He appeared contrite then, like a small boy who wanted to apologize, and he reached for her again. Charlotte knew suddenly that despite his smooth surface, buried deep in the elegant earl was a child who needed her, perhaps far more than she needed him. She took his beloved face in her hands and looked into his eyes. “I still need you, Max. I shall always need you to extricate me from my scrapes.”
He returned her solemn gaze silently, and Charlotte saw, as she so rarely did, the vulnerability there in his dark depths. “Let us hope that there are not many more of them of this caliber, for I do not know if I can stand it,” he said at last.
“When I reached the château only to find that you both were gone, I...” He did not finish, but gripped her shoulders so tightly that she nearly winced. “I had not realized until that moment just how much you mean to me, Charlotte.”
He looked frightened, whether by worry for her or by the force of his own emotion, Charlotte did not know, but her heart swelled to bursting. “Oh, Max,” she said. “I love you so.” She slid her arms around his neck and felt his own close around her.
She heard him release a raspy sigh against her neck. “You did well, and I am very proud of you. Although I am quite accustomed by now to coming to your aid, it is not something I need to do...to prove my manhood.” He pulled back to give her a crooked grin. “I can think of other, more pleasant ways to prove it...”
Charlotte grinned at the change in his tone. “We had better close the door,” she whispered, rather amazed that her organized husband, with his fondness for details, had ignored the gaping entrance to their room.
When Max muttered something that sounded suspiciously like, “Hang the bloody thing,” Charlotte shut it herself.
She stopped there, leaning back against the wood, to take a long look at him. He was magnificent. Tall and muscular and dark, his body beckoned her without the slightest movement. The air heated between them until finally he took a step toward her.
“No,” she said.
His eyebrows lifted slightly, and Charlotte smiled slowly. “Sit down,” she said in explanation, pressing him into the chair before the mirror. She picked up the fallen brush and undid the thong that held back his dark mane. “I have wanted to do this for a long time.”
His hair felt like liquid silk in her hands, sliding over her fingers so sensuously that she blinked in surprise at the jolt that shot through her. She lifted the brush and brought it down through the strands, once, twice, and then over and over until she met his eyes in the mirror. They seemed to burn into her soul like dark coals.
The brandy thrumming in her blood, Charlotte set aside the brush and speared her fingers through his hair, letting it fall slowly. Mercy, but he felt wonderful... Her hands dropped to his wide shoulders, and she pressed a kiss behind his ear before leaning over him to untie his neckcloth. She heard his indrawn breath and felt giddy, heady with the knowledge of what was to come.
Without preamble, he pulled her into his lap and looked at her for long moments, while the air crackled between them. Charlotte was so taut with expectation that she felt as though the room itself vibrated with the strength of it. She could feel the evidence of his desire against her bottom, and she suddenly realized that she had on naught but a flimsy robe, while he was fully clothed.
“I want to undress you,” she whispered.
He made some sound of assent, his eyelids lowering slightly over dark pools sleepy with the promise of sex as he watched her. He made no movement to touch her, but let her have her way when she pulled at his jacket, sliding it down over his arms. He shrugged out of it quickly.
Charlotte smiled wickedly, but said nothing. Holding his gaze, she slowly unbuttoned his waistcoat, making each movement a provocative caress. She slipped it off and then tugged his shirt from the waistband of his breeches and lifted it over his head.
The sight of his bare chest covered in its mass of dark hair made her tremble deep inside, as if every part of her was alert and attentive to him. Charlotte ran her palms down the length of it, rubbing against the muscles, catching at the hairs with her fingertips, and she felt him grow beneath her. Emboldened, Charlotte sensed her own power, for she suddenly realized that she could bring this strong, elegant, wealthy aristocrat to his knees—even as she joined him there.
With a groan, he reached for her, but Charlotte evaded him to slip from his lap. Without a word, she knelt before him and tugged at his boots. She removed one, then the other, and then his stockings. Finally she held his naked foot in her hand. She ran her hands over the flesh and up his ankle, along his muscular calf, and everything in the world dropped away but Max.
She leaned forward, purposely pressing her breasts against his thigh, and began unbuttoning his breeches. He groaned, and Charlotte felt him grip her hair like a lifeline. She ignored the tug on her locks to finish her task, and his sex sprang out into her hand. She remembered well just how he liked her to touch him there.
“Charlotte!”
Without a moment’s notice, she found herself unceremoniously pushed to the floor, the lovely gilt chair Max had been reclining in kicked to the side. Before Charlotte could even catch her breath, he was atop her, his hands sliding inside her robe while his mouth devoured hers. Over and over his tongue thrust inside, meeting her own, as he touched every inch of her body in long, heavy strokes—palming her breasts, her hips, her buttocks as if he were on fire and only she could ease the pain.
When Max broke the kiss to rise to his knees, Charlotte cried out in dismay, but he pinned her with his hot gaze, and she quieted as he opened her oversize robe and spread it wide. He looked down at her with such burning ferocity that she squirmed, but he stilled her with his hands, running them in a long, even stroke from her shoulders, over her breasts, to her thighs. Then he pushed his breeches down past his hips and lifted her to meet him.
Charlotte watched, wide-eyed, while he guided himself inside her body. Her breasts heaved as she struggled to take in air. “Dear God,” she sobbed. She had never seen anything like it in her life. Max smiled at her, half in wicked smugness, half in delirious ecstasy as he probed her depths, seating himself firmly.
She wrapped her legs around his hips and clenched down on him, her pleasure peaking in a rush, and she closed her eyes, letting it take her. When she opened them again, her husband had lost his smug smile. Instead, he had the look of someone near death.
His head was thrown back and all his muscles were gathered together, straining as he thrust into her over and over until she gasped with renewed fervor. Her fingers dug into the deep pile of the expensive carpet, and she wept with the force of new release as he joined with her, a deep sound like no other emerging from his chest to break free when his last shudder died away.
He collapsed, rolling onto his back and pulling her with him, and there they lay, neither of them speaking or moving, for what might have been minutes—or hours. When she could finally breathe again, Charlotte opened her eyes to see the bottom of the overturned chair.
“We are on the floor,” Max muttered in a rough voice that bespoke his disbelief.
Charlotte smiled into his chest. “Haven’t you ever...been on the floor before?” she asked.
Max grunted an outraged denial. “Until I met you, I had no knowledge of the area. Now, it has become a common enough place for me,” he complained. “Although, when I think of the myriad incidents in which you have managed to ground me, I must admit I prefer this new technique to your previous methods.”
Charlotte smiled, remembering the times he had been felled by spilled food or drink. She bit her lip to prevent the laugh from escaping, but then her thoughts wandered back over those occasions. “Max.” She sighed softly. “When we get home, I want to romp naked in champagne...”
Her husband groaned in reply.
“Or something,” Charlotte amended. “Champagne might be too expensive.”
“Devil take the cost!” Max answered brusquely.
“Good,” Charlotte ans
wered, “because it is quite delicious, and I was thinking about licking it from your body...”
Groaning even louder, Maximilian lifted his head as though with great effort and opened one eye to gaze at her speculatively. “My dear Charlotte,” he whispered, “I find it hard to believe that you are a vicar’s daughter.”
EPILOGUE
“Kit, get down from that pile of rocks before you fall and break your neck,” Charlotte called out. She felt a tug at her skirts.
“What is it, Katie?” Charlotte glanced down at the three-year-old who was determined to gain her attention, and her heart contracted. Her children were all beautiful, of course, but Katie...Katie had the silken, nearly black hair of her father, falling in gentle waves until it was caught up with a ribbon that matched her eyes. They were green, like her mother’s eyes, but a deeper, more intense hue that was breathtaking to behold.
Everyone noticed them, but Charlotte tried not to pet her youngest child too much. That job was handled nicely by the girl’s brothers and sisters, Barto, the oldest; the twins, John and Elizabeth; Sibylle, named after a grandmother who, if not doting, was at least a frequent visitor; Linley, and Kit.
“Me, too!” Katie said, pointing to the ruined Grecian wall upon which, to Charlotte’s consternation, Kit was still climbing.
“Kit!” Charlotte scolded before shaking her head in denial at her youngest daughter. Katie pouted for a moment, her rosebud mouth turned upside down, and Charlotte felt it again, that sense that Katie was going to be the most stunning of women. Charlotte sighed for her, for she knew what a burden beauty could be, but she knew, too, that all her girls were going to have seasons and Katie would have no compulsion to marry except for love.
“Papa!” Katie’s brief pique was banished by the appearance of her father, who lifted her up into his arms and kissed her nose. Her little hands tangled in his hair, pulling long strands from the leather thong that held them, and he sent Charlotte an amused look that said he would cut it, if not for her dire threats of retribution.
Charlotte smiled smugly in return, for they had a bargain. She would not take the scissors to her own unmanageable mass of pale curls as long as he kept his locks at an unfashionable length.
“Papa, it says in the guidebook that these ruins are some of the oldest in the region,” Barto said. He spoke earnestly to his father, and Charlotte watched him with a smile. He had inherited Max’s sense of order and responsibility, but his brothers and sisters kept him from being too serious. He would make a good earl.
“Look, Mama! I’m Apollo!” Kit called.
Charlotte glanced up to see her son balanced atop a tilting pillar with a makeshift arrow in his hands. “Max...” she whispered.
Without a word, her husband handed Katie into her arms and strode over to where his youngest son was dangling. “Kit...” He spoke in a tone that brooked no resistance as he swung his son to the ground. “Why must you get yourself in one scrape after another?”
“Don’t know,” Kit replied with a toothless grin.
“Blood will tell,” mumbled his father. Charlotte caught the remark and the pointed look toward her that went with it, and laughed gaily in response.
“Father, it is half past five and we were to be at the restaurant by six. We shall never make it on time!” Barto said, suddenly staring at his watch in consternation.
John rolled his eyes at his brother, while Elizabeth looked slightly worried. “We shall get dinner, won’t we, Papa?”
“We shall eat,” Max said in a long-suffering tone. “Put your watch away, Barto. It is not wise to adhere too rigidly to one’s schedule.”
“Come along then, children,” Charlotte said. “We had best be going.”
“I am hungriest!” Kit shouted.
“Then you run ahead,” Charlotte said. He took off, followed by the others in what soon became a headlong race down the hill, leaving Charlotte to walk beside her husband at a slower pace.
“Well, we are finally here, Max, on our long-postponed wedding trip. How do you find it?”
He gave her a wry grimace. “I will let you know after we have fed them all.”
Charlotte laughed, for she knew that his love for his family was genuine and overwhelming. Although he often teased, in truth, he had infinite patience with all the children. He reached out to take her hand, and she gripped his fingers tightly.
“Have I ever apologized for disrupting your schedule?” she asked softly.
“Many times,” Max answered with a grin. “I seem to recall hearing these apologies every time I extricated you from some insignificant scrape...and every time you presented me with a beautiful baby. And on each occasion, I believe I have given you the same reply.”
“There are more important things in life than clocks?” Charlotte asked hopefully.
Max shook his head, his lips twitching with amusement. “I shall simply make up a new schedule!”
* * * * *
Read on for a sneak peek of Surrender to the Marquess by Louise Allen...
CHAPTER ONE
September 1818—Sandbay, Dorset
It was an elegant shop front with its sea-green paintwork, touches of gilding and sparkling clean windows. Aphrodite’s Seashell. A risqué choice of name, Lucian thought, considering that Aphrodite was the Greek goddess of love, born from the sea foam when Cronus cut off Uranus’s male parts and threw them into the ocean. Otherwise it looked feminine and mildly frivolous as befitted its function and location. Not a place he would normally set foot in unless absolutely desperate.
But Mr L. J. Dunton Esquire, otherwise known in polite society as Lucian John Dunton Avery, Marquess of Cannock, was desperate. Otherwise he would not be found dead within a hundred miles of an obscure seaside resort in the not very fashionable time of mid-September. That desperation had driven him to ask for advice and the landlord at the rigidly respectable Royal Promenade Hotel had recommended this place, so he pushed open the door to a tinkle of bells and stepped inside.
* * *
Sara gave one last twitch to the draperies and stepped back to admire the display of artists’ equipment she had just set up beside the counter—easel, palette, a box of watercolour paints, the beginnings of a rough sketch of the bay on the canvas—all tastefully made into a still life with the addition of a parasol set amidst a drift of large seashells and colourful beach pebbles.
There, she thought, giving it an approving nod. That should inspire customers to buy an armful of equipment and rush to the nearest scenic viewpoint to create a masterpiece.
She replaced the jars of shells she had used on their shelf next to the other glass vessels full of coloured sands and assorted mysterious boxes and tins designed to stir the curiosity of the browser. A glance to her left across the shop reassured her that the bookshelves, the rack of picture frames and the table scattered with leaflets and journals looked invitingly informal rather than simply muddled.
Behind her the doorbells tinkled their warning. Sara turned, then modified her welcoming smile of greeting into something more restrained. This was not one of her usual clients. Not a lady at all, in fact. This visitor was not only unfamiliar, but male. Very male and a highly superior specimen of the sex at that. She kept the smile cool. She was female and most certainly young enough to be appreciative, but she had too much pride to show it.
‘Good morning, sir. I think you may have gone astray—the circulating library and reading room is just two buildings further up the street on this side.’
He was studying the shop interior, but looked round when she spoke and removed his hat. That was a very superior specimen as well. ‘I was looking for Aphrodite’s Seashell, not the library.’
‘Then you have found it. Welcome. May I assist you, sir?’
Aphrodite, I presume? The question was obviously on the tip of his tongue, but he caught it with the faintest twitch of his lips and said only, ‘I hope you may.’ He glanced down at her hand, saw her wedding ring. ‘Mrs—?’ His voice was cultur
ed, cool and very assured.
She recognised the type, or perhaps breed was the better word. Her father was one of them, her brother another, although those two conformed only in their own unique way. Corinthians, bloods of the first stare, non-pareils, aristocrats with the total, unthinking, self-confidence that came from generations of privilege. But they were also hard men who worked to keep at the peak of fitness so they could excel at the pastimes of their class—riding, driving, sport, fighting, war.
Whether such gentlemen had money or not was almost impossible to tell at first glance because they would starve rather than appear less than immaculately turned out. Their manners were perfect and their attitude to women—their women—was indulgent and protective. Nothing mattered more than honour and the honour of these men was invested in their women, in whose name they would duel to the death in order to avenge the slightest slur.
It was not an attitude she enjoyed or approved of. She feared it. Nor did she approve of their attitude to the rest of the females they came into contact with. Respectable women, of whatever class, were to be treated with courtesy and respect. The one exception, in terms of respect, although the courtesy would always be there, was attractive widows. And Sara knew herself to be an attractive widow.
She conjured up the mental image of a very large, very possessive, husband. ‘Mrs Harcourt.’
The warmth in his eyes, the faint, undeniably attractive, compression of the lines at their outer corners that hinted at a smile, was the only clue to what she suspected his thoughts were.
He was a very handsome specimen, she supposed, managing, with an effort that was deeply annoying, not to let her thoughts show on her face. He was tall, well proportioned, with thick medium-brown hair and hazel eyes. His nose was slightly aquiline, his chin decided, his mouth…wicked. Sara was not quite certain why that was, only that staring at it was definitely unwise.
‘Sir?’ she prompted.
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