At the Christmas Wedding

by Caroline Linden

  “No,” he said, taking her earlobe between his teeth and sending decadent shivers all through her. “This is a hell yes.”

  He picked her up and carried her to his bed.

  It began with kisses. Copious kisses. Kisses on her throat and earlobes and neck and shoulders and the tips of her fingers and her palms and the tender inside of her elbows. Kisses that were soft and hot at first, and soon hungry and deep and that made Charlotte feel she might expire if he didn’t kiss there and there and everywhere all at once.

  Then there were touches. Delectable touches. Some in places that she had not even known she liked to be touched. She had never known, for instance, that the caress of a single fingertip along her forearm could make her want to press her entire body against a man—this man. And she had never known that slow, light strokes up her calves could cause her knees to part as though she weren’t even doing it on purpose.

  Then there was the remarkable experience of being undressed. She wore only two garments, both of them uncomplicated by too many fasteners. He made the removal of them a maddening seduction. As he drew back the fabric to reveal each bit of her skin, he kissed her there and touched her.

  In a very short time she was breathless, clinging to him and saying words like “yes” and “please” and “oh, yes” and “please now” over and over.

  It was then that he invited her to undress him.

  A little shocked at first, she quickly decided it was the most fun she had ever had. All over he was smooth, taut, warm skin and contoured muscle. Her tongue wanted to taste it.

  “Go ahead,” he whispered, watching her lips hover over his chest as she drew his scent deep into her and felt her entire body grow all hot and achy and liquid, especially between her legs.

  “Go ahead?” she whispered back.

  “Kiss me, Charlotte.”

  She complied, touching her lips to the hard muscle so gently at first that it only made her hungrier. Then she pressed her lips fully to him, parted them and tasted his skin, and she got even hungrier. And while she kissed him, she did as he had offered: she undressed him. With more kisses and tastes and astonishing discoveries, she lost herself in the task.

  When he was finally entirely undressed, and she was staring and could not manage to control the trembling that was taking over her body, he cupped his hand beneath her chin and lifted her face so that she had to look into his eyes.

  “We needn’t,” he said.

  “Don’t you want to now?”

  His eyes had that fevered look again.

  “More than I have ever wanted anything, actually,” he said in quite a low voice. “But simply holding you is more than I ever thought I would have. So if you are hes—”

  She climbed into his lap, wrapped her arms about his shoulders, lowered her lips to his, and said, “You mustn’t be distracted from your purpose now, Your Grace.”

  “I am not distracted from my purpose,” he said with a slow smile, kissing her and brushing the hair back from her face.

  “Yes, you are.”

  “This purpose, you mean?” He touched her intimately with his fingers. She gasped, jerked to him, and gripped his shoulders.

  “Yes,” she said very airily, swiveling her hips to feel the caress even more acutely and because it just seemed to be what her hips wanted to do.

  “And this purpose?” he said, and then she was feeling him—him—hot and hard at the entrance to her body, and she was suddenly entirely without speech.

  She nodded frantically.

  Then he was inside her.

  It was shocking and astonishing and wonderful and, after a few moments of accustoming herself to it, she decided that she never wanted it to end.

  “Charlotte.” His voice was ragged.

  Sinking both hands into her hair, he kissed her perfectly, passionately, and as deeply as he was embedded inside her body. There was a waiting tension in her, a deep, thick anticipation that made her press her hips to his and the tight peaks of her breasts to his chest. He groaned and took her mouth more fully yet, and the anticipation surged. It was perfect, tantalizing, delicious, but something was missing—the wild pleasure she had felt from his fingers caressing her—and she worried that her womanly parts might not be functioning properly now.

  His fingers stroked down her neck, over her breasts and to her thighs. Wrapping his hands around her hips, he moved her on him. Then she understood that there was nothing whatsoever wrong with her, or him, or how they fit so perfectly together.

  Shortly, there was no understanding whatsoever, only the most sublime pleasure that went on and on and seemed to have no end.

  The end did eventually come. Again he put his fingers on her, between them, and in a tightening, winding, agonizing spiral of need and then a crashing, cascading waterfall of pleasure, she discovered a whole new way to thoroughly enjoy him and herself and them together. He captured her whimpers with his mouth. When his body hardened and he stilled abruptly and a low, growling groan came from his chest, she quieted him with her mouth too.

  No need to wake the neighbors, after all.

  They fell onto their sides on the mattress, she struggling for air and he kissing her lips anew so that the air-getting was at once challenging and delicious. He took her hand and interlaced their fingers, and Charlotte learned the great delight of holding his hand while she was sweaty not from running for miles. It was heaven.

  When he withdrew his hand from hers to brush her tangled hair back from her face, and his fingertips traveled over her cheek, her lips, and her jaw very tenderly, she had to struggle for air again.

  “I never thought I would be allowed this with you,” he whispered, lifting his beautiful gaze to hers. “Thank you, my lady.”

  Thank you?

  “It was my pleasure,” she replied unsteadily. “Obviously.”

  “Was?”

  “Was?” She blinked. “Is? Yes? No?”

  The brilliant blue eyes laughed, but they were still a bit fevered. “That is entirely your choice.”

  Her heart could not possibly pound any harder than at present. “What are you saying?”

  “That this is the best night of my life.” He said it simply.

  Moving to him, she wrapped her arms around him, let him bear her back on the mattress, and made love to him again with everything in her heart.

  Chapter Thirteen

  December 27 before dawn.

  The duke’s bedchamber.

  Charlotte awoke to the bed empty beside her and the soft glow of a single candle across the chamber. Turning over, she found him in the shadows by the dressing table. Atop the table was a traveling bag, and he was fastening the clasps. He was fully dressed, in boots, riding breeches, shirt, neck cloth, and a coat that stretched across shoulders she had memorized with her hands and lips.

  “What are you doing?” she said, too few hours of sleep making her words mumbly.

  He came to the bed, sat beside her on the mattress, curved his hand around her face and bent to kiss her. His lips were soft and they lingered. She didn’t even care that her mouth was cottony. This was a dream. A fantasy. Thoroughly forbidden and auguring the best possible forbidden delights to come too.

  She sighed against his lips.

  He drew back from her.

  “It should be a crime to be as beautiful as you are in the morning,” he said.

  “It isn’t the morning. It is still nighttime. I needn’t leave this room quite yet.”

  He stood. “However, I must.” He crossed to the dressing table and took up an overcoat and the case.

  “You are dressed for travel,” she said.

  “I am leaving.”

  “Kingstag?”

  He nodded.

  “Now?” She sat up and the bedclothes fell to her waist. Grabbing them, she pressed them to her naked breasts. “Alone?” In the candle’s light, Frye could see the distress enter her eyes and it carved a hole out of his gut. “You mustn’t,” she said. “The sunlight and sno
w—”

  “It will be dark for several more hours. I will be fine.”

  “But—”

  “I can delay my departure no longer.”

  “But why are you going? So abruptly, that is. Have you business to attend to elsewhere?”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “You know the reason I must leave, Charlotte. To remain would be unfair to you. No—that’s wrong. Not unfair. Rather, cruel.”

  She stared at him, her eyes wide and somewhat blank.

  Then she swung her feet over the side of the bed. Taking up her clothes from the floor, she tugged her gown over her head. Pulling the other garment on too, she slid off the bed and walked past him toward the door.

  “Charlotte—”

  She turned to face him.

  “I had not imagined this of you,” she said firmly. “After what you said, I had not imagined—oh, well, my imaginings were obviously far afield of reality. Thus my surprise now. Well, shock, truth be told.”

  “You said you understood. That you agreed. That you had no designs.”

  “I know what I said! I said it only a few hours ago. But then my imagination got active. I will say, though, that at least while I was imagining what I was imagining, I had a very good time with you.” She took a thick breath. “A marvelous time, really. I will not forget last night. Not ever, I suspect. Or anything about this Christmas with you, Horace. I will cherish the memory of it. That said, I think it will be best if we avoid seeing each other in the future. If possible.”

  “Yes,” he made himself say.

  Her throat constricted in a rough little swallow.

  “Your sisters will have their seasons in London,” she said, “and there will be parties I must attend. It would be the decent thing for you to avoid events to which my family is also expected.”

  “I will.”

  “All right then.” She turned decisively to the door again.

  “I think I know the back of you better than the front,” he heard himself say. The words came from such a profound sensation of grief that he simply was not man enough to hold them in. “Your shoulders and hair and the curve of your hips and not even a word of good-bye.”

  She swiveled halfway to him. “What are you talking about?”

  “You are running away again.”

  “I am going to my room. Back to my own bed because it is still nighttime. You, on the other hand, are running away. Rather, riding. Neverthe—Wait. Again? What do you mean that I am running away again?” Her brows twisted. “Are you referring to when you bade me abandon you in the mill to run to the inn?”

  “I am referring to when you ran away from me in the stable. Then Sheridan’s room. Then my room. Then the carriage house. Then the kitchen.” The words simply came and he did not bother halting them. He supposed he needed to hear from her the words that would make the coming hell easier to bear. He needed to hear her say that it was not breaking her heart to part from him, that she was actually relieved. “And in Hyde Park two and a half years ago.”

  Her beautiful lips fell open. “W—What?”

  “You have always run away from me, Charlotte Ascot.”

  “I have not.”

  “Yes. You have. Since that day. The day you found me in the woods at Cheriot Manor.”

  “You remember that?” she said in little more than a whisper.

  “Of course I remember that. Since that day, every time I have spoken with you, you have run away from me. Literally. You run away.”

  “I do not.”

  “Indeed you do, most extraordinarily from Hyde Park after I helped you down from the tree. No, ‘how do you do, Frye?’ Not even a ‘good day.’ Not a single word.”

  “I never imagined you the sort to stand on ceremony.”

  “That was hardly a ceremonious moment. You were in a tree. Seventeen years old, wearing the prettiest pink and white froth of confection I had ever seen a girl wear, and in a rainy London park you were twenty feet off the ground. In a tree.”

  “My tree climbing offends you?”

  “You did not climb into that tree. You flew into it to avoid walking past me on that path. You know you did.”

  “So what if I did? You should have walked past. It would have been the gentlemanly thing to do. But you insisted on helping me down, to prove that you could speak to me whether I wanted to speak with you or not. Isn’t that so?”

  “No. Yes. Possibly. For God’s sake, Charlotte, we have known each other nearly our entire lives. You were about to leave for America. Yet you didn’t even say a word to me. Not a word of greeting or parting or any other word. Why did you run away from me that morning?”

  “Well, I couldn’t stay.” She turned her face away and lifted it so she seemed to be looking into the dark corner where wall met ceiling. “You cannot possibly understand,” she muttered.

  “You might have at least spoken to me.”

  “And said what?” She pivoted back to him. “That I had a raging tendre for you? That I had adored you since I was a little girl, and that when I grew older and that adoration turned to something much more profound you were all I could think about? That I dreaded meeting you at parties and especially balls because then I would be obliged to invent a torn hem or twisted ankle so that I could avoid dancing with you, because while I could hold fairly steady in conversation with you I was certain I would not be able to hide my feelings if you touched me? Or that I could not bear to be in even the same park as you without becoming subsumed in guilt for liking my friend’s intended? And that I would rather sail to a tiny island in the Pacific Ocean to attend the wedding of cannibals at which I am the main dish than attend your wedding to somebody else?”

  He blinked. “You might have said that. Yes.”

  “Which part?”

  “Any part. Charlotte—”

  “Oh, no. I was afraid of this. Please—please don’t look at me like that.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like you pity me. Your indifference I can bear. I have long since learned to bear that. But to have your pity would be unendurable.”

  “Pity is far from what I feel at present. And indifference is the last thing on— Charlotte, how can you not see it, even now?”

  “I know you aren’t completely indifferent to me now. You showed your desire for me last night. And at the inn.”

  “But do you see all of my desires, the legion of my desires for you, that I want more than—that I want everything from you?”

  “Everything?” she whispered.

  “Everything. Your body, your lips, to be inside you and feel you getting pleasure from me. Yes, of course. But that isn’t all. I want your hand in mine, as often as you will give it and for as long as you will allow it. I want your head resting on my shoulder as together we watch the sun set each evening. I want your lips whispering my name for the remainder of my life. And I want your children to be mine, and I want to watch them grow with you. Don’t you see that I would give everything I have—my titles, my lands, my very soul—if I could have that?”

  Her chest compressed, her breaths swept away. “You love me?”

  “So much that it hurts. A good hurt. A hurt I never want to go away. But I cannot curse you with such a life as you would have with me.”

  “Curse? Curse?” Lightning darted across her stormy eyes, and glistening tears were gathering in them. “Do you know what a real curse is? A real curse is loving you and knowing that you could never be mine. That is a curse I know well, for I have already lived it, for years.” Hands bunched into fists, she moved toward him. “Horace Chesterfield Breckenridge Church, I have always loved you and I will love you and no other for the remainder of my life. So don’t try to tell me that you know all about what sort of life I would have if—”

  He caught her up in his arms and she went onto her tiptoes and pressed her cheek against his.

  “I want you,” she said fiercely, her lips brushing his skin. “Forever and ever.”

 
; His arms held her so tightly to him, and he kissed her hair.

  “It would not last forever.”

  “It would. It will.” She leaned back and her palms surrounded his face. “You know it will.”

  His eyes were so troubled.

  “Do you doubt my strength?” she said. “My resolve?”

  “Neither.”

  “Then do you doubt my love?”

  “Not any longer. Though I’m certain I should. For it cannot be real.”

  “It is real. Entirely real.”

  “Charlotte.” His gaze held hers. “You will never know when I might fail you.”

  “Fail me?”

  “You will grow to anticipate it at any moment, at all moments. To fear it. You will learn to remain on guard lest it catch you by surprise. And, eventually, you will come to despise me for making you live in that manner. I cannot do that to you. I cannot do that to any woman, but most of all not to the woman whose happiness means more to me than my own.”

  “I have a story to tell you,” she said, stroking the taut line of his jaw.

  “A story?”

  “It is of a girl who fell in love with a boy who barely noticed her. To make matters worse, he was to marry a friend she held dear and who, she adamantly believed, deserved him. This girl endured years of confusion each time she came into his company, and constant agony knowing that she would never love another as she loved him. For, you see, each time she became acquainted with other boys, other men, none of them were even half as wonderful as he. And so she decided that in order to learn to live without the constant misery, indeed to live happily, she must board a ship and sail as far away from him as she could.”

  “And she did so,” he said softly, bending to set his lips on her brow.

  “Don’t interrupt me. I am just getting to the good part.” She laid her palms on his chest. “She did so, and in that foreign land she tried to forget him, but did not. For she had been mistaken about running away from difficult things. Running away from them did not make them disappear, for when she ran she carried with her the same heart, the same mind, and the same desires. And of course the same love. So, instead, she learned to live with uncertainty and even pain, because that is what one does when one truly loves. For in true love there is joy, and that triumphs over sorrow.”