by Candace Camp
Instantly his arms were around her like iron bands, pressing her into him, and his mouth was seeking hers blindly. Charity melted against him, and her arms went around his neck, clinging to him. Simon kissed her deeply, thoroughly, and his hand slipped up and around to cup her breast. He groaned at the feel of the soft weight in his palm, and when her nipple tightened, pressing against his hand, a shudder ran through him.
Simon broke away and stepped back, sucking in great gulps of air. His face was flushed, his eyes were bright, and his mouth was wide and soft with passion. He curled his hands into fists, fighting to stay where he was.
“No,” he said hoarsely. “We must not. Sweet Jesus, woman, I seem to have no control around you. You must think me a savage to leap on you like this at every opportunity.”
“No,” Charity replied softly, and her dimple flashed as she smiled happily up at him. “I like it when you kiss me.”
Simon groaned. “Don’t say that! You will completely break my will.”
Charity stepped back, abashed. “I’m sorry.” She twisted her hands together, gazing down at them, and said in a low voice, “Is what I said very wrong? Am I too bold?”
“No! Good God!” Simon whirled back around. “I…like very much for you to say that. To know that you take pleasure in my kiss. The fact is, I like it too much. I want to take you back in my arms and start kissing you again. And I am afraid I would not be able to stop. I must not dishonor you.”
“Oh.” Charity was flooded with heat at his words, and she felt breathless and a little giddy. She smiled at him, and an answering spark flared in his eyes.
He groaned deep in his throat and turned away, shoving his hands back through his hair. “I have to leave.”
“What? So soon?”
“Yes, or I will forget myself entirely.” Simon drew a long breath, staring out across the garden. Finally he turned back to Charity, and his face was set, his voice stiff. “The reason I came here this afternoon is to tell you that I plan to leave for the country tomorrow, so I shall miss tonight’s theater party. I shall be at Deerfield Park for a few weeks.”
Charity’s heart sank. A few weeks! “But why?”
“Don’t look at me like that. I have to go. If I stay, I—Damn it, it’s torture being around you and not being able to have you!” He crossed the ground to her quickly and took her by the shoulders, gazing intently down into her face. “It’s so hard to sit with you in your drawing room with your mother and sisters, making silly, polite chitchat, when all I want to do is to take you into my arms and never stop kissing you.”
“Oh…” Charity breathed. Her knees felt dangerously weak, as if the fire that burned in Simon’s eyes were melting her very bones.
“When I do get a chance to steal a kiss from you, it makes it even worse, for then I want to do so much more, and I know that I would be an absolute scoundrel if I did.”
“But you will soon be my husband.”
“Yes.” His eyes flashed with a fierce possessiveness. “I shall, and then I shall take you to my bed and make you my wife with all the time and care that you deserve. Not hurriedly, behind some bushes in the garden, as if you were a common slut.”
“If you leave town for a few weeks, then that won’t happen?”
“It will help prevent it. Hopefully, alone in the solitude and peace of the country, I will be able to regain control of my wayward passions. I have spoken to your parents, and they have agreed to shorten the engagement to only six months. They felt anything less would appear to be unseemly haste. By going away, I can make the time of temptation even shorter.”
“I shall miss you,” Charity said simply.
“Will you? You have half of London dancing attendance upon you now. You have become quite the hit of the season.”
Charity shrugged. “Only because I am engaged to be married to you. Otherwise, I would be a little nobody.”
“I doubt that, my dear.” Amusement laced his voice. “I do not think that you would ever go unnoticed in any situation.”
Charity raised one eyebrow at him. “Is that a compliment, my lord?”
“Most definitely.” He took her hand and raised it to his lips. “Now I must take my leave of you, else Aunt Ermintrude and her entourage will be out here hunting for us. Too long a walk in the garden, even with a scolding fiancé, would occasion comment.”
“I know.” Charity heaved a sigh. “There are so many more rules in London than in the country.”
He grinned and held out his arm to her. “I trust you will be able to keep yourself out of trouble while I am gone?”
“Why, of course.” Charity widened her eyes innocently. “Whatever do you mean?”
“Well, I shan’t be there to save you from carters and bobbies.”
Charity dimpled mischievously. “Or to advise me on whom I should speak to.”
He cast her a darkling glance and added, “Or to house whatever poor unfortunate stray you should come upon.”
“Come now, confess—you like Lucky, don’t you?”
Simon rolled his eyes as they started along the path toward the house. “That hound has turned my entire household upside down. The footmen all hate to walk him, because he drags them down the street like a runaway train. The maids complain that he leaves hairs all over the furniture, and no one can keep him from sleeping on the beds.”
Charity giggled.
“Ah, you think it’s funny, do you? I doubt you would if it had been your newspaper he chewed to shreds, or your laundry he took exception to and attacked.”
“Did he really?”
“Yes, really. He also seems to think that his rightful place to sleep at night is on the foot of my bed. Cook has threatened to leave if I don’t get rid of him. By the way, that reminds me—this would be a perfect opportunity to take the mutt to the country.”
“Oh, yes, he will love all that space to romp in.”
“And London will be much safer without him.”
“Come now, you cannot tell me that you don’t really like him.”
“Can I not?” He quirked an eyebrow at her. “He is a veritable hound from hell.”
“I have heard that you are very fond of him.”
“Who told you that? It’s a dastardly lie.”
“They say that he accompanies you whenever you ride in the park.”
“He follows me and won’t return home.”
“And everyone says that you have quite started a new fashion in dogs.”
“What? Ugly mutts?” Simon leaned his head back and laughed. “Now that I can believe. Everyone in London is so anxious not to be left out of the latest trend that they will follow any wild start.”
He stopped outside the door to the house, pulling her to a halt, and he gazed down earnestly into her eyes. “Promise me that you will take care of yourself while I am gone?”
“I promise.”
“Good. I want nothing to happen to you.”
“What could happen?” Charity returned lightly.
He groaned. “I am sure I cannot even conceive of it yet.” He bent and brushed his lips against her forehead. “I am beginning to see that life would be unbearably dull without you, Miss Emerson,” he murmured.
Charity smiled. “I would find it the same without you.”
His lips touched hers in a light, brief kiss. “I would like to take you in my arms and kiss you properly, but I’m afraid I would never leave if I did so.”
He stepped back abruptly, and Charity let out a little sigh.
“Goodbye, my dear.”
“Goodbye.”
He opened the door and escorted her into the house. There he politely took his leave, and in a moment he was gone. Charity thought about the next few weeks and wanted to cry. How was she ever going to get through them without him?
CHAPTER TWELVE
SIMON WAS NOT in the best of moods as he stepped into his sister’s house. He did not like the way he felt right now. Damn it! He had meant for his marriage to be a
n easy, practical thing. And it was turning out not to be so at all. He disliked the white-hot rage that had swept over him when he saw Charity in a tête-à-tête with Faraday Reed this afternoon. It had been, he was aware, not just anger that Charity had ignored what he told her, nor had it merely been concern that Charity would innocently bring scandal to his name. No, he had to admit that the single most compelling thing he had felt was jealousy—pure, acidic fear that Charity would turn from him to the smoother Reed. It had been all he could do not to jerk Reed out of that chair and pound him with his fists.
He had felt as close to losing his famed control as he had the other day, when he was kissing Charity under the back stairs. There, he knew, in another few minutes he would have been on the floor with her, frantically shoving up her skirts and taking her like an animal, heedless of who might walk past them.
Everything was different since he had met Charity. Sometimes he felt as if his world were upside down. Never before had he looked forward to a party with eagerness, as he did now, knowing that he would see her there. Never before had he had to hold back from calling on a woman every day, or force himself to leave after spending a polite time in her company. Whenever he saw her, all he wanted to do was to whisk Charity away from all the others and have her to himself.
He found himself daydreaming at his desk instead of doing his work, recalling the way Charity had smiled, or the flash of an ankle he had seen as he handed her up into her carriage, or the laughter that sparkled in her eyes. At night he often woke, sweating and hard, from a dream of making love to her.
The engagement period was torture. He wanted Charity right now, in every way. The only way he had been able to think of to endure it was to go away to the country, to spend time away from the constant lure of her. But, maddeningly, now that he was doing so, that prospect seemed unutterably dull and lifeless. Pain had squeezed his heart when he left her at her great-aunt’s house. And that was the most infuriating thing of all. He did not want to miss her. He hated the fact that she had so quickly, so easily, become important to him. This was not the bloodless, painless marriage he had imagined—yet he knew he would not trade it for the world.
So it was that, after reflecting on such matters all the way over to Venetia’s house, Simon was feeling thoroughly disgruntled with himself, Charity and the world in general. When one of the footmen answered the door and informed him that he would see if “my lady is at home,” Simon firmly pushed the man aside, growling, “Of course she’s at home. If she’d been out, you would have said so at once.”
“But, Lord Dure…” the footman gasped, following on Simon’s heels as he strode across the spacious tiled foyer toward the stairs.
“Where is she? Upstairs?” Simon snapped, ignoring the footman’s anxious protestations. “In her sitting room?”
“I’m not sure, my lord. Pray, let me send one of the maids up to see.”
“Don’t bother,” Simon told him, taking the stairs two at a time. “Venetia will see me.”
He left the footman wringing his hands indecisively at the bottom of the stairs, and made his way to the small informal sitting room that lay next to Venetia’s bedroom. It was empty, so he proceeded to the bedroom next door, rapping sharply on the door as he swung it open.
“Venetia?” He peered into the gloom.
The heavy drapes had been drawn, leaving the room in a twilight darkness, but he could make out his sister’s form, curled up in the chair beside the bed. “What the devil are you doing there? Are you sick?”
“No, of course not,” Venetia replied in a watery voice, and there was the distinct sound of a sniffle as she stood up. “What are you doing here, Simon? Why are you bursting into my chamber as if the devil were pursuing you?”
“I think he is,” Simon replied. “Or at least the devil in the form of a blond young lady.”
“Oh.” Venetia dabbed at her face with a handkerchief. “It’s Charity that’s distressed you?”
“Yes. No. Oh, blast it, Venetia, I’m not even sure who’s to blame. Me. No one. I don’t know.” He strode over to the window and yanked at the heavy draperies. “Why do you have it so damnably dark in here?”
“I, uh, had a headache.” Venetia quickly moved away to a chair on the opposite side of the room and sat down. “Sit down and tell me what mischief Charity’s gotten into now. Not another stray animal, I hope.”
“No, thank God. She hasn’t gotten into anything, exactly. It’s that damn Reed. He’s pursuing her. I told her to rebuff him, but she’s as headstrong as…as…”
“As you?” Venetia suggested lightly.
Simon glowered at her for a moment. Then his sense of humor came to his rescue, and he had to chuckle. “Yes, as headstrong as I am. God help us.” He sank down into the chair in which Venetia had been sitting earlier. “She lets him come calling on her. She didn’t tell her mother what I said about him, and, of course, Mrs. Emerson thinks he’s a wonderful gentleman, like all the other chuckleheaded ladies in town. Why don’t any of them realize what a snake he is?”
“I am sure several of them do. But they probably found out about him through hard experience, and they are no more willing to tell everyone else why they refuse his calls than you or I were eight years ago.”
“I know. But, bloody hell, Venetia, what am I going to do about Charity? She promised me today that she wouldn’t see him again. But she only did it to please me. I can see that she doesn’t believe it when I tell her he’s a rogue.”
“You should have told her why.”
“And reveal what happened to you? Be sensible, Venetia. I couldn’t betray you, even to Charity. I just wish she would trust me.”
“I’m sure she will,” Venetia replied soothingly. “Give her a little time. You’ve only just become engaged, you know. She really doesn’t know you yet.”
“This engagement ritual is a bunch of twaddle,” Simon retorted. “Why do you have to wait so long? It isn’t as if you get to know each other during that time. Why, you’re never alone for more than a few moments. The only way you can even sit down and talk in private is to be married to a woman.”
Venetia smiled. “Is that what all this storming around is all about? That you don’t get to see enough of Charity?”
“Damn it, she’s my fiancée. I’m not going to carry her off and ruin her, simply because they leave us alone for ten minutes. You’d think the chaperonage would loosen.”
“Why, it does,” Venetia responded teasingly. “Haven’t you realized that you get to dance with her more than twice in an evening without causing a scandal? And you can sit beside her and glower at all the other young men who have the audacity to ask her to dance—which, I might add, I have seen you do on more than one occasion.”
Her teasing remarks won a reluctant smile from Simon. “Oh, yes. That’s a great advantage.” He sighed. “I’m sorry, Venetia. I shouldn’t have dropped all my grievances in your lap. Truly, that wasn’t why I came.”
“No? But that’s what a sister is for, isn’t it?”
“Is it?” Simon stood up and walked across the room to her. “That must be why you are such an admirable sister.” He reached down and took her hands, pulling her up from the chair. “Come, say goodbye to me. I have to be on my way. That’s why I came—to tell you that I’m leaving for the country for a few weeks.”
“Ah,” Venetia said knowingly. “I see.”
“See what?”
“All this grumbling about your engagement. Your impending marriage has driven you to seek the solitude of Deerfield Park.”
“The marriage that isn’t impending soon enough is driving me,” Simon told her.
“Well, the waiting will be over eventually,” Venetia said, comfortingly.
“I’ve gotten Lytton to reduce the engagement to six months.”
“That will be over in a flash!”
“Hardly.”
“Yes, it will.” Venetia linked her arm through her brother’s, and they began to walk toward the
door. “You’ll see. Why, it’s been nearly a month already, and by the time you get back from the country, the day will be practically upon you. And there will be the wedding preparations to pass the time.”
“I’m afraid I have little to do with that.”
“That’s true. Well, the honeymoon to plan, then.”
Simon smiled faintly, his mind turning to the prospect of a long journey alone with Charity. He would have to make sure that it was adequately long—perhaps a trip to Italy. He thought of the train ride across Europe, the two of them locked in their compartment, the wheels clicking rhythmically beneath them as they lay stretched out on their bed together.
As they stepped out into the better-lit hall, Simon glanced down at his sister and stopped abruptly. “You’ve been crying.”
Venetia immediately put her hands up to her face. “Oh, dear. Are my eyes so red, then?”
“Enough to show that you’ve been crying. Besides, there are tearstains on your cheeks. And here I’ve been going on like a fool about my problems, none of which would merit crying over. What is it, Venny?”
Venetia tried to smile. “Nothing. You just caught me in one of those silly moods, I’m afraid. I’m just…a little blue. It’s really nothing.”
“Nothing? You closeted yourself in your room with all the curtains closed tight, and cried so hard I can still see it. I don’t think it’s ‘nothing.’”
Simon turned and pulled her back into her bedroom, closing the door behind him. “All right. Now tell me what’s wrong. You haven’t been yourself for two weeks or more. Even I have noticed it. You look pale and distracted every time I see you, yet you always say there’s nothing wrong with you. I’m sure George has noticed it, too. Have you at least confided in him?”
“George?” Venetia looked horrified, and shook her head quickly. “No! Goodness, no, I couldn’t!”
“Couldn’t tell your own husband? Nor your brother?”
“I can’t tell anyone!” Venetia blurted out, and began to cry again.
“Here. I’m sorry. Venetia, please.” Simon shifted nervously, appalled by the emotional storm he’d unleashed. “Don’t cry. It can’t be that bad.”
