by Anne Mallory
Andreas exited again, an unreadable expression on his face. Roman moved to walk past him, but Andreas’s hand shot out, gripping his forearm.
“Don’t be an idiot.” Then he strode off, likely heading somewhere to get soused.
An idiot? That was what he had been to think that everything would be fine. That he could control the chaos when he wanted to. That nothing could touch him.
He hadn’t much cared that anything could touch him before. He still didn’t. But that it could touch Charlotte . . .
He could feel the lingering coil of absolute fear. Fucking unpleasant emotion. His hand shook. An inch to the left, and he would have killed her.
From his post just outside Roman’s door, Bill tilted his head in question. Roman wanted to shake his head and walk right by his room. Even with the door wide open and her able to see him do it. Better than seeing that overlay of her face lifeless and frozen. Shit, he had just admitted no more than a few hours past that one of his fears was—
She appeared in the door, her features very much alive. “Are you not going to come in, Roman?” Her voice was soft. Almost as if she understood what was going through his mind.
But then again, maybe she did.
His feet took him toward her, unwillingly, and he entered the room, pulling the door shut behind him. But he couldn’t meet her eyes. All of his cute games. His plans and traps. His excitement that maybe . . . just maybe . . .
“You did not endanger me.” Soft, so soft, her voice as it attempted to absolve him of damnation.
He gave a brittle little laugh. Andreas had already rung him up one side and down the other, and that hadn’t helped. He opened his mouth to say so.
She touched his cheek, making him meet her eyes. Bright blue rimmed with gold. “Everything is well. See?”
And she gently pulled his head down, her lips gliding over his forehead, over his eyelids.
One hour earlier, and he would have had something easily witty to say to that.
“Everything is not well, Charlotte.”
She took his hand and pulled it to her throat, to the heavy beat in her neck, then down her chest and around her waist.
He shuddered, then slowly withdrew his hand. “I’ll have One-eye and three of the others escort you home.”
“Why?”
“You will be safe with them.”
She gripped the open edges of his shirt, giving him a shake. “I will be safe with you.”
“I know.” He grabbed her wrists against her chest, spinning and pinning her to the wall. “Because I would skin anyone alive who dared to touch you.”
He could feel her heart beating nearly through her chest. A black, ruptured emotion slithered through him. She was afraid of him.
She pulled his mouth to hers, almost savagely, and he shuddered under the onslaught of need that rushed through him. To possess her. To keep her. To protect her. To never let her stop pulling and kissing him as hard as she was able.
Every dark desire that he had first felt for her remained true, but with the certainty that she would push back to dominate him too. Equally.
What he wanted from her. Needed from her.
But what was best for Charlotte?
He pulled away, breath harsh. “Go home, Charlotte.”
“You are being foolish.” She stepped toward him again.
He pivoted and walked around the table, picking up the decanter of One-eye’s specialty—for he needed all of his wits about him—putting furniture between them, not letting the desire to chain Charlotte to his bed overtake him.
After all, she had been threatened there. The thought spilled a cool river of ice down his spine. “Don’t tell me of foolishness.” He gripped the glass cylinder. “I cheated to win you that night, Charlotte. After the way the Delaneys spoke of you, after seeing you in the market, trapped, then digging into your charity works, seeing you again in the Hunsdens’ shop? Wanting to meet you the normal way, but knowing then that would never be possible?”
She reached a hand toward him, eyes wide and full of emotion at the serial confessions, but he pushed backward, even with the furniture already lodged between them.
“I cheated. Do you know what could have occurred if Trant had proven that? And now? That I have been poaching a highborn woman considered incomparable? They wouldn’t need to pass legislation against us. And do you know the games I’ve played with you? And with everyone around you?” He gave a humorless laugh. “Do you?”
“Don’t tell me of your regrets,” she hissed, anger replacing all of the softer emotions in her face. “Not now when you are obviously beyond sense. I regret nothing.” She slashed her hand through the air.
His personal motto. And at the same time, regret slithered over every thought he now possessed.
What was best for Charlotte? The answer was obvious. And for once he needed to overcome his selfish desires.
“Go home, Charlotte.”
“So that’s it?” She straightened, her lovely pride stiffening her frame. “You are finished with me? Finally?”
He discarded the glass and moved so quickly across the room, around the furniture, that he saw the surprise that she couldn’t hide.
“No.” He touched her chin, made her meet his eyes. Charlotte needed society and the life she had been born to, and he would put her back on that path, but he wouldn’t let her believe herself a passing fancy in order to do so. “I would never be finished with you, Charlotte.”
Something far more contorted than simple confusion graced her face. “Roman.” And her voice was soft, questioning. “Do you think you might come to love me? If you weren’t . . . giving . . . me back? Someday? Just a little?”
He was frozen. Absolutely frozen. He couldn’t speak a word. She lifted her chin a notch and pressed a soft kiss to his lips at his nonresponse. And still he remained frozen. He saw her walk to the door and grab Bill’s arm. Heard their footsteps filing down the hall. Leaving.
Leaving. Never hearing his whisper that he already did.
Chapter 21
She hadn’t seen him in a week. Always looking to the shadows, desperately hoping he would be there. Fearing what his absence meant. Both to what lay broken between them and to his own safety.
But she only saw the men shadowing her. Bill usually, and sometimes “Lefty,” a man she had seen so often that she had forced him to introduce himself. Milton had appeared a few times. She’d even seen Andreas once, waiting outside of an event in the shadows, arms crossed, eyes dark and grumpy.
But no Roman.
She had taken the warnings Bill had given her to heart and not sought Roman out. She would not put Roman in more danger by going to the hell just yet. Bill said “soon.”
The only problem was she didn’t know what would happen if and when “soon” finally came. She wondered if a single word had ever caused such anxiety.
“Charlotte, I say, what the devil is wrong with you? You have been as grouchy as a troll and as jumpy as a three-legged foal.”
She pinned Emily with a look, but her sister smiled in response.
“Come on, Charlotte,” Emily coaxed, pulling ahead of her, walking backward. “Race you home. The morning was a dead bore. Please? For me?”
Charlotte bit her lip, feeling the memory of hot eyes upon her, releasing and holding her, spurring her forth. She started running, uncharacteristically giving in to her sister’s demand.
Emily whooped as they raced.
They arrived home flushed and slightly breathless a few minutes later.
“Brilliant,” Emily exclaimed, tugging off her outer garment as soon as they were inside. Charlotte smiled at her, blood pumping, feeling better than she had in days.
“Mr. Chatsworth is closeted with Mr. Trant,” her mother said from the parlor, without looking up from her stitching.
Charlotte stilled, her fingers on the edges of her pelisse.
Making an offer.
She didn’t respond, and her mother’s eyes suddenly met
hers, brows raised. Asking the silent dark question of whether she cared—of whether her lover would care.
Charlotte removed her pelisse slowly, handing it to their butler along with her reticule. “Is he?” she responded calmly. “For how long has Mr. Trant been here?”
“An hour now.”
Hammering out details.
It wasn’t the first time someone had closeted himself with her father with an offer. But she was reaching the apogee—drawing ever closer to the last.
Emily looked confused. And strangely concerned as she followed Charlotte farther into the room.
“One would think Mr. Trant was buying into the rumors,” her mother said, stitching, eyes on her piece. Charlotte hadn’t stitched in a week. Hadn’t been able to without thinking about that night. “That he wishes to secure your obedience quickly.”
Charlotte sat stiffly in a chair. There was a tea service on the table. “A cup of tea, Emily?”
Emily hopped forward and poured as if she’d always been a dab hand at it, offering a cup to Charlotte, then balancing her own perfectly on her lap. She gave Charlotte a fierce, supportive smile.
Their mother’s eyes didn’t lift, her response apathetic. “Adequate, Emily. Perhaps in two years, you will not be a complete disappointment to your father.”
Charlotte’s smile froze in its response to Emily’s. “Better than adequate, Mother,” she said smoothly. “And Emily is far from a disappointment. In fact, she handled that as if she had never been anything other than perfec—” Charlotte looked at her sister. “She handled that just like the magnificent woman she is.”
Emily’s smile resumed its brilliance.
“You coddle her.” Stitch, stitch, unending stitch. “How did she do on your rounds today?” Viola’s tone said that she had already come to her own assumption about Emily’s performance.
Charlotte kept the stiff smile about her lips. “Emily did extremely well. I remember a time when I was far less certain of where to place my cup or how to enter conversation.”
Viola’s mouth pinched. “As if you have ever tipped a cup.” She jabbed her needle through the cloth.
“And besides that,” Charlotte pressed on, “Emily’s presence fairly lights a room on fire. She will start her own fashions, mark my words.”
Viola made a little noise as she worked another endless stitch.
Emily’s face drooped for a second before she grasped onto Charlotte’s words again. Charlotte could see the thoughts tumbling there on her face. That she believed in Charlotte’s words. That she would make her own happiness.
Charlotte wanted to make sure she had that chance. It had been her most desperate desire for so long. Her own happiness easily pushed to the side, for Emily had always been her happiness.
And now . . . Yes, now. That was the question.
Charlotte looked at their mother. Had Viola ever been happy? Charlotte thought of the miniature portrait she had once found in the attic—one her grandparents had commissioned upon her mother’s debut. The girl within had been sparkling. Vivacious.
The woman across from her though looked like a dimmed reflection of chipped paint. And yet reflections could hold their own shine. They simply needed polishing.
The malaise seemed to feed on itself, insidious. Her mother begging off appointments and leaving Charlotte to attend on her own or with one of their neighbors. She wondered why no one had ever broken her mother of the spell.
Why hadn’t she? Because . . . because Viola was her mother. Untouchable in the same way her father had once been.
And Charlotte could see how the malaise might have taken hold. How the anger had turned to bitterness, then resignation. The darker emotions never truly leaving, merely hiding behind the melancholy.
How Charlotte could go down that path herself if she wasn’t careful. How she might have contributed to her mother’s descent if only in that she had done nothing to stop it.
Charlotte narrowed her eyes. When was the last time her mother had been to the park? To an event outside of the ton?
Charlotte pushed forward in her chair. “Let us go to the park and the fair this afternoon.”
Emily pushed forward too, more than eager for an outing that would prove entertaining.
“Mother?” Charlotte asked.
Viola waved a hand, well used to simply polite inquiries. “I’m sure you will find it amusing.”
“All of us will find it amusing. You are coming with us.” Charlotte said it calmly but injected just the right amount of steel.
Her mother looked up, and her eyes narrowed before the malaise took hold once more. “I don’t feel up to it. You two go.”
“No,” Charlotte said in the same calm, steely tone. Her sister’s eyes widened, and Emily shifted in her seat. “We wish you to accompany us.”
She could feel Emily saying “We do?” in her thoughts, but wisely her sister held her tongue.
“I have the headache, Charlotte,” Viola said with more asperity, unused to her daughter arguing with her. Charlotte found it easier to do things without her parents, so she always took the easy excuses tossed her way, finding accompaniment with others—mainly Miranda for this past season.
Selfish and easy, yes, and perhaps unwise.
“Fresh air will do your head good.”
“Aunt Edith needs looking after,” her mother said with a wave.
“Anna can look after her just fine.” Aunt Edith was a convenient excuse they used to explain her mother’s frequent absences and general state of fatigue. The elderly woman lived next door, rarely emerging, content to do . . . whatever it was she did. Emily liked to say she was a spy, but Charlotte thought maybe she was simply a hermit sitting on her husband’s fortune. Bennett, her nephew, was always trying to figure out a way to get his hands on it since he was her closest family member.
Regardless, Aunt Edith made the perfect excuse. That Viola Chatsworth was so devoted to family was something that the matrons admired. It kept tongues subdued. It also hinted, wrongly—but no one outside of the family knew that—that the Chatsworths would one day be out of debt, inheriting Edith’s money.
“Aunt Edith doesn’t like Anna.”
Charlotte wasn’t sure Edith liked Viola either. But then, she seemed to tolerate the deception as long as Bennett kept his paws away from her paintings.
“Aunt Edith will be fine. You don’t need to attend her today.”
Her mother’s eyes narrowed, pinning her, stitching forgotten. “Then perhaps I merely don’t wish to go with you.”
No one ever made her mother attend an event that she didn’t wish. She could shred a person to ribbons if she chose. Bennett dealt with her as little as possible.
“You will feel better,” Charlotte said, gently. “I want you to feel better.”
“I don’t wish to go,” her mother hissed in reaction. “With an incompetent”—she pointed her needle toward Emily, then Charlotte—“and perfection.”
Charlotte held her mother’s wild eyes, determined not to allow the words to hurt. Or to look at Emily’s assuredly devastated face and give in to the rage.
In part because . . . because Viola had never said a word about Charlotte’s activities. Not since the night in the carriage. Her mother had been tight-lipped and surprisingly nonjudgmental, when she could have decimated her with a few well-chosen barbs.
She thought of Roman’s slipped words that at the beginning of their relationship he had needed to overrun Andreas’s prickly exterior to get to the real man beneath.
She took a deep breath. “Then you can go with your daughters.”
Heavy silence fell and stretched.
Charlotte disregarded her pride. “We wish you to come with us. Please.”
“I will make the outing hell for you.” Viola’s voice was almost pleasant as she jabbed her needle into the piece.
Charlotte nodded. “I know. I still wish you to accompany us.”
There was a strangled sound, and her mother threw d
own her stitching and swept from her chair and through the door.
Emily stared after her, wide-eyed and unsure. “Charlotte, what are you doing? It . . . it is more fun without her.”
Charlotte tipped her head, not wanting to utter anything that could be construed as agreement in case Viola was standing on the other side of the wall, listening. “Let’s give her a chance, Emily. Do you not wish she would come with us, happily?”
Emily didn’t look convinced. “I suppose.”
“If she comes back, give her a chance. Otherwise, we will go ourselves. Yes?”
Emily slowly nodded.
Charlotte half expected her mother not to return, but ten minutes later she did. Charlotte swallowed, trying to restrain the tendril of optimism.
Her mother gave her a dark glance. “Very well. The sooner we get this farce over, the better.”
It was more spirit than her mother had shown in years. And the rope of guilt that she had let her mother linger in her own cage knotted about her neck. She had always accepted that cages were necessary—that it was just the way things were. Charlotte swallowed uncomfortably.
“Excellent,” she said softly. “Thank you, Mother.”
Viola nodded sharply. Charlotte looked more closely at her, at her expression, at her tight lips. At the deep fear underlining her irritation. Along with something else, something she couldn’t identify.
Scared of her daughters? No, that wasn’t quite it.
Oh. Charlotte felt the revelation—the revelations—so keenly it almost choked her. She pushed aside the one tied to Roman and concentrated on her mother. Viola had ever been a vicious woman when it came to their father. And she had encompassed her daughters in that vitriol—then hadn’t known how to stop.
Behind the fear in her mother’s eyes, behind the irritation, there was hope. Choking hope.
“Yes,” Charlotte said firmly. “It will be wonderful, just the three of us. We can change dresses and—”
A door opened. Footsteps and voices.
Trant emerged in the doorway to the room, her father a step behind him. Her father shot her a look full of dark meaning. Deal with Trant—or else.
