She had mostly been thinking about him.
“I will see him,” she said.
She snatched a book from a shelf and sat in a chair near the fire.
She could see the pedestal table out of the corner of her eye. It seemed to shine and call attention to itself. It really stuck out, now that she thought about it. Anyone entering this library would notice it and wonder what was in that drawer. Nathaniel would probably guess at once that she had been pouring over its contents and ask why she cared about letters written a decade ago—
Her attention snapped to the door as it opened. Nathaniel walked in, looking so handsome her heart jumped. He was dressed for riding, in a black coat and gray trousers and high boots. The day’s breeze had mussed his golden hair and it looked too much as it did when a night of passion left it careless and free, with locks falling here and there to skim his brow.
He did not notice the table. His dark eyes locked on hers at once. He strode over and kissed her hand. They exchanged formal greetings for the footman’s sake.
Nathaniel glanced at where the man waited for instructions. “Get rid of him,” he muttered.
She dismissed the footman, who walked to the door. Very slowly. Each footfall took forever. All the while she suffered the full onslaught of Nathaniel’s presence. Her body thrilled to the silent power barely leashed by propriety.
His dark eyes coolly watched the footman retreat. He waited until the door latch sounded. Then he turned his attention back to her.
His gaze slowly lowered from her face down her body, to her knees and along the diagonal line of her legs to where her feet tucked behind the chair foot. His expression grew severe.
“Did you deliberately take the same pose to taunt me?”
She flushed. She had not realized—
“How many letters were you thinking we should write to each other before I saw you again?”
He did not sound angry, just determined and crisp.
“I thought we understood that we both needed time to think about things.”
He began his territorial pacing. Around her chair.
“Ah, yes. There are decisions to be made.”
“Exactly.”
“About things.”
She glared at him. His aura might be thrilling, but it could also be vexing.
“Things that might divide us,” he said. “So in order to think about things that might divide us, we must divide. Is that how your thinking goes?”
She did not care for his mocking tone. “It is not your place to scold me, least of all when I have behaved quite nobly and selflessly. Do not blame me for not knowing what to do now. I have no experience with liaisons at all, let alone with one that involves a man who might . . .”
He paused his steps in front of her and looked down. The might just hung there between them.
“So I am to retreat to my monk’s cell and pray and contemplate my choices. You will wait on your decision until I have made mine, I assume.”
The intensity of his attention had her swallowing hard. “I did not think it would be fair to seem to . . . I made it very clear that I will not have you blaming me for luring you to compromise. I will not be accused of trying to influence—”
“Any other woman would have extracted a promise from me in bed, damn it. But not you. Oh, no, you pretend it is separate instead of twisted together into a knot.”
“You apparently intruded this morning to have a row. Well, so be it.” She rose to her feet. “First, do not take that high-and-mighty tone with me. A woman who has Laclere as a brother grows immune to masculine demonstrations of pique.”
“Pique? You have not driven me to pique, Lady M. You are driving me mad.”
“I am trying to deal with you fairly. You should be grateful that I understand your need to make an honest decision and that I have given you the privacy to think clearly about what we learned and—”
“Think clearly? If you believe I have been thinking clearly for the last two days, or thinking about that great decision at all, you are much mistaken. The only thoughts I have had are of you naked and moaning and your mouth—”
“Mr. Knightridge.” She glared at him, then to the door where who knew what servant listened.
“Damn the servants.” He yanked her into his arms and created instant silence with a punishing kiss.
For an instant she was stunned. Then she was lost.
All thoughts of servants disappeared. His kisses were savage and his caresses bold. Fire burst in her. It did not matter where they were or who might intrude. His desire so dominated that she could barely reciprocate, but she could feel. Her fevered and reckless responses urged on his ruthless demands for her passion.
They went mad. Mad and hungry and impatient. His embrace lifted her off her feet. The world spun. Suddenly she was facedown, bent over the side of a desk, the smoothly polished surface beneath her hands and cheek. Fabric fluttered at her head and air breezed her legs and thighs. Firm hands pulled down her drawers and wicked fingers caressed down her naked bottom until he stroked where she pulsed and ached.
She bit her fist to keep from moaning and begging. His impatience matched hers. Their joining was as hard as the first kiss, long and thorough. Helpless, she abandoned herself to the pleasure and insanity and ultimately to the wild finish.
It took forever to return to her senses. First she heard his deep breath sounding out the time. His body hovered over hers. His hands flanked her on the desk where he braced his arms.
They were still joined. She sensed a warmth on her back, through her clothes. A kiss. Then he pushed away and left her. She heard the subtle movements as he fixed his garments.
She also thought she heard a knock on the door.
She jerked up her head and stared at that sound. She sensed Nathaniel freeze behind her.
“Yes,” she called.
“The viscount is below,” a muffled voice reported. “Lady Laclere is with him, and most insistent that they see you.”
Nathaniel muttered a curse. He pulled up her drawers and lifted her to her feet. “Do you always receive them when they call?”
“Always. Oh, dear heavens.” She fluffed out her petticoats and felt frantically at her hair. “Of course, bring them up,” she called to the door.
With quick movements and hurried inspections, they assessed each other and smoothed hair and clothing.
“The servants suspect,” she said, combing his hair into place with her fingers. “Otherwise the footman would have entered, and Bianca does not stand on ceremony. She would have been three steps behind.”
“As I said, damn the servants. Although, almost being found like that by your brother—I think I am repaid for my father’s intrusion. I had no idea families could be such a nuisance.”
Despite his allusion to embarrassment, Nathaniel did not look the least bit chagrined. He wore an expression of utter confidence as he dealt with her skirts.
Actually, he looked like a man well contented. A man who had just settled something important.
He gave her a last inspection, then looked in her eyes. “I trust that we have an understanding about this thread in that knot, at least.”
She was in no condition to disagree. Nor did she have time to do so. The door opened and Bianca sailed in with Vergil at her side.
“Forgive the hour, but when you hear why we came you will not mind,” Bianca said. She strode toward them with a big smile. Her excited speed made the feather on her bonnet bob. Nathaniel’s presence did not make her miss a step.
The same could not be said for Vergil. He specifically paused when he saw her company, then approached slowly.
“Knightridge.”
“Laclere.”
Bianca acknowledged Nathaniel, but her attention was all for Charlotte. “Are you unwell? You appear a little flushed. No? I am glad. Now, here is the wonderful news that brings us so early. A week hence, on the coast, there will be a very special wedding.”
“Pen?”
“Ye
s. It will be quiet, of course, but it is long past time.”
Bianca’s excitement could not be contained, and Charlotte tried to match it with her own. She truly was happy for Penelope, but watching Vergil’s reactions to this visit distracted her a bit.
He kept looking at Nathaniel with a hooded speculation, and then at her with curiosity. She could see her brother calculating that this was an odd hour for Knightridge to be alone with her in this library.
She spotted the precise instant when the possible meaning of the closed door struck him. While Bianca chattered on about plans for the wedding, Vergil silently weighed the evidence.
He all but sniffed the air. Charlotte was heartily grateful he did not. It seemed to her that the scent of sex drenched the atmosphere.
“So we had to come at once and tell you,” Bianca finished. “A note by post would never do.”
“A note may have been more civilized and considerate, however,” Vergil said. “We have interrupted a meeting, my dear.”
Bianca brushed the admonishment aside. “Just as well, for Mr. Knightridge must attend if he can. He was important to the happiness that will be celebrated.”
Nathaniel smiled noncomittedly. He was handling the awkwardness with aplomb, but Charlotte could tell that he was alert to Laclere’s increasingly suspicious demeanor.
“All the same, we should excuse ourselves,” Vergil said. “Although I am wondering if the meeting was already well concluded when we intruded.” He gave Nathaniel a deep look on the last sentence that made Charlotte’s caution prickle. She saw the big brother in him, thinking that a private chat with this man was in order.
Bianca still had not picked up the cue. “You are making plans regarding the petitions?”
“I trust that a petition came up at some point in the visit,” Vergil said dryly. “Correct, Knightridge?”
Charlotte wanted to die. “Indeed one did,” she said. “Mr. Knightridge is proving to be a great help in the cause.”
Bianca beamed. “I always knew that the two of you would find common ground in something.”
“Yes, we have discovered we think alike in one small area,” Nathaniel agreed.
Charlotte wanted to hit him.
“Indeed,” Vergil muttered. He turned his attention on her. She guessed he was looking for indications that she had not been importuned by this man whom she did not like.
Short of explaining everything, there was no way to reassure him. Nor did she feel an obligation to do so. She was a grown woman and her brother should not force his way into her house on a whim.
Fortunately, Nathaniel decided to make his exit. He took his leave of the others, and then of her. “We can continue our discussions another time, Lady M.” His quick, deep gaze made it clear how hot those discussions would be.
As soon as he was gone, Vergil turned to Bianca. “I told you it could wait until calling hours. I also said that Pen might want to send the news herself.” His palpable ill ease made his tone sharp.
The scold took Bianca aback. Suddenly confused, she looked at Charlotte. She glanced at her husband’s stony countenance. She turned once more to Charlotte.
Charlotte watched the clouds part and a beam of illumination stream through. Bianca’s eyes turned very shrewd. She examined Charlotte closely, her scrutiny pausing on every wrinkle in her skirt and every mussed tendril in her hair.
A little smile broke, one that only another woman would understand.
“Shall we take our leave now?” Vergil demanded. “I am sure that Pen will let you know all the particulars, Charl.”
Vergil hauled Bianca away. Bianca looked back and cast Charlotte another womanly smile.
“Damned embarrassing,” Charlotte heard Vergil mutter.
“I told you,” Bianca muttered back. “I saw it at Laclere Park.”
“It makes no sense. They have never liked each other.”
Their whispers died away. The door closed behind them.
Charlotte returned to her chair and sat in a sated stupor for a long time. Eventually she remembered why she had entered the library this morning.
She rose and moved a chair to the pedestal table and opened the drawer again. She sorted the letters by date and began reading them.
At noon, she came to a flurry of correspondence between Philip and his tutor. The letters had been exchanged almost seven years ago, not long before she became engaged.
At five minutes past noon, some veiled allusions in the letters began making sense to her. A pattern emerged. Her instincts comprehended first and reacted with dread.
By ten minutes after noon she was staring sightlessly at those letters, now spread out on the table.
Shock immobilized her. Her soul screamed with denial. Her heart burned like it had received a raw cut.
She would never forgive Nathaniel Knightridge for starting his horrible investigation.
Never.
CHAPTER
SEVENTEEN
I remember it,” Williamson said. “It was hard to get her out. The clothing was sodden, but she was not yet. Had we been quicker . . . Well, accidents happen. It is always a sad duty, but common enough. She was a striking young woman, however, and looked to be of good birth, so she was one I remembered.”
“Her identity remained unknown?” Nathaniel asked.
“Nothing on her to send us looking for family. No one who saw her pulled out recognized her.”
Nathaniel had left Charlotte’s house the day before triumphant, sated, and of clear resolve. He intended to finish with the Finley matter as quickly as he could, but while he did he would no longer allow Charlotte to avoid him.
If their only common ground would be pleasure and passion, so be it. He would not relinquish that. He could not.
He had thrown himself into his investigation the last two days. With any luck he would lay the whole matter to rest in the most benign way. Even if the answers were bad ones, he had hopes they could not destroy the unmistakable hunger he and Charlotte felt for each other.
Whether anything more could survive, he did not know. An impasse had been reached on that score. Only settling the “much that divided them” would ever resolve it, however.
Focused now, ruthlessly so, yesterday he had set in motion some inquiries to learn the name of the tutor who had accompanied Mardenford on the grand tour. Today he had sought information on the death of Harry’s mother.
The Metropolitan Police kept records like the good English institution it was. Although many members of that brotherhood did not like Nathaniel much, due to his defenses, a few of the inspectors had become his friends. By midafternoon he had the name of the constables who had helped drag a dead foreign woman from the Thames near the Salisbury Stairs four years ago.
He had found Williamson on duty at his post near Covent Garden. Williamson was an average-sized man, of placid appearance overall but with very intelligent eyes.
“It was kind of you to record it as an accident, so she could have a decent burial.”
Williamson’s mouth flattened into a hard line. “I do not falsify my reports, sir. She fell in. The evidence indicated as much.”
“Did people see that?”
“None we talked to. She wasn’t the first dead body fished out of the river, though. We get to know the difference. Could be she was a suicide, but I doubt it.”
“Why do you doubt it?”
“Wearing expensive clothes, wasn’t she? Not normal. Ones who do themselves in don’t want their best ruined. Usually they weight themselves too. Nor do they have gold pinned to their petticoats. This one did. Part of a chain, about as long as my finger. The links were found by the surgeon when she was delivered to him. It was used to pay for her burial, as I heard it.”
“Perhaps that was why she wore it. To pay for her burial.”
“Foreign woman, she was, from her face and clothes. What was the chance she knew it would matter? If you ask me, and you have, that woman fell in the river.”
Nathaniel tu
rned their exchange over in his mind while he returned to his chambers. Williamson’s conviction that it had not been suicide made some sense. Would she bring the boy with her if she planned that? She had to know he would be left adrift in the city afterward.
She had put Harry at a spot nearby, and told him to wait, however. If she had not wanted him to see her jump, what was the purpose of bringing him at all?
The most obvious answer only heralded more trouble. Nor, he suspected, could it ever be proven.
Harry’s mother had not gone to the river to kill herself. She had dressed in her best garments, and taken the boy, in order to meet someone. Someone to whom she had been writing for nearly a year, with no response. Someone whom she had journeyed to London to confront.
She had left the boy close by so that he could either be seen or fetched once that meeting began.
He saw it all play out. A woman in a dark, expensive dress meeting a man on the bank of the Thames. A quest for privacy, perhaps on the stairs near where her body had been found. Only she had received coldness, not welcome. Rejection, not acceptance.
Did she threaten him? Did she say she would let the world know?
Whatever had been said, she had not left the river’s edge alive. Perhaps in a fit of despair at the results of that meeting she really had jumped to her death. Or perhaps she had fallen by accident.
There was another possibility, one that the Old Bailey lawyer in Nathaniel could not ignore.
She may have been pushed.
The letter did not arrive in his chambers by the post late that afternoon. Instead it was delivered by a footman whom Nathaniel recognized as one from Charlotte’s house.
“I will be at Albany at ten. Please remove Jacobs,” the note read.
Her message surprised him on several counts. Although he had been more than bold at her house, he did not expect her to return the favor and match his precipitous demands for passion with her own. Furthermore, her visiting him was potentially ruinous in ways his visit was not.
Finally, her abrupt note implied he had not established mastery of this affair quite the way his pride had thought upon leaving victorious yesterday morning.
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