“What about Mrs. Smith?”
“This is far too large for just Mrs. Smith. She’ll need a staff.”
“I don’t know…” Her voice trailed off. “I’ve never hired a staff before. I’ve never lived in such a place. I feel inadequate.”
Jacob took her hands in his. “Don’t ever feel inadequate. Ever.” He squeezed her fingers for emphasis. “I don’t know the first thing about being an earl, but we’ll figure it out together. And in the meantime, you’ll never have to worry about where to put callers.”
She leaned her head against his chest and breathed deep. “Oh, Jacob. I don’t know what to say. This is all so overwhelming. But, thank you.”
He cricked his neck to look down at her. Her lashes were resting against her cheeks, and he realized that she had gained weight while in Mrs. Smith’s care. Her cheeks were pink and rounded, not sallow and hollow like when he’d first met her, and when he put his arms around her it didn’t feel as if he’d break her.
“Now the next thing we need to get you is an acceptable wardrobe. I’ve made an appointment with Lady Armbruster’s modiste for this afternoon.”
Her eyes widened, and she pulled away but not enough that he had to let her go. He liked holding her. He liked feeling her in his arms, and he liked sleeping next to her. Even after less than a week of being married he was falling under her spell.
“Jacob. This is too much. I don’t need Lady Armbruster’s modiste to dress me.”
He hugged her tight and then let her go, but just an arm’s length away. “You deserve Lady Armbruster’s modiste. I want you to get gowns that fit you and your style. Enough of wearing someone else’s clothes.”
She blinked back tears, and Jacob was relieved to see that he hadn’t overstepped his boundaries and that his instincts had been right. She needed to become the Countess of Ashland, just like he needed to become the Earl of Ashland.
…
Jacob showed Charlotte around the rest of the house, although she was hardly able to take it all in. The idea that this was her home now, that she would walk these halls, command these servants, was not what she was accustomed to, and she was overwhelmed by all of it.
Everything was so big. She was fairly certain there was not a rickety chair here. And there was a matching tea set. Probably several. How was she going to manage all of this?
What had she gotten herself into?
She’d gone from planning to travel to America to find employment to being a real countess in a gigantic house.
She could see that Jacob was quite pleased with the new arrangement. He was proud of his new home and was excited to show it off to her, opening doors and ushering her into one room after another. Besides the formal sitting room where she would take callers, there was a music room, a masculine-looking study that he seemed particularly pleased with, a ballroom that he said was smallish compared to most.
The thought of hosting any type of ball terrified her, but she kept that to herself and swallowed her trepidation with a trembling smile as he led her up the sweeping staircase covered in red carpet to the balcony above that led to the private rooms.
“Here is what was the nursery,” he said. Pink touched the tips of his ears, and he quickly closed the door before she could get a proper look at the room. Did it remind him of his son? Did he regret that Cora wasn’t his countess and his son wasn’t going to be in that room?
She pressed a hand against the butterflies in her stomach and moved down the hall with him.
“And this is the master bedroom.” He opened the door to reveal a masculine room done in shades of blue and gold. The centerpiece of the room was the large mahogany four-poster bed with a cover of the deepest, most royal blue that Charlotte had ever seen. It dwarfed everything else in the room.
Jacob opened a door on the other side that revealed a changing room. “Your bedchamber is through here.”
Charlotte followed him tentatively, looking back over her shoulder at the massive bed that she would need a stepstool to climb onto. And then it penetrated her brain what Jacob had just said, and she entered what would be her room. This was a much more feminine room, the furniture dainty, the bed not nearly as large, the colors muted greens and yellows.
“What do you think?” Jacob was standing in the middle of the room looking at her expectantly. She blinked up at him with a mixture of emotions.
“I…I think it’s beautiful. And overwhelming.”
He chuckled. “I agree that it’s all overwhelming.”
“Do we have to sleep in different rooms?” She looked down at her hands, then away, embarrassed to look at Jacob.
When he didn’t answer she peeked up at him to find him looking at her with the most heated, nakedly desirous expression she’d ever seen. It made her blush deepen.
“We don’t have to if you don’t want to,” he said. “In fact I would despise it if you slept in this room, without me. I’ve come to like you sleeping next to me.”
She grinned, relieved, and her legs suddenly weak with a longing that she was beginning to identify as a need for Jacob that defied anything she’d ever known before. “I like sleeping with you as well.”
He reached for her, his desire a conflagration in his eyes.
She kissed him, believing for the first time since she became his countess that maybe they could do this. Maybe they could make some sort of life out of this.
Chapter Twenty-Five
When Jacob kissed Charlotte he lost himself. All good sense fled, and there was nothing but Charlotte in his arms. Charlotte pressed against him. Charlotte returning his kisses with all the passion inside of her.
It unmanned him.
And now, standing in the middle of what would become her bedchamber, he let himself fall into the vortex of Charlotte. He kissed her deeply, pulling her as close to his body as he could, and she responded the way she always did—with passion and excitement and eagerness. It was the eagerness that was always his downfall.
He stepped forward, propelling her toward the bed.
“Jacob,” she whispered. “We can’t do this here.”
“We’re in a bedchamber—your bedchamber.” He rained kisses down her neck until a low rumble of a moan escaped her.
“This is inappropriate,” she whispered as if they weren’t the only ones in the house.
“It’s our house. We are the lord and lady of the manor.”
She giggled, and he placed a kiss on the top of her breast, frustrated that it was covered so thoroughly. God, she had perfect breasts. Not too large, not too small.
She leaned back, looking at him with those wide eyes full of trepidation and excitement.
“There is no one here,” he said as he settled on top of her. His cock was hard and hurting, and he wanted to bury himself inside her, lose himself in her warmth and wetness.
He kissed her again, with a passion he only felt for Charlotte. She was so different from his delicate Cora that it still amazed him. He’d thought that all women had to be handled with infinite care and tenderness but not Charlotte. She demanded more, coaxed him to heights he’d never risen to before.
With frustration he pulled up her skirts. “So many damned skirts,” he muttered against her lips. And then he found her molten center, hot and wet already. It never took her long to be ready for him.
He slid down her body until he was kneeling on the floor by the bed, her legs splayed before him. He closed his eyes, his cock demanding release as if he hadn’t just had her the night before.
“Jacob?” Her voice trembled, but he ignored the question in it and put his mouth against her glistening mound, tasting the essence of Charlotte.
“Jacob!” She put her hands on his head to push him away, but he started licking, using his tongue in ways that he’d never done before, going by instinct and a great desire to bring her to heights she’d never experienced. Instead of pushing him away, her hands clutched his hair and pressed him closer.
She came quickly. It only
took a few thrusts of his tongue, and her hips were going rigid and she shouted a strangled cry. Unbuttoning his pants, he surged up and pulled himself out, not even bothering to drop his trousers as he thrust inside of her while standing against the bed. He closed his eyes and let his body take over, pumping into her, sliding in and out of her warmth and tightness until his completion took over so quickly that he almost wasn’t prepared.
He shouted her name and thrust into her one last time, burying his cock as far as he possibly could. She wrapped her legs around his waist and rode him, panting and exclaiming as her passageway milked him with her second completion.
He collapsed on top of her, breathing hard, while she stroked his hair and tried to catch her own breath.
“That was quite surprising,” he said. “I certainly didn’t bring you here to do that.”
“I liked it. It was very clandestine.”
He grinned, loving this woman more every moment.
The thought shook him. He’d not wanted to love another woman again. He’d loved Cora with everything inside of him and had thought he had died when she’d died, but apparently he hadn’t. He’d been dormant, numb.
Until Charlotte.
He pushed off of her and stuffed himself back in his trousers while she sat up and straightened her skirts. Her hair was adorably mussed, and she tried in vain to smooth it down. He liked her short hair. It made her different than the other women, and it suited her delicate features. Made her seem more of a pixie.
“Hullo!”
They froze, their shocked gazes colliding.
Jacob put a finger to his lips to keep her silent and reached into his jacket for his small pocket pistol. He wasn’t one to usually carry a firearm, but in the light of the circumstances surrounding her cousin, and to keep Charlotte safe, he’d been carrying one for the past few days.
He pulled it out now, and Charlotte’s wide eyes fixed on the pistol.
Jacob quietly made his way to the door and mouthed to her, “Stay here.”
He slowly opened the door and stuck his head out.
A man was climbing the steps. He was older, nearly bald, clutching a cap, his eyes darting back and forth.
“Can I help you?” Jacob stepped out and firmly closed the door behind him.
The man stopped, obviously surprised to see someone here. “Who are you?” he asked rather sharply.
“I should be asking you that question. I am the owner of this house.”
The man’s eyes widened, and he clutched his cap tighter. “I’m Frances Cohen, the caretaker here. I check on the house every now and again. I suspect you’re the new Earl of Ashland?”
“I am.” He continued to hold his pistol loosely at his side. The man seemed harmless enough, but these days you just couldn’t tell, and he realized he’d never gotten the name of the caretaker.
“I come by every three days or so. Saw the front door was unlocked and got suspicious. You shoulda told me you were coming, my lord. I woulda had some of the women come in an’ freshen the place up.”
“No worries. I just discovered that I had inherited this place recently, and my wife and I were just taking a look around.” My wife. It still seemed so odd to say that.
Mr. Cohen’s gaze flickered around as if he were looking for Jacob’s wife but was too polite to ask about her whereabouts.
“She’s in the mistress’s bedchamber. Probably trying to decide what changes she wants to make.” Jacob smiled as if to say, “You know women.”
Mr. Cohen grinned back. “It will be good to have someone living here. When are you planning on moving in?”
“We hadn’t talked about it,” Jacob said. “Probably soon. We don’t have much to bring over from where we live now.” He felt a pang at the thought of giving up his townhouse. It was where he had brought Cora to live. Where their son had been born and where they’d both died.
“Well, you just let me know, my lord, and we’ll get the place all tidied up for you. Needs some dusting, is all, and the furniture coverings taken off and the rooms aired out. Course we’ll need to have someone go to the market and stock the kitchen. That would require a cook.”
“I have a cook who will be delighted to take over the kitchen.” He wasn’t sure “delighted” was the correct word to use for Mrs. Smith’s reaction. She didn’t know yet that she would be in charge of the kitchen of such a grand house. But Mrs. Smith had been with him and Cora from the beginning. She had helped him through his grief, and he wasn’t about to abandon her now.
“Of course, of course,” Mr. Cohen said. “You just let me know.”
“I’ll be sure to do that.”
An awkward silence followed in which Mr. Cohen stood there expectantly, and Jacob thought Charlotte was probably pressing her ear to the door.
“Well, I best be going,” Mr. Cohen finally said.
“I’ll lock up when we leave.”
Mr. Cohen nodded and reluctantly headed back downstairs. Only when Jacob heard the front door close did he breathe a sigh of relief and pocket his pistol. It seemed that Mr. Cohen was reluctant to give up his job as caretaker. Maybe Jacob could find something for him to do once they moved in.
He opened the door to the bedchamber, and Charlotte jumped back. Yes, she most definitely had been eavesdropping.
“I can’t believe we were almost caught,” she said.
“We weren’t almost caught at anything. This is our house.”
She swatted at his arm. “Jacob. You’re naughty. That was far too close for my liking.”
“Mr. Cohen would have been scandalized.”
They both dissolved into laughter, and he found Charlotte in his arms again and he kissed her. But she pulled away.
“No more of that.”
He sighed in mock exasperation. “Well then, let’s finish our tour.”
…
Charlotte exited the hansom with a weary sigh. Earlier that morning she and Jacob had visited their new home, where they’d made love in what was to be her new bedchamber and had almost gotten caught. Her cheeks heated at the thought, but the memory still made her want to dissolve into giggles.
They’d had to hurry back to the townhouse for her to meet with the modiste in time. To her surprise Sarah and her mother were there as well. Apparently, Jacob had asked them to help her, knowing that she would need reinforcements and someone to tell her what looked good and what didn’t.
It was a very strange experience. When the modiste realized that she was the new Countess of Ashland, Charlotte was treated with much respect and deference, and it made her feel awkward. She wasn’t accustomed to such treatment and didn’t particularly care for the fawning.
Sarah’s mother found it all highly amusing.
“You remind me so much of your mother,” she’d said. “The daughter of a marquess, destined for great things, and she hated all of the restrictions and rules of Society. She always told me she was nothing special and people shouldn’t think otherwise.”
Charlotte liked these stories of her mother. They were like little gifts bestowed upon her.
The whole fitting had taken far longer than Charlotte had imagined and much longer than the patience she had for it. She’d finally left the decisions up to the Crawford women, trusting their instincts far more than she trusted her own.
She had been more than relieved when they’d finished and she could hail a hansom to go home.
Home.
She was beginning to think of Jacob’s small townhouse as a home. She would be sad to leave it when they moved to the much larger house. Even though she had griped that there was nowhere to put callers, she liked the small place.
Charlotte trudged wearily up the steps, thinking maybe she might be able to take a rest before Jacob returned home. They were supposed to have dinner with Lord Armbruster, and the thought exhausted Charlotte. She liked the man, but she was exhausted from her exciting day and the fact that she and Jacob had spent much of the night awake, learning each other’s bod
ies. That thought made her blush, and as she entered the cool darkness of the townhouse she was smiling to herself at the memories. Mrs. Smith greeted her at the door, wringing her dust cloth.
“I’m so tired, Mrs. Smith. I think I’ll go upstairs and have a quick lie down.”
“There are visitors,” Mrs. Smith said in a hushed voice. “Well, one visitor.”
Charlotte’s shoulders drooped. She did not have the mental fortitude to entertain right now. “Didn’t you tell them I was out?”
“I did. She said she would wait, and she marched right on in there and sat down.”
Charlotte stilled. “She?”
Mrs. Smith nodded, and Charlotte recognized the fear in her eyes. “Who is it?” she whispered.
“Lady Morris.”
Charlotte stepped back as if she would turn around and run out of the house. Escape was her only thought, but then common sense took over. She couldn’t leave Mrs. Smith alone with her aunt, and there was nothing her aunt could do to her now. She was married. She was a countess. She far outranked a baroness, and while that did not impress Charlotte in most circumstances, she was glad of it now.
“Well, then,” she said, her gaze darting to the closed door. “Did you offer her tea?”
“No, my lady. I am a bit frightened of her.”
“Good. She doesn’t deserve tea.” And Mrs. Smith had every reason to be frightened.
“I guess I should go in there,” she said softly, still staring at the door.
“I guess so,” Mrs. Smith echoed, her voice faint.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Charlotte lifted her chin and gave Mrs. Smith a bracing smile while her insides trembled. Every instinct told her not to walk through that door. But neither would she cower.
Her aunt was sitting in one of the straight-backed chairs. Charlotte thought it was appropriate as those were the only types of chairs that could be found in the woman’s home. She didn’t believe in comfort. Thought it led to softness and Lord knew, one should never be soft.
“Aunt Martha.”
The woman lifted her head, and Charlotte had to force herself not to wince. She was suddenly reminded of the first time she’d met her aunt. Still reeling from her father’s unexpected death, grief-stricken, frightened of what her new life would be like, she’d approached her aunt in much the same way. Martha had sat there, looking Charlotte over from head to toe, frowning, dark eyes assessing.
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