Charlotte

by Virginia Taylor

  Taking his father’s business manager, he went to a nearby inn for luncheon and later he visited his father’s sawmill. He liked the smell of the hot machinery, the shavings, and the boiling glue. For a full six hours, he discussed and inspected fittings for the houses without once thinking about any of the women in his life.

  Before he retired for the night, he wanted to tell his wife that for the first day in a year he had occupied his time productively as she had suggested. He wanted to relent and ask her to sleep with him. One more night of frustration would surely kill him.

  However, he had gone without a woman for months while he’d lived with Clara. Beth would be available if abstinence became untenable, and so he took his old friend, the bottle, to bed instead.

  He put in his next day with a plasterer and spent his night thinking of his inexperienced wife laughing and smiling while he had pleasured her. Had she touched him, thoughts of the pleasures ahead would have made his nightly tortures unbearable. Brandy put him to sleep.

  He didn’t resent changing from a dilettante to a worker. He worried that he’d start to listen to his wife, grow to enjoy her candid observations, respect her practicality, and crave the touch of her cool hands on his hot and needy body. If he wanted her too much, he would accede to all her desires. Married he might be, but a papa he could never be. He would see Beth again when he had settled his wife into society. Charlotte needed his attendance now, but he didn’t know how much longer he could last working all day and drinking himself to sleep.

  He swilled his nightly dose of brandy, remembering that Tony had begun to investigate her. Presumably, he hadn’t continued. After all, Charlotte’s antecedents didn’t affect him. They certainly didn’t affect Nick, for his respectability was based purely on his father’s money. Nevertheless, the faintest niggle remained. Charlotte never mentioned any life she might have had before Miss Main’s school.

  Perhaps he needed further conversation with Tony.

  Chapter 11

  “Do you plan to be at the cottages today?” Charlotte asked Nick as he seated her at the breakfast table.

  For him, the past four days had been tiring—by day making sure his father’s cottages were readied for occupation and at night watching over Charlotte and Sarah at social events. By this means, he evaded private little chats with Charlotte before retiring with his bottle.

  “We just started the roofing. In Port Adelaide, we used wooden shingles for the tenants’ cottages, but in town we’re using slate.” He seated himself in front of his breakfast, realizing he’d said we.

  He had shocked the tradesmen by his participation in the various building projects. As a lad, he had done his share of outdoor work on the property at Stirling. Roofing was new to him, but during his satisfyingly active boyhood when he’d still had a reason to care about his inheritance, he’d had some experience with fence posts and tree lopping. He had always enjoyed working with his hands.

  “Slate? Why the change?” His father stared at him in surprise. “We can make the shingles in the factory.”

  “Mainly availability. Wood is too scarce, and your manager suggested trying a longer lasting product. They’re quarrying slate in Mintaro now.”

  “You’ll have to take us to see your new cottages,” Sarah said, finishing her egg. “When they’re done.”

  “Perhaps we could get Harvey to drive us over one day.” Charlotte glanced at Nick, who completed his breakfast with a sustaining ale.

  Finally, Charlotte stood, ending breakfast. He opened the door for her, and as she passed him into the hallway, her gaze met his long enough to cause his entire body to crave.

  “You’re making your father very happy by taking on so many of his tasks.” She ran a light finger over his newly-shaven cheek.

  His skin tingled. “Many? Not so. Just a few cottages,” he said, his voice strangely gruff.

  She dropped her palm to his lapel. “You are taking a great load from his shoulders, and now everyone is much happier, including Sarah and me.”

  His hands settled onto either side of her waist. As he stared into her frank blue eyes, his blood rushed to his groin. He wanted her. He could have her if he wished. She could have him if she wished. Instead of waiting to see how far she would go in her attempt to turn him into a quivering fool, he backed her against the wall and slid his hands to her bottom.

  “Not here,” she said, her voice low.

  “Why not? I could take you quickly.” He heard her intake of breath.

  She glanced at him and back to the breakfast room door, clearly anxious.

  “I prefer the prohibited.” He saw in her eyes that he had raised the stakes too high, and he let her off, the competition being uneven. After adjusting himself, he stepped back. “Then again, hammering nails into slate will probably satisfy me as well as a few minutes with you.”

  Leaving her to see the connection, he shrugged, certain he had proved any attempts to seduce the daisy she assumed he was were doomed to failure. “I won’t be home in time to attend whatever you have planned. I’m sure you and Sarah will manage without me.”

  Now and always, letting her undoubted charms to inveigle him into her bed was out of the question. Nodding curtly he left, the high card regrettably his.

  * * * *

  Charlotte awoke with a start. A hard thump echoed through the night and the crash of overturned furniture. A familiar voice swore repeatedly in the sitting room. She sped out of bed and arrived in the outer room in time to see her husband weave his way to his bedroom door. “Do you need help?”

  “No.” He kicked his door open and stumbled. This made him swear again even more loudly.

  “Are you sure?” She stood in his doorway while he cast his jacket onto the moonlit floor.

  “Yes.” He sat on his bed and tried to pull off his shoes.

  “Are you drunk?” She stepped into his room.

  “Legless. Now you’re here, help me with these shoes.”

  “You need a nursemaid,” she said, annoyed.

  “I’ve had one of those. I need a wife.”

  She turned on his lamp while he waited for her to grasp the heel of his shoe. He eased the shoe off. She helped with the next as well. “Oh, no you don’t,” she said in her firmest voice as he shut his eyes and rolled to the center of the bed, taking his spread to cover him. “Take your clothes off first.”

  “If you want them off, you take them off.”

  She suppressed the urge to shake him. “Why do you do this to yourself? How can you keep up this way of life?”

  “Practice, my dear one, practice.”

  She narrowed her eyes and stood well back, her arms folded. “I doubt you need to keep practicing a task you manage so well.” The cynical tone she used almost shocked her. If she didn’t watch her tongue she’d be… She squared her shoulders. She’d be a wife, his wife, a woman who belonged, a woman who could confidently express her true opinions.

  He mumbled some incomprehensible words and began to undo his shirtfront, but clearly couldn’t coordinate his fingers. She gritted her teeth and helped. His hands dropped, and he watched her. She pulled his shirt over his shoulders while he struggled his hands through the cuffs. He lay back down again, closing his eyes. Drawing an irritable breath, she set her hands on her hips and her gaze on his creamy-skinned torso, so wide at the shoulders, and so unjustifiably muscled and ridged that she drew a breath of helpless admiration.

  His eyelids flickered. “What about my trousers?” He rubbed a palm over the flat navel she could just see above his waistband. “Do you mind if I sleep in these?”

  “You shouldn’t. You should take them off.”

  His hands flopped to his sides, demonstrating he’d do nothing for himself. Firming her mouth, she undid his trousers. His belly moved with his breathing. The area under his fly had filled with the thickened part that reached to his waistband. She lifted the material off his protrusion to work at his buttons, but his han
d clamped down over hers. He forced her palm onto the shape she so badly wanted to touch that she shook.

  “Now, look at that,” he said in a voice of mock surprise. “I’m hard for you. Perhaps I’m beginning to change my orientation.” His fingers latched into the neckline of her nightgown, and she found her face on his bare shoulder.

  He rolled slightly, and she fell across him onto the bed. His head lifted and his mouth took hers. Although he had heavy fumes on his breath, she didn’t care. He had strong gentle hands, and while he worked his magic with his lips and his tongue, he pushed her hand under his trousers. Beneath, he was hot and heavy and hard.

  “Straddle me,” he whispered, “and put me inside you.”

  Her lower body rushed with heat, and her breath came in panting gasps. An all too easy conquest, she put her hands onto his shoulders, wondering how she ought to accomplish her mission. “I can’t even get your trousers off without your help.”

  His look of sleepy satisfaction disappeared and a wary crease formed between his eyebrows. “Sweetheart.” He flicked a lock of her hair back off her face. “Are you trying to take advantage of me while I’m drunk?”

  “This morning you seemed quite willing to take advantage of me.”

  He took her hand out of his trousers and sat up. “Bluff. I can’t perform now, my love. I’ve had my fill tonight.”

  For a moment Charlotte sat with an empty mind, and then the air in her chest expanded. With an explosion of white-hot rage, she shoved him onto his back. “Fill? You’ve been fornicating?”

  He looked surprised, and when he laughed, she pummeled his shoulder with her fists. “Careful.” He held her wrists. “You might hurt me.”

  “I want you to be hurt! I want you to feel the way I do!”

  His expression blanked and he let her go. “You’ll get over it.” He pushed his hair out of his eyes. “I can’t make you out. You never minded before.”

  “If you were fornicating, you wouldn’t have been with a man. You can’t make love to a man.”

  He began to laugh again. Rolling her beneath him, he kissed her face between gasps. “Is that what you thought? I thought you were being liberal.”

  “Well, you can’t, can you?”

  “That is the question. Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer.”

  “Which depends on the affliction,” she replied, taking her tone down a few decibels. “You’ve sobered, somewhat. Are you are being truthful with me?”

  He glanced away, patently unable to continue with his ridiculous lie about fornicating.

  “Well?”

  “Go back to bed.” He eased his leg from her, turned over onto his back, crossed his arms under his head, and stared at the ceiling.

  She pulled her nightgown straight. “If you won’t touch your wife, you certainly wouldn’t touch another woman.” Rubbing at her wrists, she sat up, positive she had bruised her hands on him for no reason and sure that her jealous reaction had been unjustified.

  “You’re right. I drank myself into a stupor so that I wouldn’t want anyone,” he said with weariness in his voice. “And that’s the truth.”

  “That’s the alcohol.” She climbed off his bed. “You don’t know what you’re saying.”

  She left him to sober up, returning to her cold and empty room.

  * * * *

  Charlotte didn’t expect Nick at breakfast, and she was prepared to make excuses for him. For at least a week he had been working at a job very unsuited to a gentleman, and last night’s drinking would have taken a toll.

  “Morning,” he said in a disgruntled voice before she had taken her place.

  She glanced from her perusal of the offerings on the sideboard and answered, “Morning,” in approximately the same tone.

  Sarah had not yet arrived, but Alfred smiled at Nick. “Big day today. The delivery of the slate. I expect you’ll be glad to see the end of it.”

  Nick looked somewhat dour. Charlotte noted the dark depressions beneath his eyes. “It’s the beginning of the end of an interesting exercise,” he said as he served himself breakfast. He evaded her gaze, put his porridge at his place, and pulled out her chair.

  She took porridge as well and sat.

  “Good morning, all,” Sarah said, entering and taking a plate of fruit. “The dinner last night was fun, Nick. You would have enjoyed it. Everyone was there and the table seated thirty. Thirty! I wouldn’t think we could manage so many here.”

  “We’ve another three or four leaves for this table,” Alfred said, glancing around as if the sections might be propped against the walls. “I think we could do thirty. Are we planning a dinner any time soon?”

  “You wouldn’t mind?” Charlotte asked, suddenly breathless.

  “Of course not. We need to show family support of Sarah, after all. I didn’t have a daughter, and so I hadn’t thought of the little miss’s position but… What do you think, Nick? Shouldn’t we be hosts ourselves?”

  “That would be Charlotte’s province. If she is up to it, I don’t see why we shouldn’t.” He poured himself a tall glass of water from the jug on the table.

  “A dinner? Or a small dance?” Charlotte’s head whirled with a thousand ideas. On paper, she knew exactly how to do this. “Which would you prefer, Sarah?”

  “If it’s for me…” Sarah’s eyes widened. “Fancy. What would I need to do?”

  “Possibly little more than you need to do when attending the dinners or dances of others,” Nick said in a growly voice. He rubbed his forehead, which Charlotte hoped was aching. “The girls from Miss Main’s school learn how to organize dinners and dances as well as household and husband management, and so I’m sure Charlotte can do everything required.” His tone said otherwise.

  She had no sympathy for him. None. If he wanted to drink himself surly so that he could continue on with his pretence of being effeminate, he could take the consequences.

  “If we want to begin entertaining, we need to make a plan before the weather gets too hot.” She drew a breath. “I would be pleased to manage a function of some sort here.”

  “What fun.” Sarah took a sip of tea. “We’ve never done anything like this before, have we, Charlotte? Will you be at the cottages today, Nick, or will you be coming to the garden party with us?”

  Nick rang the bell. “I’m needed at the cottages.”

  Charlotte didn’t mind that he hadn’t considered being her escort. For a few weeks she’d been a part of a couple. Although his presence validated her, the strain of keeping up his pretence was telling on him, hence his excessive drinking. Presumably, he wanted her to believe he was a deviant because he was afraid of the possibility of conceiving a child. He thought death in childbirth too great a risk, but even the queen had had nine children, and if the monarch of England could live through that, the wife of Nicholas Alden could live through one.

  “Perhaps we could get Harvey to take us to see your cottages today?”

  “You’ll get dirty,” he said tersely.

  “We’re not planning on building. Just looking.” And with the proper questions, she might hear some useful tips on where to find the right materials for her own building program.

  “We could come after the garden party.” Sarah finished off her fruit.

  The maid entered in answer to the bell.

  “A tankard of ale,” Nick said. “A large one.”

  Chapter 12

  Nick hadn’t seen Beth, and that was the problem. Hung-over and irritable, he presented at the cottages and helped load the first roof with slate. As the tradesmen began on the tiling, having worked off enough of his interminable restlessness, he sat on a window ledge, mulling the plan to host a large dinner with dancing afterward. By taking up this idea, Charlotte would be well launched into society, Sarah would be shown to her best advantage, and he would finally be off the hook and able to see his mistress again.

  Satisfied with his head-aching ruminations, he bega
n to pick through the stone for the fireplaces. No sooner had he laid a row of mortar than Luke appeared.

  Nick straightened. “The garden party was challenging, was it?”

  Luke shrugged, loosening his tie. “I’m not hanging out for a wife.”

  “Not your own, no.”

  “Give it a rest. Failing not having a wife of my own, I’m not wanting to get into any tangled or illicit relationships.”

  Nick gave him an incredulous look. “I doubt you’ll find one at a garden party held by the Metcalfs and attended by the usual crowd.”

  “You would be surprised if you ever bothered to attend,” Luke said casually. “When the conversation at the gathering got around to your latest doings, I decided to take myself off to see you soiling your hands. Here, let me at that.” He picked up a stone and balanced the straightest edge atop Nick’s lime mud. “Not bad, not bad.”

  “You’ll need to finish a row before you can pass that sort of judgment. And watch your natty attire.” Nick wore workman’s garb, cheaply purchased a few weeks ago.

  Luke removed his jacket and his tie and began to work with a will. Nick confined himself to chipping more stone. Between them, they completed the sides.

  “If I am ever dissatisfied with the law, I could take up stonework for a living,” Luke said, standing back to admire his work.

  “The masons work ten hours a day, six days a week. You desk workers would never manage.” Nick gave his friend a light punch on the shoulder, in accord with him for the first time since his marriage. “Do you know how much you would have earned if I had to pay you?”

  “A penny or two,” Luke said. “You could buy me a pie for tuppence. It’s after noon. Come over to the tavern where I left my horse, and we’ll have an ale.”

  Nick dusted himself off, but not before James and Hubert, the heir to Sir Patrick’s properties, appeared. “Ah, two more likely apprentices.”

  Mild-mannered, Hubert pasted a look of horror on his cherubic face, but James offered his relaxed smile. “We heard word at the garden party that Luke might be here. No, we didn’t come to get in your way. We’re off to help Tony. One of his mines caved in yesterday. No casualties, fortunately, but a few injured, and he needs to get the shaft cleared. Want to come with us to Kadina, Luke?”