Suddenly her body stiffened and she grabbed his shoulders with a fierce grip.
“Alex!” she cried, and “Alex!” Alex devoutly hoped that no one was in the hallway. Charlotte’s body convulsed into a hundred starry, shattered pieces. Prickles of sweat broke out all over her body. Alex grimly hung on to the last of his self-control as her lovely body convulsed against his, ragged moans escaping her lips.
There was silence in the Chinese Salon. Alex looked up at the ceiling and prayed for mastery of his body. He hadn’t felt this close to disaster since he was an adolescent. Charlotte would undoubtedly be wrenchingly embarrassed when she realized what had happened. He had to resume control of his aching, throbbing erection. Finally he looked back.
Charlotte was leaning against her corner of the divan, looking not embarrassed, but stunned.
Alex leaned over and caressed her face.
“What was that?” she finally said.
“What?” Alex said. He didn’t understand her question.
“What happened to me?” She looked straight at him, her slender eyebrows flying toward her curls.
Alex couldn’t help it; he grinned. “You had an orgasm. In France they call them la petite mort— the little death.”
Charlotte looked thoughtful. “Will it happen again?”
Alex almost laughed aloud. “I promise,” he said. “I promise.”
Charlotte thought about this while she pulled up the sleeves to her morning gown and shrugged her skirt down to its proper position. Then she reached past Alex and took a cucumber sandwich from the tray Campion brought.
Alex concentrated on thinking about horse racing. Horse racing bored him to tears and so it had become his private instrument for bodily control. Wonder crept through him. His betrothed had just had an experience that many women never had, and she was coolly eating a sandwich. His eyes narrowed and he looked closer. Charlotte’s hands were trembling. In fact, as he watched, a tear snaked down her cheek.
Alex sighed. Miraculously the uncomfortable bulge in his pantaloons disappeared. He grabbed a cucumber sandwich for himself and slid over to sit beside his teary betrothed.
“Actually,” he said meditatively, “it won’t just happen again; it will be much better next time. Because this time I gave you pleasure, but next time we’ll give each other pleasure.”
Charlotte started. She hadn’t thought about him at all. “Is there something?” she asked.
“Oh, no. If you even touch me, I’ll detonate,” Alex said cheerfully. “You see,” he continued in a silky voice, “my body is clamoring to leap on top of you and ruin you, as they say, and it is only my great gentlemanly control and sense of honor that is keeping me here, eating this dry sandwich.” He put it back on the tray and frowningly selected another. “What I ought to do is kiss you in the carriage and then stroll into my club wearing these deuced uncomfortable pantaloons, and it would end all the rumors about my capabilities.”
Charlotte looked at him from under her lashes. His dark eyes slanted over to meet hers, the message in them undeniably seductive … and amused. Suddenly Charlotte giggled. It was rather funny, although not exactly as he thought. He didn’t want to ruin her by going any further on her mother’s Chinese divan, but he already had ruined her.
She touched his sleeve, still feeling a bit guilty. “Thank you,” she said.
At that Alex looked really startled, even shocked.
“What’s the matter?” she asked.
“Only one woman ever thanked me before—” He broke off, taking a bite of his sandwich.
“Have you had many lovers?”
“Hundreds … thousands …” Alex waved his sandwich in the air. Charlotte made a little moue of disapproval. He leaned over and looked into her eyes. “A gentleman never discusses his other conquests,” he said. “But since you will be my last conquest, I might as well tell you that I don’t remember ever being as aroused as I have been this afternoon … not in my whole life, and with all those thousands of women.”
Charlotte blushed.
“We stopped,” Alex said, “because I want to make love to you for an hour, two hours, on a comfortable bed.” His eyes glinted wickedly at her. “And I want us to be married. You’ll be wearing my ring, and you’ll be mine, and no one else’s. And I want your first experience to be the beginning of a long series of nights and days together.”
“Days?” Charlotte repeated, mystified.
“Days,” Alex affirmed with a decadent smile. “My bedchamber has large windows, and I am going to lay you on my bed with the midday sun pouring in on us, and”—his voice was a thread of a whisper now—”I shall feast on your body for the whole afternoon.”
Charlotte felt she must be cherry red.
“Damn!” Alex said in a conversational tone. “I’m reaching my limit. I shall have to go take a cold bath.” Charlotte giggled.
Alex reached out and put a companionable arm around her shoulders, his hand playing with her curls.
“So, will you marry me? Shall I tell your father you agree?” he asked.
Charlotte looked up at him, her heart almost bursting with love for his wild black eyes, his flying eyebrows, his ironic sense of humor … the Alex of him.
“You are not always right, you know,” she whispered to him, her eyes shining.
“Oh?” His right eyebrow soared up. “I assure you, no one has ever said I was wrong about anything!”
“Maybe there is love at fifth or sixth sight,” Charlotte said sweetly. She wound her arms around his neck. “Maybe love is a matter of thinking the other person is beautiful, intelligent, and funny, and even wholly … desirable. Maybe—” But Alex interrupted her, his mouth descending on hers again.
The silence in the Chinese Salon was broken only by the door opening a short time later as a rather disheveled but very happy earl and an equally happy but composed-looking future countess left the room.
Chapter 13
Three days before her wedding Charlotte nervously put the finishing touches on her portrait of Chloe van Stork. Chloe sat patiently on the couch, as she had for weeks, but Charlotte could tell that she too was excited. Chloe had not looked at the portrait in progress. She wanted it to be a surprise, she explained somewhat childishly. Finally Charlotte made herself put down her brush. She was so jittery at the moment that she might wreck the painting just out of nerves. It was so odd to be finishing the portrait and getting married at the same time. It felt as if she were putting away her old life … no, that was silly. Alex had already set up a magnificent studio for her in his house. He had put it next to his study so he would know she was nearby. Charlotte smiled a secret, silly grin. She wiped her brush carefully and put it down. Later the servants would clean up all her paints and take them over to Grosvenor Square. To our house, she thought.
“Would you like to walk around and see your portrait, Chloe?”
Chloe started in surprise and jumped up. She’s such a nice person, Charlotte thought affectionately, looking at Chloe’s earnest little face and clear eyes. The two young women had become good friends over the eight weeks it had taken to complete the portrait. Charlotte squinted at her portrait. Was it there? Chloe’s deep-down honesty? She thought it was. The other side to Chloe, the mercurial gleams of desire that seemed so clear to Charlotte two months ago, were rather dimmer in the final portrait. Perhaps because Chloe herself had lost the yearning look she had after the night of King Lear. The night before Alex proposed to me, Charlotte thought with a little, irresistible smile. She couldn’t stop smiling when she thought about him.
“Two more besotted idiots I’ve never seen!” her great-aunt Margaret, a formidable lady at her best, had declared. Lady Margaret had a swollen toe and was feeling particularly testy during the formal dinner given by the Duke of Calverstill to celebrate his youngest daughter’s engagement to the Earl of Sheffield and Downes. “We’ll see how long that lasts,” she said, rather spitefully. But Margaret really was fond of her youngest niece, and
this Alexander seemed to be a decent sort. She had liked his father—Old Brandy Balls, they called him when she was young. He would have been horrified to find his son plastered with a nickname like the Ineligible Earl, that was certain.
In Charlotte’s studio, Chloe clapped her hand to her mouth. “It isn’t me!”
Charlotte looked startled. “Yes it is, Chloe. It looks just like you.”
“No,” Chloe breathed. “It’s far too beautiful.”
A smile lit the corners of Charlotte’s mouth. “You’re a raving beauty, my dear.” She put an arm around Chloe’s small shoulders. “You’ll just have to get used to that fact.” Charlotte had chosen not to place Chloe in a fashionable setting, like a ruined temple or a flowery meadow. Instead, she was sitting on the divan, just as she had in real life. Its slightly worn surface was unchallenged by Chloe’s heavy twill dress, the same dress she often wore to sittings.
“Don’t you think it would be a nicer picture if I wore a new gown?” Chloe had asked rather dubiously, when Charlotte announced her intention. “After all, Sissy is in an Egyptian costume—”
Charlotte broke into this comment. “Don’t even mention that vulgar portrait Sissy commissioned! Poor Lady Commonweal was cut up about it for weeks. Cleopatra indeed! Sissy has no sense of dress.”
Chloe thought about defending her school friend and then decided to keep quiet. Sissy did have awful taste in clothing, there was no getting around it. Chloe fancied that she herself would have good clothes sense, if her mother would ever let her choose a gown made in a current mode. But now that Lord Holland had dropped his suit, Mrs. van Stork said quite frankly that she didn’t see any reason to spend a huge amount of money outfitting Chloe. If she found another beau, then they’d see about it. But Chloe thought agonizingly that she didn’t want another beau. She wanted Will, and only Will. But Will had not only disappeared from her life; she hadn’t seen him at the theater—even if from afar—for over a month. She was getting over him, she promised herself. Any day now she would stop crying herself to sleep.
She certainly didn’t look like a weepy miss in Charlotte’s portrait. In the end Charlotte had posed Chloe in three-quarters profile. Against the background of her dark dress and the dark couch, her porcelain white skin and deep blue eyes gave her an otherworldly beauty, an unquestioning look of serenity.
“I don’t usually feel like that,” Chloe said in a rather small voice.
Charlotte pulled her over to the divan. “Now that the portrait is finished, I want to know what is going on,” she said. “Where is Will? I haven’t seen him in weeks!”
“I don’t know,” Chloe replied miserably. “I don’t have any idea.”
“Hmmm,” Charlotte said. “It’s not like Will to miss the prime part of the season.”
“I know,” Chloe said in response to her unspoken comment. “He has to find a rich bride, doesn’t he?”
Charlotte was touched by the obvious distress in Chloe’s eyes. She nimbly avoided the question.
“Did you turn him down?” Charlotte asked.
Chloe’s eyes fell to her hands, pleating and repleating the folds of her heavy skirt. “No,” she half-whispered. “He didn’t ask me.”
“Well, do you think your father might have warned him off? Because, poor thing, he does need to marry a fortune, after all. He might lose his estate, from what I hear. And all because his father was so addicted to racehorses. It’s a shame.”
Chloe shook her head. “I don’t think so. My father actually liked him—he said that Will, Lord Holland, had a better head for commerce than the average flimsy nobleman—oh, Charlotte, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to insult you … or anyone.” Her voice shrank to a whisper. “The truth is, the baron must have decided he couldn’t go through with it, that’s all. It’s one thing to have to marry a fortune, but it’s another to contemplate marrying the daughter of a cit. I think he just couldn’t bring himself to propose to me, and so he went to the country.”
Charlotte gave her a swift hug. Then she got up and pulled her portrait around so that it was facing the couch.
“Chloe van Stork,” she said firmly. “Look at my painting.” Chloe looked. “Do you really think that Will would be able to resist the idea of marrying this woman?” Chloe looked, but she didn’t see the delicate appeal in her own blue eyes, the effortless nobility of her high cheekbones and narrow shoulders, the tempered hint of sexual passion in her full red lips.
“Yes,” she said.
“Well, you’re wrong.” Chloe absorbed this in silence. “Will is coming to our wedding,” Charlotte added.
The Earl of Sheffield and Downes was marrying with more pomp and circumstance than had been seen in London for years. The invitation list to the wedding was rigorously controlled, winnowed down to peers and special friends of the bride or groom. That alone ensured that every person with any claim to being a member of the ton was dying for an invitation and so far only two invitations had been declined. Charlotte couldn’t move outside the house without being mobbed by reporters from The Tatler and The Gazette; there was even a semipermanent gossip column in The Tatler dedicated to speculation over her wedding dress, honeymoon, and future life (childless or not?).
“Now,” Charlotte said practically. “What are you going to wear to the wedding?” Chloe shook her head. To be honest, she hadn’t decided yet whether to attend the ceremony. Her parents had firmly declined their invitation, although they were inordinately pleased to have been invited. If she attended the ceremony, she would have to be chaperoned by Sissy and her parents. But she hadn’t thought to wear anything special. What did it matter? Will clearly wasn’t in London. Now her heart began to beat quickly. She would see him in three days.
“Oh, no!” Chloe said in agony. “It’s too late to get a dress … I’ll have to wear one of these.” She plucked at the heavy twill again.
“No,” Charlotte replied. “No, indeed. You see, my mama has been thinking about nothing but clothing for weeks—well, ever since Alex proposed. And that means my room is simply filled with gowns, more than I could wear in a year. And it means that there are seamstresses on the premises. They’ve been here for the last month, sewing. Let’s go. We’ll pick out a dress and they can alter it by tomorrow.”
“No, no,” Chloe gasped. “You can’t do that! I won’t let you … why, you will need those clothes on your honeymoon!”
Charlotte smiled impudently as she looked back at Chloe, all the while dragging her irresistibly to the door. “No, I won’t. Alex says I won’t need any clothes at all.” That silenced Chloe, and Charlotte bore her off downstairs.
On the day of Charlotte’s wedding, Londonfolk began to gather at St. George’s at five in the morning, the better to see the gentry filing into the chapel. Not long afterward, they had formed a cheerful, rather polite little mob, who raucously commented on the attire of each and every guest—even old Lady Tibblebutt was applauded as she tottered from her carriage, and told in no uncertain terms that she wasn’t in her dotage yet; a particularly kind bystander even offered to make her as happy as a butcher on Sunday until the crowd booed him down.
Thus it was a true compliment when even the sauciest of apprentices fell into a hush of approval as Miss Chloe van Stork descended from Sir Nigel Commonweal’s carriage. Diamond drops fell from her ears. Her blue eyes shone. But what made the reporters frantically thumb their commentary books was the irresistible combination of her lily white skin, russet hair, and a daring green gown that could only have been designed by Madame Carême. Madame was quite the modiste of the day, given that it had been leaked to the press that she designed Lady Charlotte’s wedding gown. Speculation was ripe about the style of the wedding dress. Miss van Stork’s gown was a classic Carême: made of a floating, lightweight fabric, it seemed just barely to cover her bosom, and it clung softly to her legs. But would Charlotte Daicheston want to wear something so bold for her wedding?
By eleven o’clock the footmen who stood at the doors of St. G
eorge’s had checked off almost all the names on their lists. Few had dared to be late, for fear they would be caught in the press of carriages surrounding the church. The crowd outside had reached a fever pitch of excitement. The groom was here. Everyone saw him go in, looking not at all nervous.
“Well, it is the second time for ’im, in’t?” a certain Mall Trestle said.
“So it is, so it is,” said her friend Mr. Jack, genially. “Now what’s going to make that ’un nervous ain’t the wedding, it’s the night!”
“You’re a card, Jack,” Mall said rather sourly. She preferred to think of the earl—such a handsome brute he was!—as having no problems in that area.
“Well, where’s the bride, then? Maybe she’s piked,” Jack said helpfully.
“Loped off? She never,” Mall replied in disgust. “Who’d leave a bloke like him, an earl an’ all, and even if he’s got a floppy poppy, what’s she care anyway?”
Jack frowned. It offended his sense of propriety to think of a woman who didn’t care about such things.
“Now, Mall,” he started heavily—but just then a shiver ran through the crowd, a chattering wave of voices, as if a flock of starlings suddenly landed on a pasture fence. The bride had arrived.
Charlotte sat absolutely still inside her father’s carriage. She felt giddy; she couldn’t stop smiling to herself. Her mother, on the other hand, had already started to cry, sitting on the opposite seat. But Charlotte didn’t make much of this. Her mother had wept straight through both of her sisters’ weddings. Adelaide gave a loud sob.
“Mama,” Charlotte protested, half laughing. “We’re here. We’re at the church.”
Marcel pinched his wife’s arm lovingly. “Now, you remember what we talked about, Addie,” he said in a low voice. “You can cry all night if you want to, but no crying now.”