of-fact way Gavin had divulged it.
“You had a brother?”
“Aye. At least one I knew of, probably dozens of half-brothers I’ve never met. My father wasn’t faithful, but the bastard was certainly prolific.”
“Is he still alive?”
“I don’t know, and I don’t care. He left when I was seven.”
“But you stayed,” she guessed.
“Where else where I have gone?” he said blankly, as if it had never occurred to him, not once, to do what any young, poor boy would have in his situation and leave his mother behind. “I remained with her until she passed, and then I got the hell out as quickly as I could. For a time I made my money in the boxing ring, just like my brother, but I didn’t drown myself in drink after, and soon enough I had enough saved to make my first investment.”
What strength it must have taken for a young man to resist the temptations around him and not only survive, but go on to make an enormous success of himself. To succeed where his father and brother had failed. To rise up where his peers had fallen. It also would have demanded courage and drive and, Charlotte supposed, a certain type of hardness that still existed within him to this day.
Sitting up on her elbow, she brushed a tendril of Gavin’s dark hair behind his ear. He watched her, his eyes wide and wary, but he didn’t pull away. It was almost like taming a wild wolf, she thought with a small smile. If you moved too quickly, the wolf would either snap or bolt. But with consistency and kindness he could be gentled.
She stretched forward and kissed his cheek. His beard was
rough against her lips, the woodsy scent of him divine. The arm he had wrapped around her tightened as she began to press kisses down the line of his jaw, but she stopped before she reached his neck and fell backwards onto her pillow with a giggle.
“Thank you,” she said, slanting him a sideways glance.
“For what?”
“For sharing part of yourself with me. I know it is not easy for you to do.”
“No,” he agreed. “It’s…not.”
“Does this change anything between us?” Tension coiled like a knot in her belly as she waited for his answer.
Gavin rubbed his chin. Ran a hand through his hair. Looked out the window. When Charlotte thought she would simply die of anticipation, he chuckled and flicked a finger down her nose.
“Breathe,” he said.
She exhaled through her nostrils and struck him harmlessly on the shoulder. “You are doing it on purpose!”
His expression was one of pure innocence. “Doing what?”
“Antagonizing me.” Annoyed, she started to roll off the side of the bed. He gave a hard tug with the arm that was still wrapped around her waist and she tumbled against him, her red curls spilling every which way.
“You are not going anywhere,” he said roughly.
Scowling, she planted her hands on his chest and pushed herself up. “Then tell me. Have things changed or haven’t they? Because if they haven’t…”
“If they haven’t?” he prompted.
She bit her lip. “I do not know.”
Playfulness fading, Charlotte untangled herself and sat on the edge of the bed, her toes curling around the edge of mattress and her arms wrapping around her legs. After a moment of silence the mattress moved, and tears sprang unwanted to her eyes when she felt him brush her hair to the side and press the softest of kisses to the nape of her neck.
“They have,” he murmured. “They have changed. I have changed. I was careless with you. Detached. Cold. Sometimes even cruel. I thought if I could push you away you wouldn’t matter. I thought if I buried myself in work I could forget you, but I couldn’t. I can’t,” he said achingly. “You are not who you were supposed to be. I wanted a wife I could show off like one of my carriages and then set to the side. I never expected…I never thought I was capable of feeling what I feel for you.”
London Ladies (The Complete Series) Page 22
