Noble Destiny

by Katie MacAlister

  She glanced up at his eyes and raised her chin. “Yes, of course I am. Patricia is enjoying the evening.”

  “And you are not?” he asked, his fingers briefly caressing her chin.

  “No. I was earlier, but now…” Her voice trailed off as his eyes burning into hers had its usual effect of wiping all thoughts from her mind.

  “Now?” he prompted, his voice pitched low, intimate, wrapping around Charlotte with a soft blanket of warmth and comfort. The noise and music and chatter of the bodies around them faded as she gazed into her husband’s eyes and saw only him.

  “Now it does not seem to be as enjoyable as earlier,” she admitted, rather against her will since she clung firmly to the notion that her triumphant return to Society was everything. She felt frail, as if she had been ill for a long time, and only just now had the fever broken. Mayhap the fever analogy was more true than she knew—she must be feverish to be even thinking that she no longer fit into Society.

  Mustn’t she?

  “Then we will leave,” Dare said, his thumb brushing across her lower lip. She gave a little thrilled gasp, her lips parting, her attention torn between the anguish of her own thoughts, and the sudden flair of desire that left her wanting with every part of her body for Dare to kiss her. A sudden jostling of her arm reminded her where they were.

  “I’ll tell David to bring Patricia back later,” Dare added, his eyes bright with desire. She thrilled knowing that he was as affected by their nearness as she was, and pushed away the worry over her mental state. She would deal with that later, once she had teased a few more kisses from her husband. “Perhaps Lady Beverly could watch over her?”

  What a perfectly marvelous plan! Patricia could stay at the ball, and she could return home with her sultry-eyed husband and allow him to seduce her. Or perhaps, since he seduced her last night, it was her turn. She eyed him for a moment. What a very good thought that was. Likely a good seducing on her part was all he needed to clear out the cobwebs of his thinking regarding their nuptial activities.

  “I shall ask Caro, but I’m confident she will have no objections to watching Patricia.” She wouldn’t if she knew what was good for her, Charlotte vowed as she hurried off to find her friend.

  ***

  Charlotte thanked her lucky stars that Dare lived in an unfashionable area of town, one at a distance from Henley House. She waited until he rapped on the roof of the carriage before commencing her seduction.

  “Charlotte,” he had time to gasp just before she flung herself on him and captured any other words of surprise in her mouth. Since it was her turn to seduce, she didn’t wait for him to take charge. She peeled off her gloves, spread her fingers through the silken strands of his hair, and grasping it firmly, pulled his head back just as he had done when he seduced her. His mouth was hot and alluring and she moaned her need into it as she twined her tongue around his, taking advantage of the element of surprise to taste him just as thoroughly as he tasted her. His fingers biting into her hips were the first sign that he had regained his wits; the fact that he flipped her aside, moving her under him until she lay half on, half off the carriage seat with him poised over her was another.

  “I take it you are suddenly feeling better?” he growled, his breath hot on her lips. She kicked her legs up while pushing back against his chest until he toppled over onto the carriage floor. She followed him down, brazenly laying across him, her breasts heaving into his chest, pinning his hands to the floor next to his ears as she dipped her head lower.

  “Much better,” she said, nipping his lips as she demanded entrance.

  He captured her legs between his, rolling her over until her back was pressed against the edge of the seat. She pushed him back, throwing herself over him and pinning him to the floor.

  “Stay put, will you?” She frowned. Honestly, was any other husband in the world so hard to seduce? “It’s my turn, you are obliged to do this my way.”

  She could just make out the look of confusion in his eyes through the dim light of the carriage lantern. “Charlotte, what are you talking about? I’m obliged to wrestle with you on the floor of my carriage? I don’t remember that as part of our wedding vows. Or is this some new tonnish trend that you are determined to try? If so, I must object. This position is not only undignified, but it has the added detraction of causing a crick in my neck, not to mention the fact that I’m lying on a brick.”

  “Oh,” she said, releasing her grip on his wrists to run her fingers into his hair. She sat up, straddling him. “I didn’t know about the brick. Do you wish for me to get off you and postpone your seduction until a later time when there are no bricks and cricks to interfere with my plans?”

  “That would be most magnanimous of you,” he said, his hand running up her calf. Her breath caught in her throat at his touch. She placed a hand on his chest. Even through his shirt and waistcoat, she could feel his heart beating madly, almost as madly as hers was.

  “Charlotte,” he groaned, both hands on her legs now, above her stockings, his fingers teasing a trail up her thighs. “Oh, to hell with the brick.”

  One hand tangled in her hair as he pulled her down onto him, his mouth waiting for hers, asking, pleading, then demanding she give herself to him. Vaguely, in the back of her mind, she remembered that she had wanted to be the one in charge, that it was rightfully her turn to seduce him, but the hot magic of his mouth and the fires of desire his fingers were building as they stroked up her back and around to her breasts drove every other thought from her mind.

  “God’s breath, how I want you,” he groaned into her ear as he kissed a lovely shivery spot on the side of her neck. “But we have to stop. Charlotte, you must stop. We can’t do this here.”

  She sat up on him again, pulled away from kissing the area she’d exposed by tugging off his cravat. “Hmmm.”

  His chest heaved beneath her, his breath ragged and fast. That pleased her. “Hmmm what?”

  “Hmmm, I agree that we can’t do what I’d like to do here, but do you know, there was mention made in Vyvyan La Blue’s Guide to Connubial Calisthenics of an act that is recommended for those who find themselves in a closed environment such as this carriage. Would you care for me to demonstrate?”

  “Demonstrate what?” he asked, shifting slightly, reaching beneath himself until he extracted a brick from the small of his back. “Vyvyan La Who?”

  She eyed him. He was so large, he didn’t look particularly comfortable crammed into the bottom of the carriage. “Blue. Sit up.”

  “What?”

  “Sit up.” She slid down his legs as he propped himself up, his back reclined against the wall of the carriage. She reached for the buttons on his trousers.

  “Charlotte!”

  “This is called The Alpine Shepherd Greeting The Dawn With A Song Upon His Lips. Vyvyan La Blue says if it is done correctly, you should emulate a Swiss youth calling down the mountain pastures to his sheep. Oh, my. I’d forgotten how very…imposing you are. But warm. Very, very warm. Now, let me see. If I recall the instructions correctly, I’m supposed to do this. I hope you don’t mind…”

  His reply was muffled by the loud echo of the horses’ hooves as they entered a tunnel created by a building that sat atop a stone bridge over the street. As they cleared the end of the tunnel, the coachman cast a curious glance at the groom who sat next to him.

  “Did you hear that, Jem?”

  “’Ear what, then?” the groom answered.

  The coachman peered around himself into the dark night. He shook his head and returned his attention to the horses. “Damned if it didn’t sound like someone yodeling.”

  ***

  Charlotte sat in her husband’s bed and steamed.

  She was alone.

  She was frustrated.

  She was furious.

  After she had gone to all the trouble of seducing her husban
d with mouth and hands, after she had brought him such pleasure as to call up half the sheep in the county, after all that, all he had done was carry her up to her bedroom, give her a chaste kiss upon her forehead, and leave her there. He hadn’t even stayed to help her out of her dress, and now here she sat, husbandless. He was probably down in the basement working on that horrid dirty machine of his. Well, she wasn’t going to sit there and take such abuse! After she had suffered the trauma of having that old cat Lady Brindley tell everyone that her husband hadn’t even bedded her, it was time she took matters into her own hands.

  He was going to make love to her, and that was simply that.

  She marched out of the bedroom in nothing more than her night rail, her feet bare. Down the stairs to the first floor she went, her head high, mouth set in a determined line. She continued down to the dark kitchen, empty of all but the cook’s cat, then down further to the very lowest level of the house. She flung open the door to Dare’s workroom and pointed dramatically at him, prepared to utter such scathing words as had never before left her lips.

  The intended scathe turned to dust on her tongue as Dare, shirtless, a thick lock of blond hair falling over his manly brow, turned at the squeak of the door. Her finger, still pointing, wavered, as she drank in the sight of his bare chest, glistening with perspiration in the candlelight.

  “Oh,” she said breathily, unable to think of anything else but the desire to wrap herself around that chest.

  Dare was not likewise struck dumb. “What the devil do you mean parading around in your night things, madam wife?”

  “Chest,” she murmured, her eyes huge.

  “Have you no sense?” He set down a black, lumpish thing—some part for the engine, the lucid part of her mind guessed—and glared at her.

  “Bare chest.”

  He reached for a rag and wiped the oil and grime from his hands. Such an action caused his arms and shoulders and chest to move in a beautiful ballet of muscles and tendons. Charlotte grabbed wildly for the back of a wooden chair that stood nearby.

  “Well? What have you to say to me?” Dare dropped the rag and started toward her. “God’s teeth, woman, your feet are bare!”

  “Not as bare as your chest.” She gasped as he scooped her up in his arms. “Oh. You’re so…hooo! Isn’t it hot for May, though? Did I disturb you at your work, Alasdair?”

  “Catch your death wandering around the house in the middle of the night in nothing but a scanty bit of lawn and bare feet,” Dare grumbled as he started up the stairs. “Take that candle. Yes, of course I was working. What did you think I was doing?”

  “But it’s after two, and you really should be in bed. With me.” She added that last bit just in case he wasn’t clear on the situation.

  He stopped at the foot of the stairs leading to the second floor and looked down on her, his face shadowed. “Charlotte, we’ve been over this.”

  “Not to my satisfaction.”

  He sighed, then bent and told her to set the candle down. She placed it a few steps above them as he sat down in the small pool of light cast onto the carpeted stairs, holding her firmly against his chest, his hands warm through the thin material of her night rail. She snuggled into him, stroking the sweat-dampened hair on his chest. Truly, such an act would have repulsed her on any other man, but Dare even sweated in an attractive manner. Could any man be more perfect for her?

  “Charlotte, I don’t know what more I can say to make you understand how I feel. I want something more than just a physical relationship. I think you do as well. At least I hope you do, but until you know that for certain, until you know what you honestly want from this marriage, it wouldn’t be fair to either of us to engage in those activities a husband and wife normally engage in.”

  “Arguing, you mean,” Charlotte said softly, placing a gentle kiss on the curve of his ear.

  He chuckled. “You know what I mean, wife.”

  Charlotte gave him a little smile. “You see, there is more to me than you had thought. I’m not just mind-meltingly beautiful. I can jest. I am interested in your machine, or I would be if you would explain it to me. I am economizing, and you’ll notice that I have not once complained this evening about that sorry state of affairs. I am learned in the ways of connubial calisthenics. I have a good speaking voice, and a legible hand, and could be of great help to you in your business if you will just allow me. I am, in short, the perfect wife for you.”

  He leaned his forehead against hers and smiled into her eyes. “I have never doubted your qualifications, Charlotte.”

  “But you don’t think I’m the perfect wife for you?”

  His eyes were like blue fire burning on her tender flesh. “On the contrary, there is no other woman I would rather call wife than you.”

  Hope, dampened by his refusal to be seduced, flared to life again within her breast. “Then you want me?”

  He pressed his lips to her palm, sending heat skittering down her arm. He shifted his legs, then placed her hand on his groin.

  “Wanting you was never in question.”

  He was hard and long beneath her fingers, just as he had been in the carriage earlier. The heady knowledge that he truly did want her, that he reacted in this pleasing fashion to her, made the hope within her burn brighter.

  “I don’t understand what more I can do,” she whispered, searching his eyes for the answer. “I don’t understand why it is you want me, and you know I want you, but you won’t…won’t…do it. I don’t understand what’s wrong with me.”

  He brushed his thumb across her lower lip. “Did you love your husband? Your first one, I mean.”

  She blinked at him. “Love Antonio? I…I…he was very handsome.”

  Dare said nothing, just watched her. She looked away for a moment, uncomfortable with what he might see in her eyes. “I liked him a great deal. To begin with. Once we arrived in his home, he…changed somehow. His mother was very domineering, you understand, and she wasn’t pleased we had wed, and Antonio seemed far more interested in raising sheep than in me.”

  “Did you love him?”

  “He was very handsome,” she repeated. “He was tall like you, but much thinner, not nearly so broad, and he had very elegant hands and danced beautifully. I enjoyed it when he kissed me and had hoped that the other things would be as nice, but of course, we just had the once, and although it was nothing terrible, it certainly wasn’t anything I would have written a sonnet about.”

  She could feel him smiling into her hair. “But did you love him?”

  “No,” she said miserably, her eyes on the fine gold hairs that lay on the top of his arms.

  His lips caressed her temple. She sighed and leaned into him.

  “I think you are confusing a desire for a physical relationship with deeper emotions.”

  “Shouldn’t one desire one’s husband?”

  “Yes, you should.” His hand slid up her arm. “But in our case, it’s not enough. We’ve both had sexual relationships with partners we did not love—” He stopped her protest with a swift kiss. “Granted, in your case, it was a very brief relationship, but I’m hoping it was enough to make you understand that without something more meaningful, that without true affection, such a relationship can never be satisfying.”

  She looked up at him, suddenly realizing what it was he was saying. “You want me to say I love you.”

  He closed his eyes for a moment, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallowed. “No. I want you to love me. There’s a difference.”

  She curled her fingers into the hair on his chest. “What if I said I already did? Would you believe me?”

  The blue fire glowed deeply in his eyes. She knew at that moment that he loved her, had loved her ever since they had first met, and that his love for her gave her an infinite power over him. “Yes. If you told me you loved me, I would believe you.”

&nb
sp; She could make him give her whatever she wanted. She could bring him to his knees. She could wring any confession out of him, demand any payment, and he would meet it, she could ask for any boon and be granted it. He loved her. If she lied to him, if she told him she loved him in return, he would bed her. He would believe that she loved him. Charlotte knew with a woman’s knowledge of a man who had bared his soul before her that she could lift him up to heights of rapture he had never imagined or destroy him as easily as she could grind an ant under her heel.

  Power flared brightly in her for a moment as he sat watching her, love filling his eyes, waiting to see if she would take the first step toward ecstasy or agony. She dropped her gaze and allowed the sensation of power to dissolve as she pressed a gentle kiss to the corner of his delicious mouth. “Good night.”

  She left him sitting on the steps as she headed for her own room, confused and annoyed by the myriad emotions tangled up in a coil that resembled Dare’s beautiful blue eyes. She wanted him more than anything she’d ever wanted, and yet his faith in her, his trust that she would cherish the gift of his love, awoke strange new emotions within her. She could not return such a gift with deceit. He deserved more than that. He deserved her love in return, nothing less.

  Charlotte snuggled into bed aware that for the first time in many years, she had put someone else’s feelings above her own.

  Oddly enough, it was not an unpleasant sensation.

  Ten

  “When did you first realize you were in love with Captain Woodwell?”

  Patricia hid any surprise she felt at the question and instead flashed her sister-in-law a warm smile. She knew things were not as they should be between Dare and Charlotte, but she could see the love in her brother’s eyes when he looked at his wife, and she had every confidence that Charlotte would learn to love him as well. “I believe I fell in love with David the minute I set eyes on him. He was so kind and funny, and when he spoke to me, he made me feel as if we were the only two people in the world.”

  “Kind…funny…only people in the world,” Charlotte mumbled as she stood with her back to Patricia.