If he did not let himself feel anything for Charlotte, she could not hurt him. For she would hurt him. Whether intentionally or not, she was the kind of woman capable of breaking a man’s heart into a thousand pieces. Loving her meant being engulfed by her, body and soul.
He was falling already, and he had not even known it. The sheer terror he felt when he feared her dead inside the carriage… Gavin closed his eyes and drew a deep, shuddering breath. He needed to keep his distance. He needed to remain emotionless.
He needed to put on some damn clothes.
Crossing the hall, he entered the room opposite Charlotte’s without bothering to knock. A small, thin man with dark brown hair and crooked teeth looked up from polishing a pair of leather boots and did not bother disguising his snort of laughter.
“Kicked ye out, did she? I found ye a change of clothes as ye requested. Hard to come by in these parts, but most of it should fit.” He nodded towards the corner of the room where an entire outfit was sitting neatly in a chair.
“Thank you Ernie,” Gavin said absently.
Ernie nodded. He had been Gavin’s personal valet for nearly five years, starting his employment well before Gavin possessed the wealth he did today. Loyal to a fault, Ernie was privy to every facet of his enigmatic employer’s personal life – including his marriage. “How is the missus this mornin’?” he asked with a grin.
“None of your bloody business,” Gavin said shortly before he dressed himself in everything Ernie had put out save the white cravat which his fingers fumbled with for only a few moments before he set it aside in disgust. He abhorred the formal attire of the upper crust and if he did not need the respect of the men he did business with he would have cheerfully worn ruddy trousers with holes in the knees for the rest of his life.
Pulling aside the thin blue cloth that was masquerading as a curtain, he studied the quiet scenery beyond the window while he attempted to collect his thoughts. He needed to be thinking about his work, not his wife. It was yet another reason he could not afford to let her get too close. She could prove to be a dangerous distraction, pulling him away from what mattered most. Hell, he thought with a grimace, she already is a distraction. One he needed to push to the back of his mind and ignore, as he did with everything else not directly related to his work.
“Have notices been sent out in regards to my delay in returning to London?” he asked without turning around.
“Aye,” Ernie said. “And all of your meetings have been pushed back as well.”
“And the Newmore deal? What of that?”
“Payment arrived this mornin’, far as I know.”
“In full?”
“That I’m not quite sure of.”
Gavin turned and fixed Ernie with a cold stare that had made lesser men flinch and look away. Too accustomed to his employer’s demeanor to be phased in the slightest, Ernie merely waited with his head tilted to the side and his mouth open, rather like an unsuspecting guppy about to swallow a hook.
“You need to make sure,” Gavin said. “Send a letter. Go back to London if you have to. Hell, fly there for all I care. But that man owes me money, Ernie, and I want it.”
The valet’s head bobbed up and down. “Aye, I’ll see to it. Is there anything else?”
“How is the maid?”
“The maid?” Ernie repeated blankly.
“The maid, the maid, my wife’s maid.” What the hell was her name? She was a mouse of a woman with a face easy to forget, but Gavin knew she meant quite a bit to Charlotte. Her welfare should not have mattered to him one way or another, and yet… “Tabitha. Her name is Tabitha.”
“The blond chit with the lump on ‘er head?”
Was she blond? Gavin had no idea. He knew he had met her. Talked to her, even, but every other woman seemed to pale in comparison to Charlotte. “Yes, that’s her.”
Ernie shrugged. “She’s good enough, I suppose.”
“I want the doctor to look at her again today.”
“Today?” Ernie scratched the side of his head. “But he was jest here last night.”
“Yes, and I want her examined again. My wife as well.”
Now the valet looked truly confused. “Is she ill?”
“No, she is not ill,” Gavin snapped. “I simply want her examined! She hurt her ankle in the accident,” he said, recalling how she had flinched when he accidentally brushed against her leg while he was carrying her. “I want it looked at. Today. Immediately, in fact.”
“I dunno where the doctor has gone to, but—”
“Immediately.”
“Yessir.” Ernie’s brow furrowed as Gavin stalked across the room, muttered something about a walk, and stormed out, slamming the door behind him.
Ernie had never seen his boss in such a state before, snapping orders left and right. Something had certainly gotten up under his britches, and he was pretty sure he knew what – or rather, who – that was.
He just never thought he would live to see the day the notoriously hard hearted Gavin Graystone fell in love. And to fall for such a slip of a girl… Ernie grinned. He wondered how long it would take for his boss to figure out he had taken the big jump. Gavin was a tough man. Some would even say a cruel one, although he certainly had his reasons, though few were privy to them.
Rocking back on his heels Ernie crossed his arms and rubbed his chin where a pitiful excuse for a beard grew. He tugged it thoughtfully.
He owed Gavin his life, a debt he had been struggling to repay for nearly half a decade, ever since Gavin lifted him up – quite literally – from the gutter, shook the filth from his clothes, and made him his person valet (among other less glamorous job titles). Maybe, at long last, he’d finally found a way to repay him… if his new bride was agreeable, of course.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Charlotte was not feeling very agreeable.
She wanted to check on Tabitha – just a quick peek, no talking… well, not much talking – but she had no idea what room her maid was staying in. Short of knocking on every door, her only other hope of finding her rested with Gavin who, coincidentally enough, was no where to be found.
Mrs. Clemens, the woman who owned the inn along with her husband, had been of little help. It seemed they were so overbooked they did not know what room belonged to who, and neither of them had a recollection as to where Tabitha was taken when they arrived last night.
After lunch (a parsley meal consisting of two slices of cold ham, a stale piece of bread, and watered down lemonade) Charlotte began her rounds again in the vain hope that by wandering the halls she would somehow run across Gavin. As luck would have it, she ended up with the next best thing: her husband’s valet, Ernie.
When she asked Ernie where Gavin was he directed her to a walking path that wound up behind the inn into blossoming fields of heather. Not a woman who minded a brisk walk now and again, Charlotte had attacked the hill with enthusiasm.
Now, however, after an hour of hiking up a remarkably steep path, her blisters had blisters and, while she was almost at the top, she was no closer to finding Gavin than she had been when she started.
“Hell and damnation,” she cursed, stopping to rest her weary calves. Her right ankle in particular throbbed, and she knelt to loosen the laces on her confining shoes. When she looked up, her eyes caught on a pair of brown boots that had not been in the middle of the path a second ago.
The boots were attached to dark gray trousers, the trousers to a white shirt, and the white shirt to… “Gavin?” Standing a bit clumsily, Charlotte rubbed her eyes and squinted up at her husband.
His towering frame was silhouetted by the afternoon sun, but there was no mistaking those broad shoulders and square chin for anyone else’s. His dark mane of hair was slicked back and his shirt sleeves rolled up, the thin sheen of perspiration clinging to his exposed chest revealing that he, too, had been walking.
“What are you doing here?” he asked, not sounding at all pleased to see her.
“Lo
oking for you,” she retorted. “You disappeared and I haven’t been able to find Tabitha and—”
“And you decided it would be a good idea to go searching for me by yourself?” Gavin shook his head in disbelief and muttered something under his breath she couldn’t quite hear.
He took a step forward, close enough so she could smell his musky scent and see the individual beads of sweat that clung to his tanned flesh. Sunlight surrounded him in a glowing circle, almost making it appear as though he wore a golden halo atop his head, and she barely managed to suppress a snort. Her husband, an angel? The idea was laughable. He would look far more suitable in horns, especially with his hair is disarray and that wicked gleam in his eyes as he stared right at her…
“You are looking at my breasts!” she accused.
“Yes,” Gavin admitted without a hint of shame. “Your dress is very… tight.”
Charlotte pulled at the neckline of her muslin gown. It was damp with sweat and clung to her body like a second skin, leaving little to the imagination. It also itched like the devil and as she glanced enviously at Gavin’s loose fitting trousers she wished, not for the first time, that women could dress like men. “What room is Tabitha in?” she demanded.
She wanted to be sweet natured and agreeable. Truly she did. But after walking for what felt like miles straight up hill looking for a man who never should have left in the first place, she did not feel inclined to smile and giggle and do all the other things she imagined well behaved wives did in the presence of their husbands.
“What?” Gavin said distractedly. He looked up at her, his expression bemused. “What did you say?”
Charlotte rolled her eyes. He was doing it again, she noted with a scowl. Looking at her body in that way, which would have been perfectly acceptable if only he had not told her, less than five hours ago, that he wanted nothing to do with her of an intimate nature. “Tabitha’s room,” she repeated. “Where is it?”
“I do not know.”
“You don’t know?” she said incredulously.
“I… Hell.” Gavin swept his hair away from his face with a growl. Cupping the back of his neck he began to pace across the walking path. “I can’t think,” he muttered. “I can’t even breathe.”
Charlotte’s eyebrows shot up. “You can’t breathe?”
“Not around you.” He stopped short and spun to face her, sending small plumes of dust spiraling into the air. He did a broad sweep of his arm, gesturing towards the endless hills of rolling heather and the woods beyond, all blanketed by a sky of the clearest blue. “I came out here in the middle of bloody nowhere to clear my head, and yet here you are!” he accused, his eyes flashing. “You’re everywhere I turn around.”
Taken aback by the vehemence in his tone, Charlotte took one small step of retreat, and then another. He is so very large, she thought. His broad chest rose and fell in quick succession and a vein in his forehead throbbed. She should have been frightened, and perhaps a small part of her was, but there was also an undeniable thrill of excitement lurking beneath the thin layer of fear.
Charlotte stopped backing up.
“Kiss me,” she whispered.
“…can’t get a damn minute to myself and—what did you say?” Every muscle in Gavin’s body went taut. He froze, his arms stopping mid-gesture, his legs braced apart, thighs hard and bulging beneath the thin fabric of his trousers.
“I said kiss me.” Feeling bolder, she closed the distance between them in three quick steps. “Kiss me like you did before, in the study, when you did not know who I was. Kiss me,” she implored when the saw the flicker of hesitation in his gaze, “like a man kisses a woman. Kiss me like you never want to let me go.”
A breeze stirred between them, brushing a curl against Charlotte’s cheek. As though in a trance Gavin reached out and ensnared the auburn tendril, allowing it to wrap around his finger. “We shouldn’t,” he said hoarsely.
“Why not?”
He groaned, a painful sound torn from his gut that betrayed the battle he was fighting within. “I don’t remember.”
Charlotte rose on her tiptoes and slid her arms around his neck, gliding her fingers along corded muscle before grasping the tangled ends of his hair.
Their mouths were inches apart. Their hearts pounded in unison. She felt heat radiating off from him in waves. He was like hard, hot steel… and she was only all too willing to be burned.
He cursed before he kissed her, which only seemed right. Parting her lips with one thrust of his tongue he devoured her as though he were a man starving and she rose to meet him with eager enthusiasm, matching him stroke for passionate stroke.
His hands swept up her spine and over her shoulders, clinging fast to the sloping line of her collarbone before delving lower to cup her breasts, squeezing and petting through the damp muslin. Charlotte’s nipples tingled in response, the rosebud tips aching to be touched, and when he closed his thumb and forefinger over one and then the other she arched her back and all but flung herself against him.
Gavin stumbled back a step and then they were sinking down, down, down into the sweet scent of heather. Cushioning her with his body against the hard, rocky ground he dragged his mouth from her lips and began to trace a burning path down her throat, nipping with his teeth and soothing with his tongue while she writhed on top of him, driven by instinct to suckle the tender flesh of his earlobe.
When he groaned and tilted his neck, silently begging her to do it again, she smiled a woman’s smile, the power born from eliciting such a response rushing straight to her head.
Her hands streaked down his long, lean torso and pulled impatiently at the hem of his shirt, yanking it free from his trousers and skimming it up over his chest. Using her nails, she traced little furrows across the smooth skin that had his muscles tightening and twitching beneath her inquisitive, teasing fingertips.
“Bloody hell,” he gasped when she pinched his nipples, and she had to cling with her thighs to stay atop him when he arched his back and shuddered beneath her.
Still not finished, she wiggled her way down his body, sliding inch by delicious inch until her mouth was level with his abdomen. Dipping her head, she gave the tiniest of licks to the line of exposed flesh above his waistband, tasting salt and man and something just a little dark. A little dangerous.
Gavin’s reaction was instantaneous.
Splaying his hands around her narrow ribcage he lifted her up as if she weighed no more than a feather and settled her easily into the nook of his body, once again taking her mouth even as his groin pressed against hers and heat bloomed between them, the force of it enough to steal the very breath from Charlotte’s lungs.
She answered the rocking of his hips without thinking, for there could be no thinking when there was only feeling.
Feeling the slide of his tongue against her tongue. Feeling his fingers tangling in the ends of her hair. Feeling his hard arousal jutting against her womanhood so frustratingly guarded by layers and layers of fabric.
A pressure was mounting inside of her, like a kettle left too long to boil. Still kissing him, she began a bold exploration of his body with her fingers, beginning with his neck and moving down, sliding along his shoulder and chest, skirting around a pointed nipple before journeying to the flat, sucked in plane of his stomach. She brushed against a button. Hesitated. Began to slip under…
Without warning, Gavin lifted himself up on his elbows and rolled to the side, effectively dumping Charlotte on her back.
Disoriented, she shook her head to clear it and rolled into a sitting position after taking a moment to untangle her skirts. Her body continued to pulse, her breaths coming in short little gasps. It felt as though she had been taken out of the fire and dunked in freezing cold water, and as the hazy sense of pleasure began to ebb she turned to Gavin in complete bewilderment.
“What happened?” When he did not answer; when he merely continued to sit on his haunches with his arms looped around his knees and his head bowed, s
he moved a few inches closer. “Did I do something wrong? Tell me,” she implored when he remained silent. “Gavin, what is the matter?”
He drew a ragged breath. “This never should have happened.”
Charlotte closed her eyes. She was afraid he would say that. She had hoped… no. It didn’t matter now. “We are married. What we did – what we were about to do – is only natural between a husband and his wife.” The humiliation of being tossed aside made her voice sound strained, as though she was about to cry, which of course she wasn’t. Don’t cry, she ordered herself. Don’t you dare shed tears over him.
His head still lowered, Gavin said flatly, “It was my mistake. I am sorry, Charlotte.”
She didn’t want him to be sorry! She wanted him to still be kissing her. She wanted him to tangle his fingers in her hair and yank her against him. She wanted to feel wanted, and therein was the crux of the problem. “You cannot keep doing this to me.” Plucking a stem of wild heather, she began to pull off the purple petals one by one. “You cannot desire me one moment and discard me the next. It isn’t fair, and it isn’t right.”
Struggling to her feet, she stood over him, arms akimbo and chin jutting out. “I am your wife.” At her sides her hands clenched into fists, her anger building as Gavin still refused to lift his head. “Your wife,” she repeated. “Damn you, look at me when I am speaking to you!”
Gavin looked.
His expression was blank. His eyes were shuttered. Charlotte might as well have been staring at a stone wall, and it enraged her all the further.
“Don’t you feel anything?” she cried, flinging her arms out the side. Tears crept into her voice again, but these were tears born of frustration, not sadness, and she let them fall.
“You’re crying.” Gavin sounded shocked.
Sniffling, Charlotte wiped at her damp cheeks and jerked her shoulders. “So? I am not a machine. I cannot be turned off and on with the pull of a cord or the turn of a wheel.”
He stood up in one smooth, effortless motion. “You knew what this marriage would be before you entered into it. I made myself and my intentions clear from the very beginning.”
The Runaway Duchess Page 13
