Seduced at Sunset (Love at Pembroke Palace Book 6)

by Julianne MacLean

  Her tongue darted out to lick her lips, and he felt another surge of something decadent.

  “I suspect your skill with the oars is first-rate, Mr. Torrington, since you row each morning. Practice makes perfect, they say. How fast will we go? Am I dressed all right? Or will I lose my hat out on the water?”

  “You are dressed perfectly, Lady Charlotte, and I will move as fast, or as slow, as you desire. I can do both equally well.” He looked her over seductively.

  “I am sure that you can.”

  Their eyes remained fixed on each other’s while she twirled a lock of hair at her temple. She fiddled with it in a deliberately suggestive manner, and he wondered, with a touch of concern, what he was getting himself into.

  He had come home to ensure that his mother would be taken care of in the years to come, not to become involved in a scorching hot love affair with a woman who could potentially turn out to be manipulative and demanding. He suspected Lady Charlotte had practiced that hair-twirling gesture in front of a mirror. He knew nothing about her deeper character. She could be one of those spoiled, possessive types who throw china vases when things don’t go their way. Heaven help them both if that turned out to be the case.

  The coach rumbled noisily over the city cobblestones on the way to the river jetty where he kept his boat.

  “If you don’t mind me asking,” she said, “what kept you in America for so long? Did you intend to stay there permanently when you first crossed the Atlantic?”

  “Permanently is too strong a word,” he replied. “I only knew that I wouldn’t return for a long while.”

  “And what is it that you do there? Forgive the questions, but I have always wanted to visit America. It sounds so very modern and progressive.”

  “Yes,” he said. “It is not like it is here. Americans are not so steeped in senseless traditions. At least most of them are not. The country is only just finding its legs, and I have enjoyed being a part of that growing awareness.”

  “How so?”

  The questions were taking a personal turn, but he had no reason to keep anything secret about his life abroad, so he spoke openly. “I am a railroad investor,” he explained.

  “Really?” She sat forward. “How fascinating.”

  “I like to think so,” he agreed. “The varying geography of the country is overwhelming. The American frontier stretches for thousands of miles, and there are mountains, prairies, and lakes the size of small oceans. At one time, it seemed impossible to imagine that there could be a way to connect the two coasts, but the railroad is changing everything. Commerce is booming. The possibilities there are endless.”

  “It must be very exciting to be a part of that.”

  It had been both exciting and lucrative, for Drake had traveled to America with a significant fortune and had quadrupled it three times over since his departure twelve years ago. He was probably richer than her brother the duke, but he was not the sort to flaunt his wealth.

  “It must have also been exciting to return home after such a long time away,” Lady Charlotte added. “I am sure your mother was pleased to see you.”

  He shrugged at that, for he and his mother were not close. Not in the least. As her only living son, he was here merely to do his duty by her. Then he would be gone again.

  “It appears we have arrived,” he said as the coach pulled to a halt not far from the water’s edge. Drake flicked the latch and pushed the coach door open, then stepped out and offered his hand. “And it is not too late to change your mind,” he said. “You could wait here if you prefer not to get wet.”

  “Why? Do you intend to sink us?”

  “I don’t intend to,” he replied with some amusement, “but there is always some unintentional splashing, and the water is chilly.”

  “I shall weather it just fine, Mr. Torrington,” she said as he led her to the jetty, “but I appreciate your concern for my welfare.”

  Mr. Torrington stepped into the rowboat and held out his hand. As Charlotte joined him, the boat rocked. She quickly took a seat on the bench at the stern.

  “It is a very nice boat,” she said, noting that it was only recently built, for she could smell the freshness of the wood.

  Mr. Torrington untied the ropes. He then sat down, removed his coat, set it aside, and picked up the oars. By braking with one oar and pulling with the other, he turned the small rowboat around to head out onto the river.

  There was not a single breath of wind, and the water was as still as glass. A hint of mist hovered over its surface. Charlotte closed her eyes, breathed in the fresh morning air, and listened to the sounds of the oars dipping into the water. The boat thrust firmly forward with each stroke, and when she opened her eyes, she was astonished by the speed at which they were traveling.

  Mr. Torrington, dressed in a loose white shirt and black waistcoat, was already breaking into a sweat. Then he began to row even faster. Charlotte could not fail to notice his big hands gripping the oar handles with tremendous might, and the strength of his legs as he braced them and propelled the boat forward. She also noticed that his knuckles were scabbed from the fight the previous day.

  “You are very good at this,” she said, amazed at the power of his strokes. The boat cut through the water’s surface like a blade.

  “It’s a favorite pastime of mine,” he replied.

  “Do you race?”

  “Yes,” he replied, crunching forward to perform another impressive stroke. “Whitehall racing is quite the thing in Boston and New York.”

  “Whitehall…?”

  “The name of this type of rowboat. Some say it originated in England, but others argue that it is an American design.”

  Charlotte was not sure what she had expected from today. She thought she had seen it all when she watched Mr. Torrington knock a man out in the street, but now, in an entirely different set of circumstances, she was spellbound yet again…by his broad shoulders in that loose white shirt, his massive biceps flexing, and his raw masculinity. He was a giant of a man, brimming with a magnetism that caused her body to shiver with excitement and promise. He made her feel hungry for something that was beyond propriety. She imagined throwing herself onto his lap, wrapping her arms around his neck, and devouring him with slow, deep kisses that lasted until noon.

  She had never felt such a raw attraction before. No man had ever aroused her desires in such a way, and she knew that she simply had to have him. He was the one. She was as certain of that as if she had selected him from inside a glass case at the jewelry shop.

  “How far do you go each morning?” she asked, working to distract herself from thoughts of those big hands roaming over her body.

  “I row hard and fast for a quarter of an hour.” He practically grunted out the words. “Then I slow down and turn back and return at a more leisurely pace.”

  Her head nearly snapped back with the force of each thrust of the oars. “You’re very strong,” she said with a laugh.

  Glancing over his shoulder briefly, he gave no reply. She could see he was focused on achieving greater speed and ensuring the right direction.

  His hair had grown damp with perspiration and was unruly. He flicked his head to toss it back out of his eyes. His shirt stuck to his shoulders. Shiny beads of sweat were visible on his chest where his shirt collar was open. What she wouldn’t give to kiss and taste the dampness at his neck as she imagined she would do if he were her lover. Goodness…she had never entertained such wicked thoughts about a man before.

  She felt perspiration on her forehead as well, but not from any physical exertion. She sat primly with both hands on the gunwale but felt all tangled up inside.

  When they reached the end of the quarter hour, he stopped rowing, lifted the oars out of the water, and paused to catch his breath. It was at that moment he met her gaze while his chest heaved, and the boat drifted to a slow sto
p.

  They floated freely for a moment or two. He leaned back, rested his elbows on another bench behind him, and grimaced. “I am afraid I’m not much of a conversationalist this early in the morning. Are you bored?”

  Was he joking?

  “Far from it,” she replied. “This is tremendous. I am riveted. You have my attention, all of it.” Her heart was racing, and her body was on fire with exhilaration.

  He took another moment to recover his breathing, then sat up and turned the boat around.

  “Will this be the leisurely portion of the tour?” she asked.

  He smiled and nodded. “Yes, it’s time to slow things down.”

  She suspected she was going to like it slow, just as well as fast.

  “Lady Charlotte, tell me,” he said. “What were you doing in my neighborhood yesterday, all on your own?”

  She couldn’t very well confess that she had gone to visit her real father to try and pair him up with her mother, or that she had failed miserably and needed to be alone because she was brokenhearted. Hence, she steered the conversation elsewhere.

  “I had a meeting with my publisher yesterday, and I needed to work through some ideas.”

  Mr. Torrington leaned forward, then pushed back with those strong legs for a long, slow stroke of the oars. “Are you a writer?”

  “Yes. A novelist.”

  “You don’t say.” He glanced over his shoulder. “Would I know your work?”

  “Possibly. My book has been selling very well in America, they tell me.”

  “What’s it called?”

  She hesitated, for she had been using a nom de plume. “I write under a man’s name,” she said. “My publisher felt the book would sell better that way. It’s Victor Edwards.”

  He immediately stopped rowing. “Are you having me on?”

  “No.” She chuckled.

  “You are Victor Edwards?”

  “Yes.”

  The boat began to drift on the current. “I am sitting in my boat with Victor Edwards. The Victor Edwards. And he’s a woman?”

  “That’s right.”

  He stared at her. “I am in shock!”

  Charlotte laughed again. “You’ve heard of me, then?”

  He slowly resumed rowing. “Yes, and I’ve read your book. It was quite…” He paused.

  She hated when people paused like that. She always feared it was because they hated her book and didn’t know how to politely say so.

  “Quite…?” She waved a circle in the air to encourage him to hurry and find the right word.

  “It was well researched,” he said.

  “Ah. So. You didn’t like it.”

  “No, you mistake me. I enjoyed the story very much. I was particularly interested in the main character—Ernest.”

  “The boxer,” she said. It was also the title of the book.

  “Yes.” He glanced over his shoulder again, then shook his head in disbelief.

  “What do you find so amusing?” she asked. “There is something you’re not telling me.”

  He faced her again and lifted the oars out of the water. “I read the book because the title captured my attention. I am a boxer myself, you see. Well…a retired boxer.”

  “Not professional, though,” she said, for he was a gentleman, the nephew of an earl. It was not uncommon for young noblemen to dabble in the sport, but it was quite another matter to earn one’s living in the ring.

  “I was,” he replied, surprising her with this news. “And I made a small fortune at it, too.”

  “I don’t doubt it, based on what I witnessed yesterday. Is that why you went to America in the beginning? To fight over there?”

  He adjusted the oars in the oarlocks then dipped them into the water again. “No, I boxed here in England. I only went to America after I decided to quit the sport.”

  Charlotte sat speechless while she did the math. He had told her yesterday that he had been gone for twelve years, which would have put him in the ring in 1875, or so.

  She had indeed done a significant amount of research for her novel and had read about many of England’s professional boxers. One in particular had gained notoriety as a champion until he suddenly went missing from the news. There was some speculation that he had been murdered, but a body was never discovered, so the case was closed.

  “Forgive me for asking this question, Mr. Torrington,” she said, “but are you…were you…The Iron Fist?”

  The Iron Fist was one of the most celebrated and feared sportsmen in the country who managed to keep his true identity a secret. Any man brave enough to step into the ring with him subjected himself to incomprehensible violence. They didn’t call him The Iron Fist for nothing, and eventually the boxing establishment had trouble finding sparring partners for him, for no one dared go head to head with him. He had never been defeated.

  Mr. Torrington’s eyes narrowed, as if he were impressed by her clever deduction. She supposed not many women would have knowledge of such things.

  “It appears we have something in common, Lady Charlotte,” he said. “We both have stage names, so to speak. Though your profession is far more civilized than mine ever was.”

  Charlotte blinked at him. “I am astonished.”

  “So am I,” he replied. “What are the odds I would end up in a rowboat with Victor Edwards, who had clearly based much of his main character on me.”

  “That is not true,” she quickly said in her defence. “Ernest was a composite of a number of different boxers, and the circumstances of his life were born out of my imagination. You must admit, your situations are not the same at all. Ernest gets a happy ending, while you simply disappeared. Good gracious. You were in America all this time? Why was your disappearance such a mystery? Was there anyone who knew what happened to you?”

  “My family and a few close friends knew the truth,” he explained.

  Charlotte remembered how Mr. Torrington’s housekeeper had been so knowledgeable about head wounds after Charlotte was robbed. “Mrs. March must have tended to your injuries more than once,” she said. “Now I understand why she was so secretive about her skills.”

  “Yes, and if you don’t object, Lady Charlotte, I will ask that you refrain from mentioning my presence here, or my identity, to anyone. I wish to keep my privacy.”

  She looked out over the still waters. “I will keep your secret if you will keep mine,” she replied. “For the very same reason. I do not wish to be famous. I only want to live a normal, quiet life, and write stories.”

  “About boxers?”

  She smiled at him. “No. The next book is about an orphan boy who is taken in by gypsies, and later discovers his real father is not dead, as he was led to believe. The father is a high court judge and his mother was one of the judge’s housemaids, who was murdered after giving birth.”

  “By whom?”

  “By the judge’s wife.”

  “Oh, my word,” he said. “Have you no mercy, Lady Charlotte? Your poor, unfortunate characters. Does this book have a happy ending? At least for the boy?”

  “I haven’t decided yet,” she replied, “for I have only just begun.”

  “Then I will look forward to reading it when it is finished.”

  As soon as Drake secured the boat to the jetty, he shrugged back into his jacket and offered his arm to Lady Charlotte.

  He always felt revitalized after his early morning exercise, but today was different from all the other days, for his body was smoldering with a level of excitement he had not felt in years.

  Surely, there was a simple explanation for it, he told himself, for Lady Charlotte was a beautiful woman with soft full lips, hypnotic eyes, and abundant curves in all the right places. Even the silky tone of her voice made him want to devour her whole.

  But that was not the whole story. Disco
vering that she was Victor Edwards—a successful novelist, but also a woman who knew a thing or two about a boxer’s life, and somehow, miraculously understood a violent man’s soul—seemed to heighten his attraction to her.

  For the first time he had revealed his past to a woman who would likely become his lover. It was not conceit that led him to expect such an affair to occur. Lady Charlotte had been more than candid with her words, her actions, and her eyes. He recognized the way she looked at him…how her gaze raked admiringly over the length of his body, how her hands stroked over her clothes whenever their eyes locked and held. There was a shared sexual desire between them that required consummation.

  In addition, this morning, something new had entered the equation. He had believed initially that she was a bored member of the aristocracy who wanted him for a few weeks of idle pleasure, to satisfy some wicked fantasy about a savage man who would remain outside her social circle and not taint her reputation with the roughness of his hands.

  But Lady Charlotte was not idle or bored. How could she be when her mind was occupied by the composition of lengthy tragic novels? He had read her book. There was depth to her characters, but where did her awareness of such people come from? How could this privileged woman write about such struggle without knowing something of it herself? As he did.

  He was curious now. He wanted to peel back the layers and open her up. In more ways than one.

  As they entered the coach and settled into their seats—this time he sat beside her, not across from her—he watched her with passionate interest and robust anticipation.

  “That was most enjoyable Mr. Torrington,” she said, folding her gloved hands upon her lap and looking up at him with tantalizing, gleaming eyes.

  “Yes, it was.”

  As the coach moved forward up the rutted lane, his thigh bumped hers and continued to rub against it. The press of her hip against his own quickly flooded him with arousal, which made him resent the fact that he must behave as a gentleman, for she was the daughter of a duke, and he wasn’t entirely sure she knew what she was asking for. Until he knew for sure, he must continue to obey the rules unequivocally.