“’Tis most unnatural, I admit, but alas sweet Caro, that is my lot in life—wife to a man who is indifferent to people’s opinions.”
“But you care,” Caroline protested.
“Of course I do…to some extent.” Charlotte hurried on when Caroline’s eyebrows, newly returned to their normal position, threatened to return to the top of her forehead. “That is, I care what people say—reputation is everything—but I shall never be a slave to etiquette as Society demands. I have ever gone my own way, and it’s too late for me now to learn how to abide by rules. Besides, you know as well as I do that the ton loves an Original. They may fuss and gossip like cats about little scandals, such as my eloping with Antonio, but in the end, they love the very people they claim to censure.”
Caroline didn’t look convinced. “They don’t seem to love you now, Charlotte.” She shot a quick glance over her shoulder to be sure her husband wasn’t within hearing. “In fact, dearest Algernon told me that the betting books are filled with wagers about you and Mr. McGregor.”
“Oh, yes, I know all about that—that was Lady Brindley’s doing. They were taking wagers on when Alasdair would consummate our marriage. As you well know, the wager is now moot. Didn’t your Algernon tell people that?”
Caroline’s eyes grew wider. “Yes, he did…oh, Char, should he not have? I didn’t tell him not to mention it, and you know what gossips men are.”
“No, no, I was counting on you both to spread that particular tidbit, not, I hasten to point out, that it’s anyone’s business. Still, it was the only way to have those ridiculous wagers off the books.”
“But, Char—” The words dribbled to a stop.
Charlotte transferred her attention to her friend. Caroline seemed to be at a loss for words, a condition unfamiliar to Charlotte. “Are you ill? Do you need my vinaigrette?”
“No, no, it’s not that…I…I…” Caroline’s mouth bobbed open and shut like a fish pulled from the water.
“You what? Honestly, Caro, if you’re going to sit and stare at me in that google-eyed way, the least you can do is close your mouth. Only ninnies sit at the opera with their mouths in fly-catching position.”
Caroline seemed to gather her wits. “The phrase is goggle-eyed, and don’t start that ninny business again. I was simply trying to think how best to break the news to you.”
“What news?” Caroline had all of her attention now. Lord Beverly leaned toward his wife and muttered something about calling on an acquaintance’s box for a few minutes. Charlotte waited as patiently as she could for him to finish, then pounced on her friend as soon as the man had left. “Caro, so help me, if you’re keeping something important from me, I shall tell everyone you stuff your zona with stockings—”
“Charlotte!”
Half of the house looked over as Caroline’s outraged shriek pierced the din of conversation.
Charlotte snapped open her fan and proceeded to languidly stir the heated air before her. “You’re just never happy unless you can cause a scene, are you?”
“I…you…Charlotte…” Caroline sputtered.
“Yes, now that you have the question of pronouns and proper nouns settled, perhaps you would care to tell me what news you have?”
Caroline glared at her with a regrettably mutinous look in her eye. Charlotte was just about to point out that ladies who wore mulish expressions ran the risk of their faces freezing in that manner, but was kept from that opinion by Caroline’s furious whisper. “I shouldn’t, I truly shouldn’t tell you, you don’t deserve to know at all after threatening me with such a blatant untruth—”
Charlotte leveled a critical glance on her friend’s bosom. “You can’t possibly expect me to believe that’s all you.”
“My bosom is neither here nor there,” Caroline said with dignity as she opened her fan in a manner that hid the bodice of her dress.
“My point exactly—it’s nonexistent.”
“But I shall tell you,” Caroline continued, albeit somewhat snappishly, “because your husband doesn’t deserve to suffer. Dearest Algernon told me tonight that the wagers on the betting books are to do with Mr. McGregor, specifically, whether or not he is…he can…if he has the ability to…”
“What?”
“If he is impotent,” Caroline whispered with a fiery blush.
“Impotent?” Charlotte asked, at a loss for what was making Caroline act in such a goose-ish manner. Perhaps she was carrying. Everyone knew women who were breeding were exceptionally goose-ish about things.
“Shhh!”
“Lord, Caro, Algernon must be quizzing you. Why on earth would anyone care if Alasdair was impotent with me? If you want to know the truth, I’m probably just as impotent as he is, more so in fact. Mama always did say I was shameless.”
Caroline stared at her with googled eyes—or goggled, Charlotte couldn’t remember which was the correct word—her mouth once again hanging slightly ajar. Suddenly Caro choked and fanned herself quickly, her gaze on the tips of her slippers as she leaned toward Char and hissed, “Impotent, not impudent. Impotent means physically unable to do your manly duty.”
Charlotte felt her own jaw sag at the implication. She thought for a moment she might actually swoon as a result of the burst of fury that roared to life within her, and it was all she could do to moderate her voice so the word she spoke came out as a quiet demand, rather than a howl of wrath. “Who?”
“Dearest Algernon says it’s no one person. The wagers are on all the books at all the gentlemen’s clubs…Charlotte, where are you going?”
She gathered her cloak from the chair behind hers, unable for a moment to speak. In a distant, isolated part of her mind she noted interestedly that her hands were shaking, although she was neither cold nor frightened. “Alasdair has taken our carriage; might I use yours?”
Caroline followed her friend to the hall behind their box. “Yes, of course you may. You don’t look at all well; you really should go home and lie down.”
“I will go home when I’ve seen to this latest outrage.”
“See to it? You mean the wagers? How will you see to it?”
Charlotte pinned her summer cloak closed and collected her reticule and fan. A righteous anger filled her, giving strength to her purpose. She would not allow Dare to become the laughingstock of the ton. “I will see to it in the most expedient of manners—I shall go to the men’s clubs and steal their betting books.”
Caroline fainted dead away.
***
An hour later Charlotte stepped down from the borrowed carriage, waving toward its interior as Batsfoam prepared to close the carriage door. “There are a number of books on the seat. Please have them brought to the kitchen and burned.”
“Books, madam?”
“Books, Batsfoam. Large ones, containing several pages, most of which are filled with foolish wagers made by even more foolish men who ought to know better.
Batsfoam glanced at the nearest book, which carried the name White’s in a gilded, elegant script. There were at least seven more betting books he could see by the light of the carriage lantern. A rare smile touched the grim line of his lips as he gestured a footman to the task. “Eh…did no one see you while you were liberating the books?”
“They saw me, but I wore a domino, so no one knew it was me. Besides, the sort of men they employ at those clubs are not at all what I would call intimidating. Cowards, the lot of them. They positively whimpered when I brandished his lordship’s dueling pistol. A baby could have stolen those books.”
“Ah. That was very clever of you to wear the domino, if I might be allowed to offer my humble and unworthy opinion.”
“Of course it was clever, you don’t think I would do anything to make people talk, now do you? Is Lord Carlisle at work on his engine?” Charlotte asked as she unpinned her cloak and allowed Batsfoam to take it from her.
&nbs
p; “He is.”
“Very well.” She paused for a moment as she stripped off her gloves, then shook her head at the pang of worry over her recent actions. “What’s done is done.”
“Ma’am?”
No, she was being silly to worry. No one had the slightest idea who had so boldly pushed past the porters of the clubs and dashed in to steal the books. Thank heavens Matthew had filled her ears while growing up with tales of the betting books. For once, she was grateful he was such a wastrel. “And even if someone was to recognize me, there’s my little project; surely that will take care of any speculation that might be rice.”
“Rice, ma’am?”
“Hmm?” She pulled her mind from worry about what would happen if word got out that she’d stolen the betting books and looked at Batsfoam before turning toward the stairs. “No, thank you. I’m not hungry, although I would like a cup of tea sent to my bedchamber. And don’t forget to attend those foul books. I won’t have my husband’s manly instrument impugned.”
She paused when the butler appeared to have swallowed something wrong, advised him to have a drink of water, then made her way upstairs. With contortions that would do an acrobat proud, she managed to disrobe herself. Clad in Dare’s cherry-red silk dressing gown—she preferred it over the demure blue of her own—she curled up on his newly refurbished bed with Vyvyan La Blue’s book and made notes about which connubial calisthenics were most suited to pacifying a husband who was in a sulk. She was mulling over the relative merits of Upturned Flowerpot Upon an Alabaster Pillar versus Cantonese Archery when a tremendous explosion rocked the house.
The floor beneath the bed shook as if the earth itself trembled, and in the throb of noise that followed, the sharp tinkle of glass hitting the paving stones outside could be heard. Charlotte sat for a moment, dumbfounded by the shock of the explosion. Then she was on her feet, racing barefoot down the stairs, calling her husband’s name, ruthlessly pushing everyone in her path out of the way. The glass in the kitchen windows was missing, wood and plaster and pieces of twisted metal everywhere. The door to the stairs leading to the subbasement hung drunkenly on one hinge, thrown backward toward the wall.
Someone called her name, but Charlotte ignored the warning, ignored the hands that reached to stop her. Heedless of the pain inflicted on her bare feet, she kicked debris off the stairs as she struggled to make her way downward, coughing and gasping in the thick cloud of coal and dirt and steam that filled the room. Her eyes streamed and burned as she searched desperately for Dare.
“Here!” a voice croaked from behind the remains of the heavy oak table Dare used as a worktable. “Joseph! Wills! Someone bring me a litter. And tell her ladyship—”
Charlotte was there in an instant, pushing Batsfoam out of her way so she could see her husband. He was covered in blood and black coal dust, dirt everywhere, shreds of wood and paper littering his body, small pieces of metal from the exploded engine piercing his skin.
Time seemed to stop and hold its breath as she knelt at his side, aware of the debris that pressed painfully into her knees, but uncaring in the face of the nightmare staring at her. Disbelief, fear, and anger all swirled around in her as Dare’s blood seeped into a pool that soaked her legs. She gently touched the bloodied mess that was the right side of his face and shoulder, horror at the damage inflicted upon him mingling with joy that his chest rose and fell, indicating that he wasn’t dead, he hadn’t been taken from her…yet.
Dimly she was aware of Batsfoam shouting orders as he and the footmen dragged the larger pieces of twisted metal and wood from where they surrounded Dare. She shredded her night rail to bind the worst of his wounds, walking beside him, holding his hand tightly in hers as his unconscious form was carried upstairs. All the while her mind was spinning in a confusion of answerless questions. How could anyone survive such an explosion? How could his heart continue to beat after such a horrible event? How could he endure the loss of so much blood? A sob tore from her throat as she gazed at the broken body that was laid gently on his bed. How could she live without him?
Fifteen
His wife was the devil incarnate.
“Good morning, husband! Isn’t it a lovely day?”
True, she didn’t have horns or cloven hooves or smell like brimstone, but Dare was convinced she was a handmaiden of Satan, if not the Dark Master himself.
“Of course, you wouldn’t know it’s a lovely day outside since you sit here in the dark. I’ll just open these curtains and let the sunlight in.”
Who else but the devil would derive such pleasure from his pain?
“You haven’t eaten your breakfast. Dare, you must eat, you can’t expect to regain your health if you don’t eat.”
She was smiling at him, dammit, her dimples blaring away as she tried to coax him into eating. She was always coaxing him to do something or other. He didn’t want to be coaxed, he wanted to be left alone. In the dark. With no bright blue eyes to remind him just how much he’d lost.
He wanted to die.
“Dare? I’ve made something for you.”
He closed his eyes…eye…and held his breath. If he pretended he was asleep, perhaps she’d leave him be. It had worked in a past. A couple of times. Not recently, though.
“Here it is! It’s a new eye patch. Do you like it?”
Air moved in front of his face as if someone swung an object before him…an object approximately the size and shape of an eye patch.
An eye patch he needed to cover the gaping hole in his head where his right eye had once been.
“It wasn’t easy embroidering your plaid colors, but I persevered, and I think the effect is really quite stunning.”
There he sat—eyeless, scarred, his right arm limp, a complete wreck of a man. Useless, that’s what he was. No, worse than useless—pitiful. He was a pitiful, useless, half-man, one who had failed his wife at every possible level of husbandness.
“The sporran, I believe, adds a particularly cunning touch.”
Pitiful and pathetic, a shell, a former man, now good for nothing but sitting in the dark, taking up space, eating food that should go to better, more worthy, deserving men who hadn’t ruined their lives and their wives’ lives…sporran?
Dare opened his eye. “You put a sporran on an eye patch?”
Charlotte knelt at his feet, one hand resting on his knee. She held a red eye patch in one hand, decorated in such a manner that it looked like a miniscule kilt, complete with sporran. She must have worked for hours over it.
“Give it to someone else,” he heard himself say gruffly. “I don’t deserve it.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I don’t know any other McGregor who needs an eye patch.” Charlotte flashed those damned happy dimples at him again. Her hand tightened on his knee, sending a sudden flash of warmth up his leg, straight to his groin.
That was another way he was bound to disappoint her. She wanted children. She had enjoyed their liaisons in bed. Now she was shackled to him for life, a pitiful specimen of mankind who would never be able to fulfill even her most basic desires.
If he had any honor, he’d take a pistol to his head and end both their torments.
“Leave me,” he mumbled, leaning his head back against the chair and closing his eye.
“What did you say?”
“LEAVE ME,” he said more forcefully, opening his eye just long enough to glare at her.
She studied him for a moment, then leaned forward between his legs until her breasts were pressed against his groin, her fingers trailing down the grapevine of scars that marked the side of his face. “Are you in pain?”
He was surprised to note he had an erection. He had assumed he wasn’t capable of one any longer, but the warmth of her soft breasts pressed against him, coupled with the faint lavender scent that teased his nose and the erotic glide of her fingers down his face, stirred him as nothing
had in the past month since the accident.
“No pain,” he answered hoarsely, hope springing to life within him. If he could bed her, at least he would be of some use. He could give her pleasure, give her children, give her something to make up for the hell he had dragged her into.
She was no longer looking at his injuries, now she was looking at his mouth with an avidity that bespoke her own awareness of him. Heat blossomed within him as he leaned forward to capture her mouth, to taste her again, to sink into the warm haven her mouth offered. He slid one arm around her waist, pulling her tight against him, while the other hand ached to cup the back of her head, tipping it backwards, leaving her lips parted, waiting to be plundered…
He stared with humiliation at his right arm. It hung limply at his side, refusing his order to tangle his fingers in Charlotte’s golden curls. He couldn’t even lift the leaden weight of it enough to put his arm around her.
“Dare?”
He let his left arm drop from her waist, slumping back into the chair, closing his eye against the disappointment—and worse, pity—he was sure to see in her eyes.
“Dare? Is something wrong?”
What a wretched end he had come to. Despair wailed within him as he realized that even if he had been able to will his injured arm into working properly, he couldn’t pleasure his wife. No woman in her right mind would want such a pathetic mockery of a man to touch her.
“Husband, I realize you are frustrated because the strength hasn’t returned to your arm, but Dr. Milton did say that he believed exercising it would help you regain the muscle you lost. Would you like to do a few of the exercises now? After you’re done, I would be very happy to sit on your lap and kiss you.”
He was only fooling himself to think it would be otherwise. “Leave me be, Charlotte.”
“But, Dare—”
“Get out, woman! Why must you always be fluttering around me? Can’t you see I don’t want you?”
“But I want to help—”
“All I want from you is your absence!”
Noble Destiny Page 25
