“Had he given you any indication that he was a criminal?”
“No. Of course not. He was my brother Michael’s best friend,” she explained, “handsome and as dashing as a girl could want. Oh, he was always something of a mischief-maker, but so was my brother.”
“Then you had no reason to believe that he would hurt you. Did you tell your family what happened?” That would certainly explain both Edgar’s beating and the razing of the carriage house, along with the man’s decision to leave Tennessee.
Charlotte shook her head. “Dear heavens, no. I – I couldn’t tell them. I was so ashamed, I thought I’d die. I’ve never said a word about it. And when I – when I began to miss my – to suspect I was with child, I prayed and prayed and hoped it wasn’t true. But it was . . .”
He tried to imagine the girl she had been, no matter how advanced her education, coping with a life shattered by an act of violence.
“I was too frightened to even speak of my condition,” she said, “let alone try to excuse my part in it.”
“Rape’s not an excuse,” he asserted. “It’s a damned abomination. The man should have gone to prison.”
“And what if I had told?” she asked. “Alexander would still be a bastard, and the two of us would spend our whole lives as objects of pity and contempt. As much as I fought against the act and the idea, I love my son.”
“No one would ever doubt you on that point,” Ben agreed. “But Charlotte, secrets that big have a way of working themselves loose. Maybe you ought to tell the boy – at least some of it – before somebody else does.”
He was thinking of Mrs. Martin, but it could be anyone. A relative, a friend, another child who had overheard a bit of gossip not meant for his ears. As terrible as the news might be coming from Charlotte, how much worse would it be if someone tossed it off carelessly?
“How could I ever explain to him the circumstances of his birth? How could I pass on to Alexander the shame I’ve carried --”
“You have no call to feel ashamed.”
She stared at him for a long while before speaking. “I was ruined before I ever had a chance to be a woman. Ruined by my own foolishness. Because of that, I’ll never marry, never have a family that I can call my own. And you tell me I should feel no shame in that?”
“I do,” he growled, “and I damned well mean it. Charlotte, if Edgar Martin were alive and in reach, I’d hand you his bollocks on a platter. And then I’d hang the bastard.”
She managed a sad smile. “And they tell me Texans aren’t true gentlemen.”
He smiled back. “We may be a little rough around the edges, but we mostly have good instincts.”
The trace of humor faded from her expression. “Your instinct about me is wrong, Ben. I swear to you, I’m no spy.”
He stared into her eyes for a long time without speaking. In them he saw the weariness that follows weeping and the intimacy that comes in the wake of sharing pain. He found that he believed her when she’d told him she had never spoken of what had happened in the Martins’ carriage house when she was fifteen. Yet tonight, she had trusted him with that.
He wanted desperately to trust in her as well, to prove to himself that it was possible that this remarkable young woman saw in him what he’d supposed the war had stolen: a capacity for kindness, an appetite for joy. Yet something in him could not speak the words, so in their stead, he canted his head forward until his mouth found hers.
He kissed her hungrily, devouring her lips and delving with his tongue to taste her sweetness. She gave a small sound of surprise deep in her throat. A moment later, he felt her palms pushing against his arms, her nails digging into the fabric of his jacket.
He drew back abruptly, wondering if he’d misread what he’d seen written in her face moments earlier. Now her eyes were wide with fear.
“Charlotte?” Even as he spoke her name, he understood his blunder. With a sigh, he dragged his fingers through his hair. He needed to get his hands away from her, just as he needed to remember she’d just shared the story of her rape. “I’m sorry. That was stupid, thoughtless. I didn’t mean to frighten you. I only thought that --”
She laid a finger over his lips to silence him. He felt the warmth of it and the way a tiny pulse beat in its padded tip. He fought the urge to take that finger into his mouth, to gingerly test it with his teeth and tongue.
“You still find me . . . attractive, even after what you know about me?” she asked.
Attractive? Her fingertip was working him into a lather. He grasped her forearm and carefully moved her hand from his mouth. He could not resist stroking the inside of her wrist with his thumb before he took his hand away. “I thought you were lovely in the moonlight,” he told her honestly, “but tonight I’d say the firelight suits you better. You are beautiful, Charlotte, and you are so much more.”
He had never spoken so to any woman, had never dreamed of doing such a thing. He saw now that his relationship with Mattie had been that of two acquaintances banding together to satisfy a physical need; its depth had been a puddle compared to the treacherous river in which he waded now.
“I never thought that any man could . . . .” She shook her head in disbelief. “My mother told me that if anyone found out what happened, no man would ever see me as anything but soiled. I didn’t think it mattered. I never wish to marry anyway.” She shook her head. “I would never – I couldn’t endure that again.” Revulsion swam across her features.
His hand touched her cheek. “When he hurt you, he stole something . . . something that can be precious when it’s freely given. A man’s touch is meant to bring so much more than pain and fear. I wish – I wish that I could show you, teach you.”
Once more, she brought her fingers to his lips. Only this time, she caressed them lightly, with little strokes that made him grasp her arm in self-defense. But instead of pushing away the temptation as he had meant to, he turned her hand and pressed his mouth against the inside of her wrist.
As his lips brushed against the sensitive skin, he heard her murmur, “I think you have shown me already. That first time you kissed me – I haven’t been able to forget.”
With each word, she leaned closer, until he recognized the heavy-lidded languor of her gaze. He attempted to remind himself of what he risked, but the thought fragmented as his hands pulled her against him.
“I haven’t shown you anything. Not yet,” he whispered before his mouth reclaimed the territory it had staked.
This time, she kissed him back with a recklessness that matched his own. His arms enfolded her a moment before their lips parted and tongues touched. She murmured wordless pleasure as his palms traveled the curves along either side of her, pausing to linger at her waist and the sweet flare of her hips.
His mouth fell away from hers to trail kisses along the pale column of her neck, then to linger at the delicate skin beside her ear until he felt chills rippling through her. His hand cupped the fullness of her breast, and she groaned in response – just before she pulled away.
Though his arousal strained painfully within the confines of his trousers, Ben kept his distance.
“You would – you would stop now?” Her voice had thickened with what he thought was desire.
At least until the import of her words sank in.
“I would stop at any moment.” He ached to touch her, but enough control remained for him to recognize that stopping would be sensible in any case. He had come here to arrest this woman, not to make love to her, no matter how the night’s events conspired to strengthen the bond he felt.
Even so, when she shook her head, his body throbbed with disappointment. But her eyes lingered upon him, and his mind filled with the taste of her, the feel of her soft warmth.
“I needed to know that I could stop it,” Charlotte told him. “But God forgive me, I don’t want to. I want you to show me, Ben, to make a different memory.”
He should have paused to wonder about her motivation, should have been gentl
eman enough to ask if she was certain. But instead, he kissed her hard before she could change her mind. She sank backward against his onslaught, responding with a soft moan of desire.
He needed to feel more of her, thought that he would die if he did not. His fingers fumbled with the buttons of her bodice. To his surprise, she hastened to help him with the task. They wore far too many clothes, he thought, frustrated as he encountered layer after interfering layer.
He brushed aside her hair, which had tumbled down around her shoulders, then trailed hungry kisses from her neck down to the milky smoothness of her chest. As if Charlotte guessed his goal, she worked feverishly at her corset’s laces until the barrier fell away and his mouth tested the full curves that marked her upper breasts. When he heard her gasp, his head dipped to take in a taut nipple. He listened in satisfaction to her sweet whimpers of response.
Her fingers dug into his back and shoulders as he moved to taste the other breast. He lifted his head from her, then began removing his own clothing, for he could no longer bear its confines.
Her arms crossed over her bare breasts, Charlotte watched his trousers slide downward along his thighs. Her eyes rounded at the sight of the shape straining at his drawers.
“You would stop now?” she asked. Reflected firelight danced across her upper body, and he saw that she was trembling.
Ben’s breath caught at the sight of her, but he understood her fear. He nodded, swallowing against a hard lump in his throat. “I said so, and I meant it.”
She stood slowly, and he worried that she would turn and leave the room. Instead, she unfastened skirt and petticoats and let them drop to the floor.
“It’s altogether too warm in here with this fire.” A nervous quaver belied her boldness, but soon each stood completely nude before the other.
“I was right about the firelight,” he said as his gaze lingered on each curve. “It was made for you.”
He took her by the hand and pulled her beside him on the sofa. At the touch of her palm on his thigh, he groaned.
Through the haze of his desire, he noticed how she studied his false leg where it met flesh. Was she repulsed by the injury, or by the thought that he was less than whole?
Her fingertips grazed his knee. “Does it hurt you?”
“At times.”
“Take it off, then.”
He shook his head. “My leg – it’s hard to look at.”
“We both have our scars,” she whispered.
He did as she bade before kissing her with a possessive fierceness that pressed her down onto the cushion. Had there ever been a woman as perfect as she? The future be damned. If he had to die for this, so be it. He was lost already in the softness of her breasts, the heat of her against his naked flesh.
As his fingers found the moisture of her inner folds, he heard her draw a deep breath. She moved against his gentle strokes, slowly at first, then with increasing urgency as she found her rhythm.
He looked up from her breast, his hand slowing its motion. “Would you have me stop now?”
Her whimper made him smile.
“No!” she protested. “Please, you can’t stop . . . this . . . only – there mustn’t be --”
“A child,” he finished for her. His fingers twitched, and he reveled in her astonished gasp. “Trust me in this, Charlotte.”
“I do,” she whispered. “I do trust you.”
He pressed a fierce kiss against her lips, in part because it pleased him. But in part because he could not quite bring himself to say he trusted her as well. As if to make up for the lack, his mouth delved deeper and then lower, inch by inch, until it found the hot, wet center of her pleasure, and she cried out with wave upon wave of shuddering release.
Afterward, she lay so still, he might have thought that he had killed her, were it not for the rise and fall of her chest. He sat along the sofa’s edge, the pain of his unquenched lust exquisite. In her abandon, Charlotte’s legs were slightly parted, so that he had to look away before he forgot his promise to her.
She peered at him beneath heavy lids; then with one hand she reached out. It was enough to shatter his resolve, enough for him to impale her emptiness in one powerful, smooth stroke.
Charlotte stiffened, but a moment later, she sighed beside his ear, “So good, Ben. I never – never knew how good.”
He had moved to a place beyond all words, to an ancient place of scent and rhythm, of glowing sparks that coalesced in his blind eyes. Almost too late, he withdrew before his lust exploded into a light that flooded the darkest reaches of his soul.
o0o
Engaged to three men, in love with another.
The words wound through her consciousness again and again, sinuous and deadly as a viper. Charlotte awakened with them hissing in her ear, awakened to darkness tempered only by the glowing embers in the hearth.
Her eyes adjusted to the dim light to take in the dark shape sitting on the oval rug beside her feet. Ben was so still that she thought him asleep, but after a moment, she saw his head move slightly and realized he was staring into the dying coals.
The feelings that had surfaced while she slept resonated in her desire to climb down beside him on the floor, to crawl into the refuge of his arms. She wondered that she thought of him as safety, of how strange it was that she equated such a word with the man most dangerous to her.
Reason told her that she’d been foolish to trust in him, more foolish still to believe herself in love. But reason melted away at the thought of how his words had overthrown the reign of her self-loathing, how his desire had vanquished the idea that anyone who knew her secret must despise her.
“A man’s touch is meant to bring so much more than pain and fear,” he had told her. “I wish – I wish that I could show you, teach you.”
Yes, he had certainly done that. She shuddered lightly, thinking of the pleasure of his lesson, wishing that she could bring herself to ask him to repeat it now. But other secrets stood in her way, more recent sins that she must not confess: the messages she’d passed, the three men she had beguiled.
And they were surely sins. She understood now that she’d been wrong to allow her brother to manipulate her as he had, wrong to be caught up in defending a way of life that seemed more untenable each time she thought of it. The Yankees may have taken her city, her home, even her father from her, but she no longer wanted any part in this war. For every lie she’d told, a web of consequences spread out, and Ben had made her see that some of these proved fatal.
A need swept through her, a desire to end the subterfuge and trust Ben Chandler with the truth. But the web spread far and wide and touched too many others. Her confession would implicate the three men she had falsely agreed to marry, so that each of them would be punished for the information he had been tricked into giving her. If she said too much, Ida April might be arrested, as Mrs. Perkins had been already. Most importantly, the best punishment she might hope for would be a prison term, and though she didn’t doubt that she deserved it, her absence would be a devastating blow to Alexander. Clearly, telling all she knew was not an option.
But even if Ben allowed her such an option, continuing as she had would be equally impossible, perhaps more dangerous, considering her feelings. She tried in vain to imagine a way to disentangle herself from her own lies’ clinging strands. One by one, could she make excuses to break off her promises to Jonathan Snyder, Delaney McMahon, and Gideon Williams? Could she let Michael know that she was finished with his game, or should she merely stop sending information? Either way, he was certain to construe her decision as betrayal, as would her remaining family members.
The pain of her father’s death gave her a forewarning of how deeply it would hurt to turn her back on those she loved. She thought, too, of Alexander, and how he looked up to the man he thought of as his brother, the aunt and uncle and four cousins he loved so much. How could she possibly take them all from him for the uncertainty of life among the Yankees? And she hadn’t even thought of
how she might support the two of them alone.
If she could possibly escape the charges Ben had threatened earlier, she would have to forge another pass and flee south with Alexander. She could tell Michael that the Yankees had discovered her deceit. Then he would surely spirit her and Alexander to some safe haven for the remainder of the war.
She told herself that was the safest course. Yet when Ben reached up to take her hand, then brought it to his mouth and kissed it, she fought against the desire to slide back into his arms and to speak the words of love that would only hurt both of them further.
As if he read her mind, he asked her, “You’ve been awake for a while. Are you regretting what we did?”
“Are you?”
“I asked first,” he reminded her.
“I suppose I should be, but I’m not. Tonight . . . tonight was so much more than I ever dreamed.” She saw in his eyes that it had been the same for him, and she saw possibility as well, the chance that she might be able to convince him to let her go.
But the idea of using Ben after what they’d shared knifed through her. She wouldn’t, couldn’t sink so far. Instead, she rushed to tell him, “I’ll never be sorry for being with you tonight, no matter what the future brings. Because I’ll always have it to look back on.”
“A memory. Not a beginning?”
She shook her head. She must give him honesty in this, at least. “We both know that can’t be.”
“Why, Charlotte?”
Within that simple question, Charlotte felt her nakedness, felt how vulnerable it left her and how open to his scrutiny.
“You don’t trust me. You never have,” she told him as she gathered several articles of clothing.
“I understand why you lied about Alexander. Maybe – maybe there’s some other explanation for the --”
“You said ‘maybe.’” As she began to dress, she thought of how she should be disappointed that neither their friendship nor their passion had blinded him. Instead, she felt relief. She didn’t want Ben Chandler to turn into a fool, another of her gullible conquests. She couldn’t bear the thought of numbering him among her false fiancés.
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