Scott sat near the fire, a blanket covering his lap and legs. His bare shoulders gleamed in the light. He stared at her, his face inscrutable, his gaze following the long sweep of her hair and dropping to study her bare toes.
Her teeth chattered and she clamped them together. His clothes—including his small clothes—were draped over a rope strung across the end of the room. A hard gust of wind rattled the window and Charlotte crossed to the four-poster, let her concealing quilt fall, and slid into Scott’s bed.
Scott wheeled over and looked at her across the open expanse of mattress. The dim light made it impossible to make out more than the grim line of his mouth and the glitter of his eyes.
“As much as I want you,” he said, “you must first know that I never intend to wed.”
His words caused both relief and dismay. One part of her was glad at how he’d simplified everything, another part saddened that he planned a solitary life.
“Nor do I.”
His jaw tightened, and his eyes narrowed. For a long moment he studied her. She held her breath.
“Are you certain, Charlotte?”
The husky timbre of his voice sent shivers racing through her. “Yes, David. I am.”
He barely looked away as he repositioned his chair, turning and then backing it up alongside the bed. He threw back the bedcovers, adjusted the quilt across his lap and boosted himself onto the chair arm.
The quilt came with him but slipped. Charlotte had known he was naked, but seeing his bare hip shocked her. He boosted himself again, this time onto the bed, the muscles of his back and arms bulging.
The sudden rattle of the doorknob and knock startled Charlotte. She pressed her fingers over her mouth. Scott lifted his head.
Boone’s voice came through the door. “Mr. Scott, sir? I found a book for you.”
“I’ve changed my mind, Boone. I’m going to bed.”
“Do you need some help, sir?”
“No, I’m all right. I’m already abed. I won’t be needing you any more tonight.”
Boone made no reply. There was only silence.
“Good evening, Boone.”
“Yes, sir. Good-night, sir.”
Charlotte and David waited and listened until Boone’s footsteps became too distant to hear. David grasped his legs and pulled them onto the bed then, whipped away the quilt and tossed the covers over himself. It all happened so fast that Charlotte caught only a glimpse of the lower half of his body.
He turned toward her, all shoulders and sculpted muscle, curling red-gold hair arrowing from his chest to his abdomen and disappearing beneath the bedclothes. Charlotte didn’t know where to look. Such a muscular form might not be fashionable for a gentleman, but seeing the evidence of his strength and masculinity made her all muzzy. She felt his warmth, caught his familiar scent and heard his quickened breathing. Her fingers curled around the edge of the covers. She wanted to reach out and feel him, but a sudden siege of nerves made her hold.
He plucked her hand from the covers and rubbed his thumb back and forth across the back of it. “This might well be a mistake. We could cause ourselves all kinds of hurt.”
His words might have left her wondering if he even wanted this, but there was no mistaking the hot spark of desire in his eyes.
“You’re right,” she said. “But at least we’ll have the bliss of tonight. No matter what the future holds, I want tonight.”
“What if you conceive?”
She shook her head. “I won’t. I…won’t.”
He frowned a moment then leaned over her, and she dared to put her palm on his chest. The cool, springy curls over hot flesh enticed her. Every small hesitation fell away. She slid her trembling hand up to his warm neck and rested it over his hammering pulse.
He reached under the covers, and his fingers skimmed down her sides. She sucked in her breath as he gathered her chemise, and in one smooth motion he drew it up over her head and upraised arms and tossed it aside. So already she’d experienced an intimacy with Scott that she’d never had with Haliday. She’d never been completely unclothed with her husband.
When his mouth brushed across hers, Charlotte thought she might combust. Desire gripped her, belayed her fears, and she pulled him toward her. He was already gathering her into his arms. They lay on their sides. His lips settled firmly onto hers, and his tongue slid into her mouth. She tasted him as her hands explored the breadth of his shoulders and slid up into the cool silk of his hair.
He slanted his mouth and deepened the kiss, and the part of her that Haliday hadn’t destroyed—the purest part, nestled deep within Charlotte’s heart—rose up to meet him. The demand of his mouth released her from all constraint. In response she aligned her body to his, rubbing against him with breasts and abdomen and reveling in the unyielding length of his manhood hard against her hip. Every touch ignited her passion. Her nipples were rigid and achy, and she pressed them harder against his taut chest, tantalizing herself by rubbing them against his curly hair.
Leaving her lips wet and far from satisfied, her breath sighing, he slid his mouth along her jaw and down her throat. He cupped her breast, teased her nipple with his tongue, then sucked hard before gentling.
Charlotte moaned. She ran her hands over his muscled contours and slid them down the straight ridge of his spine before she stroked lower to explore his narrow waist and the curve of his firm buttocks. A strangled groan came from him, and he moved to her other breast, his tongue and teeth working it to a rigid peak.
The acute sensitivity he’d fostered with his lips and teeth and tongue spread like sparks through the center of her. She wanted his weight pressing between her thighs, wanted his hard, swollen member filling her. It lay right over her most responsive part, building her craving as it rubbed.
She widened her legs and rocked against the silky, firm length of him, prompting his return to her mouth and a possessive kiss that robbed her of all thought. Calloused fingers trailed down her body, stole her breath and set her trembling. She clutched his back as his finger entered her, and his thumb rubbed the bulge of feminine tissue that lay just above her body’s entrance. Acute tension flashed through her.
“David.”
Her strangled voice squeezed out with the force of a sob, and a moment later his lips covered hers with as much hunger as if it were his first taste of her. His tongue thrust into her mouth as his finger slowly withdrew and once more penetrated her body, and she wrapped her top leg over his hip. Sexual tension built until she lay at the brink of something that her body instinctively strove to reach as she raked her hands up his sides and bit at his lip.
“David,” she begged.
He rose, supporting himself with extended arms and his intact right knee. Cool air rushed over her damp skin. Every pore waited for his next touch.
He abandoned her mouth and trailed his lips down her throat. His breath sawed over her, ragged and hot, and Charlotte rolled to her back and stared up at him. She dragged in air as he reached down, hooked his left knee and lifted it over her pelvis, and his lower leg dragged over hers. Then he twisted his shoulders and with one hand adjusted the position of his shattered leg, while Charlotte shuddered with need.
Finally, he was going to claim her.
The thigh of the leg he kneeled on bulged with muscle. His useless left leg was thin and frail as a child’s, but it wasn’t repulsive. He turned back to Charlotte, face taut. She’d never forget his masculine frame poised above her, their mingled scents, his cock at the moist entrance to her body.
His flushed body radiated heat. Charlotte threaded her fingers through his hair, pulled his head down to hers and captured his mouth. He plunged into her with one powerful thrust and groaned.
Everything in her that had waited for David Scott opened. She tightened her legs and arms, held on to him and, gasping, buried her face in the curve of his neck. The rasp of evening whiskers pricked the side of her face, but her body held him tight and she felt every inch as he pulled out and drove
into her again.
“Oh, God, but you’re sweet.”
They were the first words he’d spoken since their loving began. He seemed to grow even harder, and each thrust pushed her toward that looming pinnacle. He drew her hips higher, found a stroking rhythm that made it impossible for her to hold back a litany of begging, and impossibly then he drove even deeper, touching her in the most primal of ways.
His fingers found her nipple, and when he firmly squeezed, the masculine power that enveloped Charlotte grew ever more intense until she had no recourse but joyful surrender. Fire shot from the tip of her breast to her womb, and her body clenched. A madness born of passion seized her and flung her to a place at once unimaginable and so magnificent she could only cling to David, press her mouth to his shoulder and stifle her cry.
Moments later he too stiffened and shuddered. His head arched back, and a low, guttural moan erupted from his throat.
#
Still inside Charlotte, too enervated to move, David rested limply against her. Then she twitched, and he hooked his arm around her waist and rolled to his side. Somehow her knees ended up wedged between his, effectively supporting his shattered left leg in a comfortable position.
She nuzzled up against him and sighed, and the sound and feel triggered the release of his own breath as well. Here he was, in a strange inn and a strange bed, having loved a woman for the first time since his injury, yet it had never felt awkward. He couldn’t recall when he’d last felt this perfect. Certainly it had been before his injury.
No, he realized, not even then. He’d never felt as contented as this.
His eyes began to burn, so he pressed his thumb and forefinger, hard, into their wet corners. He sniffed once and rubbed his hand down his face; then he sighed again, smoothed his hand over Charlotte’s long, silken black hair, and gave himself to sleep. When he woke, it was to predawn light.
Charlotte, just a silhouette, sat on the edge of the bed with arms upraised, white chemise sliding down her body. She pulled her hair out from under the garment. It tumbled down her back, and regret stabbed through him. He’d slept soundly. He wished he’d woken in the middle of the night and loved Charlotte again.
He reached out and smoothed his hand from her shoulder to her elbow. The skin was so soft that he wanted to bury his lips in the warm bend of her arm. He wanted to press his nose to her neck and breathe in her fragrance. He’d not had enough, not nearly enough. Now their time was up.
She looked over her shoulder at him, and his hand fell from her arm. She stood, retrieved her quilt from the floor and wrapped it around her.
“I’ve got to get back to my room before the inn is awake.”
He raised himself up onto one elbow. “What happens now, Charlotte?”
She went to the fire, knelt down and tossed kindling on the coals. Almost immediately the fire crackled, flared, and the resulting glow spread into the room, making her quilt sprout color. She rose slowly and turned.
“Can we discuss this in the coach?”
“We can, but I think you need to understand something.”
She canted her head to the side and came near the bed, looking puzzled and a bit apprehensive. He crushed the unspoken reassurances he longed to offer.
“What?” she asked.
Even after last night, he still feared exposing his injured body to her eyes, but he couldn’t make plans until he knew she understood exactly what an intimate association with him meant. He sat up and swept the coverings from his legs. “This is what you must understand.”
He was half hard, but the state of his cock wasn’t what concerned him. It was her reaction to his legs. They weren’t deformed, just spindly-looking, excepting his right thigh. By contrast, it was bulky with muscle. He could move his feet and toes just a bit, but moving his legs required him to grab and lift them.
Completely exposed, he maneuvered closer to his wheelchair, which still sat at the bedside. That let her see just how his legs looked when he picked up the damned things and moved them. He didn’t think he could bear it if she appeared revolted, so he didn’t watch her. Instead he stared at his legs, every moment aware of her breath, of her tiniest movement.
She advanced one step. He could see the edge of her quilt from the corner of his eye.
“Do they hurt?”
“Usually not. Rainy days, like today, they ache a bit.”
She astonished him by placing her hand upon his leg. “Can you feel my touch?” she asked.
He dared a glance at her. She didn’t appear repulsed; instead her face bore a look of great concentration.
“Yes. I’ve numbness in a couple of areas, but overall sensation is normal. They’re limp as noodles, though.” And, depending on how they were placed, they could be crooked and floppy, too. “The surgeons wanted to amputate, but Wakefield wouldn’t let them. I’m fortunate none of the bone ends pierced my skin, because amputation would have been a certainty.”
Charlotte bent and kissed first one leg and then the other, and then she pressed her forehead against his knee. Her unbound hair fell across his thighs and its silky caress as she straightened made him shiver and harden. Oh, God, the feelings this woman raised. He hadn’t even known he could be so full of them.
She turned brilliant bluebell eyes on him. “I’m so sorry for what you’ve suffered and lost, David, but this makes you no less a man to me.”
For a minute he couldn’t speak. He gave her a jerky nod, swallowed and dragged in a breath before he was able to respond, his voice embarrassingly husky. “You’d best hurry to your room.”
She smiled, and he couldn’t hold anything back from his own happy expression. He knew he was grinning ear to ear but he couldn’t help himself. She bent and kissed him then—a kiss satisfying even given its brevity.
After she left, David sat for a long minute, captivated by their exchange, awash with something he couldn’t quite identify but which felt suspiciously like joy.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Four days later, David asked Boone to wait outside and wheeled himself through the cozy, single-story cottage. Could he really embark on an affair with Charlotte and rent this house for their trysts?
He’d moved heaven and earth and been blessed with good fortune to find it so quickly. Small yet comfortable, its windows looked out on a compact but glorious garden. The home was private and within his meager means—probably the two most important considerations—but the low rent wasn’t what drew him. He could picture them together in this informal setting, imagine Charlotte in the bedroom with her hand wrapped around one of the bed’s cherry posts, gazing out the bay window to the riot of blooming rosebushes beyond.
He closed his eyes and let his head drop back. Was he really going to do this? Could he enjoy an intimate relationship with Charlotte, knowing its conclusion always loomed in the future? What if he fell in love with her? How would he survive when their affair ended, as he knew someday it would? He was no longer the tall, straight, self-assured man he’d been.
She had truly shocked him when she touched and kissed his legs. He didn’t doubt she accepted the man he was—or rather, the man she saw. Broken but carrying on. Supposedly a hero. But she didn’t know the real man. That one remained inside him, hidden.
Would he have been so anxious to purchase a commission if he’d known what his future held? He’d accepted the possibility of death but never considered he might be left dealing with a broken body. He’d been awarded the Victoria Cross for an act of bravery, but in his heart he truly wondered at his merit. If he’d known what fate had in store for him, would he really have returned to the battlefield to rescue Wakefield?
He heard the door open, the rustle of Charlotte’s skirts and soft tread of her footsteps.
“David?”
He wheeled into the parlor. Seeing her pushed all doubt away. She fit into the house as if it had been designed to complement her. She wore a blue dress with a deep, shawl-like ivory collar. She’d brought the sky inside with her.
“You’re wearing color.” Color other than one acceptable for half-mourning, that was.
“You know my wearing somber colors is for appearances.” One corner of her mouth curved up. “I don’t mind being a hypocrite when I’m only disgusting myself, but I stop when it means risking your derision.”
“I’d never criticize your decision to break from half-mourning.”
She moved close, smoothed back a lock of his hair with her finger. Heat fisted low in his body.
“I know. Next month will mark two years and my mourning period will end. But today…today I wanted to wear something pretty.”
For him. His heart expanded until it filled his chest, and he grinned. She was so much more than pretty.
She whirled then, paced to the kitchen and back, nodded approvingly as she looked around and asked, “How many servants will we need?”
“I should think one cook-housekeeper will be enough for a place this size. Boone will be available if we need him, too.”
Charlotte went to the window that looked out on a gnarled oak and stood watching as two squirrels chased through the tree. She smiled. “It’s a little jewel box of a cottage, isn’t it?”
An apt description. And she would be the precious gem inside.
“It is,” David agreed. “It’s actually called Rose Cottage, no doubt due to the gardens.”
“I’ll make arrangements at the livery for my transport.”
She didn’t have her own coach, so she’d need to rent a conveyance. But she sounded distracted.
“Having doubts?” he asked.
She whirled, her brows drawn together. “What?”
He said nothing. She walked over and offered her hand. He took it and found her grip surprisingly firm.
“No. No doubts,” she said. Her flawless ivory skin blushed pink. “May I engage the cook-housekeeper?”
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