by Maya Rodale
And if they did not escape this folly soon, she would be his maddening, devious and dangerous wife.
He felt exhausted merely thinking about the possibility.
James dared a glance at her and his heart stopped in his throat. Her hair was a dark tussled mess, as if a man had run his fingers through it while savagely making love to her. There were two dirty stains on her white gown at knee height, the result of her kneeling on the ground to pick the lock. Not that anyone would believe that. No, they would think she’d been kneeling for something else entirely.
This was bad. This was worse than bad.
“We need to get out of here,” he said firmly. “Quickly, and unnoticed.”
“The windows,” Charlotte said resolutely. The windows were seven feet from the ground, but they were their only option.
Then, oddly, James was glad to be suffering this scheme with Charlotte. Any other girl would be having an attack of the vapors, where as she … Dear God, what was she undertaking now?
While James woolgathered, Charlotte began arranging the crates into a suitable tower for climbing to reach the windows. He quickly stepped in to help, lifting them high with an ease that made her think of his muscles flexing taut and strong underneath his clothes.
This inspired all sorts of ridiculous imaginings: James, working in naught but his shirtsleeves on a hot summer day, perhaps cooling off by pouring a bucket of cold water over his head, plastering his wet, transparent shirt to the hard, defined planes of muscles of his chest.
The imagination was a wicked, wanton tease. The imagination also caused her to feel lightheaded, which made her think of fainting into his arms. Dear Annabelle’s latest column in The London Weekly had suggested the very thing as a way to attract a man’s attention.
“You know, Charlotte, it’s funny that you didn’t ask me why I was in the folly,” James remarked.
Actually, she wanted to correct him: It wasn’t funny at all. Most of the ton unwittingly participated in her schemes without question. Today she had to tangle with a smart one.
“Let’s say that I was rather preoccupied with getting out of here,” she replied.
“Nevertheless, I can’t help but wonder if this is one of your schemes,” James said, glancing sideways at her.
“I wasn’t planning for us to be stuck here,” she replied and wasn’t that the truth!
“Really? This is not some scheme to entrap me in a lifetime of matrimony?”
“You think highly of yourself. No, James, if you must know you broke my heart in 1817 and I haven’t quite forgiven you for it.”
Had she really just said that? Of course. She’d been waiting eight years to let him know of the hurt he caused her.
“What happened in 1817?” She watched as James did the math to calculate their ages, and searched the far recesses of his memory for an event of such devastating magnitude occurring when she was twelve and he fifteen. His brow furrowed. And then he remembered.
“Because I wouldn’t attend a funeral for your pet rabbit?” he asked.
“Our rabbit, George Coney. It wasn’t just that you wouldn’t attend, but you mocked me for it. In front of everyone. And—”
“I was an idiot lad of fifteen and had schoolmates around for the holiday,” James explained in one of those carefully cultivated patient voices which she used when she spoke to her toddler cousins.
“—And then,” Charlotte said, her voice rising as she recollected The Horrible Thing They Did, “you and your idiot friends ate him!”
She had invited James to join her for George Coney’s funeral. After all, they had discovered the injured rabbit together six years earlier. Together, they had nursed the poor thing back to health. George had been her beloved pet, and James her beloved friend and partner in crime.
But James had grown too old for her games, and he had laughed at her along with his schoolmates. But then the body of her beloved pet went missing. And then the body was discovered. Roasting. On a spit. On the front lawn of Hastings House.
“Dudley did it,” James maintained. “And he is an idiot and I am no longer friends with him. I did not partake in George Coney.”
“I thought I was your friend,” she said softly. She had been hysterical, inconsolable. She still had not forgiven Dudley or James.
Charlotte could articulate now what she could not then. She had been devastated by the loss of her pet, which she had rescued—with James’s assistance—from the garden. More so, she had been stung by the sudden loss of her best friend who suddenly, after one term at Eton, wanted nothing to do with her. She could understand the mocking and the reluctance to associate with a girl, she supposed. Worst of all, he had traded her company for a pet-eater like Dudley.
Charlotte knew now that it was a stupid thing boys and men did—deny feelings and sensitivity and resort to extraordinary lengths to prove they had hearts of stone.
She could forgive James all that, if she were a better person. Occasionally she had moments. But she could not forgive the way he never really spoke to her again after that incident. Had their years of friendship meant nothing?
“Have you been holding this grudge for eight years?”
It wasn’t as if he gave her a chance to forgive him. He never asked her to turn about the room, or waltz, or offered to fetch her lemonade. All those little gestures signified nothing to anyone else but would have meant the world to her. She didn’t say that, though.
“I was going to set you up with a very nice young lady,” Charlotte said. “But her bonnet became entangled in tree branches.”
“I have narrowly escaped matrimony to one girl, only to find myself risking it with another,” James remarked.
“I don’t want to be here either, James. And I certainly don’t want to marry someone who mocks delicate young ladies when they are in a fragile emotional state, quite possibly eats pets and then refuses to speak to their childhood friend for eight years,” she said, pausing to turn and face him. He shrugged—how infuriating! “In other words, you. I don’t want to marry you,” she added.
Really, though, she didn’t want to entrust her heart to him again, knowing he might forsake her. Again.
“I got that,” he said leveling a stare. His eyes were very blue, and she was all in awe of his gaze as he took her in: tussled girl, dirty dress. She must have looked like a petulant child. Except there was nothing childlike about the way he looked at her, or how it made her feel.
“Well, say something,” Charlotte implored after he stared at her for a long while.
Then James grinned, tugged one of her curls and said, “C’mon, Char, let’s get the hell out of here. I’m going to climb up on those crates and see if I can reach the window.”
Like that, the moment was over, yet a hint of their old familiarity had resurfaced.
“It would mean so much to me if your first act of freedom was to unlatch the door. I’d have the devil of a time explaining to my brother why I was locked in a folly,” she said.
“I’m sure you would manage magnificently. I’m also sure he wouldn’t be surprised in the slightest.”
“I’m not sure if that is a compliment. Or not.”
“I know you, Charlotte,” murmured James. He did, like no one else. Even Harriet. She was used to being misunderstood or avoided by those scared of her reputation for wit and trouble. With those warm words, with that heated look, a little bit of her loneliness melted.
“What time is it?” she asked.
“A quarter to four!” James said. Then he swore, viciously. And she grinned, wickedly.
“Perhaps we needn’t be out by four precisely. We can wait until after everyone leaves and then presumably a servant will return here for something. Thus, we shall obtain our freedom and his silence for a nominal fee. Servants are easily bribed. Don’t ask how I know that.”
“I am due to give a speech honoring my father and commemorating the completion of this folly. I must also do so up to the standards of the oh-so-perfect G
ideon.”
“Well you’d better see to climbing out that window then,” Charlotte urged. If Gideon was half as insufferable as he’d been as a child … She supposed people like Gideon served a useful purpose in the world, such as taking on tedious tasks no one else wanted, and serving as excellent people to prank.
“See if Harriet is outside. We can call for her.”
James climbed up the crates, reaching for the window and pulling his weight up enough so he could peer out.
“I don’t see Harriet.”
“She must have helped Lucy back to the party.”
“Your plans have failed spectacularly, Charlotte,” James said, adopting a tragic expression.
“Yes my plan for you to climb out the window and unlock the door is not going as planned.”
“About that …”
“What? Why are you climbing down?” Charlotte asked, a note of panic creeping into her voice. The clock was literally ticking, time was running out and she was facing exile!
“Oh damn,” James swore. In his haste to return to the ground, James’s breeches caught on a nail jutting from a crate. The couple fell silent at the sound of ripping fabric.
Two pairs of blue eyes nervously looked down to the gentleman’s lower half, which was indelicately exposed thanks to a tear along the breeches, exposing his unmentionables.
“Your jacket will cover it,” Charlotte said and it was mostly the truth. The tear was positioned such that, so long as he didn’t move or bend over, or if the wind didn’t blow the tails of his coat, no one would notice. “Hurry.”
“Also …” James began in a tone a voice that was a prelude to something not good.
“Also?” Charlotte echoed, infusing more drama than necessary into the syllables.
“I don’t think I’ll be able to climb out the window. Can’t get high enough. But I could lift you, then you could shimmy down and go unlatch the door.”
“In skirts?”
“Take them off,” James said with a shrug.
Her mouth dropped open. Even she, the ever-unflappable Charlotte Brandon, was shocked by a gentleman’s simple command to disrobe before him.
And then to climb out a window at a garden party.
In her underthings.
This was a bit much, even for her, which was really saying something.
“I beg your pardon!” she said, because it seemed the thing to say in such a situation. If her brother found out about this, she would be packed off to Scotland by midnight. Perhaps even Australia.
“Charlotte, we are a facing a lifetime of —”
“Holy matrimony? Wedded bliss? Eternal devotion?”
“Take your damned dress off,” he growled, eyes flashing.
“Bloody hell,” she swore.
“Language, young lady,” he reprimanded.
“Now you develop a sense of propriety,” she retorted.
“If only you would have done so an hour ago, we wouldn’t be in this mess.”
“Oh!” Charlotte pressed her palms against his rather hard chest and pushed him. He stumbled back a step, because he was startled and not because of the force. His hands closed around her wrists and he held her. Close. Then, he turned her around.
Suddenly, it became difficult to breathe, as she was held flush against him and aware that he was aroused by this. If the heat in her belly—and lower—was any indication, she was too.
Obviously, there was a design flaw with the air supply in the folly. James ought to mention that in his speech. His speech!
“How much time do we have?” Charlotte asked, sounding more breathless than she would have liked.
“I’m not really watching the clock right now, Charlotte,” James said. His voice was strangely husky and it did things to her. Made her feel things.
And then he began to unbutton her dress. He worked quickly, and the speed, ease and determination with which he divested her of her gown were anything but seductive.
Or so she told herself.
She had felt his fingertips brush quickly and gently against her bare skin, where no man had ever touched her. She had felt the pause when he had undone all the buttons, but hadn’t moved to help her out of the gown. As if he were looking, drinking her in.
Charlotte stepped out of her dress and looked for a place to hang it. She settled for the knob of the door. That cursed, locked door.
“Are you ready?” James asked her. His eyes had darkened. They focused firmly on her face. And it irritated her that a rake such as he did not openly ogle her. One lascivious stare was the least he could give her.
“Of course,” she replied, as if she stripped down to her undergarments in front of gentlemen regularly. As if this situation were not at all unusual.
There was something familiar about it. In a way, it felt like old times.
Just with corsets. And a man, not a boy.
It was not like old times at all.
Good lord, she was going daft.
“Let’s do this,” she said firmly. It was deuced awkward but he climbed up, then she did, then he lifted her high enough so that she could swing one leg over the ledge. And then another. She held on, then let go, sliding down the stone wall and landing with a thud on her bottom.
The sound of chattering party guests reached her, and in a flash she was unlatching the door and stepping inside—holding the door open, wide open, of course, and taking great care to keep it thus.
Even as she swiftly donned her dress and James made short work of the buttons and smoothed some of the wrinkles in her gown.
“My hair,” she whispered, tentatively raising one hand to the incriminating mess it had become.
“The wind. It’s incredibly windy today,” James lectured. Indeed. Now if only wind could explain the telltale signs she’d been on her knees.
“You should go immediately to make your speech. Don’t worry about me,” she told him.
“I should worry about you. But oddly enough, I fear more for whoever encounters you,” he said. She smiled, because she knew it was a compliment.
She cast a wary eye over his appearance. His hair was also disheveled. His cravat had gone limp. Dust and dirt flecked his jacket. And his breeches … stained at the knees and ripped quite nearly up to his backside.
Charlotte brushed off his jacket. It was the least she could do.
“Well, it has been …” she started, her voice trailing off.
“… a pleasure,” James said firmly. Her heart beat hard with happiness. She had missed him. And she did not want to miss him again.
Charlotte’s last glimpse of the garden party—as she was swiftly and discretely hustled out by her brother and sister-in-law—was James standing before the guests delivering his speech. The wind blew, ruffling his hair and lifting the tails of his coat, exposing the unseemly rip in his breeches. Lord Hastings was horrified. The guests were aghast. Any words he said were lost in the wind.
They would say that he looked disgraceful. Charlotte thought he looked utterly dashing.
Brooke’s Gentleman’s Club
Later that night
“Well that went badly,” James remarked to his old friend, Nathanson. There was not enough brandy. Or whiskey. Or wine. James’s heart was still racing from all the narrowly averted disasters of the afternoon.
“I’m dying to know what the devil happened to you, James. And do not repeat that hogwash about saving the kitten from the tree,” Nathanson implored.
In spite of himself, James grinned. When he found himself a disheveled unsightly mess standing before two hundred guests expecting a speech on architecture and the achievements of his father, James’s mind went blank.
Save for one thought: What would Charlotte do?
Because he knew her, he knew that she would brazen through. She would concoct a story just shy of utterly unbelievable. And she would defend it until her dying breath. So he did just that.
First, he started off by offering the services of his valet and offered his p
resent attire as recommendation. A few people in the crowd laughed.
Next, he mentioned having saved a kitten from a tree as an explanation for his disheveled appearance. After all, who could find fault with the rescue of a kitten?
Never mind that there was no kitten.
James then began speaking of his father’s interest and dedication to his study. He was presently surprised to find that all those things he’d read about had somehow lodged in his brain and were available to him in his hour of need. James spoke of the folly’s features and praised it for its beauty and security (that was for Charlotte).
All in all, he did not do a terrible job.
But all anyone seemed to notice was the massive hole in the backside of his breeches, revealed with every gust of wind.
It had been an unusually windy day.
“You know, I can’t decide which was my favorite part,” Nathanson remarked, grinning. “The gasp of the crowd when you stepped up to speak, looking as if you had lost a wrestling match with a rabid wild boar, or your father’s grim expression when he saw the hole in your breeches.”
“I’m glad someone finds humor in it,” James replied. He could see the humor in all of it. His father could not. James took a long sip of his whiskey.
“How angry is he?” Nathanson asked gingerly.
“The thing to remember is that even if I had pulled it off perfectly, he still would have thought Gideon could have done better,” James said. The sad fact was that Gideon could do no wrong and James could do no right.
“Ah yes, the revoltingly perfect heir and older brother, fluent in five languages—“ Nathanson said dryly. They’d all been at school together. Gideon had been as smug, perfect and insufferable then as he was now.
“Seven,” James corrected.
“Royal ambassador to Greece,” Nathanson said, waving his hand dismissively.
“France and Germany, as well,” James added, his mouth a grim line.
“With a portrait hanging in the National Gallery,” Nathanson carried on.