by Diana Quincy
“It is a pity, is it not, my dear, that I did not learn of this before your brother and his ilk burned the stables down.” His mouth was just by her ear, his hot breath a rough caress. “The rafters there would have been ideal for slipping a noose around your brother’s neck and watching him swing.”
Despair gutted through Charlotte, an anguished sound escaped her. A shadow crossed Cam’s face. Abruptly releasing her arm, he strode over to pour himself a drink. Charlotte watched his back, the way the sleek turn of muscle rippled under the fine lawn of his shirt.
He turned back toward her, bitter disillusionment etched in his face. “I should have put it all together myself. Ned Ludd is known to be from Leicester. Fuller is from Leicester. The mythical idiot, Ned Ludd, worked at a mill there, as did your brother.” Cam raised his glass in a mock salute, emotion glazing his eyes. “But he is no idiot, is he, Charlotte? That is where we got the story wrong.” He gave a ragged laugh and threw back more drink, grimacing as he swallowed. “Congratulations, my dear, on a game well played.”
Her hands curled into fists, the nails digging into her skin. “Cam, what will you do to him now?”
Uttering a low curse, he pivoted to hurl his glass against the wall. The shattering sound exploded into the air, the scattering shards tinkling away. She backed away when he stalked toward her with glittering eyes.
Alarm flooded her and she could think of nothing but warning her brother. Spinning around, she dashed for the door, her heart blasting in her chest. Cam’s boots pounded behind her, closing in. She reached the door, blinded by tears, and tried to pull it open with jerky, panicked movements. Cam slammed up behind her. Thrusting both of his palms against the door, he boxed her in, effectively preventing her from leaving.
“Do you think to go and warn him?” His despairing whisper sliced through her. “Is it always him you think of first, Charlotte? Even now?”
“Let me go,” she gasped, her back to him, her forehead resting against the dark, cool wood of the door. “You have made it quite clear that I am now beneath your touch.”
Pushing his body up against hers, he forced Charlotte flat against the door. “Oh, hardly that. Hardly that.” Pained bitterness tinged his voice. His hips were against the small of her back and she shivered at the feel of his obvious arousal. Her body reacted almost violently, with a ravening need to be joined with him.
For one last time.
To push away whatever shattering inevitability awaited them on the other side of the massive wooden door. She knew better than anyone what Cam would be compelled to do once he left this room. And they both understood she could never forgive him for it.
Turning to face him, Charlotte let out a cry of need, her hands going to the sides of his hips to bring him closer to her. She melded herself against him, trying to assuage her hunger. Cam’s questioning eyes burned into hers.
“Yes,” she whispered, her pulse slamming against her skin. “Now.”
Surprise flickered in his face. “Do not allow this. Tell me to stop.”
She shook her head. “I want no more pretenses between us.”
Abandoning any show of gentlemanly restraint, he made quick work of her bodice, shoving down the delicate fabric of her shift and the lace of her stays, leaving her bare to his gaze. Cool air bathed the engorged pink tips of her pale mounds.
He lifted her up against the wall and anchored her there. His head came down to ravish her softness. He took one bud into his mouth and toyed with it, suckling her, his teeth skimming the sensitive point.
Wrapping her legs around Cam’s hips, she welcomed the feel of his hard flesh against her bare thigh. She clawed at his shirt, pulling it out of his breeches. Anxious to feel his skin, her hands slid up the smooth warmth of his back.
He pulled his lips away, watching his long fingers caress her breasts, their tips slick and glistening from his mouth. Handling them almost reverently, his deft fingers continued their sensuous assault.
Then he was unfastening his breeches. She half sobbed with relief when his manhood sprang out, stiff and massive, impossibly ready. Grabbing the skirt of her mangled dress, he bunched it around Charlotte’s waist. Then he cupped her buttocks, clasping her bare skin in his firm, strong grip.
The moment Cam’s hard arousal breeched her, Charlotte’s greedy body clutched him, drawing him further in. With a quiet roar, he slipped into her in one quick stroke. She cried out, the fullness of being joined with him banishing the desolation inside of her. Cam thrust into her with a ferocity they both craved. Her body softened, taking as much of him inside her as she could. Both moved in a frenzy, their bodies quickly finding a matching rhythm.
His tongue plundered Charlotte’s mouth. His unshaven face abraded hers, stinging her sensitive skin. She kissed him back hard, intertwining her tongue with his, tasting the lingering brandy and the depth of their shared desperation.
Pounding against each other, they exploded together, a wild and noisy climax, crying out with relief as sensation crashed over them in powerful waves. They stilled for a moment, panting and intertwined, slick with perspiration. Charlotte’s body pulsated, her legs quivered.
Still intimately connected, Cam buried his face in her neck. “Did I hurt you?” he murmured, his voice thick with remorse.
She shook her head, unable to speak, her eyelids burning with unshed tears. Charlotte clasped him to her, both loving and hating him all at once because of what he would do next.
He released her with a tenderness that made her want to weep. Cradling her jaw with warm fingers, Cam brushed a kiss over her lips, this one gentle and sweet. He lingered as if savoring her taste, then stepped back to fasten his breeches.
He tucked his shirt into his breeches, watching her as she pulled her chemise up to cover herself. She knew she looked awful with her hair askew and tousled about her shoulders. Her lips felt swollen and her cheeks on fire from where his unshaven face had scraped her tender skin.
A knock sounded on the door behind her. “Miss Livingston?” came the tentative voice of Clara, Willa’s maid.
“Yes.” Clearing her emotion-swollen throat, she struggled to put her bodice to rights. “Just a moment.”
“It is Her Grace, ma’am,” Clara said talking through the door. “It is her time. The babe is coming, and she’s asking for you.”
“Yes, of course,” she called back. “Please tell the duchess I’ll attend her soon.”
Cam’s inscrutable gaze flickered over her, then shifted, and he seemed very far away. “I must go as well.”
His tone was polite, distant, as though he had already left her. Cam’s warm hand moved over her shoulder to ease her away from the exit.
She swallowed hard, a useless attempt to ease the strangled feeling in her throat. “What will you do now?”
“You know what I must do.” Regret glinted his eyes. “It would be wrong of me to allow more people to die when it is within my power to put a halt to the violence.”
He reached for the door and hesitated, turning to lock gazes with her. The fine creases around his sunlit green eyes seemed to have deepened overnight. “But also know this. There will never be another woman for me. I have already taken you to wife in every way that matters. When you leave me, there will be no other. You are the wife of my heart.”
She choked back a sob, her heart swelling until it felt too big for her chest. She could almost appreciate the irony of it—the reformed rake faithful to a phantom bride.
Cam pulled the door open and slipped out without giving her another look. The sound of his boots clicked a persistent beat on the marble floors as he strode away.
Listening to the sound of his footsteps grow ever lighter, Cam’s words from that afternoon not so long ago ricocheted in her head. There was one way, he’d said, to quash the burgeoning Luddite movement. “You must cut off the head of the snake. Ned Ludd must hang.”
Sorrow exploded inside of her chest. Sliding to the floor with her back against the door, a sob erupte
d from her chest, and she let grief overwhelm her.
…
Several endless hours later, after Willa delivered a healthy son, Charlotte went in search of her brother. She’d looked desperately for Nathan before attending to the birth, but he’d been nowhere to be found. She could only hope now that he’d escaped before Cam had run him to ground.
When she didn’t find him at the destroyed stable or the barn where the horses were being housed temporarily, anxiety stretched hard in her chest. She returned to the house to find Digby overseeing the cleanup of the solarium.
“Have you, by any chance, seen the coachman?” she asked the butler, her heart pounding.
“No, ma’am, not since he rode out early this morning with the marquess.”
Her heart faltered. “Mister Fuller left with Lord Camryn?”
“Yes, miss. Just after my lord summoned the constable.”
The band of anxiety around her chest tightened, squeezing the air out of her. “Where did they go?”
“He’s gone.” Cam’s sure, steady voice sounded from behind her. “And he’s not coming back.”
She turned to face him. He looked like he’d ridden hard, his face bronzed from too much sun, weariness deepening the lines in his face. His riding clothes were wrinkled, his boots dusty from the road.
“You sent him away.”
He nodded gravely. “I took care of everything.”
Anguish filled her chest. She’d known to expect it. But, until this moment, Charlotte realized she hadn’t truly believed Cam would go through with it. At her core, she hadn’t thought him capable of wounding her so deeply and irreparably. What a fool she was.
Stumbling past him, desperate to get away, she ran blindly through the hallway. Nathan was gone. Perhaps had already been hanged. Had his life been taken at the very moment she’d helped bring new life into the world?
“Charlotte.” Cam’s urgent voice broke through the grief pounding in her ears. “Charlotte, wait!”
Stopping, she turned abruptly and flew at him, anguished fury ripping her insides. “Wait for what? What is there left to say?” She pounded his chest with both fists. “I know you summoned the constable.”
“Calm yourself.” He caught her wrists in a gentle grip. “I must tell you what has become of Nathan.”
“Do you think I care to hear the details? Haven’t you done enough?” Pressure pushed down on her chest. She couldn’t breathe. Breaking loose from his grip, she turned and staggered to the terrace doors, eager to get outside. Maybe she could draw a breath in the fresh air.
She ran into the garden and bent over, with her hands on her knees, gasping the warm, still air into her flattened lungs.
Cam ran up behind her. “Charlotte, love—”
“Stop.” Bending over, she struggled for breath. Her skin felt like it was being stretched inside out. “I beg of you. Please just let me alone.”
“I thought you might like to know where your brother is.”
“Must you paint a vivid picture of Nathan swinging from a tree?”
“More like sailing on a ship.”
“I hate you—” Her words stumbled. “Sailing on a…what?”
Cam’s voice gentled. “Fuller has decided to seek his fortune in the West Indies.”
“What do you mean?” She straightened and peered into Cam’s face. “How is that possible?”
“As we speak, he is on one of my trading vessels, which should be pulling out to sea at any moment.”
She drew a big gulp of air that soothed her desperate lungs. “But Digby said the constable came.”
“And informed me that there would be no trial once Ludd was apprehended. He’d have been strung up to the nearest tree as an example to all of the other agitators.”
“You didn’t turn him in when you had the chance?”
“And allow them to make a gruesome spectacle of him? He’d have faced a hangman’s noose without benefit of a trial. What manner of justice would that have been?”
The truth hit her with a head-dizzying rush. “Nathan is free?” she whispered, hardly able to believe it.
He nodded. “I accompanied him part of the way to the port. Once Mister Fuller arrives on the islands, he’ll find a clerical job awaiting him at our West Indies shipping offices. As it happens, I’ve just become a partner with the duke in that operation.”
She shook her head, trying in vain to sharpen her dazed mind. “I don’t know what to say.”
“It won’t be long before Mister Fuller is comfortably settled into his new life.”
A mammoth wave of relief almost swept her off her feet. Cam’s arm shot out to lend her strength.
“So as you can see,” he said, “all is well.”
“Yes,” she echoed, still unable to trust the feeling of joy beginning to swell in her chest. “All is well.”
Chapter Seventeen
Over the next week, summer began its fade into fall, the verdant trees gradually transforming into a brilliant riot of reds, oranges, and golds. The softened sun slanted over Cam’s mill town, casting the sand-colored stone cottages in picturesque hues of golden light.
Inhaling the crisp country air, Charlotte surveyed the area, which looked much as it had when she’d last visited several weeks ago. No obvious scars from the rioting and turmoil were visible. Tables had been set out near the white stone church, where women bustled about preparing for the picnic, which all of the workers would be attending later in the day. The town itself appeared busier now. A tidy new store had opened, and the children had begun attending school.
“Does this place have a name?” she asked Cam as they strolled through the center of town.
“We haven’t really settled on one, but I have a few thoughts.”
“Such as?”
“Charlottesfield has a certain cache. Or Charlottesford.”
She smiled, shaking her head. “How you do go on.”
“I’ve also considered Charlotteham.”
“Definitely not Charlotteham. That sounds like a dish served at a country dinner table.”
“Charlottesly.”
“Stop,” she said laughing as they reached the schoolhouse. “Let’s go see the children at their studies.”
“Sorry to disappoint you, love, but the pupils have the day off for the picnic.”
“Oh.” She made a moue of disappointment. “Well, I should still like to see it.”
Although absent of children, the schoolroom felt very alive. Their artwork adorned one wall. She studied them, smiling at the most rudimentary ones, the bright colors and simple strokes obviously done by the youngest children. She walked along the sun-kissed room, taking in the smell of paint, fresh wood, and lingering scent of active children. The map on the wall caught her attention and her gaze darted to the West Indies.
“We shall hear from him soon enough,” Cam’s gentle voice said from behind her. “It has only been a fortnight.”
“Yes, of course.” Heaviness settled into her chest. “I shall never be able to repay you for what you’ve done.”
“What is it, darling?” He drew her around to face him. “Why this sadness? I’ve seen it more than once since Nathan left us.”
She lowered her gaze. “It is nothing.”
“It is not nothing.” He put a finger under her chin, tilting her face upward until she looked into his determined amber-green gaze. “We agreed there would be no more secrets between us.”
“It is that I worry.”
“About?”
“That my selfishness will end up ruining you.” Her lungs felt sore. “Passion fades. And once it does you’ll be left with a wife who is Ned Ludd’s sister. If that were ever to become known, you would be destroyed.”
“We’ve been over this.” He drew a breath, slowly releasing it through his nostrils before continuing. “None of us can know what the future will bring, except that you and I will marry. You could already be carrying my child in your womb.”
“You loved m
e enough to let Nathan go. Perhaps I should love you enough to let you go.”
He laughed. Laughed. While she contemplated making the greatest sacrifice imaginable. “I fail to see what is so amusing,” she sniffed, drawing away.
“You fool.” He closed his long fingers closed around her upper arms, holding her in place. “I let him go for you, yes. But I didn’t compromise my principles. In all likelihood, they were going to torture him and hang him without a trial. Allowing that to take place would have compromised my sense of right and wrong.” He pulled her closer. “Do not act so beetle-headed. If anything, you helped me examine my principles and stay true to them.”
She drew back to study his face. “But you said, when you left the library, after we’d—” She flushed at the memory. “That I knew what you must do.”
“I’m no saint.” One corner of his mouth lifted. “I wanted to quell the violence. Sending your brother to the West Indies was no accident. He can hardly cause trouble from there.”
“Still, you took a great risk.”
“I couldn’t let them string your brother up. He didn’t stand a chance. Perhaps if there had been a possibility of him having a fair trial.” Cupping her face, he planted a firm kiss on her lips. “I love you, Charlotte. You bring out the best in me, make me demand the best of myself. You cannot even consider leaving me.”
“I love you, too,” she whispered, the ache in her chest easing. “How could I not? Look at you. You are perfect.”
He took her into his arms, holding her tightly to him. “We are getting married next week. Say yes and promise me you’ll never even consider leaving me again.”
“I do want to marry you as soon as possible.” She snuggled into his warm embrace, inhaling his familiar, musky, masculine scent mixed with horses and leather. “I promise to never leave you. I doubt I could survive it.”
“Then we are agreed. Finally,” he said, pressing his lips softly to hers.
Remembering where they were, she pulled away. “Oh, Cam, now I can help you with your school project.”
