Dare stared in continued disbelief, his emotions tangled and confused as anger and outrage battled with a very unwelcome desire to laugh. He should leave that exact moment. He should walk out of the room and leave Charlotte to whatever horribly convoluted plan she had hatched in that Gordian knot of a mind. He should turn his back on her and never see her again, never again feel the velvet brush of her voice, never experience the brilliant, brief surge of joy that swelled within him when he caught sight of her, and certainly he should never, ever hold her in his arms again.
It just was not sane.
“So be it. I’m mad,” Dare growled to himself as he leaned against the door and crossed his arms over his chest, watching as Charlotte muttered and swore as she attempted to wriggle out of the pillow. He clamped down firmly on the wave of desire that swept through him at the sight of such unintentionally seductive movements, damning his eyes and his lust equally. No one would ever believe he could be aroused by a large, hairy, long-dead king, but with each wiggle of her rounded hips his desire, amongst other things, swelled. “This ravishment you’re planning—do I assume it has something to do with your proposal of marriage a few days ago?”
Charlotte triumphantly kicked herself free of the pillow, turning upon him a look of innocence so profound it would make an angel feel impure. Dare wasn’t fooled for a moment.
“Marriage? Proposal? Oh, that silliness! Good heavens, my lord, I’d forgotten all about that,” she replied with what he knew were dimples beneath the beard. “No, this is totally unrelated.”
“Ah. Would you mind, purely to satisfy my curiosity, informing me what exactly is the goal of your intended ravishment of my person?”
She paused for a moment in the act of unbuttoning her breeches. “You want to know why I wish to ravish you?”
Dare nodded. Yes, he did. He wanted her to admit that she was no better than the rest of the women in Society. He wanted his disillusionment to be complete and inexorably final. He wanted to kill the hunger for her that grew stronger within him each time he saw her. By God, he needed to exorcise himself of her!
“Oh. Well. That. Er…it’s quite simple, actually. You look exceptionally well against me.”
A bubble of laughter threatened his iron control. “I do?”
“Yes.” Charlotte gave him another beardy smile and continued to work nimble fingers down the line of mother of pearl buttons on her purple-and-black breeches.
He resisted the almost overwhelming and completely irrational urge to take her in his arms and kiss away what infinitesimal bit of wits remained about her. “I see. I apologize for my incorrect deduction. I had imagined that your ravishment of me was part of a plan to trap me into marriage.”
Charlotte paused. “Oh?”
“Yes. It had occurred to me—thankfully you have shown me the error in my thinking—that you might have arranged to be discovered with me here.”
Her hand stilled upon the buttons. “Ah.”
“In this room.”
She blinked.
“In a state of extreme undress.”
She licked her strawberry-sweet lips.
“That isn’t the case?”
She raised an outraged chin and shot him a steely look. “I am sorely offended that you could think me capable of such heinous and unworthy acts, Lord Carlisle. You would think a gentleman would be pleased with an offer of ravishment, but no, you have to be obstinate and suspicious and ruin the whole experience! I’m of half a mind to not ravish you at all!”
One heavy gold eyebrow cocked in question.
“But I shall,” she continued, nodding righteously as she resumed work on the buttons. “I shall overlook your petty thoughts this once, but don’t expect me to be so generous next time.”
“So your intention in removing all your clothing and making love to me is not to be discovered, compromised to the point that I will be forced by honor into wedding you?”
“I just said that!”
“Then you don’t mind if I lock this door?” Dare turned the small brass key in the lock and pocketed it.
“Er…” Charlotte watched him warily.
“I thought you wouldn’t. Where would you care for the lovemaking to take place?”
Her lovely blue eyes didn’t even blink. “Er…”
“That couch looks comfortable. Or perhaps you would like to have your wicked way with me on the rug before the fire?”
She glanced at the fire. “Er…”
Dare gave her a scandalized wiggle of his brows as he strolled over to stand next to a large leather armchair. “Don’t tell me you prefer more inventive positions? The armchair, perhaps?”
Charlotte looked with blossoming interest at the armchair. “How could that be possible?”
Dare couldn’t help but laugh. She really was the most refreshing woman he’d ever met, uninhibited, direct, every word and deed unexpected, but he had had enough of playing her game. He had spent well over the few minutes he had allotted to attending her codpiece needs, and his future relied upon his keeping his sister’s soon-to-be aunt satisfied of his character and morality. “Lady Charlotte, I’m afraid I must turn down yet another of your charming but irregular offers. I have left my sister alone too long. If you will forgive me—”
Charlotte approached the leather chair, prodding gently at it as if she expected it to explode before her eyes. “How exactly does one conduct a ravishment in a chair?”
Both of Dare’s eyebrows rose.
“Where, for instance, do the legs go?”
His eyebrows rose even higher.
“And what about the…instrument? How exactly is it wielded in such a situation?”
Dare mused upon his luck in having thick hair, for if he had not, his eyebrows would have found themselves at the back of his head. “Lady Charlotte—”
She stared at the chair with a puzzled frown, one hand holding her unbuttoned breeches together. “I simply cannot picture it. Not even in Vyvyan La Blue’s famed Guide to Connubial Calisthenics is an armchair mentioned.”
Dare opened his mouth to take his leave once and for all.
“I would have remembered such a thing if it were!”
He shook his head. He had to gather his wits, and do it now, else he’d be lost in the mad twirl of her thoughts.
“It wouldn’t be an easy thing to overlook, and I paid diligent attention to the chapters on creative use of furnishings as Antonio was so very fond of brocade.”
“Regardless—” Brocade? Surely he was not hearing her correctly.
“You wouldn’t think a man would find brocade a thing of enjoyment, but Antonio loved to have me wrap him in long lengths of it, then use a carpet beater on him.”
“I must be…did you say carpet beater?”
She nodded, tracing a finger down the curved back of the chair. “Yes, he said it made the brocade soft and pliable and soothing to the skin, although how he could appreciate that with all the twitching and spasming and moaning he did as a result of the application of the carpet beater is beyond my understanding.”
He thought that was the least of what was beyond her understanding.
“Still, he looked forward to the brocade beating sessions, so I guess there must be some merit in what he said.”
Dare took a good, firm grip on his wits, and made one last effort to save his sanity. “Lady Charlotte?”
Charlotte turned to him with a sweet, completely misleading expression on her bearded face. “Yes, my lord?”
He looked deep into her lovely eyes, fathomless and clear, and he knew a yearning not felt since he was young and foolish and in love for the first time. But he was no longer young, and foolish though he might be, he had no place for love in his life. “Good evening.”
“But, my lord…”
He walked to the door and unlocked it, glancing
back over his shoulder to forever burn the image in his mind of the woman who had somehow, against his will, stayed in his heart after five lonely years. She was beautiful. Ethereal. A goddess, still as marble, clad in rumpled silk stockings, her ruff skewed slightly to one side with her exertions, the long lace fall of her linen shirt tangling with the hand that clutched her breeches together, the codpiece dangling in disarray. Her face was pale against the burning red of her beard, making her eyes glitter bright and clear as the bluest of summer skies.
He would leave town after Patricia’s wedding. He would never see her again. “Good-bye, Charlotte.”
The latched turned under his hand, forcing him to step back quickly lest he be struck by the opening door.
“Ah, Lord Carlisle, there you are. A little bird told me I could find you here.”
Dare looked with growing horror at the smiling, suspicious face of his hostess.
“Lady Jersey. I…er…”
“Your sister was worried about you, weren’t you, Miss McGregor?”
Dare took another step back as Patricia slipped in next to Lady Jersey. Both women looked beyond him to where Charlotte had scurried behind the chair. “I was. It’s not like my brother to disappear when he promised me a waltz, although if you have some business with that gentleman, Dare, I am willing to forgive you the oversight.”
Lady Jersey stepped farther into the room, inclining her head toward Charlotte as she held out her hand. “Sir, I do not believe I’ve had the pleasure?”
Charlotte, with a strangled sound and a quick indecipherable glance at Dare, reached out to take the proffered hand, but snatched it back quickly when her breeches started to slide down her hips.
“Good God in heaven!” Lady Jersey exclaimed, her sharp eyes missing nothing of Charlotte’s rumpled appearance. “Lord Carlisle, I had no idea you are a…that you preferred…”
Thankfully the presence of Patricia put a halt to any further utterances. Dare opened his mouth to explain, but he couldn’t. If he mentioned who Charlotte was, the parson’s noose would be around his neck before he knew it. Yet if he didn’t, Lady Jersey would be sure to spread word of his alleged sexual preference, which, given his luck of late, would find its way unerringly to the ears of the very straitlaced Mrs. Whitney, and that would spell a disaster from which he could not recover. He tried to rally his wits, but the full horror of the situation had struck him, leaving him with a sick, clammy feeling in the region of his stomach, hands that were suddenly damp, and the knowledge that if his goose was not yet actually plucked, it was next in line. Before he could do more than sputter an objection, however, the matter was taken from him.
“Lord Carlisle was merely helping me with my codpiece,” Charlotte said in a deep, obviously false approximation of a male voice. Two more people crowded into the doorway as she cleared her throat and added, “That is, he was assisting in removing an object from it.”
Dare’s mind went numb around the edges. He hadn’t thought matters could be made worse, but when Mrs. Whitney leaned toward him and in a scandalized whisper asked why a half-clad man was standing before Lady Jersey, he felt the leaden weight of despair clamp itself around his heart. Dare glanced at her, over to the sympathetic eyes of Patricia’s betrothed standing beside his aunt, and felt the cold hands of the feather plucker approaching. He was caught. Ensnared. Trapped. It had come to this, to a choice. If he wanted any hope of selling his engine design to the Whitney shipyards, he would have to salvage the situation, and assuming his prayer for the earth to open up and swallow him whole was not going to be answered, salvage meant sacrifice. His sacrifice.
He took one last breath as a free man.
“When I say he was assisting me, I mean that he offered to look inside and determine what exactly was in—”
“What Lady Charlotte is trying to say is that she has done me the honor of bestowing upon me her hand.”
Five pairs of eyes stared in surprise at his pronouncement. Dare looked calmly back at all of them, beyond feeling anything but stupefied.
“She? That person is a woman?” asked Mrs. Whitney.
“I knew it!” Patricia exclaimed, saluting her brother with her wooden saber before kissing him on his cheek. “I’m so pleased!”
“Best of luck to you, old man,” said David the sea captain as he clapped Dare on the back.
“Lady Charlotte?” Lady Jersey growled as she turned to face the person in question. “Lady Charlotte Collins? The Lady Charlotte who ran off with an Italian nobody despite my warning her it would all end in despair? The Lady Charlotte whom I specifically forbade to attend my ball? The Lady Charlotte who, upon hearing my refusal, referred to me as ‘that jealous old she-cat who wouldn’t recognize quality if it bit her on the bottom’? That Lady Charlotte?”
Dare looked at Charlotte. She looked back at him, her eyes round with surprise. Then suddenly she whooped with delight and threw herself across the room and into his arms, murmuring into his ear, “I knew this would turn out well! I knew you wouldn’t fail me! Now we will be wed and you won’t be hunted any longer, and Lady Jersey will have to receive me, and I shall have gowns and go to balls and dance, and best of all, your instrument will be happy to apply itself while you demonstrate the armchair’s usage to me.”
“Oh, happy day,” Dare said, flinching slightly as the hunter’s arrow pierced him with a mortal blow. The taste of entrapment was bitter on his tongue.
Four
“Truly, Alasdair…”
Charlotte stopped speaking under the look Dare bent upon her. She thinned her lips in annoyance. “We are betrothed. Must I continue to call you Lord Carlisle?”
Dare fought the familiar tightness across his chest and took an experimental deep breath. At least the shackles Charlotte had about him allowed him to breathe. “No, you do not need to call me Lord Carlisle, but if you must use my Christian name, please use the abbreviated version. No one but my mother calls me Alasdair.”
She blinked. “What should I call you?”
“Dare.”
“Dare? As in…Dare?”
“Dare.” He signaled the horses to start and expertly guided them into the busy flow of traffic surrounding Covent Garden. “It’s just four little letters. Even you should be able to remember it.”
Charlotte tucked an errant curl back into her honeysuckle-crested bonnet, frowned for a moment, then turned to give Dare an outraged glare. “Did you just insult me?”
“Yes.”
Her look of outrage grew. “Why?”
“Because I’m in a foul mood.”
“Why?” she asked again.
Because he had been forced into offering for her. Because he had enough experience to know that what she wanted in life was not what he wanted. Because he knew that despite his acceptance of fate, their marriage would be a terrible mismatch, dooming them both to a life filled with misery, despair, and hopelessness. The Charlotte he remembered was silly and seldom looked beneath the surface, while he had been molded by bitter circumstances and had no patience with shallowness. Dare stared grimly ahead as he drove his team toward Green Park, where his sister had arranged to act in place of Charlotte’s family to discuss wedding arrangements. He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye, expecting to see a righteously indignant Charlotte demanding he treat her as was her due, or a petulant Charlotte who wanted compliments to soothe his insult, or worst of all, a giggly Charlotte determined to jolly him into a better mood. Dare was a man who cherished his sulks, and he had no intention of being made happy when he wanted to brood.
What he saw in her eyes shook his faith in his right to make everyone around him miserable. She was nodding, understanding and compassion warming her blue eyes until they were so clear, he could see right through to her soul. He yanked his gaze away. He didn’t want to see her soul. He wanted to be left alone to nurse the grievous injury she had done him, and he c
ouldn’t do that if he was forced to see beyond the shallow surface of her character.
She patted his arm nearest her. He stared down at the butter-yellow glove resting on his sleeve as she said, “It will no doubt come as a great surprise to you, but I, too, have had occasion to give in to a pout. I’ve found them most refreshing, as long as they don’t go on too long. Then they can cause wrinkles.”
Dare straightened his shoulders and shot her a warning glance. “I do not pout, madam. I am, if anything, merely brooding over the many injustices done me of late. Brooding is not pouting. It’s as far removed from pouting as is possible. Women pout, men do not.”
“Pheasant feathers!” Charlotte scoffed. “It’s a pout and nothing but a pout. And to what injustices are you referring? You don’t mean our marriage, do you? Because if you do, I shall be forced to be offended and take action.”
“What action?” Dare couldn’t help but ask. He wrestled his bad mood back to its accustomed place. Just being in her presence gave him a sense of something so remarkably akin to happiness that it threatened to blow away the clouds of his foul mood. And he couldn’t have that, because without his cloak of self-pity, he would have to admit to feeling things for Charlotte that were best left unrecognized.
“I should challenge you to a duel.”
Dare jerked at the reins, narrowly avoiding driving over two unwary lady’s maids. He tossed an apology over the side of the phaeton before turning his attention back to his bride-to-be. “Obviously the stress of the last few weeks has taken its toll on me. My hearing has become quite unreliable. Would you repeat what you just said?”
“I said that if you meant our marriage and future together was an injustice, I should take action, and that action would translate itself as a duel. Pistols, I think. I never was any good with Matthew’s sword, but I am reckoned quite a crank shot with a pistol.”