Lady Charlotte's First Love

by Anna Bradley

  Her gaze darted to his face. “Hurt myself? I would never… Why would you ask such a thing?”

  His shoulders went rigid. “You promised me, that day in the carriage—you promised you wouldn’t pretend anymore. You promised never to hide from me again.”

  “I—I’m not pretending—”

  “You’d have me believe this was a pleasure ride? It was almost dark when you left the stable yard. No, don’t try to deny it. I saw you leave alone, on a half-broken horse and riding recklessly, as if you hoped you’d fall.”

  “No, I—” But no matter how she tried to force it through her lips, the denial wouldn’t come, not when he looked at her with that stark panic in his face, with his torn shirt and bloody arm. Not when it could so easily have been his entire body covered in blood, or his neck broken. “When I left the stable yard I thought only of running away, of escape. I—I’m sorry. It was foolish.”

  A dark, bleak looked passed over his face. “Were you running away from me?”

  She closed her eyes. It would be easier that way, so much easier, but the truth was never simple or easy. “No. I was running away from…me.”

  He stepped close to her and wrapped his hands around her shoulders. “The other night in the garden, with Devon, I thought… But you were saying good-bye to him, weren’t you? I said awful things to you, called you—” He stopped, swallowed convulsively. “What I said, and the look on your face that night—it’s haunted me, Charlotte. I beg you to forgive me.”

  Forgive me. But what if it was too late for forgiveness? What if there was no absolution to be had?

  Then you lived with your guilt, and you took your punishment.

  Something snapped inside her then—not into pieces, but into place, the last piece in a puzzle she’d long since despaired of completing.

  All these months, since the moment she’d set foot in London—the scandals, the sneering contempt of the ton, the way she’d refused her family’s comfort, refused to go to Bellwood—wasn’t that what it had been? A punishment. Her punishment for failing Hadley. She’d wanted to hurt herself, as if her pain could somehow make amends to him, or change what had happened.

  And everyone else—her family, the ton, even Julian—she’d wanted them to hurt her, too. To punish her. She shrank away from the ton’s cruelty, yes, but even then, even as she’d been desperate to escape it a tiny part of her, a part she’d buried in the darkest recesses of her heart…

  That part of her welcomed it. Because a woman like her should be punished. A woman like her deserved to be taught a lesson.

  Dear God. She couldn’t look at him.

  “I—I should have stopped you from saying the things you said that night,” she whispered. “I didn’t, because…”

  Because I didn’t know. Until this moment, I didn’t know.

  He leaned closer, tried to see into her face. “Because I wouldn’t listen, wouldn’t let you—”

  “No.” She looked down at her gloved hands. “I didn’t stop you because I wanted… I wanted you to hurt me.”

  He touched his fingers to her chin to raise her face to his. “Why would you want me to hurt you?”

  So gentle, his hands. It was his gentleness that undid her, made the truth stir and rise from that deep, secret place inside of her, the place where she ached and bled, and she couldn’t stop it, couldn’t close the hole in her chest, and the truth kept rising, tearing loose until she couldn’t force it back down anymore. All the pain and the secrets and the guilt shoved against her lips, gushed from her mouth, seeped from her pores—all those wet, dark, ugly truths.

  “Because I… I deserve to be hurt.”

  He sucked in a quick, harsh breath, as if a fist had landed in his stomach. “No. No you don’t, Charlotte.”

  “You don’t know. You don’t know what I did. What I am.” She didn’t want him to know, to see it, to see her, because once he saw that ugliness he’d leave her at Hadley House alone, just as she deserved.

  He cupped the back of her head in his hand and looked into her eyes. “I do know who you are. It’s you who doesn’t know anymore. Tell me what happened here, Charlotte. To Hadley. To you.”

  She drew a deep breath. She’d never told anyone the entire truth, and she wouldn’t tell Julian now—not the worst of it. Not what had happened to her, because it would only hurt him to know, and it was a useless, meaningless pain. There was nothing he could do—nothing anyone could do.

  But she’d tell him as much as she could. “Hadley died.”

  Julian remained silent, waiting.

  “He was about to ride to a hunt. I was standing nearby to see him off when all of a sudden he decided to take a high jump. But his horse balked at the last minute, and Hadley was thrown. The fall broke his neck.”

  Julian made a low, pained sound deep in his chest. He pressed his palm flat against the nape of her neck. He didn’t speak, but he held her so she wouldn’t look away from him.

  “It was my fault. He was trying to make me look at him, to see him, to…to make me love him. And I wanted to, you know—I tried to. I tried so hard, but it was no use. He knew, and he kept trying to find a way.”

  Julian slid his hands into her hair. “It wasn’t your fault. You can’t make yourself love someone, Charlotte, any more than you can make yourself not love someone.”

  Tears pressed behind her eyes. “But I promised I would love him. When I married him, I swore it. I thought I could, but it became a lie. I lied to him, and then he died, and now I’m being punished.”

  “No.” His voice was fierce. “No. You can’t really believe that, Charlotte.”

  She gripped his wrists. “I do believe it. It’s true, Julian. If it weren’t, then none of the rest of it would have happened.”

  He stroked her hair back from her face. “What happened after he died?”

  The truth tried to rise in her chest again, to tear free, but she forced it back. The whole truth of what had happened—that burden was hers to bear alone.

  Tell him what you can, but nothing more. “His mother, she—”

  She didn’t want to think about it, didn’t want to hear the dowager’s screams in her head, but no matter what she did, no matter how many whorehouses she visited in London and how much scandal she courted, she couldn’t silence it.

  “The shock of Hadley’s death destroyed what was left of her mind. She blamed me from the first, and she never forgave me. She wept every day after he was gone, right up until the day she died. I tried to comfort her, but whenever I came near her she’d shriek and wail and work herself into a frenzy. She said she wished her son had never married me, that I was a curse upon him. That it was my fault he’d died. That I’d killed him, and it should have been me instead.”

  He clasped her face in his hands and looked at her with such tenderness, such grief. “She was mad, Charlotte. You said yourself she was out of her mind.”

  “She was mad, but she wasn’t wrong. Hadley was a good man, a kind man—he deserved better than to spend the last months of his life with a wife who didn’t love him, could never love him. He deserved so much better—” Her throat closed on an odd, choked sound. “So much better than me.”

  He caught her to him, wrapped his arms around her and held her, so tight and so close she felt every thud of his heart in her own chest. “Let it go, Charlotte. Let it out, or it will keep hurting you.”

  No, she wouldn’t let it out, wouldn’t cry, because if she did, she’d never stop. But even as she denied the grief it took her, seized her by the neck and shook her like a ragdoll until there was nothing else she could do but sob against him, great heaving sobs that threatened to tear her apart.

  He held her head against his chest and stroked her hair until the wracking cries subsided into quiet tears, and still he held her and murmured to her like a child, his hands warm and soothing against her back. When
she was exhausted from the storm of emotion, he gathered her into his arms without a word, lifted her onto his horse, then retrieved her horse’s reins and swung up behind her on the saddle. “Lean back on me.”

  She let herself sag against him.

  “That’s it.” He settled her so her back rested against his chest and wrapped one arm around her waist. “Sleep.”

  Miraculously she did, cradled in the curve of his body, his breath a soft, steady rhythm against her back. She thought she felt his lips at her temple and his whispers in her ear, but then she succumbed to the kind of sleep that had eluded her for months, deep and dreamless.

  When she awoke, the sky was dark over her head. Someone was speaking, but she couldn’t quite make sense of the words. “Julian?”

  “I’m here, sweetheart. Slide your arms around my neck.”

  She obeyed without question. The saddle disappeared out from under her and for a moment she panicked as she became groundless again, suspended, but then she felt Julian’s arms under her, and her cheek found his chest, which vibrated with a low sigh as she relaxed against him. Then he was moving—door, stairs, hallways, and more doors until at last she felt a soft coverlet beneath her and knew he’d brought her to her bedchamber.

  She must have slipped into another dream for a while because she lost some time. When she awoke later it was to a hushed argument taking place at her bedside.

  “You can’t be in here with her,” a voice hissed. Mrs. Boyle? “It’s not proper, Captain West. I can’t allow—”

  “No.” Charlotte struggled to sit up, but her eyes seemed fused shut and sleep threatened to take her down again. “I want him to stay.”

  “Now, don’t agitate yourself, my lady.” A soft, motherly hand pressed her back down into the mattress. “You’ve been through quite an ordeal. You can thank Captain West tomorrow—”

  “No. Julian.” She forced her eyes open and grasped his hand. “Don’t go.”

  His fingers closed around hers. “I won’t. You heard Lady Hadley, Mrs. Boyle. She wants me to stay, and I’m sure you don’t wish to upset her, as fragile as she is right now.”

  Charlotte fell back against the pillows and let her eyes fall half closed.

  Mrs. Boyle huffed and fretted, but at last she accepted the inevitable. “Oh, very well.” She meandered around the room, straightened a few perfectly straight objects on Charlotte’s dressing table, and then closed the door behind her with an offended click.

  For a moment after she left neither of them said anything. Then, because there was so much to say and no place to begin, Charlotte blurted, “You’re bleeding.”

  “What?” Julian glanced down at the long, bloody scratch on his arm. “Oh. It’s nothing.”

  “It bled quite a lot.”

  He smiled. “And now it’s stopped.”

  “It looks deep. May I see it?”

  “It’s nothing, I promise you.” But he sat down on the edge of her bed, obediently turned over his arm, and held it out so she could inspect the cut. The smooth skin seemed too vulnerable to belong to Julian, too fragile to protect such a muscular limb.

  She hesitated for a single moment before she touched him—only a moment, a breath in time, but it lengthened, stretched, became infinite, for surely a mere moment wasn’t enough to hold such emotion, such promise.

  Or such risk. Once she touched him, she might not be able to stop.

  And yet it was already too late, wasn’t it? She hadn’t touched him yet, and already she couldn’t stop. Her fingertip met his warm skin and stroked lightly down his arm, just to the right of the gash.

  His breath caught hard in his throat.

  She looked into his eyes—dark and heavy-lidded—drew his hand slowly to her mouth, and pressed her lips into his palm.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  As soon as her soft, red lips met his palm, those lips he’d longed for in one fevered dream after another, Julian knew he was lost. Cam and Ellie, Jane, even Colin—they all faded from his mind the instant her mouth touched his skin.

  She brought his hand to her cheek and held it there. Her eyes found his, a question in their bottomless depths, but he didn’t give her a chance to ask it. There wasn’t any need. They both knew the answer—they’d known since that night more than a year ago when he found her waiting for him under a sky full of stars. So he simply brought his other hand up, cradled her face in both his palms, and touched his mouth to hers.

  She sighed, long and low. He caught the soft exhalation on his tongue, tasted it. Sweet. Both familiar and new at once, her taste, like a hazy melody teasing at the edges of his consciousness, one he thought he remembered until he heard it again and found he’d forgotten how beautiful it was, how much it moved him.

  “Stay, Julian.” She slid her hands into the opening of his shirt to brush her fingertips over the nape of his neck. “Stay with me tonight.”

  Julian shivered at her touch. Ah God, nothing had changed. Her most innocent caress still had the power to send him to his knees, to make him want to stay there. He would. Tonight. He’d stay with her, and he’d love her, and he’d wait to think about tomorrow when it came.

  He drew back to look into her eyes. “Did you think I would leave you?” He stroked his thumb down her cheek and brushed it across her lower lip, his groin tightening at the hint of wet warmth he found there.

  She pressed her lips to the pad of his thumb, then lifted his fingers one by one to kiss them each in turn. “Kiss me again.”

  He took her lips with a groan. She opened eagerly for him and he surged inside, desperate to taste her everywhere. She met his strokes, her tongue as insistent as his, her mouth wet and open and so hot and sweet he feared he’d spend from just kissing her, before he could even tear off his breeches.

  He should have known it would be like this. He never could stop at a taste with Charlotte. Her skin, her sighs and murmurs made him ravenous, and within seconds he was kissing her deeply, his tongue searching every corner of her mouth, the shell of her ear, her neck. His hands were rough in her hair, tugging as he sucked at the pulse point at her throat. God, he could stay here forever with her pulse fluttering wildly under his darting tongue, her breasts pressed against his chest, his hand hot against the smooth silk of her stockings, sliding higher, higher, over the bare skin above her garter, so close now, close to that heaven between her thighs.…

  She made the tiniest movement, almost a flinch. Julian paused, his hand going still. “Did I hurt you?”

  “No. It’s nothing. Just a bruise from the saddle.”

  A bruise, on the tender white skin of her thigh. Where else was she bruised, hurt? He pulled back slightly and let his gaze move over her. She’d lost her hat somewhere during her mad dash for the forest. Most of her hair had come loose, but a few pins were still tangled haphazardly in the long dark strands, and one of them had scratched her cheek. Some buttons had been torn from her riding habit, and her hands…

  “Let me see your hands, Charlotte.”

  She hesitated, but he took her wrists and turned her hands up. Her gloves had protected her from being scraped raw by the reins, but the tender skin at the heart of her palms had already begun to swell and purple with bruises.

  He pressed his face against her neck and inhaled. Her skin was so soft here, the curve where her neck met her shoulder so fragrant. She might have broken her neck today. Her skin might be cold by now, with no pulse there for his tongue to caress, and he was so desperate to get between her thighs he’d nearly forgotten—

  “Julian?”

  He wanted her, so much his blood scorched him as it rushed through his veins, but though her body had survived today’s ordeal, she was fragile still, with wounds and scars beneath her skin. She’d lost so much—everything, even herself—and now he wanted to take more from her.

  He traced a gentle finger over the swollen skin of h
er palm. The bruises would fade, her body would heal, but what of the lacerations inside her, under her skin? The deep gashes in her heart, her soul—would they heal, or would they bleed forever?

  “Julian? Are you all right?”

  He raised her hands to his lips and pressed a soft kiss into each of her palms. “Yes, sweetheart. I just want to slow down.”

  Flesh and bone, a body—it was alive or it was dead, and nothing in between. Not like a heart, which could keep beating even after everything else that made a person who they were was gone.

  If you touched a body with love, could you heal a heart?

  “Julian?”

  Charlotte was looking up at him with such big, uncertain eyes he couldn’t resist taking her mouth again, but then he set her gently away from him. She made a protesting noise in her throat and clutched at his shirt to bring him back to her, but he captured her hands and lowered them gently to the coverlet. “I won’t leave you, Charlotte. I couldn’t, even if I wanted to.”

  He rose, crossed the room, and locked the door. When he turned back, she’d moved to the middle of the bed, her knees curled under her. God, he was going to bare every inch of her, slowly, kiss each bit of creamy flesh as it was revealed, worship her with his hands and his mouth and pray it was enough to heal her heart.

  “How slowly do you wish to go?” She bit her lip. “That is, do you think you might come back to the bed?” Her cheeks heated in a furious blush.

  Julian couldn’t help his grin. She was part temptress, part innocent, with her teeth caught in that plump red lip and that blush. “I think…” He tugged off his boots and tossed them into a corner. “Nothing could stop me”—he pulled his shirt over his head and let it drop to the floor—“from coming to you in that bed.”

  “Oh, my.”

  Her eyes were like the stroke of a hand against his bare skin as she watched him approach the bed. She crawled across the coverlet to the edge and wrapped her arms around his waist, sighing with pleasure as he pulled the remaining pins from her hair.

  He caught his breath as the dark tresses spilled into his hands. “I dreamed about you like this, with your hair loose in a cloud around you.”