by Matilda Hart
Ryde watched Hawthorne’s color change to a mottled red, as though every blood vessel in his head had popped and was leaking under the skin of his face. His eyes bulged out, and when he stood up, one arm ended in a fist so tight his knuckles showed white. Before the man could respond, and possibly hurt his chances of any further social advancement by an incautious response to Ryde’s remark, the duke said,
“Gentlemen, perhaps we ought to rejoin the ladies before bed. It is getting late, and tomorrow is a big day here. I am sure your good wives will appreciate an early retirement. I know mine will. A little light entertainment will round out the evening nicely, I think.”
Without waiting for a response, he led the way back to the drawing room, leaving Ryde to bring up the rear. The younger man did not miss the venomous glare slanted his way by the harried Hawthorne, but he ignored the man, and wandered back to the drawing room where the duke was once again speaking.
“Tomorrow is the Michealmas fair. I’m looking forward to this year’s festivities. Aside from the morning Mass, which you are all invited to attend, the whole village will bring the children for blackberry and daisy picking, as well as the traditional foot races and games, and after a rest, we will have the annual dance. Feel free to stay in, or join us for the festivities.”
A desultory game of whist ensued, and then Charlotte was prevailed upon to play for the assembled guests. As the youngest woman, it was expected of her, and Ryde sat back to listen to her performance. She played reasonably well, but he felt she was somehow constrained by having to play for an audience, and then only accepted pieces. He thought he caught a glimpse, now and again. of fire beneath the demure performance, and wished he could free her to play as she wished, what she chose. He was sure, given her fiery spirit, that it would be vastly more entertaining for those assembled.
“Will there be a prize this year again for the winning breads and blackberry pies, Your Grace”? This question from Hawthorne’s wife, and the gleam in her eye suggested she had some personal interest in the answer. Apparently, Mrs. Hawthorne was not particularly keen to listen to her daughter’s playing any longer.
“Most definitely, dear lady. At your daughter’s insistence, we will not only award the blue ribbon to the winning family, but also a basket of food supplies against the coming winter.”
“What a very quaint idea,” the Countess of Farley remarked, a condescending smile on her face as she looked across at Charlotte. “Your Grace is very kind to entertain it.”
“I have done more than entertain it, cousin,” the duke replied indulgently, entirely missing, or ignoring, the intended slight to his lady. “The contents of the basket have already been assembled, thanks to my wife’s industry, and the prize is even now reposing below stairs.” He also turned to regard her, though with a smile on his face.
“Her Grace is certainly a model of generosity,” the woman remarked waspishly, feeling herself on safe ground, without reason, as it turned out.
“I concur,” the duke said, his voice suddenly sharp, his gaze piercing on the woman who had surely forgotten herself and her station as only married to a distant relative of the man whose wife she was trying to insult. “And I am happy that she graces my home with her beauty and generous heart.”
Ryde watched Charlotte’s face become suffused with rosy color, and he struggled to stop himself from staring. She was riveting, and he was finding more to admire in her with every passing hour. He managed to turn his eyes to the hapless Countess in time to see her blush an ugly shade of almost purple. Charlotte saved the day, and the woman’s last shred of dignity, when she rose to her feet and addressed her husband.
“My Lord,” she said, smiling sweetly, “I hope you don’t mind if I retire for the evening.”
Snowley walked over to his wife and took her hand into the crook of his arm. “Most certainly not, my dear.”
Everyone rose and took themselves off, leaving Ryde alone in the room. He turned, looking around him, wondering what it might be like to be a married man, with a wife as beautiful as the lovely lady of the house. Bates came in, and he ordered a large brandy which he took up with him to his rooms. He was in the next suite to his cousin’s, on the opposite side from his wife, in the east wing of the house. All the other guests were in the west wing, and with only two other guests coming for the morrow, the party was quite small. He supposed the Snowleys were saving the big ball for Christmas. Still, a party of fourteen was not to be sneezed at. Snowley had invited their spinster cousin, the Lady Regina, to make up the number, and Ryde would be squiring her for the evening’s dance.
He supposed he ought to be grateful that Snowley had not chosen to invite their maiden aunt instead. The Dowager Duchess of Granby was seventy if she was a day, and though still beautiful, and as feisty as a woman half her age, it would not have sat well with him to be stuck with her. She would have spent the entire evening prying into his love life, of which he sadly had none, and trying to suggest worthy women for his immediate attention. Before today, he had not considered marriage, and even now, when it was finally on the table, he was not willing to discuss it with anyone else. Unless it were with his hostess and new cousin, the Lady Charlotte.
Chapter 3 -- Charlotte
The room was black as midnight, the silence only emphasized by the crackling of the fire in the grate. Lottie lay wide-eyed, having awakened after a few hours of sleep. She had tossed and turned for a good ten minutes before deciding that the best thing she could do for herself was get a glass of sherry. It might help her go back to sleep. And if there was nothing to be found in the kitchen, why then she’d just have to help herself to some of her husband’s best brandy.
Swinging her legs over the side of the bed, she located the slippers she wore in her rooms and slid her feet into them. Next came her dressing gown, and she was glad that she had a thick velvet one, as she didn’t relish the thought of wandering around in the draughty mansion in thin silks. Wrapping the garment around herself tightly, she reached for the discarded wrap that Alice had left on the chair and headed out into the corridor. This was not her first foray into the sleeping house after hours, but it would be her first while there were guests asleep on the other side. And her first with Ryde practically next door to her.
She wondered what he looked like when he was dressed for bed. Her husband, on the one occasion on which they had shared a bed, had slept in a nightshirt and thin breeches, which he had removed before taking her maidenhead. He was almost entirely hairless, except for some around his sex, and Lottie wondered if it ran in the family. She had glimpsed a cousin’s hairy chest once, after he had removed his shirt to rinse the dust and sweat from his face and arms after a morning of haying. She had liked to see the hair running down the center of his broad chest, and the hairs on his arms and legs. Although she dared not mention that she had been so minutely observing a man, even if he were her own blood relative, she knew, from having heard the talk of the others, that the hairs went beneath his breeches, curling around his sex, so her husband’s had come as no surprise to her.
The thought of Ryde with hair around his sex made her flush with heat, and she thanked heaven there was no one around to remark upon her color. Trying to rid herself of the lustful thoughts, she hurried down to the kitchen, but found everything put tidily away, with nothing left out. She supposed she understood. Tomorrow, and for the next three days, there would be a party of fourteen to feed, and Bates would be very careful to preserve his master’s stock.
Taking herself off to her husband’s study, therefore, she availed herself of the brandy he stored there, pouring herself a stiff measure, and putting away the bottle before turning to leave. The door opened, startling her, and she almost dropped her candle, which she held in her other hand. The last man she might have expected to see stood framed in the doorway, dressed in a nightgown, over what she was sure were breeches and a nightshirt. The robe was dark in color -- she could not tell whether it was black or blue -- and his feet were bare.
She paused to wonder how he could stand the cold floors, before she realized the impropriety of her current situation.
“Pardon me, Your Grace,” Ryde said, before she could speak. “I did not know anyone was here.”
Lottie swallowed. “It is no matter, Your Lordship. I was just helping myself to a sleep aid from my husband’s cabinet.”
And why she was explaining herself to this man she had no idea. Despite her unruly emotions around him, he was still the man who hated her for ruining his chances of succession by the promise of an heir from his cousin’s loins. Not that he was to know that there had been no progress on that front, since her husband’s departure from her rooms three months earlier. Feeling unaccountably irritated with him for stirring up feelings and thoughts she did not know how best to handle, she moved towards the door, expecting him to move aside and let her pass. When he did not, she stopped and looked up at his shadowed face.
“Please to let me pass,” she said, her voice tremulous despite her best efforts to keep it steady.
“If you would but speak my name, I would grant your wish,” he said, in a tone so low as to be almost impossible to hear.
She glared at him, wondering why he was being so difficult. She must have spoken aloud, because he answered her.
“I am trying to mend fences, to establish a more friendly footing for our future meetings. It would be so much easier if you would call me by my name.”
“That isn’t appropriate, Your Lordship,” she insisted, and tried to sidestep him.
He reached out and brushed a lock of her hair that had fallen into her face back behind her ear. The shock of contact was immediate, and they both inhaled sharply, as though mildly electrocuted.
‘My name is Barrington,” he continued after a moment. “It would please me greatly if you would call me by that name when we are alone together. And in public, Ryde is most acceptable. Will you do this for me, Charlotte?”
The sound of her name on his lips shook Lottie to her core. He said it as though it were a prayer, and he the supplicant needing blessing. She wanted to resist him, and under other circumstances she supposed she might have. But coming hard on the heels of those unruly and vulgar thoughts about his body not ten minutes prior, she was undone.
“Very well, Your...Barrington.” She stopped. She could say no more.
“Thank you, Charlotte.”
He smiled down at her, his full lips bowing up in so delightful a fashion as to render her still quite speechless, and suddenly warm from the need to feel them on her person.
“I really must go,” she said in a panic, but remained where she was, afraid to move for fear of touching him again and setting off that spark that made her lady parts tingle inexplicably.
She did not wish to enjoy the electrifying sensations as much as she was, and guilt swamped her when she realized she was harboring lustful thoughts for someone who was not her husband.
“Barrington,” he said. “Or, even easier, Barry.”
“What?” she looked up again in confusion.
“My name,” he explained. “Say my name. ‘I really must go, Barry’,” he instructed her.
“I have already done so, and now I really must get back to bed.”
Lottie watched his jaw tighten, and the line of his lips change to one of seductive promise. She could not see his eyes, and she was suddenly grateful for that. She did not wish to know what he was thinking, for fear it was along the same lines as her own thoughts. She would not encourage him.
“You are incredibly beautiful, Charlotte,” he said, reaching out once more to touch her hair. “I hope you sleep well.”
He moved aside to let her pass, and as she slipped by him, the heat of his body enveloped her. Her hand trembled, making the contents of the glass slosh about. Steadying herself, she turned as she passed him.
“My family call me Lottie,” she said, determined to be as cool as he appeared to be. “Goodnight...Barry.”
And then she hurried away, back up the stairs as fast as her legs could take her, managing not to spill the brandy or snuff out the candle. Once safely behind her closed bedroom door, she put the candle down and sat quickly in the couch before her legs gave way. Taking a large sip from the glass in her hand, she relished the burn of the liquor. It was good to feel something other than this unwanted desire for a man she should dislike. Another sip, and then she was wondering why she should dislike him. He was quite a handsome man, big and brawny, and yet so elegant and sophisticated. He had been particularly silent at dinner, aside from his question about the race, and did not seem inclined to be heard when they were playing at whist.
What was it about him that made her want to trace the lines of his cheekbones, the curves of his lips, the length of his limbs? Why were thoughts of him so suddenly assailing her, when she had not spared him a single one before? She supposed the fact of his being a guest in the house might explain it. And he would be with them for the week, staying even after the others had left. How was she to manage when he was demanding a familiarity she knew would continually beat against her need to keep a proper distance from him?
She took another large sip of her drink, and decided that it was, after all, only a request to call him by his given name. What harm could there be in that? She would never presume to do so in company, and as that was where she was most likely to encounter him, Ryde was good enough. He himself had said so. Perhaps, to make it easier on herself, she would just not call him by name at all. That would spare her blushes, and as there was little he could insist upon in company, and they were not likely to meet again as they had done just now, she felt safe on the course of action she had settled upon following.
The brandy was beginning to take effect, and she crawled back into bed, pulling the drapes around it, and was asleep within moments. When Alice drew the drapes, letting in the brightening light of early morning, Lottie groaned. The effect of too much wine, plus the addition of brandy, had given her a headache she knew would not easily be relieved. She supposed that this was what happened when too much alcohol was consumed on an empty stomach.
“I will not dress immediately, Alice. I have a headache. Could you fetch me some tea, please? And draw the drapes back again until I am ready.”
She closed her eyes again, not opening them until her maid called to say the tea was ready.
She sat up in bed, and took the tray the young woman held and sipped the soothing tea.
“Come back in an hour, please, Alice. And please make my excuses to His Grace. Tell him I will be ready in time for the morning Mass.”
She sipped the tea until the cup was empty, and then lay back and closed her eyes again. Whether the ache was relieved in an hour or not, she would rise and face the day. Her husband’s voice woke her the next time she opened her eyes.
“Are you still unwell, my dear?” he asked, his voice solicitous. He was sitting next to her on the edge of the bed. “Shall I have them bring your breakfast up? You do not have to attend the Mass if you are not up to it.”
Lottie tried not to blush as she sat up, unaccustomed as she was to having him in her bedchamber. Pulling the sheets up to her chin, she smiled faintly and shook her head.
“No, I’ll stir myself now. The last of our guests will be arriving shortly, and I wish to be up and ready to meet them. And it would be unbecoming of me as your wife not to attend the Mass. But if you would make my excuses to the others, I would appreciate it.”
He took her hand and leaned forward, brushing his lips against her cheek. “Take your time, my dear.” He looked at her assessingly, and she felt her cheeks heating from his frank appraisal of her features. “I am glad that I did not come to you last evening, as I had intended. I myself was somewhat indisposed. But I shall be a better husband to you tonight.” He dropped another quick kiss on her lips, patted her hand, and departed.
Lottie felt the panic rising inside her chest, threatening to cut off her breath. She scrambled out of bed, found the glass of unfinished bra
ndy, and swallowed the remains desperately. What would her husband have done had he come to lie with her and found her missing from her bed? And what if he had witnessed the scene in his study? Although she had done nothing wrong, she had been alone with an unmarried man in her nightrail. And she had had the most inappropriate thoughts about that man, thoughts which made her shudder at the very idea of entertaining her husband later. Could she feign an illness? It would not be unprecedented, as he had only just left her after being told she was indisposed. Trembling now with a nameless dread, she summoned her maid and set about washing and dressing for her guests. She had a duty now, as the wife of the duke, to be the perfect hostess, or as perfect as she could get. There was no time for foolish worries about doing her wifely duty.
