His words were hurtful, intended to cause pain, spoken with cruelty since he knew that was the only way he could drive her from his side. He fully expected her to snap back at him, to hurl harsh words at his scarred face, to run sobbing from the room. What he wasn’t expecting was for her to press herself against him and kiss him gently on his lips.
“I love you, Dare. I always will.”
He kept his eye closed tight against the tears that rose with her words and held his breath until he heard the door close behind her. With the soft click of the lock, he released his breath and stared dully at the rug beneath his feet.
The last thing he could bear was for her to see him cry.
***
“I am back, Batsfoam.”
“So I can see, my lady. How was Mr. Crouch?”
Charlotte unburdened herself of her spencer. “Saddened that my plan for distracting Society by means of the mortal embarrassment of Lady Brindley has been permanently delayed, but he agreed that I have more important things to tend to now than worrying about what people say. The visit to Dr. Milton was less pleasant. Has my husband eaten?”
“I regret that he has not, my lady.”
Charlotte paused in the act of removing her gloves and looked closely at the butler. His habitual air of misery had been missing the last four weeks, as if tending to his wounded master had relieved him of his own self-absorption. Batsfoam had worked just as hard as she had to keep Dare alive those first few weeks, spelling each other so one could rest while the other sat with Dare and made sure the fever that set in didn’t claim his life. It had been a long, tortuous fight, but after two weeks they silently celebrated their victory when Dare’s fever broke and he quickly began to regain his strength.
Until the last week, when melancholy and depression set in.
“Has he left his bedchamber?”
“He went to his study.”
Batsfoam’s eyes were dark with apprehension. Charlotte frowned as she pulled off the second glove. What was in Dare’s study that had Batsfoam so concerned? Dare hadn’t left his bedchamber since he was carried upstairs, more dead than alive. Surely the fact that he left his room to go to the study was a good sign.
She frowned over the memory of the morning as she headed for the stairs. He had told her he didn’t need her. He’d rejected her attentions, couldn’t even bring himself to kiss her when she pressed against him, but she had seen the self-loathing in his eye and knew he was wallowing in an endless well of self-pity. The physician had told her Dare had healed physically, but his mind was now the cause of worry… “Damnation! His pistols!”
She leaped up the stairs, her heart pounding madly. Why hadn’t she had the sense to hide his pistols? The answer echoed in her head as she cleared the top step and turned to race down the long hall.
She never thought he’d be despondent enough to contemplate taking his life.
“Lady Charlotte!”
She ignored Batsfoam’s cry and flung herself into the small room at the back of the house that Dare used as his study.
He sat in the darkened room before the empty grate, a bottle of whiskey at his side, one of his dueling pistols lying across his knee. With a slow, ominous movement, his head turned until he was looking at her. Her breath caught at the dulled look of hopelessness in his dark blue eye. He had given up. Dr. Milton had warned her that men either fought to live, or gave up and just wasted away. Despite all her care and love, Dare had chosen the latter path.
Well, he would have to think again! Charlotte stood before her husband, her hands fisted, anger like none she’d ever known filling her at the sight of the pistol on his lap. She loved him—he couldn’t just give up like that! He loved her, too. Didn’t that mean he would do anything for her?
“If you kill yourself, I will never forgive you,” she yelled. “Never, do you understand? Never! I will make your life a living hell, or just you see if I don’t!”
He blinked at her, then smiled a grim sort of smile that made her hand itch to slap it off his face. But she couldn’t slap him—he’d been grievously injured. A good wife didn’t slap her husband when he’d suffered a most traumatic event like surviving an explosion.
“If I am dead, you can hardly make my life a living hell.”
The crack of her hand meeting his cheek shocked both of them. Batsfoam, standing in the doorway, gasped in surprise before suddenly grinning as he quietly backed out of the room and closed the door. Dare stared at her, disbelief written on his face. Slowly he set the pistol on the table at his elbow and one-handedly pushed himself out of the chair.
Charlotte refused to give ground to him. She stood where she was, pressed against him, her head tilted back to give him a glare to end all glares.
“You slapped me,” Dare growled.
“Yes, I did. And I enjoyed it,” she answered defiantly. It was true—she had enjoyed slapping him, a fact that should have shamed her, but the sad reality was that she was fed up with his self-pity. Dr. Milton had told her that very afternoon that unless Dare stopped pitying himself, he would likely not survive another month. Considering the pistol, she doubted if he would last even that long. “Indeed, I enjoyed it so much, I think I will do it again.”
The second slap brought some color to Dare’s face, but best of all, it also brought a murderous glint to his eye. Charlotte could have danced a jig at the sight of that emotion—until then, only apathy and despair had been present in his lovely eye.
“I have been wounded, madam. Do you take so much pleasure in my pain that you must add to it?” Dare asked between clenched teeth.
“Well, of course I do,” she answered, raising her chin another notch, secretly smiling at the look of indignation plainly visible on his handsome face. “That’s why I have not left your side these last four weeks. That’s why I sat up all night, every night, for two weeks while you raged with fever. That’s why I bathed you, changed your bandages, took care of your personal needs, fed you, wept over you, and pleaded with you to not give up, begging you to fight the fever until you returned to me. That is why, until today when I called on the physician you refused to see, I have not stepped foot out of this house since the accident. I did all that because I take so very much pleasure in your pain.”
He had the grace to look ashamed, but it wasn’t enough. The time had clearly come for him to make the decision, and by God, if he didn’t make the right one, she’d make it for him.
“I will not go through the nightmare of having to pick out and train another husband,” she told him, poking him in the chest as she did so.
“Train?” he snarled. “Do you liken me to an animal that must be trained to be made habitable?”
“I liken you to a man who is extremely pigheaded and obstinate, and hasn’t a clue about what really matters in life. Until you realize just how blessed you are to have me as your wife—”
“I do realize how blessed I am…was,” he shouted back at her, his face flushed with anger. “You are the loveliest, most amazing woman I know, dammit! I love you!”
“Then you had better start acting like it!” she said in a volume that a less-refined person might label as yelling.
“God damn you, woman, how can I? I’m crippled! Near blind! I’m worthless in every bloody respect! I have no money, no title, no social standing left to me, and now the last thing I had—a body worthy of worshipping you—has been destroyed. The only way I can show you I love you is to rid the earth of my pitiable presence and leave you free to marry a man who can give you what I can’t.”
She slapped him again, not very hard, but hard enough that he tensed his jaw, narrowed his eye, and grabbed at her wrist to keep her from repeating the action. She had to admit she greatly enjoyed shocking him out of his attack of self-pity. “How dare you! How dare you insinuate that the only reason I married you was for your money or title or social standing or your handsome face!”
>
He leaned forward until his hot breath fanned her face. “Can you honestly say you didn’t marry me for those things?”
“No, of course I can’t! What woman in my position wouldn’t marry for money or title or handsome looks?”
A familiar look of resigned confusion came over his face as he released her wrist to rub his forehead. “You’re saying you did marry me for the very same things I can no longer give you, and yet you’re offended when I point that out?”
She peeled off his somber black eye patch and moved around behind him to tie on the new kilted one. “Red looks very good on you. I’m not offended that you know why I married you; I’m offended that you think those things still matter to me. Once I managed the feat of falling in love with you—no easy task, considering your temperament—everything changed. A woman in love doesn’t care about money or looks.”
She returned to his front, trailing her fingers down his lifeless arm until she caught his fingers in hers, bringing their joined hands to her mouth. She kissed each of his fingers.
“And does a woman in love not care about standing or titles?”
“Titles, no,” she answered with dimples flying. “Standing…well, women in love reserve the right to retain their standing so as to better further their husband’s successes. I really do think I’ve had as much of your self-pity as I can stand, Alasdair. Therefore, I will take Dr. Milton’s advice and give you an intermatum: You will decide right here and now that you wish to continue living. You will realize that despite the loss of your eye and the diminished strength of your arm, you are still a vital, important man. You will remember that you swore before God to cherish and honor me, and you can’t possibly do that if you are dead or moping around in darkened rooms. I very much deserve to be cherished and honored. For that reason, you will kiss me and hug me and touch me in those womanly parts that tingle when you are near, and then you will bed me. Every night. Possibly two times a night once you regain your stamina. In short, husband mine, you will return to the Dare I knew and loved, and you will do so this very minute!”
Dare looked as if he wanted to smile, but was afraid to. Slowly the fire died out in his eye as he reached up to rub his thumb against her shoulder. “The word is ultimatum, not intermatum.”
“I know,” she said softly, allowing her eyes to fill with all the love she felt for him. “I just liked the sound of intermatum better. It’s more forceful.”
His lips twitched. “My beautiful wife. My beautiful Charlotte who deserves better.”
“Yes, I do,” she agreed, rubbing her cheek against the back of his hand. “I deserve a husband who is not a coward, a husband who doesn’t know the meaning of surrender. I deserve a husband who loves me enough to fight for me.”
“You deserve a husband who can give you want you want,” Dare said softly, his shoulders slumping as his hand dropped from her shoulder. “What have I to offer you? I’m penniless, crippled, and half-blind. My title is in question, and our one means of salvation lies in a heap of twisted metal. You deserve far more than what I can offer you, Charlotte.”
She refused to let him back away, wrapping both her arms around his waist, rubbing his nose with hers. “You told me once that appearance wasn’t everything; I’m telling you the same now. Crippled and half-blind you may be, but you’re still you, and that’s all that matters. And as for the other things…you’ll have more money than I’ll possibly be able to spend once you sell your engine. Your title might be lost—although Crouch is working diligently on the matter—but you still have standing in the ton. You might have lost one eye, but you have another, and Dr. Milton is convinced that you’ll regain at least some use in your right arm if you set your mind to it. And as for your engine, I have every confidence that if you dedicate yourself to it, you could have it ready in time for the scientific exhibition.”
He was shaking his head even before she stopped speaking. “There’s only two weeks left. I couldn’t rebuild the engine in that time.”
She brushed her lips against his, smiling at the flicker of passion in his eye. “We’ll all help. Batsfoam examined the engine and said he believed all that would need replacing was the boiler. You have a little more than two weeks—can you build a boiler in that time?”
Dare frowned, an act that made Charlotte want to cheer. He was thinking about it. She could see him working mental calculations regarding what would need to be done to have the engine ready.
“It would only take me a few days to rebuild the boiler, but that’s not the problem. Obviously my design was flawed, or else it wouldn’t have exploded under the pressure of a half-filled boiler.”
“Then you will simply have to design a new one,” she said helpfully, and kissed him again, this time her lips lingering on his mouth, her breath mingling with his.
“I can’t—” he started to say, one arm snaking around her waist to pull her even closer. She rubbed against him, almost purring with the feeling of the hard, muscled planes of his chest and thighs.
“You can do anything you want,” she answered, sucking his lower lip into her mouth. He groaned and pulled her tighter, grinding his hips against hers. “I believe in you, Dare. I believe you can succeed. I would never have married a man who couldn’t keep me as I deserve to be kept.”
“Little witch,” he murmured against her lips. Her hands were busy until she had the buttons of his shirt free, sliding her fingers along the smooth, muscled planes of his back, along the pleasing contours of his chest. Even after a month of illness and inactivity, his body was still hard with muscle and sinew. “If you think you can goad me into doing what you want—”
“Never,” she breathed, nipping at his lips, wordlessly begging him to take charge. When he didn’t, she murmured, “I do not goad. Seducing, however, is another matter…”
Since he still wasn’t kissing her the way she wanted to be kissed, she decided to take matters in her own hands—so to speak. She demanded entrance to the warm lure of his mouth, and when it was given, she ruthlessly invaded—tasting him, teasing him, stirring the embers of passion that burned between them.
With a groan, he succumbed to the fire, his mouth moving over hers with increased heat, his tongue doing all those amazing tongue things she previously believed she would never find the least bit interesting (but was happy to be proven wrong), his body pressed hard against hers, moving with a seductive slowness that threatened to drain all reason from her mind. His hand was everywhere, fingers one moment tugging her head back to angle her mouth for deeper penetration; the next they were skimming along the tapes at the back of her gown, tugging down the fine lawn until his fingers met her bared flesh. In the passion-fogged depths of her mind she remembered a scene from the past, and broke away long enough to push him backward, into the wine-colored armchair. She followed, pulling up her gown so she could kneel astride his thighs.
“Char, I can’t—”
“Don’t you remember?” she cooed, her hands working feverishly to free him from the confines of his shirt. “You promised to show me how to conduct a ravishment in a chair. I’m still curious as to the exact logistics of it all—assuming I’m correct in believing your erected instrument will function upside down, not that I’ve had any experience with upside-down instruments, you understand, but since your instrument appears to be straining your breech buttons, I gather you are pleased with the thought of being ravished in this chair. Therefore, I have faith that you’ll make a most satisfying explanation of where the legs and such go.”
Dare kissed the wits—those remaining—right out of her head before pulling his lips from hers and kissing a hot trail down her neck. “I can’t do this, wife. I can’t…I don’t know that I can…you can’t want…”
“Oh, but I do,” she corrected, nipping his jaw as her fingers fumbled with the tightly strained cloth at his groin. “You cannot possibly imagine how much I want you, Dare.”
; “You deserve better than a half-man with a scarred face and a useless arm,” he groaned into her bare shoulder as she released the last button on his breeches, pushing aside the material to take his hardness into her hands.
“I deserve you.” She smiled, then gently removed his eye patch. He moved then, tried to stop her, his face twisted with anguish as the fingers of his good hand dug into her wrist. “Men! I’ll never understand you. Such a fuss over a few scars.”
His jaw tightened as she kissed the line of damaged skin that ran down the side of his face, moving upward until she reached his closed eyelid.
“No.”
The word was spoken on a half sob, only one word, but so filled with pain that it brought tears to her eyes. Tenderly she pressed a kiss to the slack eyelid. How could he imagine that something so inconsequential as the loss of an eye could diminish her love for him? “Yes. Until you realize that your injuries don’t matter to me, yes.” She kissed his eyelid again, and once again until he turned his head so he could look at her.
His eye was burning bright with the fever of desire, glittering with love and passion, but tinged with wariness, as if bracing himself for a blow. She smiled, and kissed the eyelid over his whole eye as well. “From their eyelids as they glanced dripped love,” she quoted.
Dare opened his eye, puzzled. She smiled. “That is from one of those musty Greek men Papa was forever fussing over. I don’t remember which one—Iliad, I think his name was—but I do remember Papa reading him aloud to us. Mr. Iliad wasn’t very interesting until he started talking about pouring sweet dew on tongues.”
His lips curled ever so slightly. “I believe the gentleman in question was Hesiod, not Homer.”
She leaned forward against him, pinning the rampant parts of him between them, cupping his face in her hands. “Does it really matter who said it?” she asked between little kisses to his cheeks and jaw. “Does anything matter but the fact that you’re my husband, and I love you, and I want you to show me how the armchair ravishment you so temptingly teased me with a few months ago is managed?”
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