He pushed her legs open with his knees and she gasped as he speared her still-wet pussy with one long, heavy thrust. He was so big inside of her, stretching her to her limit, until she squirmed with the pleasure of the fullness. She lifted into him, tensing against him, releasing him, watching as his mouth twitched and his gaze darkened with undeniable desire.
He slid back and then all the way to the hilt again and she arched beneath him. He hit spots inside of her that she had never known existed. Places that made her body sing a new song of pleasure, one very different from any she’d learned in her marriage or at her own hand.
He buried his mouth into her neck as he thrust hard and fast, swirling his hips so that he hit that magical place deep within her and also stimulated her tingling clitoris with his hips. She began to shake as she dug her nails into his shoulders, as she whispered his name over and over because she could remember no other word than that.
He never faltered, he never altered, he just drove and drove and drove, lifting her higher and higher before she toppled into a spiral of pleasure. She screamed against his lips as he kissed her through the crisis. Her mind was empty except for sensation—nothing mattered more than their joined bodies and everything that she felt from her head to her flexing toes.
She was shaking as she came down from the high unlike any she’d ever experienced. He was still driving into her, his neck flexed, his eyes shut, and then his lips opened and he let out all his breath. She stared, captivated by the beauty of this man who was always in control finally letting go. He withdrew but remained above her, and she felt the warmth of him pump between them as she clung to him, holding him closer, never wanting to let him go.
Now she just had to find a way to make him see that here was where he had always wanted to be.
Ewan opened his eyes slowly and was greeted by the most wonderful and unexpected sight. Charlotte lay beside him, her body tucked against his, her hair splayed across his arms and chest. In his bed. They had moved there during the night. He’d meant to go alone, to avoid the inevitability of someone coming to look for him in the wee hours of the morning and finding them in her room.
But she had resisted and she had seduced and followed. Now they were here together and he had never loved his bed more. The light in the chamber was dim, but just enough that he could examine her while she slept.
She was beautiful, of course. Charlotte had always been beautiful. Even when she was a little girl, her bright hair and green eyes and quick laugh had turned the heads of many a boy in their acquaintance. As she grew up, her beauty had only increased. She’d never had an awkward phase like so many little girls. She’d just flowered, and Ewan had hung on every moment of her transformation from girl to woman.
And there was no denying she was a woman now. A confident woman, one who would pursue what she wanted with dogged and singular focus. Denying her had always been almost impossible. Now was no different.
He drew in a soft breath and reached out to trace the soft slope of her shoulder, the line of her arm. His fingers trailed over her side beneath the blankets and he memorized the swell of her hip with his hands. She stirred a little and he froze, watching as her lips parted on a contented little sigh. She didn’t wake, though. Was it because she was a heavy sleeper? Just exhausted from a night of passionate exploration?
She wanted him to find out. She wanted him to take this time alone and make it theirs. But…he wasn’t sure. In the light of day, even with her tucked against his body, he knew that wasn’t right. It wasn’t something that a gentleman and a lady did.
Only that body didn’t seem to care. Even now when she curled her hand against his chest and burrowed closer, his cock swelled to life and demanded he do things to her. Wicked, wonderful things.
His mind wanted things, too. After all, he had loved Charlotte since the moment she took his hand and dragged him inside to listen to his father the day he’d been abandoned with his aunt and uncle. Loving her had only become easier as wanting her became more and more painful.
He loved her now, looking down at her, a little smile on her face as she dreamed of…well, he could only imagine what she dreamed of. If he were any other man, he would have offered for her years ago. The moment she was out in Society, he would have gone to her brother and asked for her hand so that no one else could ever make a claim.
But he wasn’t any other man. He wasn’t normal. He wasn’t right. He was damaged. His father had told him that five times a day for ten years, and Ewan knew he was right. What other man had to carry a notebook around in his pocket just to communicate? And if the notebook was missing? He was reduced to pointing and grunting like some animal. People stared. Whispered. Laughed. Talked about him like he wasn’t there or wasn’t intelligent enough to hear their mocking.
Was that a life for Charlotte?
And what if they had children? What if he passed along his brokenness to some little boy or girl? Then he would have to watch that child tread down a horrible path like he had.
He flinched at the thought, at the pain that accompanied it. He wouldn’t pass that pain to anyone, not even his worst enemy. How could he even consider passing it to this woman he loved and any children they would produce together?
Whatever Charlotte was trying to do with this seduction, he might not be able to resist physically. But he had to remain strong when it came to everything else. When it came to a future he knew they couldn’t have.
A knock on the outer door to his chamber broke through his troubling train of thought, and Charlotte stirred again at the sound. She lifted her head, eyes bleary with sleep, and when she saw him, she smiled. She snuggled into him.
“I thought you might be a dream,” she murmured, voice still thick with sleep. “I’m so glad this is real.” The knock came again and she shook her head. “What time is it?”
He signed, “Early. I need to answer it.”
He leaned in to kiss her, then managed to extract himself from her arms and get out of the warm bed. He grabbed for a robe that was draped on the back of a chair and checked its pocket for his notebook before he slipped from the master chamber and into the entryway.
When he opened the door, he found Smith awaiting him. While the butler was normally pulled together, this morning he had clearly been interrupted in the midst of his toilette. His hair was slightly disheveled and his jacket was crooked.
“I’m so sorry to wake you, Your Grace,” he said with an incline of his head. “But the rain continued overnight. The water is rising like last year.”
Ewan nodded before he wrote, “Then we’ll need to sandbag and move the tenants closest to the water’s edge.”
“Half a dozen men have started down to the river to start filling the bags with sand, Your Grace,” Smith responded.
Ewan glanced over his shoulder. The irresponsible part of him wanted to let his staff take care of the issue and just stay in bed with Charlotte all day. But he couldn’t do it. And perhaps it was best to have a day apart anyway. It could only help him find the distance he liked to keep between them.
“I will ready myself and join them,” he wrote. “I will not need a valet.”
“Very good, sir,” Smith said. “Will you require anything else?”
Ewan shook his head, reached out to squeeze Smith’s shoulder in thanks and stepped back into the chamber. As he made his way back into the bedroom, he found Charlotte there, sitting up in his bed, his sheets barely wrapped around her body. Want rose up in him, pounding through his veins and making his cock hard and achy beneath his robe.
“Flooding?” she said, concern heavy in her voice.
He shed out of the robe and went to his wardrobe to find some of his working clothes. As he stepped into his trousers, he signed with one hand, “Yes, the proximity of my property to both river and sea makes it a beautiful place, but also dangerous. This year and last the heavy rains have caused flooding. My father let the tenants deal with it themselves, but I see
it as my responsibility.”
“And so you fill bags with sand?” she asked, watching his every move as he dressed. Her focused regard did not make this easier. “Is that what Smith said?”
“That’s right,” he signed, then tugged his shirt over his head. When his hands were free again, he continued, “It provides a temporary dam that directs the water away from the houses. This repeat of last year’s situation means we must build a retaining wall in the spring. But for now, I must go out and help the men.”
She pushed to her feet, the sheets fluttering away and revealing her utterly naked body. He swallowed hard past a suddenly very thick throat and fought desperately to focus on what she was saying.
“I’m coming with you.”
He blinked, and her nakedness faded slightly into the background at her shocking statement. He shook his head and signed, “Too dangerous!”
She arched a brow and grabbed for her gown from the previous night. As she struggled into it, she said, “You’ll need all the help you can get. And wouldn’t it be easier to communicate through sign rather than trying to write notes in the rain?”
He pursed his lips. She wasn’t wrong there. In inclement weather outside it was sometimes a struggle to communicate. A slowdown in what they were doing could mean damage to his property or even injury to his people. But he looked at Charlotte, still gorgeous and sophisticated even with her dress half unfastened and her hair around her shoulders, and had a hard time picturing her slogging through the rain and mud in her gown.
“You’ll get soaked,” he protested swiftly. “And be cold.”
She shrugged. “I have a few heavier gowns and most of them are in mourning colors. I wouldn’t be sad to see them destroyed. I even have boots, since I visited Meg and Simon before coming here and Meg loves to take walks through the property, rain or shine.”
Ewan sighed. Once again, it was impossible to say no to her. She stepped up and leaned in to kiss him gently. “You can’t break me, Ewan. I’m stronger than I look.”
“I never doubted that,” he signed slowly.
She touched his cheek and then turned her back. “Fasten me, will you? Then I’ll run and change into something old and ugly and pull my hair back. It won’t be a quarter of an hour, I promise you. Enough time for you to make any other arrangements.”
He buttoned her, trying to ignore the jolts of awareness when his fingertips brushed her soft skin. Then he turned her to face him. “You must promise me you’ll be careful,” he signed.
She nodded. “Always, Ewan. I’ll meet you in the foyer in two shakes!”
With that, she gathered her slippers and rushed from the room, leaving him to stare after her. He’d thought today might be a way to distance himself from the way Charlotte wrapped herself so easily around him.
But now it was about to turn into a view into his very soul for her, and a look into hers, too. Because he well knew that the way those of rank dealt with regular people said a lot about who they were. In her, he had no doubt he would see kindness, but also the distance that her rank required.
And she would see how much he belonged in the common rabble. What she did with that knowledge remained to be seen.
Chapter Five
“Your Grace!” a man cried out as Ewan dismounted from his horse. He offered a hand to Charlotte to help her do the same, but didn’t linger as he turned to the men gathered beside the now-raging river.
Charlotte frowned as she looked at it. She could see exactly why Ewan was so concerned—the water was licking dangerously close to several of the homes of his tenants. But the men had already been working. There was a huge pile of sand in the middle of the cluster of homes and a dozen men shoveled it into bags that were then taken over to build the makeshift dike that was beginning to form to protect the buildings.
“It’s worse than last year,” said the man who had approached, his eyes a little wide. “We’re grateful to have your help.”
Ewan cast a glance at Charlotte and she hustled forward as he began to sign. “His Grace says that he’s happy to be here and sorry he didn’t build the retaining wall last summer.”
The man looked at her with confusion, and she smiled to ease his mind. “I’m Lady Portsmith,” she said, extending a hand. “I’m here to help.”
The man blinked as he bowed over it. “Er, Marcus Chadworth, my lady. I’m the duke’s foreman.”
“Nice to meet you. Now tell me where to help,” she said, turning toward Ewan.
His cheeks were slightly flushed even as rain cascaded down them. He looked entirely uncomfortable, and she frowned. She wanted her presence to be a help, not a hindrance or an embarrassment.
“Perhaps you could assist with the women and children for now,” Mr. Chadworth suggested with a quick glance at Ewan. “The ones in these three homes must move.”
“Of course,” she said, stepping away as the two men joined the others in making and hauling the sandbags. Ewan didn’t pull his notebook out as he approached, but raised a hand and was greeted, warmly and respectfully, by those in his employ and under his protection. He cast one glance at her, then grabbed a shovel and joined in making sandbags.
She sucked in a breath and forced herself not to stand like a ninny, staring at him. Though she could have done that all day, for his muscles moved in a fascinating way beneath his coat.
Instead, she moved toward the houses he had indicated were to be evacuated. There were wagons in front of each, half loaded with the pieces of the lives of those within. She shook her head at the fear on the face of a woman who exited the first house, dragging a trunk behind her.
“Here, let me help,” Charlotte insisted, rushing up to grab the other end. Together they lifted it onto the back of the wagon.
“Thank you,” the woman said, wiping rain from her brow. Tears sparkled in her eyes. “I’m much obliged.”
“Certainly,” Charlotte said. “I’m here to help. Give me a vocation and I will do whatever I can.”
The woman stiffened and stared at Charlotte a bit more closely. “You’re a lady,” she said.
Charlotte smiled. “I suppose I am.”
The woman backed away. “You needn’t trouble yourself, my lady.”
Charlotte wrinkled her brow at the rejection. “Posh, you need help and I am here to provide it.”
“It ain’t right,” the woman insisted.
Charlotte couldn’t help but laugh. “What isn’t right is standing here and letting your life wash away because I have some invisible rank above you.” She reached out and caught the woman’s hands. “On any other day I will let you ‘my lady’ me until your face is blue. Today, my name is Charlotte and I’m very happy to help if you will allow it.”
The woman shifted and then glanced down at the rising river. She sighed. “Eliza, my lady,” she said. “And…and I suppose I could use some help in the kitchen.”
“Excellent,” Charlotte said, linking arms with her new friend. “Lead the way.”
She cast one last glance at Ewan as she entered the house, but he did not return it. He was too busy working hard for his people. People he cared about, it was quite obvious.
And that meant she cared about them, too.
The pile of sand that Ewan’s workers had hauled up from the sea was beginning to dwindle as Charlotte helped Eliza and a few of the other women lift a handful of items onto the last wagon.
“We’ll be back shortly for the children,” the driver said, tilting his soaking wet hat toward them and urging the horses forward up the hill.
Charlotte turned back to her new friends with what she hoped was an encouraging smile. In the past hour, she had heard the fear in the women’s voices, she’d seen it on their children’s faces, and it broke her heart.
“What if the dam don’t hold?” Eliza mused out loud.
Her child, a little girl who could be no more than six, reached up to take her mother’s hand as she looked off at the wall the me
n at the river’s edge had built. Already it seemed to be holding back the lapping waves, but Charlotte felt no more certain about its ability to stem the tide than anyone else.
“Shall we help them?” she asked, motioning to the sand pile. The others shifted with uncertainty and Charlotte’s smile widened in an attempt for comfort. “It’s a game! Whoever can help fill the most bags wins.”
“What do they win?” asked one of the children, a sweet little girl named Maribelle.
Charlotte squatted down to put herself more on the child’s level. “What about sweet tarts from the big house and a new dolly as soon as the bridge reopens and I can go into the village?”
“I don’t want a dolly!” one of the boys called out.
Charlotte stood back up. “Then a wooden sword for the boy who fills the most and, of course, the sweet tarts. Is it a bargain?”
There were eight children in all and now they exchanged looks, excitement replacing their fear, if only for a moment. Charlotte’s heart lurched at their looks. She remembered Ewan looking much the same when his father had abandoned him all those years ago. Uncertainty was the worst thing for children.
The boys and girls hurried down the hill, with the women following. There was only one man left filling sandbags when they reached the pile—the rest were stacking—and he glared up at Charlotte as she neared him. “What do you want?”
She lifted her brows. “We’ve come to help. It makes more sense for you to be stacking. Show me the method for filling the bags and we’ll take over.”
He shook his head. “You can’t be serious.”
Charlotte straightened and put on her best “lady of the manor” face. “I most certainly am. Now, we can waste time talking about this or you can let us help. I’m not offering a third option.”
His brow wrinkled and then he threw up his hands. “Fine.”
The Silent Duke Page 5
