He said nothing.
“Come now. You have seen me in my shift. The least you can do now is to share this mystery.”
Which was true.
“Fortier and I occasionally do odd jobs for the government. We are now on the trail of a thief who has been cozening defenseless women into giving over their money to a noble cause, and then pocketing it all instead.”
Her perfect lips fell open. He wanted them beneath his. Then the rest of her beneath the rest of him too.
“The government?” she said. “Are you spies?”
“No. I have plenty to see to at Kentwood, with my mother trying to run the place like it’s a charitable foundation and my sisters getting into endless scrapes. And Fortier is not even English, of course. We are merely helping out a bit, doing tasks it’s easy to do under cover of roguish foolery.”
“You have done this before? How many times?”
“A handful.” Dozens. “During the war it was mostly passing messages between actual spies at social gatherings. That sort of thing. Nothing spectacular.”
“Actual spies?” She was still gaping and it took every mote of self-restraint in him not to cover those lips with his. “Horace Church, you are a hero! You and Lord Fortier.”
“Nothing so grand. Only doing my duty to the kingdom.”
“I daresay you do that well enough in Parliament.” Pink was stealing into her cheeks again.
“You are blushing,” he said, his voice rumbling over Charlotte’s tingling nerves like hot chocolate slipping over one’s tongue. He smiled slightly. “I wonder why.”
“I am not,” she said, lifting her hand over a fiery cheek.
His fingers wrapped around it, his fingertips caressing her skin tenderly, decadently.
“Don’t cover it,” he said, drawing her hand downward. “This is wholly intriguing. I don’t think I have ever seen you blush before.”
He would have seen her blush if he had bothered to look at her even once that sennight of the party at Cheriot Manor, after she had found him insensible and bleeding in the wood. Only thirteen, she had already loved him, and she had been out of her mind with panic when he would not rouse to her voice. When he finally had, awakening with a start, he had said nothing to her. Nothing. Without a word, he had extracted his hand from hers, wiped the blood from his face, climbed to his knees in silence, then his feet, and, stumbling at first, walked away. He had not looked back.
And then he had not looked at her again the entire duration of the house party.
Shame over that dismissal—and terrible hurt—had kept her cheeks ruddy that whole sennight. Even her father had asked if she was ill.
Not ill. Only foolish—foolish to fall in love with a boy who never looked at her and who was promised to another girl—a girl who would never for any reason be found on her knees in the bracken in the woods, dripping with sweat from having just run miles, her hair in a tight tail to keep it away from her face, and wearing her maid’s cast-off homespun instead of delicate muslin.
Yet her infatuation had persisted, because only that once had he treated her poorly. Once in all the years they had known each other. At all other times he had been perfect: kind, generous, funny, intelligent, fair, just, and good.
It had been very easy to love him.
She extracted her hand from his now.
“You suspect Mr. Sheridan is the man cheating women out of their money?” she said.
He nodded. “Fortier and I believe Miss Mapplethorpe is his intended victim this time.”
“Oh, no! She is a darling. I will stay close to her.”
“Not too close.”
“Why not?”
“We cannot apprehend Sheridan without proof. Unfortunately, Miss Mapplethorpe must be taken in by him before we expose him.”
“I see. All right.”
“You will not confront Sheridan,” he said.
The tingling returned, this time beneath her ribs. He was not telling her to stay out of the intrigue entirely. He trusted her.
“I will not,” she said. “What shall I do if I learn anything of use?”
“Find me. Tell me.”
“You are Mr. Church,” she said, wanting to smile. “While Lady Charlotte Ascot might seek conversation with the Duke of Frye without censure under these circumstances, she cannot very well do so with a strange mister, under any circumstances, now can she?”
“Find me,” he said again, his gaze dropping to her lips.
With a nod, she hurried out of the carriage house. They had achieved a friendly armistice. But she still did not trust him. Not entirely. Not until she had spoken with her friends at Kingstag and learned the entire story of the dissolution of the eighteen-year-long betrothal between the Duke of Frye and Lady Serena Cavendish.
Chapter Eight
Christmas Eve.
The taproom and kitchen.
The ground floor of the Fiddler’s Roost had been fitted out for Christmas. Evergreen boughs decorated with ribbons hung from each lintel, candles glowed cheerily, and the innkeeper had mixed up a bowl of punch. A space had even been cleared for dancing after the feast.
Frye knew he ought to be following Sheridan’s every move now, especially as everybody was relaxed and this would be the ideal time for the blackguard to ingratiate himself further with Miss Mapplethorpe. But Freddie, again pretending to imbibe with Anderson, the innkeeper, and now the coachmen, was covertly watching their quarry too.
And Frye simply could not manage to look away from Charlotte.
Nearly all evening she had been playing with the children, running about with them, tossing rings and making paper chains to hang on the boughs, singing carols and laughing with them like a girl herself.
He wanted that. Every day. Her. Playing with children. His children. Their children. The longing was wedged beneath his ribs like a heated brick: heavy and searing.
He was only twenty-five. He did not know another man his age in his social set who would admit to longing for children. Perhaps none of them knew that they could never have children, that they could never give themselves to a woman like he ached to give himself to Charlotte Ascot. Perhaps if they did, they would feel this awful pressure of hopelessness in their chests too. This loneliness.
When he had finally told his mother he intended to break it off with Serena Cavendish, she attempted to convince him otherwise. Lovingly she had insisted he could have a family and be happy. He had seen the tears spring up behind her eyes, the tears she had been unable to withhold when his father died at the age of thirty-six. She had begged him to reconsider.
But she did not know how he felt about Charlotte.
The final children’s game wrapped up with a rain of confetti and a flurry of laughter and exhausted little bodies strewn across the floor.
“Now, dancing!” the innkeeper announced, lodging a fiddle betwixt chin and shoulder, and struck up a tune.
Frye went directly to Charlotte.
“My lady, may I have this dance?”
Urging the last of the children toward their mother on the stairs, she looked at his extended hand, then into his eyes—and the whole world seemed brighter, life more precious than Frye had ever thought it could be. She was shining, pink with exertion and joy. An earl’s daughter, yet she had donned no jewels or costly ball gown. She wore a simple dress the color of roses and ribbons in her hair that tumbled now halfway down her back in soft curls.
“Thank you, Mr. Church.” She placed her fingers on his palm and he nearly fell over.
Eight years and five months: a lifetime since she had last willingly taken his hand with her strong fingers that day in the wood. He had been so ashamed that she had seen him helpless like that, he hadn’t been able to speak to her, even to look at her, for the remainder of that sennight at Cheriot Manor. Yet she had said nothing, not to him and not to anyone, about what she had seen. To his knowledge, she never had.
It was their secret.
Now she offered him a small sm
ile and entered the pattern with him. It separated them soon enough, but he was not to be deterred.
“What did you do while you were in America, Lady Charlotte?” he said when he again had the sublime pleasure of her hand in his.
“Do?” she asked with a lifted brow. “Oh, well, each day I dined on pheasant and chocolates decorated with gold leaf, and each evening dashing gentlemen showered me with poetry and posies.”
He smiled. “I have no doubt of the latter.”
“Don’t try to flatter me, sir,” she said with a flick of her fan. “I have seen you practice flatteries on others and am not impressed.”
“Tell me truly, Charlotte,” he said. “How did you pass thirty months away from England?”
“My Aunt Imogene is an eccentric. Consequently, I had a lot of adventures.”
“Climbing mountains, sailing up rivers, and riding in hot air balloons? Those sorts of rugged American adventures?” He could imagine her embracing every one of them.
“Rather, nursing poor sailors, reading stories to orphan children, and serving food to starving war veterans. I told you she is an eccentric. But in truth, it was a grand time. I met many interesting people,” she said. “Oh, don’t look at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“As though I have grown horns atop my head.”
“I am not looking at you as though you have grown horns atop your head.”
“You are.”
“I am not. You are an extraordinary woman.”
“I am a lady,” she corrected him, arching her brows.
She had never flirted with him before. Of course.
This was a good sign.
“An extraordinary lady,” he said with bow.
“When I was very young,” she said seriously, “my mother told me that I must always care for those in need. She said not wealth or beauty or blood, but compassion was what truly made a lady. I have never forgotten those words. At least, my aunt made certain I would not.”
He drew her close, closer than the dance required, and they halted in the middle of the room. Nobody noticed. The fiddling and dancing and clapping swirled around them.
He simply had to touch her. More than the gorgeous touch of her hand on his palm. More and more and more, and damn every fear within him telling him he mustn’t, that the more he had of her now the harder it would be when he had none of her.
He led her from the dance floor and into the foyer.
“Where are we going?” she said, glancing back, but not resisting as he drew her into the kitchen. The room was empty, everybody making merry in the taproom.
She looked into his eyes. “Shouldn’t we—” Then the kitchen door was closing and they were immersed in the scents of Christmas cooking and entirely alone.
He wrapped his hand around the back of her neck. Her hair was silky and heavy over his knuckles, beautiful, and her skin warm and so damn soft.
“You should kiss me,” he said above her lips.
His lips on hers were soft, commanding, intoxicating. Charlotte didn’t know quite how it happened, but within seconds she was leaning back against the doorjamb and parting her lips to let him kiss her more deeply. Then his other hand was on her waist, his body brushing hers—barely—her knees then her thighs, then the tips of her breasts that were agonizingly tender.
“Touch me, Charlotte,” he said roughly. “Put your hands on me.”
She did, her fingers curving around his elbows and shifting to his arms. Beneath the fine fabric of his coat he was all unyielding muscle. A rumbling sound came from deep in his chest.
“Yes,” he whispered against her lips.
“Yes?”
“A thousand times yes.” He sounded entirely unsteady. Her heartbeats were unbridled, wild, her body thoroughly hot and aching. She wanted to lick his lips that were kissing hers so beautifully. She wanted to delve completely inside him and devour him.
Darting the tip of her tongue out between her teeth, she stroked his.
Instantly he drew back from her mouth. His eyes were fevered, his breathing fast.
Then his arm was wrapping around her waist, and he was pulling her against him entirely and capturing her mouth beneath his.
It was more than a kiss. It was lips seeking, tasting, getting as close as possible, inseparable, and tongues laving, feeding, ravenous for more. Everywhere he touched her she was wild for more, wild to press against him more tightly, to feel every gloriously hard inch of him with her own body. She was wholly wanton and she didn’t care. His hands holding her were strong, certain, his lips a maiden’s fantasy.
Then both of his hands were in her hair and he was bearing her up against the wall and she was frantic from need racing through her, in her tongue that he stroked as though he would consume her, and in her hands that wanted to feel every taut inch of his arms and chest. The sensation of the contours of his body beneath her palms set off heavy blooms of heat and pleasure between her legs. She wanted to feel the skin over that taut muscle, to feel the hard surface of his bare belly against hers, their thighs together without layers of fabric, and the cruelly tight peaks of her breasts against any part of him. She had wanted to touch him for so long, helplessly, hopelessly. Now she needed to touch all of him at once.
Sweeping his hands over her shoulders and down her back, he held her hips hard against his and his lips served her—her tongue and teeth and the corners of her mouth, then her throat.
Her tiny cap sleeve was slipping over her shoulder, then lower, his fingers tugging it, his lips following where her skin was laid bare. She moaned, loving his mouth on her, the heat of his breath and his tongue.
“Not enough,” she heard him utter so deeply she thought it might be her imagination. “This is not enough.” His words were exactly what her heart was shouting. “Beautiful woman. We must cease this.” He sounded breathless. Bewildered. Desperate.
Cease?
Cease.
She dragged herself away and fell against the opposite counter. His cravat was destroyed, his shirt pulled halfway out of his trousers from where her hands had sought him, and his perfect lips damp and parted. He was everything she had always wanted. Always. She could not even remember what it was like not to love him.
“We cannot do this,” he said. His eyes upon her lips looked dark and full of confusion.
“We cannot?” she panted.
His fevered gaze went to her exposed shoulder. “No.”
“Here? Oh, of course.” She pulled her sleeve back up. “You should not undress me here.”
“I must not undress you anywhere.”
She tried to think, but the feeling part of her seemed thoroughly in control.
“Two months ago you were betrothed to my friend,” she said, reminding herself of the reason she should in fact not be kissing him now, not until she was able to speak with Serena.
After a moment’s pause, he nodded. “Yes.”
Yet he had kissed her anyway. Unpleasant feelings smothered the pleasure.
“Did you kiss Nancy like that last night?”
“Nancy.” His brow crinkled, then his eyes snapped wide. “Nancy, at this inn? The barmaid?”
“Yes.”
Anger sparked in the blue. “No.”
“Well, you needn’t take offense.”
“For pity’s sake, Charlotte,” he said, raking his fingers through his hair. His eyes were afire. “Is that what you think of me?”
“I don’t know what to think of you! You just kissed me and then said we cannot.”
“I was flirting with her to learn what she knows of Sheridan.”
“Why would she know anything of Mr. Sheridan?”
“Because she spent two hours in his bedchamber last night.”
“Oh. I see.”
“I am sorry I had to tell you that.”
“I forced you to.”
He cast her a dark look. “A man of honor does not tarry with maidservants.”
“A man of honor does no
t break off an engagement of eighteen years’ duration, either.”
“He does if he must,” he said grimly. Then he turned away from her, only halfway, and she saw the hard rise and fall of his shoulders. He ran his hand through his hair again, then over his face and she wanted to be his hands, to feel the angles and textures of his features. She wanted to feel every inch of him. “You are impressively loyal to your friend,” he said.
“Of course I am.”
He turned to her and there was warmth in his eyes, and something else. Admiration.
“If I could inspire that sort of devotion in you,” he said, “it would make me the happiest man on earth.”
“You are a tease, Horace Church,” she said with a little break in her voice that made her furious.
“Only honest.” Finally. And it felt fantastically good. To no satisfying end, of course. He could never actually court her. But it felt incredible saying this aloud to her. And kissing her . . . There she stood, her hair undone by his hands, her lips soft and reddened by his kiss, and her cheeks as rosy as her gown. “It is not true—the reason I gave yesterday for kissing you.”
The lashes fanned about her storm cloud eyes. “You do not think I am kissable after all?”
“God, yes. Obviously. More than kissable. Much more,” he said without perfect control of his voice, or that other part of him that wanted the much more now, immediately.
“I don’t understand,” she said.
“The truth is, I have wanted to kiss you for years.”
“Years?” she said in little more than a whisper.
“Years.” Every sinew and muscle in his body was tight and hard and wanting her. “But Charlotte . . .”
She looked abruptly wary.
Good.
“What?”
He had to make himself say it. “I have no intention of marrying. Ever.”
“Ever?”
He nodded.
For a moment she said nothing.
“But you are a duke. You . . . There are expectations.”
“I already have an heir. My brother is an exceptional person, intelligent, moral, dedicated to the people of Frye, to our family, and to England.” And his younger brother Preston did not fear falling from his horse suddenly, or losing control of his carriage in traffic, or the world believing he was possessed by the devil at worst and insane at best, every day of his life. “I needn’t marry.”
At the Christmas Wedding Page 22
