She caught him unprepared. He was stunned by his own behavior, far too shocked to notice the elevated pitch of her voice. He understood only the words, and these made him wonder if he’d lost his hearing along with his mind and sense of honor.
“Frightened?” he repeated incredulously. “Frightened? I? Of you?”
She lifted her perfect chin. “My bonnet, if you please,” she said in precisely the tone she might have used with a lackey.
He was all but trembling with the turmoil within, almost sick with it. Yet he picked up her frilly bonnet from the shelf and gave it to her. He pulled the door open.
She did not put the bonnet on her head, only held it by the ribbons, as though he’d contaminated it by touching it.
“I won’t tell anybody,” she said with a small, scornful smile. “It is hardly worth mentioning, after all.”
She sailed through the door, nose in the air.
He slammed it behind her.
As the door slammed shut, Charlotte let out a whooshing breath.
“You bloody damned idiot,” she gasped. “How could you?”
How couldn’t she?
He was infuriating, and she’d felt so sure of herself: no question she could stand up to him, no doubt in her mind of how she’d deal with his obnoxiousness. He thought all he had to do was act the conquering male and her heart would flutter and she would surrender.
She’d show him, she’d thought. How easy it had been to turn herself into a stone statue!
And then, and then…
…the light touch of his lips upon her skin, the tenderness that took her all unawares and made her heart ache.
Guile. It was nothing but the guile of a practiced rake. And she’d succumbed. Instantly.
Oh, but for a moment, a lifetime of a moment, it had been sweet, unbearably so. For that small lifetime she’d felt young again and could believe again. For that time it seemed a bud of true happiness was growing in her heart and blossoming in the warmth.
Warmth, indeed.
A euphemism for lust.
Yet for a time, for that small lifetime, she’d felt warm and cared for and safe. For that time, desire was a joyous blossoming of tenderness.
How could she be so deluded?
Easily, too easily.
She put two fingers to her lips. They were swollen and tingling. She was swollen and tingling down below, too, where no hand but her own had touched for more than ten years.
How gently he’d touched her. She remembered the way he’d gathered her in his arms, and made her feel precious. She’d even imagined his hands trembling…but it was she who’d trembled, fool that she was, with anticipation and hope and girlish excitement.
She could scarcely remember the girl she used to be or the excitement she’d felt so long ago when a man first gathered her in his arms.
She’d worked so hard to forget how wanton she’d been. She couldn’t bear to think of it: the blind foolishness of a moment and the shame afterward, at what she’d given up so thoughtlessly, the most precious thing a woman had to give. The shame cut so deep she’d thought it would kill her. At times she’d hoped it would.
She doubted she and Geordie Blaine had had time for tenderness, even if he were capable of it, which was most unlikely. Their few couplings had been so furtive and hurried. She had loved him madly—or thought it was love—and she’d been ignorant. She had felt pleasure—or the madness of infatuation—simply to be with him, to be daring and defiant.
So there, Papa. Forget Mama so quickly, will you? Marry again, as though she never mattered, as though I never mattered? Forget me, too, will you?
Anger, loneliness, fear of losing her father as well as her mother: She understood all the whys now.
She’d churned with feelings, far more than a spoiled, sheltered girl could manage, certainly.
She must have forgotten a good deal, though, because nothing she could recall of that time resembled what she’d experienced minutes earlier with Mr. Carsington. If he hadn’t been holding her, she would have tumbled from the dairy table and melted into a puddle on the floor.
Wicked man. He was too curst skilled by half.
And she was the greatest ignoramus of a woman who’d ever walked the face of the earth.
Another minute and he’d have had her, there on the table of the dairy, like the sluttish dairymaids in those lewd prints her boy cousins had tried to shock her with.
Another minute and—
But it hadn’t happened. She was not sure where or how she’d found the presence of mind to stop him, but she had.
Then—and again she had no idea where salvation had come from—she’d said the first thing that came into her head, and it turned out to be exactly the right thing, finally.
Hardly worth mentioning.
She glanced back at the closed door.
It was a wonder he hadn’t thrown her out of the dairy bodily.
He could do it, too, easily.
He was not only large but he had the muscles of a blacksmith.
“Oh,” she said, and she ached, because she could feel it yet, the warmth of his big body, the strength of those muscled arms.
She pressed her fist against her mouth. She had to get away. Far away.
She hurried down the footpath, putting on her bonnet and tying the ribbons as she went.
Thunk. Thunk. Thunk.
This was the sound Darius’s head made as it struck the dairy door, about ten minutes after he slammed it behind Lady Charlotte.
He needed to hit somebody, and the logical target was himself.
“You moron.”
Thunk.
“Half-wit.”
Thunk.
“Imbecile.”
Thunk.
He stepped back from the door and sank onto a stool. There he sat for a time, clutching his head.
The pain was a relief from the stew in his mind.
So close he’d come, so close.
Another minute and he’d have ravished her. And then…and then…
It didn’t bear thinking of.
He saw it in his mind’s eye all the same: a hasty trip to the altar, and everyone knowing why, because there was no other reason on earth the likes of Lady Charlotte Hayward would suddenly become wife to Lord Hargate’s youngest and least impressive son, whose sole asset was a ramshackle property whose house was tumbling down about his ears.
There was no way out of marriage in such a case, no way even Darius could excuse himself. No matter how unjust and illogical he deemed Society’s rules, he couldn’t change them. Gentlemen expected their wives to be virgins. If they were not, they would suffer either public disgrace or private misery. He couldn’t change Nature, either, who’d designated the female as childbearer.
Whatever else he was, he was a gentleman who understood that to deflower her and abandon her was out of the question.
He would have to marry her, which meant that, henceforth, her father would view Darius Carsington as a fortune-hunting debauchée.
Henceforth his own father would perceive him as an unprincipled incompetent. Darius could hear the deep, scornful voice: You decided it was easier to seduce an innocent girl and live off her portion, I see.
His brothers would despise him. His mother would be disappointed. His grandmother would be disgusted.
And the woman forced to wed him would hate him, of course, for the rest of her life, for ruining her life.
“Errgh.” He clenched fistfuls of his hair. “Errrrrgh. No. Don’t think about it. Just…stop. It didn’t happen. It’s not going to happen.”
To blot out the nightmare in his mind, he opened his eyes and gazed about him.
Sparkling white. Elegant.
He sighed. The dairy was…beautiful, really.
Not merely immaculate but arranged exactly as it ought to be. If she’d found no fatal flaws in the scullery, that, too, must be…right.
“Damn me,” he said. If he had only listened to her in a calm and ration
al manner, the situation would not have become emotional and he would not have acted like a cliché.
She was Lithby’s daughter, after all. Hadn’t she told him how her father quoted Darius’s writings? Doubtless Lord Lithby shared his agricultural enthusiasms with his wife and daughter. Hadn’t Lady Lithby said that Lady Charlotte was a country woman? Why should she not know how a dairy worked?
And why should she not assume he’d be interested in increasing his income? What responsible landowner would not wish to improve the productivity of his property?
“Besides, you gave her a hint, you know you did,” Darius muttered. “Trying to be so witty. Vipera-bankrupt-me-remodeling-my-house-icus. Perhaps she was quick enough to realize it wasn’t entirely a joke.”
Not that her motives mattered.
She was right, more than right.
He dragged his hands through his hair.
Now what?
Tomorrow I shall tell the servants to restore the dirt.
Had any other woman uttered the threat, he would have laughed.
But she…
After what had happened here?
She’d do it.
He thought and thought.
He got up and paced the dairy.
He stared at one stained-glass window, then another.
He tapped his fingers on the marble shelf.
He set Logic to work on the problem. He looked at it this way and that way, inside out and upside down.
And in the end, being a servant of Logic, he knew he was doomed. He must go to her and endure the unendurable, a fate worse than torture, maiming, plague, pestilence, famine, or death.
He must APOLOGIZE.
Darius hurried back to his house, only to learn that the ladies were long gone. He’d left it too late.
He debated whether to go to Lithby Hall.
But what were the chances there of speaking to her privately? Even if he weren’t in her bad books, how could he contrive to be alone with her? The only time parents would leave a gentleman alone with an unwed daughter was when they believed a marriage proposal was imminent.
He must wait until tomorrow, and it must be at Beechwood. While privacy was difficult here, too, this at least was his property. He wasn’t at the mercy of someone else’s servants. It only wanted ingenuity to devise a way to get her alone for the thirty seconds he needed to say what must be said.
Since he could do nothing productive today, and as long as he was mortifying himself, he returned to the dairy, found the separate door opening into the dairy scullery, and inspected that.
It was exactly as she’d said.
Thunk.
The next morning, after shocking Goodbody by changing his clothes four times, Darius was in place, guarding the dairy door, well before the ladies were due to arrive.
He waited for half an hour, and no one appeared.
He waited another half hour, and no one appeared.
Another half hour passed while he tugged at his neckcloth and took off his hat and put it on again, flicked dust from his boots with his handkerchief, frowned at the dust on his handkerchief, frowned at wrinkles in his trousers, and drove away several confused spiders who didn’t understand that their eviction from the dairy was permanent.
Finally, he gave up and went to the house, watching all the way for any servants Lady Charlotte might have sent to put the dirt back in the dairy.
He found Lady Lithby first. She was talking to the plasterer—a man named Tyler, Darius recalled. Having received his orders, the workman was leaving as Darius joined her.
After the usual civilities, Darius said, casually, “I wonder if Lady Charlotte is about. I wanted to consult her about the dairy scullery gutter.”
Lady Lithby’s dark eyebrows went up. “The gutter? You’ve found out her secret, then.”
“Do you mean the secret about her being far more intelligent than she lets on?” he said. “Or the one about her knowing as much about estate management as a man? Or is there another secret I’d better find out in a hurry if I know what’s good for me?”
Lady Lithby laughed. “I should have realized you’d find her out,” she said. “The average gentleman would not. If she did let on how much she knew, he’d humor and patronize her.”
As I did, Darius thought.
“Poor Charlotte must let them talk about agriculture and never venture a remark, though she is as knowledgeable as any of them.”
“She ventured a number of remarks to me,” Darius said. “I was…surprised.” Not to mention obnoxious, childish, close-minded, and generally despicable.
“It is not so surprising when one considers her father’s character and the circumstances of her childhood,” said Lady Lithby. “Charlotte was the son, you know, for rather a long while.”
“The son,” he said, and the pieces instantly fell into place. Thanks to the talkative Mrs. Steepleton, he knew Lady Charlotte was the only child until she was nearly twenty, for the first Lady Lithby had become an invalid soon after giving birth. Apparently, then, seeing no prospect of having a son and heir, Lord Lithby had made his daughter a substitute of sorts.
She’d viewed Darius’s dairy as a man would have done, assessing its potential, weighing costs versus profit.
No wonder she’d looked so pleased. She’d seen through the filth and accumulated rubbish to its potential, and gone to work. When he’d found her, she’d been proud and pleased with herself, as she’d every right to be, because she’d judged correctly.
Darius’s conscience stabbed hard, and Logic did nothing to ameliorate the pain. He, who prided himself on his intelligence, on his objectivity, had behaved like the stupidest, most immature of men.
Was this what his father saw in him? Intellectual conceit? Immaturity? Close-mindedness?
At that moment a fair-haired boy—one of the workmen’s apprentices, apparently—ran up to them, cap in hand. He stopped short, his face reddening. He bowed to them separately. Then, tightly clutching his cap, he looked about him. Clearly he was lost. Clearly, too, he was not bold enough to address his superiors without leave.
“Yes?” Lady Lithby said with a kindly smile.
Thus invited, he spoke, the words spilling out in a rush: “Begging your pardon, your ladyship, but I’m Mr. Tyler’s apprentice, Pip. They told me he was looking for me, and he was here with you.”
“He went upstairs a moment ago,” she said. “To the master bedroom.” She explained how to get there. The boy bowed again and ran off in the direction she’d indicated.
“The master bedroom?” Darius said. He’d given orders that no one was to enter that room. “I thought—”
“I know, I know,” Lady Lithby said. “We were to leave it alone. But you had not realized the plaster was so bad.”
Darius recalled—and he shouldn’t have needed a reminder—how a piece of ornamental plasterwork had nearly killed Goodbody. “Of course. It had slipped my mind. Naturally it must be repaired.”
“Your manservant has removed your belongings to the south bedroom,” she said. “Charlotte is upstairs as well, in the corner guest chamber. She’s sorting the contents of that curious trunk.”
Darius searched his mind. Nothing about a trunk there. “What trunk?” he said.
“Oh, did no one tell you? They found it when they were clearing out the dairy, under a lot of broken chairs and tables.”
Within the top layers of the trunk’s contents, Charlotte found an assortment of elaborate masks, half a dozen exquisite fans, a hooded cloak of a deep blue silk, a linen stomacher embroidered with birds of paradise, and an old-fashioned corset. There were a few letters and books, too, including a copy of Alexander Pope’s The Rape of the Lock, its pages filled with pressed flowers: ancient roses, violets, daisies, pansies, and forget-me-nots.
Last, she found a small black silk bag that tied with ribbons.
Charlotte was kneeling on a cushion in front of the open trunk, the various contents she’d unearthed neatly sorted and arranged
about her. She frowned over the mysterious bag in her hand. It did not seem sturdy enough to serve as a purse of any kind. What did it hold? Handkerchiefs? Was it an old style of pocket to wear under one’s skirts? But why would it need such large ribbons?
From somewhere to her right a deep voice said, “A wig bag. I haven’t seen one of those since Cousin Hector died.”
Her heart instantly sped to triple time. She made herself turn calmly in the direction of the voice. Mr. Carsington stood in the doorway, leaning against the doorpost, his arms folded over his big chest.
How long had he stood there, watching her?
And wasn’t “stood” a completely inadequate word for what he did? He not only seemed to take over the room even before he entered it but made the space seem too small to contain him. This was probably because he occupied her, completely.
She was aware with all her being of the arrogant Apollo on the threshold, his hair and eyes glinting gold. She was aware, too aware, of the broad shoulders and chest, the taut waist and long legs. She could almost feel those powerful arms wrapping about her as they’d done yesterday. She could almost feel the warmth of his hard body…the touch of his mouth on her cheek…those teasing kisses that had made her giggle, made her feel like a girl again…
Don’t forget how near you came to doing exactly what you did when you were a girl, she told herself.
“A wig bag,” she repeated calmly, while she rose calmly, too, while every pulse point of her body seemed to be jumping against her skin.
“A gentleman would wear it to tie up the queue of his wig,” said Mr. Carsington. “Cousin Hector was one of my mother’s relations. An old-fashioned fellow.” He paused, frowning. “As I seem to be. Lady Charlotte, I must speak to you.”
“Are you not doing so?” she said.
He entered the room, closing the door behind him.
“You must open the door,” she said.
He closed his eyes, made a growling sound, opened his eyes, then opened the door a crack. “Very well, if you insist on having witnesses.”
Her heart sped up to quadruple time. “Witnesses?”
“I have come to speak to you about what happened yesterday,” he said.
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