Page 42 of To Tame the Wild Rake
“I can walk one hundred yards across a private courtyard on my own, Anthony,” she told him, but he said he would worry if she went out into the open alone. “Take a footman, Cherry, to stay with you until your own guard arrives.”
As it happened, her carriage and guard were coming through the gate as she and Mullins reached the front steps. “Thank you, Mullins,” she said to the footman. He stopped to watch as her guard handed her up into the carriage, and she lifted a hand in half a wave—not to Mullins, but to those windows of the duke’s suite of offices that looked out onto the courtyard.
Perhaps Anthony had forgotten about her already. But no. He would be watching. She had underestimated his feelings for her, but last night he had showed her in a thousand ways that he truly cared. His reverent care of her. The private memories he shared. The heat and love in his eyes when she woke from a deep sleep to find him watching her.
Which had prompted a third round of amorous congress before they fell asleep again. They enjoyed one another’s convivial society a fourth time this morning, and Charlotte could feel the effects of the night’s pleasure. Not soreness, exactly. A certain tenderness in the places that were still soft and puffy. And an ache deep within that she now knew was her body yearning for his.
Perhaps, after all, she could risk telling him the full truth. Even if he rejected her, she was sure he would be kind, and perhaps he loved her enough to marry her, ruined as she was, even if she could not give him an heir. She was smiling and humming to herself as she walked up the steps of her home, thinking of the immediate future. She had some planning to do and some arrangements to make. If they had nothing else, they would have their seven days.
Yes, and more. For they had compared invitations, and he would be at the Peckworth musicale tonight and the Opera tomorrow night. She would see him soon.
At last! The spies Wharton had set on Saint Charlotte (and there was a misnomer, if ever there was one) had brought him the very piece of information he needed. And his careful work to establish a set of ears and eyes in the Haverford heir’s wing confirmed the news.
Charlotte Winderfield, that paragon of virtue, had spent the night with the Marquis of Aldridge, known seducer of everything in skirts. The information would add weight to the stories he intended to have whispered in the ears of every gossipmonger he knew. Charlotte Winderfield was a slut who seduced her own brother (which drove him to his death), and her continued fornication through the ranks of thetonwere only confirmed by her current affair with the most notorious rake in the whole of England.
Wharton, or rather Stirling Whailand, was off to Tattersalls and then to Manton’s to set the rumours flying.
20
Seeing Anthony in company proved to be more difficult thanCharlotte expected. To keep their secret, she had to behave as if nothing had changed since yesterday. She wanted to smile at him, spend the whole evening at his side, touch him, bask in the warmth of his eyes.
He seemed unaffected, nodding to her gravely from the other side of the room when she looked his way, then continuing his conversation with his mother and Jessica as if Charlotte was merely an acquaintance of no particular importance.
She sat with Sarah and Nate, and Anthony took a place a couple of rows behind her. Charlotte exercised all the willpower she had at her command and managed not to turn around, but to give at least the appearance of listening to the music. Her mind kept slipping to the events of the previous night and to wondering whether Anthony was thinking about them too.
When the musicians stopped for a rest and their hostess announced that supper was served in the next room, he made his move, bringing his ladies over to greet her party, then offering Charlotte his arm and holding her back to allow the others to lead the way.
He bent his head close to her ear and whispered, “There’s a door two down from the room set aside for women to retire. Meet me inside that room? In ten minutes?”
She turned her head to meet his eyes, meaning to refuse. What came off her tongue was a breathy, “Yes.”
He smiled, more with his eyes than his mouth, then left her at the door of the room, taking a couple of steps forward to say to the duchess, “I trust you will excuse me, Mama. I have seen someone I wish to speak with.” He was gone before Aunt Eleanor could reply.
Was it always this easy to keep an assignation? When she excused herself a few minutes later, no one in her party made any comment. Perhaps it was her reputation. No one would think anything of Saint Charlotte heading down the passage that led to the ladies’ retiring room.
Everyone else must be focused on their supper, because she had the passage to herself. She counted doors, opened the right one, and slipped into a room dimly lit with a single candle. She sensed Anthony’s presence a bare second before she found herself seized and ruthlessly kissed.
Her hesitation was only momentary, any alarm immediately allayed by the dear familiar smell and taste of him. Her passion rose to meet his, and she lost track of space and time as she poured out all the frustration she’d felt at denying their changed relationship in public.
“Devil take it,” Anthony said, after some time, pulling back from her lips and looking down at her. “I didn’t mean to be such a beast, Cherry. Forgive me?”
“For a kiss I thoroughly enjoyed?” She lifted her eyebrows in challenge, and he grinned and kissed them.
“I intended only to tell you that I missed you. Being in the same room and unable to acknowledge what is between us—I found it hard. I wanted a few moments when I could be honest.”
Charlotte chuckled. “That kiss felt honest to me.”
He rested his cheek on her hair. “Honest enough that neither of us dare leave this room until we are fit to be seen, dear heart.”
He was right, as she saw after more kisses, when she took the candle to the mirror over the fireplace to check that her hair was tidy. It was, but her face was flushed and her lips swollen and red.
Anthony likewise showed the effects, and not just on his lips, as his skin-tight evening breeches left him no place to hide. Charlotte asked, “Can I help you with that?”
Anthony swallowed hard. “Better not. There is no lock on the door, Cherry. I’ll step outside into the cold after you are safely back with your family.”
She could do with a bit of cold herself. And if her attraction to Anthony had got this much out of control after a single night, how would she ever cope after a week?
She was still pondering that question in the carriage on the way home, and kept losing track of the conversation. “Charlotte, you are somewhere else this evening,” Sarah said. “Are you well?”
