Pippa opened her mouth to scream and then settled. Charlotte smiled at her hugely. She might not like her papa, but she certainly liked this small, independent spirit.
“I’m the not-nanny, remember me?”
Pippa gave her a small, cautious smile. Charlotte tucked her into the crook of her arm, so she was sitting up and could see where they were going.
“Miss van Stork,” she said courteously. “Since our sitting has been interrupted, shall we join my mother and take some tea?”
Alex’s heart sank. Not only was his love looking like a black thundercloud and cross as a termagant, now she wanted to join her mama. And given what he understood from the Duke of Calverstill this morning, the duchess was likely being talked into the idea of meeting him at this very moment.
He cleared his throat. “Ah, your mother is busy.”
Charlotte swung around. “And how, pray, would you know?”
“Your father told me,” Alex said, rocking back on his heels and looking absolutely imperturbable.
Charlotte stared at him for a moment in frustration. What was going on here? Suddenly the light dawned. Alex must have met her father and asked for her hand in marriage this morning. And somehow he talked his way out of her father’s absolute refusal of the idea. So now her father was relaying whatever story Alex came up with to her mother. Charlotte threw Alex a brooding look.
“Hmmm,” she said, nonplussed for a moment.
“I should leave now,” Chloe interjected. She really didn’t enjoy all this strained conversation, especially as she had no idea what was going on. “My mother was very clear about the fact that she needed me to return this morning.”
Charlotte turned to her, her face falling. “Oh, but surely …”
Alex intervened. He took Chloe’s hand and smiled at her genially. “We all know what mamas are like when they want you to return on time,” he said. “I promise not to interrupt your next sitting with Charlotte.”
Chloe looked at him silently for a minute. My goodness, but this man was confident. She couldn’t deny his incredible attractiveness, but was there no chink in his assurance? Well, he is a man, and a peer of the realm, and handsome, and rich, she thought with some resentment. Why should there be?
“Of course,” she replied hastily, aware that she had been mute too long. Chloe withdrew her hand and turned to Charlotte. Then she gave an involuntary smile. Perhaps the earl’s comeuppance was at hand. Charlotte looked as mutinous as a mule, in her mother’s term. Chloe smiled with genuine warmth, and curtsied to Charlotte.
“Oh, Lord,” Charlotte said. “Here we are, curtsying and addressing each other formally. Are you sure you want to do this, Miss van Stork? We’re going to be locked up in this room with each other for almost six weeks—you’ll have to call me Charlotte.”
Chloe twinkled at her. Little fits of temper didn’t bother her, given that her father indulged in them all the time. “Oh, no, Charlotte,” she said, holding out her hand. “I am looking forward to this portrait, even if I can’t see it until I get married!”
“Oh, I let Sophie see her portrait,” Charlotte said. “She just doesn’t understand it yet. Her only comment was that she thought her teeth were too large.” They shook hands with total understanding.
“I’ll see you tomorrow morning, then,” Charlotte said resignedly. “Let me show you out, please.” Charlotte went first, still holding Pippa, who laughed madly and tried to swipe all the pictures off the wall as they descended. Chloe came next and Alex followed. He was feeling rather vexed. Why was Charlotte glowering at him? Surely she didn’t think he was playing fast and loose with her when he kissed her last night? Didn’t she expect to marry him? What kind of person did she think he was, anyway, some kind of castaway who would kiss a girl—the way they kissed—and then brush her off? His first proposal two weeks ago, and her rejection of it, didn’t even enter his mind.
Charlotte saluted Chloe at the door and then turned around briskly. Without missing a step she dumped Pippa into Alex’s arms.
“She’s wet.”
“Oh,” Alex replied. He made such a funny picture, an elegant gentleman holding a child whose beautiful white dress was becoming more soggy by the moment, that Charlotte almost burst out laughing. Only a hint of darkness about his eyes stopped her. Alex turned to Campion, who was waiting patiently.
“Will you call Keating, my man, please?”
“Certainly, my lord.” Campion bowed deeply. “Would you like me to bring the child downstairs?” The entire household was riveted with interest in the Earl of Sheffield and Downes; Campion knew that Pippa would be eagerly welcomed by Mrs. Simpkin and the other upper servants. Keating was being feasted royally at this very moment, he had no doubt. There was no one in the house who didn’t know that the earl had spent forty minutes alone with the master in his study, and that they had emerged on most amiable terms. And there wasn’t a single lobcock too stupid to draw the right conclusion about what had happened in that study.
“Yes, thank you,” Alex said. He handed over Pippa, who miraculously didn’t scream but just patted Campion’s face. Alex and Charlotte watched Campion carry Pippa off as if he bore wet children around the house every day.
“She’s a bit better,” Alex said in a distracted tone. “She hasn’t had a true howl in two days.”
“Yes, well,” Charlotte said. Just like the rest of the household, she knew exactly why he was here, and she didn’t want any part of it. Not now. Not when she still had the residual headache she’d had all day. Not when she was feeling so cross and prickly that she might burst into tears. She just couldn’t—wouldn’t—cope with another marriage proposal at the moment.
So, rather than walking into the Blue Room, or one of the other salons off the entrance hall, she held out her hand graciously.
“It was very nice of you to visit, my lord,” she said loftily.
Alex walked over until he was standing just in front of Charlotte, casting an admonishing look at the two footmen on attendance in the hallway. They instantly disguised the curiosity that decked both their faces and stood poker-straight against the walls. Alex kept walking forward until Charlotte receded a step and another step. He glanced at one footman, who quickly pulled open the door to the Chinese Salon, as it was called. Alex briskly took Charlotte’s arm in his hand, swung her about, and walked her into the room. The door swung to behind them with a quiet click.
Alex immediately dropped Charlotte’s arm and turned around to face her. “What makes you think I would leave my child to the mercy of that muffin-faced type you call your butler?” he said, affably enough.
Charlotte stared at him. She hadn’t thought about the fact that she had tried to say good-bye to him after seeing his child carried down into the servants’ quarters.
“My lord,” she said, “I am not … fit for this conversation this morning. I have a headache.” Charlotte dropped gracefully into a couch, feeling rather like a fraud, but also doing a good imitation of her great-aunt Margaret. Margaret was invariably ill with something, and she much enjoyed her own infirmities.
Alex stood before her, looking absolutely collected, Charlotte noted with some irritation.
“Perhaps you would like me to go down on my knees?” he asked. Charlotte saw the amusement lighting his eyes and glared at him.
“No.”
“Good,” Alex said.
An undefinable suggestion of fury hung around him in a way that was making Charlotte most uncomfortable. She raised her chin defiantly. No one could force her to marry, not even an earl of the realm. Her head throbbed painfully.
“Perhaps you would like to commence now?” she asked defiantly.
Alex stared down at her. This wasn’t going the way he pictured. He thought the interview with her father would be the most difficult part of proposing to Charlotte Daicheston. He had dreaded the explanations, the discussion of his first, horrible marriage—for God’s sake, he never even wrote his own father with the details. But
the duke had been genial enough, listening carefully, asking a few sage questions, nodding here and there. And at the end he shook hands with Alex and said he had his blessing, and Alex had thought that was it. If he pictured anything, it was Charlotte melting into his arms, madly grateful at the idea of becoming his wife. Swaying toward him, the way she did last night. In fact, he had counseled himself not to allow the whole proposal to get out of hand—he wasn’t going to take his wife’s virginity in a drawing room! Somehow after the discovery of Maria’s perfidy, and after finding out she had bedded practically every man in Rome before turning eighteen, the idea of virginity and wedding nights had become very important. No graceless coupling in coaches for him. Yet he thought that he and Charlotte were so mutually fraught with desire that he even considered a special license. But Charlotte’s father had rejected that idea.
“It’s going to have to be big,” he had said shrewdly. “We’ll have to put on the romantic wedding of the century, in order to cool the gossip. And you”—he looked at Alex from under his bushy eyebrows—”you’ll have to make a baby as soon as possible.”
Alex nodded. He had no worry about that. In all he and Maria probably made love only ten times, and he had Pippa as a result.
But now—Charlotte was looking as testy as a cobbler with a sore head and he was losing all inclination to ask anyone to marry him. What did he need a wife for? Maria’s screaming diatribes should have been enough to warn him off women forever. And Pippa was doing better…. The silence between them grew and grew.
Alex looked down at Charlotte again. With a faint pulse of alarm, he realized that her face was as white as her gown and she was leaning her head against her hand. He sat down next to her.
“You really do have a headache, don’t you?”
Charlotte nodded miserably. Each nod made her head pound. Alex got up and went out into the hall. She heard him talking quietly to one of the footmen.
“I’ve sent him off to tell Keating to make you a special brew,” he said, reentering the room. “Here—bend your head this way.” He gently pulled her over until she toppled against his shoulder.
“This is most improper,” Charlotte said, rearing her head.
“Hush. No one can see us.” His hands pushed aside the curls at the nape of her neck and he started a slow light massage. Charlotte turned her face to the side and rested it against his shoulder. She could feel solid muscle under her cheek. It was oddly comforting, somehow. And his big hands were surprisingly tender … She closed her eyes.
There was a knock and Alex swiftly pulled Charlotte to a sitting position, smiling at her wan look. Campion brought in a tall glass on a silver tray.
“Here, swallow this.”
She eyed it suspiciously. It looked vile—yellow and frothy.
“I hate egg drinks.”
“Drink it anyway.”
She did. It wasn’t as bad as she suspected. Worse, she thought gloomily. The footman took the empty glass and bowed his way out of the room. Alex pulled Charlotte back onto his shoulder in a companionable sort of way. Charlotte closed her eyes again.
“There was liquor in that drink, wasn’t there?” she asked drowsily, after a bit. “I don’t like liquor….” Her voice trailed off and Alex could tell she had gone to sleep. He patted her satiny curls back into place. An involuntary grin twisted his lips. How many women go to sleep when an earl comes to propose marriage? He thought of all the voracious glances he intercepted every time he attended Almack’s. Patrick used to twit him, saying that all he’d have to do was dance with a girl twice and she’d be ordering wedding livery.
Well, this was a good story for Patrick. He looked down at his sleeping nonbetrothed. A not-nanny, not-betrothed, he thought wryly. Charlotte’s hair curled riotously, twirling around his hand. He pulled up a soft ringlet and let it spring back into a silky corkscrew. The way she was lying he could see only her profile. Long, curling black lashes lay on her white cheek—a bit rosier now, he noticed with satisfaction. Keating’s headache remedy had enough liquor, as she called it, to heat an ox. Even watching her sleep Alex felt his body stir appreciatively.
That was enough. She didn’t want to marry him, did she? Why not? Perhaps she had heard the story of his first marriage. That must be it, he thought, somewhat relieved. She must think that he had bought off her father somehow and was going to turn her into an unpaid nursemaid. Now he did remember his first proposal. She hadn’t said much, just no. Alex shook his head. They needed to have a straight talk when she woke up. He leaned his head against the back of the divan and closed his eyes. Within seconds, the only sound in the room was the gentle breathing of two sleeping gentlefolk.
Outside, the two footmen looked at each other in wild surmise. They hadn’t heard anything—any words, no matter how muted—for a long time. What was going on in the Chinese Salon? Cecil thought he knew. He smiled widely and thought about Marie. He had tried to talk her into doing it in one of the public rooms in the house. Lord knows, they’d been in every linen closet. But she had always said no.
“Those rooms are formal and dangerous,” she had insisted. “Why, we’d be put out without a shilling if we did anything so outrageous!”
Cecil had it all worked out. Sunday mornings the family was at church, and so were the servants. He simply had to wait until he was on rotation to stay in the house, or switch with one of the other footmen, and she could plead a headache.
“No,” she had kept saying. But now he’d tell her that her very own mistress had done the same. Cecil stood quietly at his post, waiting for someone to emerge from the Chinese Salon, an optimistic glow in his eyes.
Chapter 12
Charlotte opened her eyes some twenty minutes later. Her headache was gone and she had a delicious sense of warmth. Even her irritability had vanished. I’m drunk, she thought, feeling her head reel slightly as she sat up. Alex was sleeping soundly. At least he didn’t sleep with his mouth open. At that moment he opened his eyes and stared at her wordlessly. A glimmer of a smile lit her eyes. Still without saying anything he pulled her over against his side.
“Sleeping together,” Alex finally said in a tone of mock disgust. “Just like two old men on a bench in the sun.”
“Would you like some tea?” Charlotte smiled. “Just to keep you awake, of course.”
Alex hated the stuff. “Lapdog brew. Just the thing for an old gaffer like myself.”
“Would you prefer sherry? Or something stronger? I suspect,” Charlotte said primly, “that Keating’s special drink has made me tipsy, and so I shall drink some tea to ameliorate the situation.” She walked to the door and pushed it open. Cecil’s face fell when he saw her. She looked perfectly groomed and composed. The young lady had not been doing anything untoward in that room. He trotted off to bring a tea tray.
Charlotte turned around. Alex was comfortably sprawled on a hideous Chinese settee chosen by her mother at the height of the rage for things Oriental. The arms were sleeping lions, their eyes picked out in red lacquer. But Alex … he was beautiful, Charlotte thought with an inner sigh. He was wearing an exquisitely cut coat of dove gray, which contrasted ruthlessly with the untamed masculinity breathing through his muscled thighs. Her resolution was weakening.
Alex raised his heavy-lidded eyes and said abruptly, “We need to talk.” Charlotte nodded and sat down next to him.
Upstairs the duchess was becoming worried. Surely her daughter had been unchaperoned far too long. She walked quickly around her chamber a few times. At first she couldn’t believe it when Marcel told her he had reversed himself and now approved the match. But when he detailed all the awful details of Alex’s first marriage, she agreed. Adelaide sighed. Now if only Charlotte could bring herself to discuss what had happened three years ago….
Marcel walked into her bedchamber through the connecting doors leading to his own chambers.
“Time to go, dearest. We’ll be late. You know that I hate to be late.”
“Oh, Marcel.” Adelaide
turned an anguished face toward him. “We can’t go anywhere. Why, Charlotte and Alexander Foakes are still closeted in the Chinese Salon … don’t you think we should join them? They’ve been together, unchaperoned, for over forty-five minutes!” She yanked on the bell cord vigorously.
“Nonsense,” her husband replied. “Charlotte’s a grown girl. She won’t get up to any tricks. Besides, Campion told me that she had a tea tray and a light luncheon sent in. Does that sound like a seduction to you? Now, it’s time to go.” He firmly swept his reluctant wife toward the door.
“But what will he think of me?” she wailed. “We can’t simply leave them unchaperoned!”
“Listen, Addie. You told Charlotte all about the reasons why I originally forbade the marriage, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Well, then, Alex obviously needs some time to explain about his first marriage and the annulment, and all the rest of it that I told you.”
“Perhaps we should just say good-bye?”
“Nonsense,” Marcel said again. “We’ll leave word with Campion.”
Marcel followed his wife down the stairs, ready to push her out the door if need be. He knew as well as anyone that leaving his daughter unchaperoned would be considered a piece of great folly in some circles. But he was playing a deep game, he thought proudly. Not for nothing was he considered a wily poker player. He liked this earl. In fact, he liked him more than he had liked any of Charlotte’s other suitors. He fancied Alex had the right combination of strength and intelligence to cope with Charlotte’s painting and general stubbornness. But he shrewdly reckoned that Alex had quite a job before him convincing Charlotte, and so he had told him, straight out. Women didn’t like to marry men with reputations of this sort. Now, if Alex had had a reputation for whoring and the like, he wouldn’t see any problem. But a reputation for being a limp lily—no. Charlotte had her pride, as much as the next woman.
Alex had listened to him silently, his black eyes inscrutable. But Marcel fancied his point had sunk in. Now, what he, Marcel, would do in this situation would be to convince her. Yes, convince her. And that might take a while, he thought with an inward grin. Under no circumstances was Marcel going to let Addie bounce into the room and ruin the mood. Down in the hallway he dismissed the footmen and told Campion to keep an eye on the place. (Campion immediately understood the master’s vague direction meant to keep inquiring eyes away from the door to the Chinese Salon.) Then Marcel triumphantly bore his wife off to a musical luncheon.