“I see it,” Edgeworth said. “Might I remind you, I’ve already ridden in it once.”
“Entirely your problem,” Drew snapped, wishing he had thought to put a flask of whiskey in his pocket. Char’s raven-haired image was flickering in his head. A sure warning he was entirely too sober. “I’m not getting in that death trap.”
The captain of the boat, a wiry old man with weathered, sun-beaten skin that reminded Drew of his favorite broken-in saddle, snorted. “Simpering dandy,” the man hissed under his breath then spit into the water.
“I heard that, you miserable, craggy-faced lout,” Drew returned.
“That’s the spirit,” the captain said with a chortle. “I’ll be waiting aboard for the two of you. Five minutes. No more.” The captain climbed aboard the ship and disappeared below.
“Let’s go,” Edgeworth said, putting one booted foot onto the edge of the rocking boat.
Drew’s stomach turned over with each dip and creak of the vessel. “I don’t think I can,” he said, unwilling to admit that the thought of riding in the boat made him feel ill.
Edgeworth took their grandfather’s summons from his pocket and waved it in the air. “Need I remind you?
“What do you think?” Drew grumbled. “I’m standing here freezing my ballocks off, aren’t I?”
“Just being here will not help you keep your inheritance, Hardwick. You’ve actually got to go home to Danby Castle as your Grandfather demands, unless you want to be penniless.”
Drew wasn’t sure he cared if he was penniless or not. That was the problem. He pulled his overcoat tighter to ward off the frigid December air as he listened to the water lapping against the boat. Each splash reminded him his time to make a decision was running out.
“Did I mention that if you don’t return by December twenty-fourth, you will be impoverished?” Edgeworth shoved the crumpled summons under Drew’s nose. “As in cut off without a bucket to piss your Brandy soaked urine into.”
That last part got Drew’s attention and made him shudder. How was he to buy whiskey to forget who he was and what he had done, if he didn’t have two coins to rub together?
“Let’s go,” he said, jumping aboard and going below to the dark, damp cabin. He strode towards one of the narrow cots bolted to the wall, laid down, and closed his eyes. He had a few hours before he would be back on English soil, then a two-day ride at best before he would be standing on the hallowed grounds of Danby Castle. After that, it might take five to ten minutes, depending on who he ran into, before he would be in his bedroom where he had taken Char’s innocence.
Char.
Charlotte.
He clenched his teeth on the desire to call out her name.
It was probably good she had disappeared from Danby Castle and into thin air. He might have done something stupid if she had stayed, and he’d been forced to see her degraded by his father. Drew had no doubt his father would have taken every opportunity to remind Charlotte and Drew she was nothing more than a servant’s poor daughter.
Fresh anger, as if his father’s order for Drew to break his impetuous offer of marriage to Char had happened minutes ago, rolled though him. He curled his fingers into the cot, gripping and releasing the sheet. The boat rolled, and he broke out into a profuse sweat.
Yes, it was a damn good thing she’d gone. He might have done something chivalrous. He might have actually become a decent man and not the rotter he was. But he would never know for sure, and Char, no doubt, had left Danby Castle and never thought of him again.
~ 2 ~
Charlotte Milne had ghosts in her head.
Two, to be precise.
One, the ghost of the foolish girl she had been, blessedly only made a flickering appearance every now and then. Each time Charlotte took the stage at the Sans Pareil Theatre to the thundering applause of the simpering lords and ladies of the ton, that ghost faded a bit more.
Banishment of the blithering fool she had been was also helped when, post performance, the ton came clamoring for Charlotte’s attention. She was not above the need to be admired and wanted. She had earned that small bit of vanity the day she had picked up the millions of jagged pieces of her broken heart that Drew had left on his bedroom floor.
Charlotte gritted her teeth and shook the thought of Drew away. His ghost was much harder to banish from her thoughts. She dabbed a bit of rouge on her cheeks. A bit more red? Hmm… Yes. She applied some more and smiled at the way the color made the hollow of her cheeks more pronounced, more exotic.
The lords wanted to bed exotic Charlotte, and the ladies wanted to get close enough to her to assure themselves they were more beautiful than a mere actress, a commoner, a woman who—horror upon horrors—traced her bloodline to a scullery maid and a butler, even if he was the stiff and proper butler of the Duke of Danby.
Charlotte didn’t mind the way those who thought they were better than she was swarmed around her. It actually amused her. Thinking on it now, her mouth pulled into a cynical smile. Each time she turned down a pompous lord’s invitation to become his mistress or witnessed the flash of realization in a condescending lady’s eyes that her perfect pedigree did not make her more beautiful than Charlotte, she felt a bit of vindication. Vindication for the way she’d been treated as an inferior all her life, simply because she had not had the fortune to be highborn.
The problem was the moment fled quickly and always left a sour taste in her mouth. And Drew’s pesky ghost, who insisted on roaming rampantly through her head, always appeared with a whisper—no matter how far you rise, no matter how much you attain, you will never be good enough.
Charlotte snatched the brush off her vanity and raked it roughly through her long hair. She had assumed she would never despise anyone more than Drew, but she had been wrong. She hated his ghost, his mocking memory more. She could not seem to banish the fiend from her mind.
But she had a plan—a carefully constructed cold-blooded plot to wipe Andrew Whitton, Lord, Earl of Hardwick, from her head for good. She wasn’t foolish enough to think she would ever love any man the way she had loved Drew. After all, she had given him her whole heart. She frowned at her reflection in the looking glass. Damn Drew. He had taken something from her she could never get back. He had taken her ability to trust. And without that, she had decided the next best things to love were security, status, and revenge.
She would get all three very shortly. A knock came at her dressing room door, and Charlotte stood on shaking legs to let the Marquess of Salisbury enter. He was a wicked reprobate of a man, but he wanted to own her, and he was willing to pay any price. The price, she had decided, after months of carefully avoiding his advances, was marriage. He cared naught for society and loved nothing more than flaunting his disdain for his ilk in their faces. He was using her, but she was using him too.
Salisbury wanted to marry her to prove, once and for all, he could do as he pleased; and she would marry him to prove to Drew and his family that they had been wrong about her. She was worthy of a lord’s love.
Charlotte opened the door, her stomach tensing as Salisbury breezed into the room, resplendent in navy blue formal dress. He was a beautiful man, with his russet locks and piercing green eyes, and she should be ecstatic he wanted her. Instead, a mild queasiness filled her.
“Lottie.” He closed the door behind him and drew her into his arms. She forced herself not to turn her head to the side when he pressed his lips to hers. A small, irrepressible shudder ran through her body. “You’re nervous?” he asked, stroking a hand over her hair.
She nodded.
“But it’s not your first time?”
But it was her first time with a man she didn’t love. Drew had been her first, her only. Lying with him, his exquisite, feather-light fingers moving down her chest, over her stomach, between her—she squeezed her eyes shut.
“Lottie, come sit,” Salisbury said, taking her hand and leading her to the settee. She followed him and sat while making an effort to compose h
erself.
“I’ve something for you, dear heart.”
“Thank you, Salisbury,” she said reaching for the glittering diamond ring he held between his index finger and thumb. She fought the tide of disappointment that wailed within her. She had imagined this moment a thousand times, but it had always been Drew sitting on the other side, and their future had been bright with the promise of love. Foolish, stupid girl. That sort of love only existed in the fairy tales her mother had read to her as a child.
“You’ve kept your part of our bargain perfectly,” she murmured. She reached for the tie of her dressing robe, but her shaking hands made undoing the knot impossible. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, willing herself to go through with her plan. She wanted to lay with Salisbury. She wanted to replace the memory of Drew with another man, the man who would be her husband. Why did her heart beat so hard it echoed through her entire body and set her teeth to chattering? She clenched down against the noise.
Salisbury’s hands settled over her fumbling fingers. “Your skin is like ice.”
She smiled faintly. What a ninny she was being. “The room’s cold.”
He shook his head. “It’s hot, if you ask me.”
Yes, well, she hadn’t asked. Just like a man to give an answer a woman didn’t want. Charlotte shrugged. “Nerves, I suppose.”
Salisbury gently cupped her face. “You will forget whoever he was.”
Charlotte wasn’t sure if that was a command or a promise. Either way, she needed to nod. “Perhaps. We should begin. There’s not much time before they’ll call me to stage.”
“I’ve been thinking we should wait until we are properly wed.”
“Oh, yes,” Charlotte blurted, feeling as if the hounds of hell had just been called off her heels. “That’s a sound idea.”
Salisbury offered a cynical smile. “Your enthusiasm for the delay wounds my inflated pride.”
Charlotte’s heart dropped to her bare feet. What to say? She scrambled for the right words, but a loud knocking and a harsh, clipped, “Curtain’s going up in five,” saved her from having to respond.
“That’s my cue,” she said, rushing to put on her slippers and her costume. “We’ll talk later?”
Salisbury stood and opened the door for her. “No need. Tomorrow we’ll be wed. Whatever’s there’s to say, we’ve a lifetime to do it.”
A lifetime? Why did it sound like a death sentence? Charlotte took a deep breath and plastered a smile on her frozen face. She was good enough to marry into the ton, and to be good enough, she needed to shove her silly girlhood fantasies into the darkest recesses of her mind where they could damn well stay gathering cobwebs.
“I’m looking forwards to forever,” she lied. Determined to make a grand exit, she lifted her chin and turned away to walk elegantly, like the duchess she would be, down the bustling corridor. Her foot caught in the long hem of her gown, causing her to careen forwards with a yelp of dismay. She threw her arms out to catch herself, but instead of a jarring hit, a strong pair of hands slipped under her arms then proceeded to draw her up into a circle of heat and steel.
Her heart jumped in a way it had not jumped in almost a year.
Joy surged through her.
Maybe she was not dead inside, after all.
She glanced up to thank her savior and stared in numb silence into bright blue eyes surrounded by long, sooty lashes, set in the face of a dark devil.
“Release me at once,” she hissed at Drew, as the heat of longing and desire danced up her body, flushed her chest, and singed her face.
The hounds of hell, indeed.
Satan was holding her in his arms, and she was not about to be dragged back down into the pits of hell, otherwise known as love.
~ 3 ~
None of Drew’s heated fantasies of Char had included her demanding in a most unfriendly tone that he let her go. Which was precisely why he was sure he was not having another one of his lovely daydreams about her. Her angry tone, along with the fact that some man was staring fiercely at him, increased Drew’s confidence he wasn’t dreaming. He’d had some debauched fantasies in his life, but never had a man been in any of them.
Drew curled his fingers tighter around Char’s warm, silky arms. Normally, he prided himself in the ability to remember precise details of situations and people, but even his memory was not so superb that he could conjure up the way his heart jerked when she was near, the way her smell of freesia immediately relaxed him, or the way her burning skin warmed him to his soul. This was definitely real. Char was here, in the flesh, an answer to a prayer he’d been too ashamed, too afraid, to plead. He breathed deeply of her and pulled her close.
“Char,” he whispered in her ear, the soft curls of her fiery red hair tickling his nose.
“Let me go, you drunken imbecile.” Char’s slippered foot ground down on his toe in a manner that certainly did not say, “I forgive you.”
Let her go?
Ha, ha, and bloody ha. He’d sooner cut off his hand than let her go a second time. Fate had finally decided to crown him the golden son again, and he was not about to argue with fate. Though his mind was a bit fuzzy from the copious amounts of liquor he’d consumed to forget the flaming-haired temptress glaring at him, he was determined to embrace this gift and immediately set things right.
In the spirit of embracing the offering, he pulled Char tighter, wincing when she tried to squirm away from him. Fate may have given him a gift, but he suspected a hearty payment of groveling was due before he could claim his prize. “I see you’ve not forgotten or forgiven.”
“Surely you jest?” Char’s perfectly kissable red lips turned down into a frown.
His groin pulsed to painful awareness of the woman he held so close. He cleared his throat. “I was a weak, damnable ass.”
She jerked one arm free and then the other. “At least we agree on that.” She was good at deftly maneuvering out of his grasp, but she was no match for him. He smiled the roguish smile he knew she once loved as he tapped his fingers, now twined securely around her waist. “You’re fast, but as usual, I’m faster.”
The line that had served to send them both into bales of laughter in the past, elicited a deeper frown from Char. Perhaps reminding her of how he had always managed to capture her and undress her before she could stop her laughter and protest was not one of his wisest decisions. “I’m sorry.” By God he was. His heart throbbed with just how damnably sorry he was.
“You’re precisely twelve months too late.” She glanced down at his arms wrapped around her waist, her gaze flickering to the right as a troupe of actors and actresses rushed past them and bumped into each other in their attempt to gape. Several people collided as they skirted around the dark-haired buffoon standing in the middle of the narrow hall, who was staring directly at Drew.
Wait a bloody minute. The buffoon wasn’t staring at him, the man was leering at Char as if she were a puzzle he had just figured out. Swinging Char around so her back would be to the nosy man, Drew looked into her eyes and, decision firmly made, moved his hands to grip her delicate face and say what he should have said twelve months ago. He’d rather be stone cold poor than spend one more minute without this woman in his life. He grinned at the twitching of her lips. She always twitched when she was angry.
He’d soothe her anger with his apology and explanation of his sorry character, but he needed to be quick and employ every weapon at his disposal. He frowned. What weapons did he have to sway Char with? He searched his mind and smiled. Char’s father had raised her on the good book. Surely, she’d be more apt to forgive if he could show God was on his side.
“Char—” he began and coughed to clear the tremble from his voice. “It’s hard for a rich man—” he stopped again and tried to recall the exact wording of the scene in Mark he was trying to quote. Damned if he shouldn’t have drunk less tonight and striven to be a better listener all the times his mother had preached the Bible.
“Don’t say another word,�
� Charlotte hissed, her face white under the rouge that should have made her look vibrantly alive. As it stood, the unusual paleness of her skin was sharply contrasted by the makeup and gave her an overall deathly pallor. An uneasy feeling coursed through Drew.
“Char, what is it?” He’d not bloody fumbled it all that badly, had he?
“Let me go.” She jerked his hands away from her face, scooted around him, and went to the waiting and open arms of the buffoon.
As she hovered in the other man’s arms, Drew stared at the two of them for a moment, astonishment turning to confusion turning to recognition. “Salisbury?” Drew croaked.
The Marquess of Salisbury inclined his head. “Hardwick.”
Drew withdrew his handkerchief and wiped it across his damp brow. “What the hell are you doing at the Sans Peril?”
“I’m here because of my betrothed.” Salisbury’s arm slid around Char to pull her flush up against his chest. Drew stepped forwards to rip the man’s arm out of its socket for touching Char so intimately, but like a pesky fly that wouldn’t go away, Edgeworth appeared out of the shadows and placed himself between Drew and the man he intended to harm bodily.
“Move,” Drew demanded.
“Nothing doing, cousin,” Edgeworth replied, putting his back to Drew, then extending his hand to Char and bowing. “Felicitations are in order, then?”
What the bloody hell? Drew knew the whiskey made him slow tonight, but why would Edgeworth be offering solicitations to Char for cuddling up to a man who was betrothed to another woman? Drew’s patience snapped, and just as his traitor cousin’s lips grazed the hand of the woman who belonged, body and soul, to Drew, he shoved Edgeworth out of the way.
“Char,” Drew said urgently. “You’re better than this illicit affair.” He motioned to the marquess. “I hardly think taking up with Salisbury will replace what you and I have.”
Char shook her head, sending her bright red curls cascading over her shoulders. She stepped out of Salisbury’s arm, but his hand remained on the small of her back serving to further Drew’s annoyance. “You’re drunk, Lord Hardwick,” Char said coldly.
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