It was their first chance to speak privately all day. He had ridden down from London and arrived just this morning. She and her lady’s maid had traveled by her coach from Laclere Park yesterday.
The arrangements for this tour of western Sussex’s coastal region had all been his, communicated to her from London by post. He had planned the route they would take once they left New Shoreham this afternoon, and the towns they would visit. He had located the inns where they would stay, and the fishing villages they would investigate. He had even had the petitions prepared.
It had all been managed with precision and with no effort on her part. She was able to remain at Laclere Park and spend the last few days with her sister and brothers, making sure that Fleur regained her strength.
Which meant that until Nathaniel walked into Mrs. Darby’s drawing room today, Charlotte had not seen him since he departed Laclere Park the morning after Fleur had given birth.
She had thought about him, however. He had thoroughly intruded on her emotions, making a jumble of them. Anticipating his arrival this morning had caused a building nervousness. The notion of spending several days in his company did nothing to quell her churning stomach now.
At some point on this journey he would again raise the matter of her behavior at that party. She did not think that she would like hearing what he intended to say.
As for herself, there was not much that she could say.
That conversation now hung in the air waiting for its moment. It crackled between them as they walked down the lane of shops.
She felt his attention and caught him looking at her with a sidelong gaze. His eyes reflected a subtle, new familiarity, and she felt herself flushing. She turned her own attention to the passing stores.
That same knowing had been in his eyes that last night at Laclere Park, while they joined the celebration and spoke of commonplace things.
It had penetrated her the next day as he bid adieu.
It was present when he greeted her this morning, and right now, as they strolled silently toward the churchyard, it affected his whole presence.
His awareness of what she had done, and what they had shared, drenched the mood between them.
She should have known it would be visible. Palpable. She should have guessed that when it wasn’t, that meant he did not know she had been with him that night, or at least was not sure.
He was sure now. For some reason, he had become sure that day at Laclere Park.
They crossed the lane and aimed for the gate of the churchyard.
“Mrs. Duclairc is well?” he asked. “The boy is healthy?”
“Both are flourishing. They will name the child Vergil, after my brother. Laclere was so moved when Dante told him, he had to leave the room. Dante says you helped save his sanity, so I think you have a friend for life now.”
He opened the gate and stood aside for her. As she passed him she saw a vague smile toy with his lips.
“What is amusing?” she asked.
He closed the gate and fell into step again as they strolled through the plantings. “I think that you exaggerate his new devotion to our friendship. I suspect that either he or Laclere would call me out if they knew about that party.”
Her heart flipped. She glanced around, hoping to see evidence this topic could be delayed. Unfortunately, no one else was visiting the churchyard today. They were alone in the garden.
He aimed their walk to a far corner. The little internal jig that his presence always provoked turned into a dervish’s spin.
She cleared her throat. “It isn’t as if Dante hasn’t . . . and as for Laclere, I have cause to think . . . that is, I do not believe either would be so hypocritical as to call you out.”
His eyes were very bright now. The vague smile expanded into an expression dark and sardonic. “Yes, Dante attended Lyndale’s parties, and Laclere was no saint, despite what everyone assumed. However, I do not think they would agree that their own behavior excuses mine toward you.”
“I am not a child. It is no longer their concern.”
“You are their little sister. In their minds, you will always need protection.”
They had reached the end of the path. He stopped and faced her. The branches of a fruit tree formed a canopy over their heads. The spindly lines were swollen and red, impatient for the warmth that would allow them to bud.
“I could always plead ignorance, I suppose.” He speared her with that new look. “You, however, cannot.”
A weak smile quivered on her lips, but died. She had never been at such a disadvantage in her life.
He gazed down at her with an indescribable expression. One that mixed amusement, dismay, and anger.
“Whatever were you thinking, Charlotte?”
Whatever were you thinking, Charlotte?
She looked away. She considered his question at length. What had she been thinking?
She summoned the memories of that week, and the mood that had led her to that party. She had plunged headlong into the preparations, delighting in the secrecy and the madness of what she plotted. She had been heady from her own audacity. Once she made the decision, it became an exciting, enlivening adventure.
It was not those thoughts that explained her behavior, however. Other, less pleasant ones had spurred the impulse that sent her, masked and anonymous, to that party.
“I was thinking that my life was very dull,” she said. “I had been to a dinner party and Lyndale was seated beside me. He asked when I intended to drop the mourning. That shocked me. I have not been mourning all this time. But his words held up a looking glass. I saw what he saw. I realized that while I had not been in protracted mourning, I had not really been living either.”
She looked back at him. She could not fathom his reaction from his eyes. Her explanation sounded very thin to her own ears.
She tried again. “Six years had passed. Six years in which nothing of significance had happened in my life. All around me there was drama, but I was in the wings, watching. Even Penelope—God forgive me, she suffered so, but at least she was finally experiencing something besides the vacant, bland, seamless movement of time. There is such a thing as being too comfortable, don’t you think?”
“I suppose there is.”
“I had only experienced one true emotion during that time. It stirred me so profoundly that it made my heart and soul appear a wasteland in comparison. That was my growing love for little Ambrose. I wondered at it. Savored it. That love reminded me that I was alive, but mostly dormant. And suddenly, one day I woke up and it was not enough, none of it was. Not my station, nor my family, nor my memories.”
She could not go on. There were no words for the desperation that gripped her that day. She could not convey the horrible restlessness, as if her life had become a casket entombing her before her time. She could never tell this man about the night she gazed in the looking glass and finally saw what was there—a pretty woman, no longer so young, for whom time was moving fast.
Whom life was passing by.
Sadness slid through her. And disappointment. She began walking back to Mrs. Darby’s.
He caught her arm and stopped her. “Charl—”
“No. Let me go. You are demanding an explanation that I cannot put into words. You were the last person I thought would chastise me. I thought you understood. I thought you just knew. I did not go to that party intending to . . . I wanted to be shocking and daring, that is true. I ached to shake up my boring soul by doing something reckless and outrageous. But I only intended to see what all the whispers were about, not to participate.” She glared back at him. “I thought you understood that too.”
“I am not seeking to chastise, but to learn where your mind was.”
“My mind? It was half mad, in ways I suspect a man’s never is.” She jerked her arm. “Let me go, Nathaniel. Please. It was my hope that you would never discover it had been me. I suppose I knew it would be ruined if you did.”
“I will let you go if y
ou want, after I ask one question.”
Sick at heart, and resentful at the humiliation making her feel like the biggest fool ever born, she faced him.
“Ask your question, Nathaniel.”
His eyes burned. With what? Anger? She could not tell. His expression was crisp, however. Chiseled and set.
“Why me?”
Her heart fell even lower. “Oh, that question.”
“I think it is a good one.”
It certainly was. She had asked it of herself a hundred times since that night.
“I wish I could say something arch, such as you were the first man available, but that would be dishonest.”
“I am relieved to hear it.”
Dishonest, but easier. “At first I felt safe with you. I knew you, even if you did not know me. And because you did not know me, it was a different you from the one I knew. And then . . . I said so little, but I felt that you comprehended the volumes that remained unspoken, and then . . .” How to put it in words? How to explain that he might as well have been wearing a mask too. The emotions were that startling and unexpected. That new.
She was grateful when he did not press her for more. He simply continued to gaze with that invasive speculation, that binding familiarity.
His eyes did not comfort or absorb her, however. That look only increased the awkwardness and her embarrassment. She had left that party thinking that every word she had just spoken in this garden would have been unnecessary with him.
Apparently not. Her memories of that night were fantasies, created to appease her conscience. This man was appalled, and trying valiantly not to show it.
“You think badly of me. You were shocked to realize it was me.”
“I was shocked, but I do not think badly of you. If I have implied that, I am sorry. I am not secure in what I think. I have not been able to move beyond the realization that I have compromised you in the worst way.”
“You had good reason to believe I was a woman beyond compromise. You cannot compromise someone if you don’t even know who she is.”
“Normally I would agree. We found a way for me to do it, all the same. Furthermore, I do know who she is now and my honor commands that I find some solution to the dilemma.”
“That is the reason for this interrogation?” A different kind of disappointment spread. A distinctly annoyed one.
Here she was, close to tears over the death of a transcendent dream, and he was plodding along, seeking to find a path back to dull respectability.
“Put your mind at rest. I do not hold you responsible. You have no obligations to my reputation.”
“I disagree. Eventually it will come out. Lyndale knows, I am sure.” He began strolling slowly, as if stepping through his thoughts. He moved back and forth beneath the tree.
“Did he tell you it was I in that mask?”
“No, but he knows. I can tell. He knows it was you and he knows you and I—well, he knows. You are aware of how tactless he is. Someday he will be talking about something else entirely, and in a flood of wit, out it will come.”
“I am sure he will be discreet.”
Nathaniel shot her a glance of supreme skepticism. Since Lyndale was not celebrated for discretion, she had no words to defend him.
“So, here we are, Charlotte. Your situation is dangerous.”
“I disagree. It would not ruin me, not totally, even if it became known.”
“Nonsense. Your position would be damaged beyond redemption. I have contemplated this for several days and concluded there is only one way to rectify my behavior—”
“Don’t you mean our behavior? It is very good of you to take all the blame yourself, but—”
He stopped walking and raised a hand to silence her. “Lady M., I must ask that for once you restrain from interrupting and contradicting me. In the best of circumstances it is—just allow me a few sentences in peace, if you will.”
“Of course, Mr. Knightridge.”
He inhaled audibly and found his stride again. “The course is clear, I think you will agree.”
She watched him stroll, to and fro, much as he did in a courtroom. Too relaxed for pacing. Too deliberate for meandering. This was a way of declaring dominance of a territory.
“There is only one thing to do. We should wed at once. If we are married when gossip spreads, it will not affect you nearly as much. I procured the special license before I left London.”
She stared at him. He spoke as if she had been anticipating such a suggestion. He threw out the notion of marriage as calmly as if he were announcing which route they would take back to London.
He stopped moving and gazed at the church. “We may as well do it here, before we leave. I will speak with the vicar.”
“I think that we should first—”
“I will arrange it for tomorrow morning.”
“There is no reason to be hasty. After all—”
“It will not even delay our progress much.”
“Mr. Knightridge.”
He looked over, startled by her sharp tone.
“Mr. Knightridge—Nathaniel—you are very good to want to rectify matters, and to be so protective of my reputation. This is very noble of you. However . . .”
He cocked his head when the pause lengthened. “However?”
She sighed. It seemed to her that the however was obvious. “We do not like each other, Nathaniel.”
“So you keep reminding me. However, recent evidence indicates we like each other well enough.”
“That was only because you did not know who I was that night.”
“I have known who you were since that night.”
“I see. You are not referring to our big indiscretion but to our more recent, smaller ones.” Her mind groped for a rationalization. “I will admit those are harder to explain.”
“Not at all. As I said, a wall crumbled. My soul recognized you even if my brain insisted on being blind. I wondered, you know. Every time we kissed, my instincts kept suggesting the possibility, but my mind said, Impossible. Charlotte Mardenford does not attend such parties and have casual liaisons with you, of all men. You might have told me. At least our sudden impulse toward little indiscretions would have made some sense.”
An edge of anger entered the last sentences. It held her response in check. Dismissing that desire as no more than silly kisses and flirtations would not be wise today.
“Despite the intimacies between us, it would be rash to marry. There is no need, and there is still much that divides us. Even this proposal was marked by contention. You cannot really want this. You merely feel obligated. That reflects well on your honor, but I am not a young girl who requires marriage to save her reputation. Therefore, I decline.”
His expression hardened. He paced toward her until he was mere inches away. He looked down.
“It was an orgy, Charlotte. We were not alone in that chamber. If it is learned you were there, you will be ridiculed and scorned. If it is discovered that you were there with me, whom the world knows you do not like, it will be thought that you are not only promiscuous, but coldly so.”
Is that what he thought? That she was a scandalous lady of sin? She suspected it was.
“I do not think it will be learned I was there. Even you did not know it until now. Lyndale is a better man than you say, and he will not betray me. Nor will you.”
His gaze warmed. Suddenly she was looking into the eyes that had captivated her that night. Her soul responded with an ache of yearning. They may not like each other, and he might be a threat to other memories and securities, but that night had forged a unity. That bond could pull at her now whenever he acknowledged it existed.
“I have tried to deal fairly with you,” he said.
“I appreciate it. I truly do.”
“Your rejection leaves me only one recourse, and that is to seduce you.”
“That is an odd conclusion to this conversation. I would not say that is the only recourse.”
“I
see no other.”
“Restraint? Gracious retreat? Friendship?”
“I am not inclined to be restrained with you. Nor have you demanded it from me of late.”
That was true, but things were different now. If she allowed further liberties, if she succumbed to a seduction, it might destroy what little remained of her memories of that night. They might be fantasies, but they were beautiful ones and very dear to her. If she permitted another indiscretion now that she knew he knew, she might be forced to learn for certain that she had been a promiscuous fool.
He crooked a finger under her chin and tilted her face up. “I look at you now and all I see are the eyes gazing up at me while I held you that night.”
She felt her face warming. “I suppose that could be inconvenient until it passed. Surely it is only a small problem, however.”
“A small problem? You do not know men well.” He glossed the backs of his fingertips over her cheek. His touch made her light-headed. “I must have you at least one more time, Charlotte. Otherwise I will never know.”
A creak at the gate penetrated her swimming senses. Voices broke the silence of the yard. He glanced over at the sounds. His hand left her face.
“You will never know what, Nathaniel?”
They began retracing their path through the garden. He looked to the intruders but his eyes were hooded, as if he really looked inside himself. “I will just never know.”
CHAPTER
ELEVEN
He had to know, that was all there was to it.
Had he imagined the best of that night? Had he merely been besotted by the mood, the lighting, the mystery?
If so, he would let reality demolish the illusions. He was not inclined to live his life nostalgic over an experience that had been a fraud.
Evidence indicated that Charlotte had used him badly. Played him for a fool, to be frank about it. She may not have intended to. Unhappiness may have driven her to take impulsive risks, but she had still deceived him.
And yet . . . well, he had to know.
She was on her guard as they continued their little journey. She kept her abigail close and even insisted the maid share her chamber at inns. She managed never to be alone with him, as if she feared he would commence a seduction at the least provocation.
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