“Does Sarah’s will allow for that?” she asked.
“Sarah’s will allows for whatever the executor says.” Literally. “As long as whatever building you end up with is named after her, you’ll have followed the letter of the law.” He flicked the reins. “I haven’t seen the first two yet myself. The buildings may not be in any condition to renovate, or they may not be large enough to suit your needs. But after today, I should have a better sense of what your needs actually are.”
They were approaching Kew Bridge over the Thames. Suddenly he felt her stiffen beside him. That’s when he remembered her aversion to water.
“Are you all right?” he asked as he slowed the horses.
“Yes.” She flashed him a game smile. “I cannot believe you remembered my silly…peculiarity.”
“It isn’t silly. And I generally remember whenever a woman goes to pieces in my arms. I don’t relish having it happen again. Not out of fear, anyway,” he teased.
She smiled gamely. “It is not a problem. I cross this bridge every time I go in to town. I am quite accustomed to it.”
Noting her pallor, he cast her a skeptical glance. “You don’t look accustomed.”
“I will be fine, I promise. Just get it over with.”
“All right.” Taking her hand, he tucked it in the crook of his elbow and then urged the horses to a quicker speed. “I won’t let anything harm you, you know.”
“I know.”
But she gripped his arm so tightly as they drove over the Thames, that he wondered if she’d leave bruises.
As soon as they were across, she relaxed, though she kept her hand on his arm. “Have I thanked you yet for taking me to see these properties?”
He snorted. “Until now, you’ve acted as if I’m mounting an attack on your life.”
A laugh escaped her. “Can I help it if I hate the idea of uprooting the entire school?” She squeezed his arm. “But I believe in keeping an open mind. And I am glad you are the one carrying me around. You see? I can be reasonable.”
“Right.” Reasonable would be her letting him handle this from now on. Which would only happen if he could convince her to marry him.
One thing at a time. Bed her first. Then marriage will naturally follow.
And once they were married, surely the problems with the school wouldn’t matter.
He hoped not, anyway. Because after they reached the first property and the land agent brought them around, David realized that convincing her to move the school might prove difficult. After years in a beautiful old Elizabethan manor, she had unrealistically high expectations.
Before they could even make it inside, Charlotte objected to the small size of the lot, to the poor condition of the drive, to the lack of adequate trees.
“You can plant trees,” he pointed out.
“Yes, but it would be years before we could have trees the size of those on our present property.”
She’d be out on her ear long before then. “How about if I trim those hedges over there to look like trees?” he snapped.
“Very amusing. Trees are important, you know. They provide shade.”
“Shade is certainly something every young lady needs for a proper education. Next you’ll be telling me that sunshine warps the mind.”
She laughed. “I just prefer trees.”
“Fine. The next property has plenty of trees.”
So off they went to Acton. Unfortunately, though the first property there had a virtual forest, it also had overgrown gardens and a soulless Palladian building that would take a great deal of work. Inside, the moldings were crumbling, every wall needed repainting, and the ceilings were black with half a century’s worth of coal and candle smoke. Worse yet, the staircase was in bad need of repair. Still, a little effort might bring it up to snuff.
But not according to Charlotte. “It’s too dark,” she announced after the agent had taken them through the entire place. “Not enough windows.”
“I see,” David said dryly. “The outside of the last property had too much sun, and the inside of this one has too little. Perhaps I should explain the concept of sunshine to you. It generally stays on the outside. That is why we have candles for the inside.”
She arched her eyebrows at him. “Are you done mocking me?”
“I’m not sure. Are you planning to say anything else mockworthy?”
“I’m planning to leave you here and go on to the next property alone if you don’t behave,” she chided.
“You don’t know where it is.”
“Then I will steal your phaeton and drive myself home.”
“Ah, but you don’t want to miss the next property.”
“Why?”
“Because it has a stable twice the size of the school’s present one.”
She sighed. “You do know the way to a woman’s heart.”
God, he hoped so. Traipsing about the countryside with her was making him hungry. Very, very hungry. Only the presence of the land agent kept him from sweeping her up in his arms on the way back to his phaeton and kissing her into the same state of mindless lust he had been stewing in for the past couple of hours.
Fortunately, the next property would have no land agent waiting for them. He smiled.
“I don’t suppose we could pick up again tomorrow,” she said as he handed her up into his rig. “That way I could go back to the school and see if there’s a letter from my cousin.”
There was no letter. David had waited to have a better sense of what to say after today’s jaunt.
“I promise you’ll love this property up the road.” He climbed into the driver’s seat and took the reins. “Besides, it seems clear to me that your cousin has decided on a tactic of benign neglect. He figures if he keeps ignoring your letters, you’ll give up and go away.”
“I don’t want to hear any more complaints about my cousin,” she grumbled as they set off. “You sound just like Terence. He doesn’t trust Cousin Michael either.”
He slanted a glance at her. “Your bodyguard doesn’t trust any man where you’re concerned.”
“Bodyguard? He’s a lady’s footman.”
“You may have hired him as such, but you use him like a bodyguard.”
She fiddled with her reticule strap. “What makes you say that?”
“Women don’t generally hire boxers as footmen.” He returned his gaze to the road. “Did you know he killed a man in the ring?”
“Yes.”
“That he was put on trial for it?”
“And was acquitted. As well he should have been. If boxing weren’t illegal, there wouldn’t even have been a trial. He deserved better, after the way he trounced Jim Belcher at the Salisbury.”
David gaped at her. “Don’t tell me you follow boxing.”
She shrugged. “I used to, when Jimmy was alive. He was an enthusiast, and I always made him bring me along so I could keep him from betting excessively. I didn’t watch, though. It was a bit too bloody for my taste.” Her voice dropped a fraction. “Especially when the women fought.”
The truth suddenly hit him, so painful it made his chest hurt. “Did your father used to hit your mother?”
Her gaze shot to him. “What? No!”
“No?” he prodded, not believing her.
She sighed. “No. But he…came very near to it a number of times. Mostly, he preferred more subtle punishments.”
Since the bastard hadn’t balked at threatening his daughter with what terrified her the most years ago, David could well imagine what sorts of punishments he’d inflicted on the mother.
They traveled some way in silence before she spoke again.
“When I was a girl, I used to pray that someone would step in to defend us, especially when Papa was saying cruel things to Mama,” she said softly. “I thought that if a man could just lay Papa out once on our behalf, he would stop his bullying. Of course, there was no one.”
David wished again that he could have been that man for her.
&
nbsp; “And anyway,” she went on, “it probably wouldn’t have worked. It would just have enraged him more.”
So once she was grown, she’d hired a footman who could lay anyone out at her command. But first…“Is that why you married Harris?”
“What do you mean?”
“Did you marry him so he could protect you from your father after that letter came out in the papers?” Belatedly, it had dawned on him that if she hadn’t sent the letter to the paper, then she hadn’t anticipated how her father might punish her for it. “That is, assuming your father had guessed who’d written it.”
“Oh, he guessed,” she said in a hollow voice. “He knew at once it was me.”
A chill passed over him. “So that’s why you ran away with Harris.”
“Yes,” she admitted. “That very day. While Papa was still ranting to Mama about it, Jimmy came to the house and found me alone in the garden, fretting over what was going to happen. He offered to take me away. I knew Papa would lock me up forever if I didn’t seize the chance to leave then, so I did.”
David gripped the reins as if they were a lifeline. Harris had offered marriage because he had not. Because he had been too much of a coward, too intent upon protecting himself and his pride to explore why Charlotte had changed from his sweetheart into his enemy overnight.
“Clever fellow, your Jimmy,” he said hoarsely. They’d reached the next property. He drove up in front of the building, then turned to her. “He knew to strike when you were at your most vulnerable.”
“It wasn’t like that.”
“No? Did he not get the benefit of your dowry and inheritance?”
“Yes, but he didn’t do it for that reason.”
“Really? So Harris is not the reason you drill into your students the lesson that fortune hunters are to be avoided at all costs?”
“No.”
Before he could respond to that astonishing remark, she climbed down from the phaeton and headed up the steps of the building.
Handing the reins over to his tiger, he hurried after her with a building feeling of dread. “Then who is the reason?”
She stopped short on the top step. “Where’s the land agent?”
That momentarily distracted him. “There isn’t one. The owner gave me the key. He didn’t want to come all the way out here just to show the property. Told me to look around to my heart’s content.”
As the ramifications of that hit her, she sucked in a harsh breath. “So we…have the place to ourselves?”
He unlocked the door. “Exactly.” Holding the door open, he met her startled gaze with one of challenge. “Shall we go in?”
She glanced to where his tiger was driving the phaeton off to the nearby stables, and a hint of panic touched her face.
But it was gone in a flash, replaced by a tentative smile. “Why not?”
His blood thundered in his ears. He led her inside, then closed and locked the door behind them.
But he was not so far gone that he’d forgotten their previous conversation. Backing her against the door, he planted his hands on either side of her shoulders. “Answer the question, Charlotte. If Harris didn’t inspire your heiress lessons, then who did?”
“I’m sorry, David,” she said, her eyes not meeting his. “You did.”
Chapter Fifteen
Charlotte winced to see anger flaring in David’s face.
“The hell I did,” he ground out.
“Please, you have to understand—”
“I did not court you for your money, damn it!”
“I know,” she said softly. “I know it now, in any case.”
His eyes looked haunted. She couldn’t bear to see it, knowing how sorely she had misjudged him years ago.
Slipping under his arm, she wandered down the marble-floored hall. “But back then I thought you had only pretended to care about me to gain my fortune. I believed it for years. And it didn’t help that you married Sarah for her money.”
“Because I had no choice!” he ground out as he followed hard on her heels.
“I realize that now. Giles explained it very well.”
“Yes, he told me last night about encountering you at some social affair a few years ago. You believed him when he told you I never bedded Molly, yet you didn’t give me the chance to argue it for myself!”
“Don’t you think I have tortured myself over that ever since?” She halted, her stomach knotting to remember the effect of Giles’s revelation on her that night. “Bad enough that I wrote that horrible letter and that it ended up published, but to realize that I had done it so foolishly…”
A sob caught in her throat. He slid up behind her. Catching her about the waist, he pulled her back into his arms. “Why didn’t you come to me? Why didn’t you ask me about Molly?”
“Because I was stupid and young and terrified of my father. I thought that you and he…that you would tell him, and he would make me…”
“My God, sweeting,” he said hoarsely. “I would never have done that to you.”
“I realize that now.” Her voice dropped low. “When I sent the letter, part of me prayed that you would come after me when you read it. I so wanted to be proved wrong, yet I didn’t dare believe it…”
“Instead it went to the paper, and I was too proud, too horrified to attempt to get you back. What a fool I was.” The anguish in his tone was unmistakable. “Did my chatty little brother happen to tell you what I did to him after he revealed how he’d acted with Molly that night?”
She wrapped her arms over the arm that manacled her waist. “No,” she breathed.
“I beat him within an inch of his life.” The scent of his spicy cologne intoxicated her, and when he kissed a path to her ear, her blood roared in her veins. “We didn’t speak for a long time because I was so angry. Because he’d lost me the only woman I’d ever cared for.”
The tender words made a wild alarm rise in her breast. She had convinced herself that this could work, that they could have an affair as long as she did not let her heart become engaged. She had to keep herself safe. There were so many reasons not to hope for more from him.
But when he spoke of how he felt, it roused her hopes dangerously. She did not dare believe in it. Instead, she turned in his arms to press a finger to his lips. “Shh, no more talking.” Then she replaced her finger with her mouth.
He hesitated a fraction, then gave in with a groan, kissing her ravenously, drawing her up against the length of his hard body as their tongues warred. Still kissing her, he tore at the bows on her gown, untying them one by one.
She made no protest, looping her arms about his neck as he opened her bodice clear down to her waist. Reaching inside, he jerked down her corset cups so he could fondle her breast through her chemise, thumbing her nipple into a hard point beneath his hand.
But when she tried to push his coat off, he drew back to growl, “Not here.”
Her heart nearly stopped. “But I thought we…I thought you wanted—”
“I do,” he clarified hastily. “Just not in the hall. I’ve waited half a lifetime to have you, and I’m not going to take you on the bare floor.” Clasping her by the waist, he tugged her toward an open door. “Come on, sweeting. This way.”
Seconds later, he led her into a small sitting room. Charlotte stared around her in a daze of frustrated desire. There was one spindly chair and a rickety table bearing a picnic basket. But most telling was the pallet laid before the hearth.
“You…you planned this?” she accused, then realized how stupid that sounded. The house with the key…his comment back at the school. Of course he had arranged it ahead of time.
With a devilish smile, David released her to go light an impressive stack of wood in the fireplace. “I always plan.” He struck the flint until it sparked and caught on the kindling. “You ought to know that about me by now.”
A laugh bubbled out of her as she remembered their picnic across from Saddle Island years ago. “And here I was thinking how
wicked we are to be doing this in some stranger’s house. Should I be flattered or insulted that you felt so sure of me?”
“Sure!” Shaking his head, he nursed the tiny fire into a roaring flame. “No man has ever been less sure of a woman in his life.” He rose to fix her with an unreadable gaze. “I believe in being prepared. But I said this had to be mutual, and I meant it. If you want to leave—”
“No,” she cut in.
His eyes glittered darkly as he came toward her, shucking his coat and tossing it onto the lone chair. “I’ve done nothing since yesterday but think of making love to you.”
Truth be told, neither had she. “Aren’t you worried that someone will come along—”
“No,” he said as he reached her. “We’re alone here. I swear it.”
“In that case…” She began to untie the rest of the bows on her pelisse-robe, but he halted her with one hand.
“Let me,” he murmured. “I can’t tell you how often I’ve imagined undressing you.”
Her breath seemed lodged way down in her throat as he undid bow after bow, his hands fumbling a little. She was glad he was as nervous as she was.
Perversely, that emboldened her. She unbuttoned his waistcoat, her blood heating at the idea of seeing him naked for the first time. “I assume that the owner of this fine house doesn’t know you are appropriating his property for an illicit affair.”
He shed his waistcoat. “Certainly not. But I don’t think he’d care. In my place, he’d do the same.”
That perplexed her. “Who is it?” she asked as she slipped off her gown and petticoat, then threw them onto the chair with his coat.
“Stoneville.” He circled behind her to unlace her, his breath hot upon her neck.
“Stoneville!” Lord Stoneville was not only David’s friend, but a friend to the school, along with Anthony and Simon Tremaine, the Duke of Foxmoor. “But why—”
“He’s strapped for funds and has decided to rid himself of this place. I told him I’d take a look at it.” With her corset off, he rounded her again. “I neglected to mention that you’d be with me, of course, but fortunately he was having too much fun in town to come show us around.”
The School for Heiresses: 'Wed Him Before You Bed Him Page 17
