“You do?” Charlotte squeaked, disbelieving. “But how?”
Noah shrugged. “That is the way of things, love. It is how Society operates and has for some time.” Somehow, she did not think that was quite true. “Trust me. I will handle your father. You’ve no need to worry.”
Except that Charlotte did worry, for nothing was turning out the way she had imagined.
And the longer she was in Noah’s arms, surprisingly, the more clear things were becoming. His kiss might have muddled her thinking at first, but not for long.
While Noah’s kisses were delightful, they were not Francis’. His caresses, while they made her swoon, did not make her want to burst into flames the way Francis’ did. His body would give her immense pleasure, she was certain, but not the way she believed Francis’ body could. She was also beginning to suspect that Noah, while a good man, did not have quite the integrity that Francis had. After all, he had been aware of his uncle’s plan and felt the entire thing manageable. His words seemed to imply that she was silly for worrying about the issue at all, that he would handle things.
Charlotte was beginning to think that Lord Noah Acton might be a lovely second choice. But he was not Francis. And he never would be.
Except that even if Francis was her first choice, she might not be able to have him anyway. Noah might not be afraid of her father, but Charlotte was. And if she returned home without a beau – specifically without Noah – then her father would marry her off to the current duke and she would be forced into his bed, no matter what Noah said or did. Unless…unless…unless…
Oh, there were simply too many variables at play. This could all be solved rather neatly if Francis would just agree to wed her now. He wanted her. She knew that. She was quickly coming to the conclusion that he was her choice as well. So what was the problem?
His past – or lack of it – most likely, but that was something she could not change, so she was right back to where she started from – an impossible situation.
“But I do worry,” she finally admitted softly. “You do not know my father.”
Noah traced the pad of his thumb over Charlotte’s lips. “Nor do you know my uncle. He wants your marriage settlements and someone to bear the Springford heir. Even if you are forced to marry him,” he held up his hand when she would have protested, “ even if you are forced to wed him, you would never spend a single night in his bed. Only mine. And when he passes away, for he will not live forever? Maybe not even a few more months, really. After the proper mourning period? We can wed as we please. Assuming we cannot and do not from the first.”
He made it all sound so simple Charlotte thought as she looked into his dark eyes. So easy. But this was a devil’s bargain that he was offering and they both knew it. Could she live with herself if she took it? Could she live at all if she did not?
“Noah, I…”
However, he pressed a finger to her lips. “Hush. I know this is sudden and that we have only shared our first kiss. However there is passion between us, Charlotte, and you would be a fool to dismiss it so easily.”
“I’m not,” she insisted. “I wouldn’t.” More to the point, she couldn’t. At least not yet.
“Then think upon what we have shared today.” His eyes roamed over the bodice of her gown, the one cut so low that it was almost more suited for an evening gown than a day dress. “Ponder what we could share.” Noah reached out and cupped her breast, rolling her already swollen nipple between his fingers so that she moaned. “I want you, Charlotte. I will not hide my desire for you any longer.”
She swallowed hard, not knowing what to say.
Noah leaned down and scraped his teeth along the tender skin of her neck. He was marking her. She should have slapped him, but something held her hands at her side. Indecision, most likely.
Noah slid his hands around her waist to cup her backside and pull her tightly against his pulsing erection. “I want to fuck you, Charlotte. I want you in my bed, growing large with my child. I want to feast upon you, lavishing every pleasure of the flesh upon your delectable body. I think you want that too.”
Given the way her knees were quivering, Charlotte was likely to agree.
“I cannot offer you a staid life the way Underhill can. That is not my way, nor the way of the Springford line. We are rakes and gamblers. We take mistresses.” Oh, she did not like the sound of that. When she wed, she had hoped her husband would be faithful. “But I will give you a life of comfort, wealth, and pleasure beyond your wildest imagination. I also will not lie to you, no matter how awful the truth. Can your viscount say that much? Does he always offer you the truth as I vow I will?”
“No.” Charlotte shook her head, her thoughts swimming. “I know that he is withholding things from me, even now.”
Noah seized her lips in another hard, passionate kiss. This time, he gave no quarter and took what he wanted from her. Swept up as she was in the moment, Charlotte was powerless to stop him, even though she knew she should. Even though she knew she should not be kissing him – or Francis for that matter – while her heart was still undecided.
“Then think about what I am offering you, love,” Noah whispered when he finally released her lips, his hands now sliding down over her hips and settling her against him, his cock still throbbing against her belly. “Think about all I have promised you. I may not be perfect, but with me, you will always know where you stand.” Then that same, cocky grin was back. “And you will never be left wanting in bed.”
“I will think about your offer,” Charlotte gulped, the details of this scandalous, inappropriate conversation whirling through her mind. They should not be speaking like this, but then, why should they not? That was why she was here, wasn’t it? To warn Noah, to see if she wished to barter her body to him or to Francis in exchange for…other things?
Finally, Noah took a step back, his eyes still black with barely concealed passion. “I shall hold you to that, love. And I trust you will be able to make your decision soon.”
She nodded, her voice a mere whisper. “I will.”
Just then, thunder rumbled in the distance and both of them looked up to see a sky that was darkening more rapidly by the minute.
“We have tarried too long,” he grumbled, though humor still lit his eyes. “That is the folly of being alone with a beautiful, too-temping woman.”
Charlotte understood Noah was attempting to return their relationship to the way it had been before they kissed. He couldn’t. No matter how hard he tried. The moment he had kissed her, had fondled her breasts and pressed his cock into her softness, things between them had changed irrevocably. They could not go back to their innocent flirtation of before. Now it was up to her to decide if they were to go forward or not.
“Will we beat the rain back to the manor house?” she asked worriedly, not relishing the idea of becoming trapped in the coming downpour.
Once more, thunder rumbled ominously, but closer this time. “Probably not,” Noah replied grimly as he pointed toward another path she had not noticed before. It was more overgrown than the others but still appeared to be kept up well enough to accommodate their horses. “There are plenty of buildings on Fullbridge’s property, everything from game keeper’s cottages to a hunting box to a playhouse he had built for his son years ago. However down that path is a summerhouse that is almost always unlocked.” He glanced up at the sky. “It is not far and the storm is growing closer. We should seek shelter there.” Then he added as if he could not resist. “And I shall see about getting you out of that frock, pretty as it is, and closer to becoming my wife.”
Even teasing, it was an utterly scandalous thing to say and Charlotte was about to rebuke Noah for his forwardness. She never had the chance, however, for at that moment, a bolt of lightning rent the sky and struck near to where she had already mounted Daisychain.
Without a moment’s hesitation, the horse reared back in fear and with Charlotte still clinging to the mare’s back, both horse and rider took off
at a dead run through the thick forest in the complete opposite direction of the summerhouse. And there was nothing she could to do stop the spooked animal. For she was, unfortunately, not nearly that accomplished of a rider.
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fourteen
It felt as if the rain was drenching him to his bones as Francis slogged through the downpour on the back of a borrowed horse. He would have preferred to ride out on Mercury to search for Charlotte, but he didn’t want to risk harming his prized stallion that was already worn out from his early morning outing. Especially if a bolt of lightning caused the notoriously temperamental horse to bolt the way it had Charlotte’s mare. The stupid creature had returned – riderless of course – to the stables just as the search party was forming. There was no sign of where the horse might have left Charlotte for the animal appeared to be just fine, if not a little wet.
Francis had been enraged at that point but thankfully had also managed to keep his head before he did something foolish like plant Snowly the facer the cur rightly deserved for allowing Charlotte to become lost in the first place. Given the expression on their host’s face when the earl had explained what had happened and why he had ridden directly back to the manor house rather than search for Charlotte himself, Francis half expected the duke to be the one doling out punishment to Snowly. A punishment the man richly deserved, at least in Francis’ opinion.
Instead, Fullbridge had curtly barked rapid orders to his grooms, his male staff and the other gentlemen assembled in the stable yard, each with directions on where to search, what structures lay in which part of the estate and – God help them all – where there were dangers about including the already swollen stream and a good sized hole that had opened up in the north fields the other week and had yet to be filled in.
Francis didn’t even want to contemplate so terrible a fate befalling Charlotte. Instead, he preferred to believe that she had been clever enough to somehow dismount from the runaway mare and scramble to safety. Though where that might be, considering that Daisychain had returned to the stable from an entirely different direction than which she had bolted, he had no bloody idea.
Unlike the other men searching Havenhurst, Francis had decided to return to the old ruins and see if he could somehow track the path the horse had taken when she bolted. Fullbridge had been convinced – to his own folly, Francis believed – that Charlotte had somehow managed to remain on Daisychain until the mare drew closer to the manor house, possibly to the very back of the walled garden that bordered both the eastern and western fields. Which, in Francis’ mind made no sense for if Charlotte had indeed been able to ride the spooked horse that far, then she would have either returned to the manor by now or somehow miraculously managed to remain on the beast’s back until it reached the safety of the stables.
However, Daisychain had appeared from out of the north along a little-used path that connected to the far eastern corner of the estate. Francis remembered someone mentioning that the ruins were more east than true south and that there was a small bridge that ran over the stream to the north of the ruins – precisely the same direction the horse had emerged from earlier. Therefore, in Francis’ mind, it was logical that Charlotte was likely somewhere along that looping northward path between the ruins and the manor.
Well, it seemed logical to him, though no one else had shared his certainty about that.
In fact, most of the gentlemen the duke had roused seemed convinced that Charlotte was still somewhere near the ruins and insisted that should be where they focused the search efforts. Francis had been convinced they would not find her there, though he could not say why. Arguing had taken up a good deal of time, time Francis did not believe they had to waste. In the end, it had been decided that the group should concentrate their efforts on the ruins and then work their way north rather than following the path backward.
Once more, Francis’ gut had told him that the quickest way to find Charlotte was to retrace the horse’s path and had argued with everyone again, but to no avail.
So Francis had gone out on his own in search of Charlotte with one final glare in Snowly’s direction. It was, perhaps, a foolish thing to do but something in his gut told him this was the quickest way to find her.
Now as he rode on through the pounding rain, Francis had the vaguest sense that he had done this before. Well, not searching a duke’s estate for Charlotte specifically, but there was a general sense that he had done something similar before. Something inside of him was all but certain that he had participated in a search party for a missing woman at some point in his past and that he had used his tracking skills to find her – skills he did not think he presently possessed. But perhaps he did since he somehow seemed absolutely certain he could find her.
Francis also remembered that Dr. Longford had said that if he wished to even have a chance at remembering who he was, Francis would do well to give in to his natural inclinations. And right now his natural inclination told him that he would find Charlotte not by wandering aimlessly around the ducal estate but by tracking her as one would prey. He just wasn’t certain how he knew that, and despite that certainty, as the rain came down harder, Francis began to wonder if he might not be imagining things or was becoming brain-addled.
Or becoming a candidate for Bedlam. That was another strong possibility as well.
Nor was this the first time in recent months he had considered that he was losing his mind and indulging in hare-brained schemes. Because right now, his “gut instincts” seemed to be failing him.
After all, Francis had been searching for the better part of an hour and the only things he had managed to find on this God-forsaken muddy trail were two rabbits hiding under a rather large shrub, a bit of broken crockery from who knew what sort of mischief, a bent lantern and a ruined fishing pole near the stream, and a bit of tattered cream-colored lace in a hedgerow.
Charlotte, Francis remembered, had not been wearing any sort of lace today. Not even on her gown. Just ribbons. Pink ones.
Perhaps the other men had been right after all and Francis was merely following hope rather than logic.
Still, he was determined to follow this path to its end, though as the muddy track began looping back toward the south, he rather wished that this path were a little shorter. And perhaps lined with gravel. Really, his valet was going to have Francis’ head over the state of his Hessians.
Francis was about to pull his hat even farther down over his eyes when he saw it. At first, it looked like nothing more than a flash of off-white, perhaps the fur of an animal, such as a deer or a rabbit. Though how a rabbit would reach that height, he could not fathom. He expected the flash of white to be gone when he looked next, but it was not. He saw it again rather easily and immediately, Francis pulled his horse up short so he could investigate.
When he approached the brambles, he saw that the thing that caught his eye was not a bit of animal fur but instead a shawl. A woman’s shawl embroidered with tiny pink rosebuds. The very same shawl he had seen Charlotte wearing on numerous occasions over the last year. She had been wearing her ruby red velvet riding habit this morning but he was almost certain she had the shawl with her as well. In fact, he was convinced it had been lying across her saddle when they met in the field.
“Charlotte!” Francis cried out above the increasing din of the wind and rain. “Charlotte, where are you?”
He was met by silence, but he was not deterred. She was nearby. She had to be.
“Charlotte!” he tried again. “It is me! Francis! You have to tell me where you are, pet, for I can’t see you! It is raining too hard!”
And truly it was, the wind now whipping the rain sideways as the clouds seemed to sink lower in the sky. For a day that had started out so sunny and clement, as it pushed toward the noon hour, it rather looked more like the first oncoming of night, especially since he could see a bit of fog beginning to form in the depths of the trees nearby.
“Charlotte!” Francis was not le
aving until he found her. He would rather die out here first. “You must help me, my love, for I cannot find you! Please, Charlotte! Tell me where you are.”
That was when he heard it. At first, the sound seemed like nothing more than the cry of the wind as it howled around him but then he listened closer. It was a woman. Charlotte! It had to be.
He continued to call her name, guided by those little moans and sounds she was making until he found her. She was half buried in some holly bushes, her leg twisted beneath her in an ugly fashion.
Charlotte made a mewling sort of sound that might have been a word, but even as Francis drew close and knelt down next to her, he still couldn’t understand what she was saying. It didn’t matter. What he did understand was the pained and frightened look in her eyes as she reached out to him desperately, her arms shaking with cold as she did so.
“Shhh, love. It’s all right. I have you now.” As gently as he could, Francis untangled Charlotte from the bushes and lifted her into his arms. She was shivering, soaked through to her skin and likely had been for some time as her riding habit offered very little protection from the elements.
“Fr..Fr…Francis,” she finally managed to stammer. “You came. I thought no one would.”
Pulling her tighter to him, he placed a kiss on the top of her head. “Of course I did, love. I will always come for you when you are in need. I would never abandon you, Charlotte. Never.” When he hefted her more securely into his arms, she whimpered. “Are you hurt?”
“Just my leg,” she whispered, burrowing deeper into his shoulder. “It is nothing.”
Except he didn’t think it was nothing. Charlotte’s leg did not appear to be broken – though he would not know for certain until he could properly examine her – but at the very least, it was sprained or strained. He also could not examine her in this downpour. Nor did he want her to walk until he did.
A Lady to Desire Page 16
