Runaway Duchess (London Ladies Book 1)

by Jillian Eaton

  “You said that already.”

  He began to swear then.

  Rather impressively.

  Charlotte had never witnessed the like of it before, at least not from Gavin, and then she suddenly understood what he was trying to hide behind all of his anger.

  Fear.

  He was afraid for her.

  “I am sorry I worried you,” she said quietly.

  “–fucking murderer could be lurking in the…what?” He stopped short, his expression going blank. “Did you…did you just apologize?”

  Heat gathered in her collarbones and spread up into her cheeks. “You needn’t act as if it’s an eighth wonder of the world.”

  “Could you say it again?” The hint of a grin toyed with his mouth as most of his anger melted away. “With the wind, I don’t know if I heard you correctly.”

  “There is no wind.”

  “Humour me.”

  “Very well,” she huffed. “I am sorry I worried you. I should not have come out here by myself after dark. However–”

  “Ah.” He held up his hand, palm facing out. “That’s all I needed.”

  “But–”

  “I accept your apology.”

  Arrogant man, she thought with a flicker of annoyance. Annoyance that rapidly turned into something else when she saw the way he was gazing at her. As if he were a scoundrel starved…and she was the only meal for miles.

  “Gavin–” she began when he slipped his hands beneath her cloak and skimmed his fingers up her arms.

  “You’re so damned beautiful,” he said huskily. “With the moonlight on your skin and shadows in your hair. Like a fairy queen summoned from the woods and the wilds to tempt me.”

  Charlotte sucked in a deep breath. In the distance the sun finally sank below the horizon, shedding the last of its light and plunging the hills into velvety darkness. From the deep tangles of heather a thrush whistled, its haunting tune lifting the tiny hairs the nape of her neck.

  “This isn’t fair,” she whispered even as she hesitantly rested her hands on his chest. He was hot to touch and she leaned into him, drawn to his heat like a moth to flame. “We said we wouldn’t do this again. You said this isn’t what you wanted.”

  “I don’t know what the hell I want anymore.” There was frustration in his voice. Desire in his eyes. He cupped the curve of her jaw. His thumb dipped to the corner of her mouth and because it only seemed natural, because it only seemed right, she parted her lips and sucked gently on the tip.

  Gavin threw back his head and groaned. Before she could fully comprehend what was happening, his other arm yanked her against the rigid concave of his body. His thighs braced against her thighs, his mouth lowered onto her mouth, and his tongue slid between her lips to taste her tongue.

  She could have stopped him. She should have stopped him. Instead, she grabbed onto the collar of his shirt and pressed herself against him in willful abandon.

  His fingers tangled in her hair, forcing her hood back and sending metal pins scattering across the ground. When her thick curls tumbled free he drowned his hands in them, wrapping the sinuous red tendrils around his wrists until it was impossible to tell where she ended and he began. They moaned and writhed, clinging to each other in a mindless, lust-fueled passion that overruled all sense and reason.

  Charlotte gasped for air when he dragged his mouth away from her lips and began to kiss his way down her neck, nibbling and licking until her knees wobbled and she sagged against him. A pull, an unraveling of satin ribbon, and her cloak pooled at her feet. The cool air on her skin brought awareness, and she lightly pressed her hands against his chest.

  “Gavin, wait.” She gave a push, but she might as well have been trying to topple a stone wall. “Wait,” she repeated when he licked her clavicle. “Wait,” she moaned when he held her breast and bent his head, drawing a nipple into his mouth. He suckled her through the fabric of her dress, and the composition of his wet tough and the damp muslin was nearly her undoing.

  Nearly, but not quite.

  “We need to talk about this. We need to–”

  “Once.” Suddenly his mouth was at her ear. He traced the delicate shell with this tongue as his hands went around to her buttocks and he squeezed, settling her over his pulsing length. “Just once, Charlotte, and we can be done with this.” His eyes were glazed as though in a fever dream. His tone deeply pitched. “Just once, and I can forget you.”

  It would have been kinder to jab a knife between her ribs.

  “You want…you want to forget me?” As the full meaning of his words registered, she fought like a hellion to be free of him. Kicking, scratching, shoving. Anything she could do to get away.

  “Charlotte, what are you–damnit,” he swore when a lucky blow bounced off his shoulder. It hurt her hand more than it hurt him, but she was still satisfied to see that he gave a tiny flinch. “Calm down. You’re going to injure yourself.”

  “Not before I injure you!”

  She began to direct her punches at his head until he grabbed both of her wrists and held them high in the air. She considered raising her knee, but he must have sensed her intention, because he immediately brought his legs together and narrowed his eyes.

  “Don’t even bloody think about it,” he warned.

  “Then let me go!”

  “I will as soon as you agree not to kick me in the bollocks again.”

  Her lips pursed. “I’m not making any promises.”

  “Charlotte…”

  “Fine.” The most dangerous four-letter word in a woman’s vocabulary.

  “I want to hear you say it.”

  “You’re being absolutely–”

  “Say it,” he growled as his grip tightened.

  “I won’t kick you in the bollocks again. Even though you deserve it,” she muttered under her breath.

  “I heard that.”

  “You were meant to.”

  He released her wrists, then immediately stepped back and covered his genitals with both hands. It would have been comical, if she weren’t so infuriated.

  “How could you?” To Charlotte’s embarrassment, tears pricked her eyes. She blinked them furiously away. For a fleeting moment, she’d actually thought their moonlight kiss meant he was ready to fully embrace their relationship as husband and wife. What an idiot she was. “How could you want to–to forget me?”

  Gavin slowly lifted his arms. “That’s not what I meant.”

  “It’s what you said.”

  “Yes.” He pinched the back of his neck. Sighed. “Yes, I did.”

  Crouch, she retrieved her cloak and gave it a good shake, then put it back on. Unable to look at Gavin, she directed her gaze to the heavens where the moon hung like an enormous pearl, round and full and luminous. It evoked a sense of sadness inside of her, a brittle aching that started in her heart and trickled through her veins like ice.

  “Do you hate me?” she asked. “Is that why you want to forget?”

  “What? No. No,” he repeated vehemently.

  “Then you’ve a funny way of showing it.” As her anger withered, Charlotte was left feeling tired and empty. It was exhausting to care for someone as deeply a she cared for Gavin. To depend on him to bring her to the highest peaks, only to have him drop her to the lowest lows. She felt like a ball that had been bounced. Soaring high at first toss only to slowly dwindle down, sinking lower and lower with each strike of the ground until it stopped moving all together.

  “Whatever you want,” she said, “I do not have it in me to give you. I cannot feign coldness one second and heat the next. I thought I could, but I can’t. I won’t. Maybe if I could be more like you—”

  He cut her off with a bitter laugh. “You don’t want to be like me.”

  In the silvery light of the moon Gavin’s face was impossibly bleak. It was the face of a man who was discontent with his life. A man who wanted more of everything…except what mattered most.

  She felt pity.

  For
him, and for herself.

  For what might have been…and what could never be.

  “This cannot happen again,” she said dully. “I can give you my heart as a whole if you want, but I will not sell it off piece by broken piece.”

  And because she did love him, even though she knew it was a completely pointless endeavor, she lifted her hand and rested it along his rigid jawline. Inexplicably, the lines in his countenance eased, his breathing calmed, and the knot of worry he always seemed to carry between his brows unraveled. For an instant, he appeared to be a peace. With her. With himself. Her lips parted. Hope trembled, slight as a butterfly’s wing, inside her chest. Then his temple creased and something shifted in his gray eyes, like a curtain being yanked into place to cover whatever vulnerability he’d been on the brink of sharing with her.

  “Intercourse can be a purely physical act. There’s no need to bring anything else into it to complicate matters. At its core, it is just two willing bodies coming together to give the other pleasure. Nothing more, and nothing–”

  “Less,” she finished with a wistful smile. “Except I want the more, Gavin. I want everything, and you want nothing. For a time, perhaps, it would work. There is no denying our attraction to each other. It was there from the start. But I would always want more, and you would always want less, and in the end we would despise each another. And that,” she murmured as she reached out to brush a dark tendril of hair behind his ear, “I do not want.”

  She knew he understood she spoke the truth when his shoulders stiffened. He withdrew from her embrace, and she let her arm drop to her side.

  “You’re right,” he said after a lengthy pause. “Of course you’re right.”

  In this instance, she dearly wished she wasn’t.

  “We might try being friends,” she suggested tentatively.

  “Friends?” Gavin repeated the word as if he’d never heard it before.

  “We are married,” she pointed out. “Surely we should be more than passing acquaintances.”

  He grunted. “I suppose.”

  Charlotte would have given anything to know what thoughts were hidden behind that steely gaze. To know what her husband really wanted. To understand how he really felt. She had caught enough glimpses to know that beneath his carefully constructed façade of indifference was a man of genuine passion, which made her wonder what happened in his past to make him so cynical? So aloof? So untrusting of others?

  It would have taken a special sort of savagery, she imagined, for Gavin to fight his way up from the working to class to being one of the richest commoners in all of London. There would have been no one to look after him. No one to put his best interests above their own. No one to love him, or comfort him, or show him kindness.

  Was it any great surprise, then, that he did not know how to give what he’d never received? The things she craved most from him–tenderness, compassion, understanding–were weaknesses in his eyes.

  Not strengths.

  Gavin wanted a wife to run his household and attend social functions and open doors to high society that were otherwise closed. But what he needed was a woman who understood him. A woman who was capable of giving him what all the money in England could not. A woman who wasn’t intimidated by his gruffness. A woman who appreciated him for who he was, sharp edges and all.

  I can be that woman, Charlotte thought determinedly.

  I will be that woman.

  “Tell me about your manor in London,” she said, tucking her hand into the crook of his elbow as they started back to the inn. It beckoned them with an array of torchlight; a beacon of gold in all of the inky black. “From what I understand, you remodeled the entire home?”

  “I did.” If Gavin thought it unusual they’d gone from kissing to arguing to discussing houses, it didn’t show. “The previous owners fell onto hard times, and the house fell into disrepair. In hindsight, it probably would have been easier to knock the entire thing to the ground and start from scratch, but it had solid bones. Nearly every room has been gutted and remodeled, the floors refinished and the walls fitted with new plaster. Although it could do with a personal touch. I do not have an eye for design,” he admitted gruffly.

  “Then it is a good thing your wife does.”

  “You do?”

  “Does that shock you?”

  He snorted. “Nothing shocks me about you, Charlotte. At least, not anymore.”

  She didn’t know whether to take that as a compliment or a criticism.

  A compliment, she decided.

  Most certainly a compliment.

  “I’d be happy to take over the interior design, if you’d like,” she offered. “Naturally you’d have final approval, as it’s your house.

  “Our house,” he corrected.

  Her breath caught. With four words he’d nearly destroyed her faith…and with two he’d restored it.

  “No pinks,” he continued, oblivious to the stars shining in her eyes. “Or oranges. I’ve heard orange is apparently on trend–”

  “I despise orange,” she said. “It clashes horribly with my hair.”

  “Well we can’t have that, can we?”

  They’d reached the inn. There was another couple at the entrance, talking in low tones. Stepping around them, they made their way inside and up the stairs. Gavin walked her to her room, but stopped short of entering.

  “Good night,” he said.

  “Good night,” she echoed.

  “Until tomorrow, then.”

  “Until tomorrow.”

  He started down the hall, then hesitated and looked back at her over his shoulder, his eyes piercing in the shadows. “Charlotte…I…I am sorry I cannot give you want you want.”

  “Could you say that again?” she asked innocently, her head tilting. “I couldn’t hear you over the wind.”

  His teeth flashed in a crooked grin, and then he walked away.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Six days later the road was fixed, the new carriage had arrived, and Charlotte found herself en route to London. With her blessing Gavin had left the day before on horseback to attend a business meeting that required his immediate presence.

  She already missed him.

  Since the night on the hill, a tentative peace had grown between them. They acted, as Charlotte had suggested, like friends. As a result, they were more than strangers and less than lovers…stuck somewhere in the middle whether they could each carefully grow and nurture a mutual respect and understanding for the other.

  They took to discussing easy things, like the weather or their preferences in food (she was fond of jams, he despised fish), and in the days before their departure Gavin took to accompanying her on her long walks in the mornings and she began to help him (albeit very discreetly) with his accounting in the afternoons.

  It did not take them long to settle into an easy rhythm. Like a river winding around an intricate grouping of rocks, they established a gentle ebb and flow. Too much force and the water thrashed and bubbled. Too little and it never made it stopped. As long as Charlotte was careful not to ask Gavin for more than he was willing to give, he was amendable. At times, even cheerful. As a result, she was very much looking forward to starting their lives together once the reached London. But something she was not looking forward to was seeing her mother.

  She knew that no matter what she said, Bettina would never understand why she had run off to marry a commoner. It would not matter how much wealth Gavin possessed. Without a title in front of his name, he would never be anything to Bettina save the man who kept her daughter from becoming a duchess.

  It was a worry that festered in the back of her mind all the way to London. Blessed with good weather, the journey was uneventful, and they returned a full day earlier than expected.

  Instantly Charlotte was assailed with the sights and sounds of the city as the carriage expertly navigated the bustling streets and thoroughfares. The weather was predictably overcast, turning everything a dismal shade of gray. There
were no rolling fields of heather to be had here, nor endless stretches of clear blue sky so bright it hurt the eyes. Compared to the wildness of Scotland everything was dark and dank and dirty. Slumping low in her seat, Charlotte kept the window curtain closed until they were within a few blocks of Shire House.

  The closer she came to her destination the larger the houses grew, from narrow town homes to grand mansions set far back from the road behind imposing iron gates. When the carriage stopped precisely in front of 32 Park Lane, Charlotte opened the door and hopped eagerly down without waiting for assistance.

  She walked to the front gate and leaned against the thick iron bars, pressing her face right up between them to afford herself a clear, unfettered view of her new home.

  Shire House stood alone on top of a very slight hill. It was four stories high, all hard lines and blank windows with none of the personal touches that made a house a home. Everything was very precise. Formidable, even. But it did not emanate the same sense of coldness and sterility Paine’s manor had.

  There could be warmth here, Charlotte thought, pleased despite the sudden hum of nerves in her belly. There could be beauty.

  In the blink of an eye she saw the dormant gardens blooming with color and life. Cheerful shutters in sunshine yellow framing the windows and the front veranda scattered with toys left behind by a forgetful child.

  She saw herself reading on a bench underneath the grand oak in the front yard, sipping a cool glass of lemonade while she waited for Gavin to return home. When he did he brought her a bouquet of tulips, and he smiled ruefully because they were plucked from her very own garden, but she didn’t mind.

  He took her in his arms and they kissed without a care for who was watching. The flowers tumbled to the lawn, forgotten, as they lost themselves in each other. Then came the patter of little feet, a child’s gleeful yell, and Gavin bent low to swoop their son high above his head. Watching her husband and child play, Charlotte knew only love and contentment.

  Then door slammed, her eyes snapped open, and the perfect future faded into oblivion, replaced instead with the image of a man whom Charlotte did not recognize striding purposefully towards her.