by Ashley March
She hated dukes, the whole stupid, stubborn lot of them, but Philip in particular.
The carriage veered around a corner too sharply, sending Charlotte tumbling forward. She screamed, certain that her head was going to catch her fall before she could maneuver her elbows beneath her.
And then she cursed, because rather than either her head or her elbows hitting the floor, her husband caught her.
His hands steadied her shoulders, his breath fanning over her hair. Charlotte looked up. “Why is Fitzjames driving so bloody fast?”
In the pale moonlight streaming through the window, she could see his silver eyes flicker. Charlotte lifted a defiant brow. Along with her flirtations and coquetry, she had refined her rather spectacular flair for profanity.
Take that, your dukeliness.
But Philip only drew her up to sit beside him, his thigh uncomfortably close to hers. Charlotte sucked in a breath when he reached behind her head and untied his handkerchief. Then he leaned back to sit as straight and rigid as before while he tucked the linen cloth into his pocket.
“There. Now you may chatter away as you like.”
“Sod off.”
“Very clever, my dear. Your improvement of mind and vocabulary is impressive, as always.”
Charlotte scowled. She hated when he used that particular condescending tone. Though she tried, she could never quite match it. Instead she settled for shoving her shoulder against him. “At least move over, then.” His nearness was vastly annoying; the heat radiating from his body made her all too aware of him. It had taken her a long time to convince herself she was no longer attracted to him, and she wasn’t willing to give up her hard-won indifference so easily.
Of course, she could have clambered to the other seat, but she didn’t want to face backward. If Philip insisted on being rude and not giving her the forward-facing seat, then he would just have to share it.
But at a distance.
He swiveled his head and looked down his nose at her with those silver moonlight eyes that made her think of angels and demons and soft, quiet rain. “You might discover that if you exercise your manners and ask nicely, I will accede to your wish without the use of physical force.”
Charlotte leaned away, her fingers curling into her palms. “Would you mind terribly, Your Grace, if you scooted your ass over a few inches? Perhaps a foot?” Tilting her head, she batted her eyelashes at him.
His lips quirked to a ten-degree angle. Egad, the man was practically grinning.
“Very nice attempt, sweetheart. But you forgot to say please.”
She bared her teeth. “Very well. Please move your rotten, snobbish, narcissistic ass over to the other side.”
He regarded her for a long, silent moment, then: “Perhaps I shouldn’t have removed the kerchief after all.”
Really, it was too much. Charlotte lunged at him.
Philip almost laughed. Almost. But he was too busy defending himself from the hellion who rammed her bound fists at his ribs to give in to the urge.
It was incredible. He hadn’t felt this alive in . . . well, since before they had married, when he was still courting her, wooing her, trying to seduce her.
He winced as her elbow caught his midsection, her body twisting and contorting in curious ways while she attempted to do him injury.
Philip wrapped one arm around her waist and the other around her chest. Amazingly, she had somehow come to be sitting on his lap.
Perhaps not sitting, exactly. Sprawled would be a much more accurate description: her head laid against his shoulder, tipped back so she could glare at him; her legs were parted over his knee, her slippered feet scrambling to find some way to propel herself out of his hold.
He knew he should let her go. He knew she hated being restrained, hated being controlled. But her body was soft, and the light scent of jasmine rose to his nostrils. She was everything he’d never known he’d wanted, and she was in his arms.
“Philip?”
His gullible heart leaped. If he hadn’t known better, he would have thought by the way she said his name—breathy, with a touch of adoration, as if he were the only man in her world—that she actually enjoyed his embrace.
But he did know better. Philip subdued his recalcitrant heart. “Yes?”
“If you do not release me at once, I vow that at the first opportunity I shall incapacitate you, and any hope you have of ever reproducing will be lost.”
Philip carefully set her away from him. “I had forgotten how charming and pleasant you can be.”
“Only with you, dear husband. Only with you.” She thrust out her arms. “You may untie my wrists as well.”
“I don’t suppose you would say please.”
“I don’t suppose you really care that much for a son.”
Philip cleared his throat, swallowing his laughter. “I will allow you to use that threat only so often. Once we are out of the confines of this carriage, I will be better able to protect myself.”
Her eyes narrowed, a thin smile tilting her lips. “You may try.”
His hands closed around her wrists, so delicate, so fragile beneath his fingers. He remembered how smooth, like satin heat, her skin had once felt beneath his touch. Then there had been no gloves to encumber him; it had been only his flesh against hers. Philip traced a long, lingering trail over her wrists with his thumbs.
Charlotte made a noise in her throat, and he glanced up. Her expression was inscrutable. “Just untie the damned cravat,” she ordered him.
Philip’s fingers stilled. An eternity had passed since that night, three years ago. Though only thin scraps of cloth, their gloves were yet another impenetrable veil between them, a reminder that the only thing they shared now was the past.
It took him only a moment to loosen the binding. As soon as she was free, Charlotte slid away from him.
Philip turned his head as he tucked the cloth in his pocket, alongside the handkerchief.
“Why did you abduct me?”
Staring at the window, he watched Charlotte’s reflection as the moon chased the carriage through the standing shadows of the trees.
He drew in a deep breath. “Your actions do not become a lady of your station. The Duchess of Rutherford, a halfpenny whore.”
“Ah. I’ve embarrassed you. I’ve embarrassed the Rutherford name. What a shame. But then, you knew I wasn’t a lady when you married me. You chose me, Philip. Or have you forgotten?”
“I made a mistake.” It was, possibly, the first time in his entire life—certainly the first he could remember—that he’d uttered those words.
Charlotte laughed—a throaty, full-bodied sound, so rich and warm he wanted to laugh, too. He turned to face her, and was taken aback by the bleakness in her eyes.
“A mistake.” Her smile taunted him. He knew what she was thinking: if he had granted her request for a divorce when she first asked, she wouldn’t have wasted three years of her life as his duchess. “But why now, Philip? You never gave a damn in the past about what I did, who I lifted my skirts for.”
He stiffened.
“Damn you, Philip! Answer me!”
She blinked, once, twice, before jerking her head to look out her side of the carriage—but not before he saw the sheen of unshed tears glistening brightly in her eyes.
“It’s simple, my dear,” he drawled. “You have become a liability. I will return you to Ruthven Manor, where you will no longer be able to feed the rumor mills.”
Her head was turned away from him, but Philip clearly heard the sound she made at his pronouncement.
She snorted.
At him.
A duke.
He didn’t know why he should be so surprised. She’d already cursed at him, laughed at him—hell, she’d even attacked him. And she was the only person he knew who didn’t pander to or fawn over him.
If it had been anyone else, he would not have tolerated the insolence. But he had long since learned that Charlotte did not quaver at his coldest glare,
nor did she fear his cutting tone.
Her expression was scornful as she turned to him. “Do not think that abandoning me in the countryside will solve your problems.”
She leaned toward him, a seductive pout on her lips. Philip forgot to breathe as her gloved hand lifted and she trailed a finger along his jaw. He could not remember the last time she had touched him like this—a voluntary, intimate gesture.
Her breath fell softly against his skin as she murmured, “Until you grant my request, I am determined to do everything I can to make your life a living hell.” Her finger paused, then bounced off the tip of his nose at precisely the same time she said, “Your Grace.”
Growling, Philip caught the offending appendage before she could draw her hand away. “You have become quite accomplished, haven’t you? Who could have known that the charming little squire’s daughter would become so successful as a mistress to the masses?”
She tried to tug her hand away, but he held firm, turning it over in his grasp until her palm faced upward.
Philip looked into her eyes. “Do you want me to release you?”
“Yes.”
He used his other hand to stroke her palm, his index finger tracing paths inward and outward, always returning to the center, like the rays of the sun. “And yet you allow other men to touch you.”
Philip skimmed his fingers upward, over her wrist, along the inside of her elbow, until he reached the edge of her glove. “To undress you.”
He pinched the fabric between his fingers and pulled, dragging her glove downward. It was a prolonged torture, a delicious torment as inch by inch more of her skin was revealed. She might put her more generous endowments on display for other men to admire, but this—this flesh of her arm, gleaming so white and pale in the black night—this intimacy belonged to him.
No matter how many men she had taken as lovers, no matter how many had seen her nude in the past, he vowed no other would ever again have the privilege to view her thus.
Philip exhaled—a long, shuddering breath—as the glove rolled past her wrist and over her hand, finally falling away from her fingertips.
He drew her hand to his mouth, pressing his lips to the center of her palm. “To kiss you.”
She said nothing. But he felt her tremble, and his own hand was none too steady as he kissed her again.
“To—”
The door to the carriage opened. “We’ve arrived, Your Grace.”
Philip blinked at Gilpin, the groom. He hadn’t even realized they’d stopped, so entranced had he become.
Charlotte hastily withdrew her hand from his. “Where are we?” she asked the groom. Her profile was serene, her voice calm. Philip wondered if he had imagined the trembling.
“Old Fane’s Crossing, Your Grace.”
She turned to him. “My glove, Philip.”
He bent his head, searching the shadows. “I sent Fallon ahead to arrange for rooms. Supper will be waiting, and baths will be prepared soon afterward. Your maid is—”
Philip glanced up as the carriage shifted.
She was gone.
Chapter 3
Philip shoved through the door to the inn. The sounds of raucous laughter and whistling immediately assaulted his ears.
He should have chained her and swallowed the damned key.
The public room smelled dark and dank, of stale beer and old blood, the dim lights serving only to accentuate the atmosphere of vulgarity and ruthlessness. Philip swept the room with a glower and tensed when he spied Charlotte standing on a table in the middle of the room. She was in the process of peeling off her other glove.
Her eyes sparked as she watched him approach, her smile slow and taunting.
One of the men at the table, a young pup who appeared to be fresh out of university, stretched a hand toward her ankle. He howled in pain as Philip wrenched his fingers and threw him to the ground.
Philip’s blood pounded in his veins, hot and heavy, as he stared down at the man he had leveled. He usually carried out his battles with wit and the sharp blade of his tongue, but God, it felt good to be uncivilized, if only for a few minutes.
Something fell on his head, and Philip ignored the crowd’s heckling as he reached to draw it away. He glanced at the long ivory kid glove hanging from his fingertips, then up at Charlotte.
Her skin was bare from her hands to her shoulders, and she glared at him in challenge as she lifted her arms to the crowd. “What do you say, gentlemen? Do you want to see more?”
A chorus of slurred voices rose in encouragement, and she lowered her eyes once again to his as she began to pluck the pins from her hair.
As each pin fell with a defiant ping before him, and every lock of her sable brown hair curled seductively around her shoulders, a black, growing rage built inside Philip. It hummed in his blood, pulsed at his temples, curved his mouth into a cruel sneer.
He leaned forward and flattened his palms over the wood of the table, its surface splintered and rough beneath his hands.
The table tipped, and Charlotte cried out and went tumbling to her knees, her fingers white at the knuckles as she fought for balance.
Philip pushed harder, sending the other occupants at the table scattering and forcing her to slide into the brace of his arms.
She fought to escape him, the sweet smell of jasmine rising to his nostrils as her hair brushed against his jaw. And if he tilted his head at just the right angle, he could glimpse the edges of her dark pink nipples when she arched her back in an effort to twist away from him.
As Philip admired the delightful view she presented, he revised his earlier thought: it felt damned bloody good to be uncivilized.
He tucked her against his chest, careful to dodge the wild flailing of her arms and legs. Drunken shouts from the other patrons demanded he release her, but he ignored them and headed toward the innkeeper, a surly, red-bearded man wearing a cloth wrapped around his waist. The man scratched at his beard as Philip neared.
“The Duke of Rutherford. I believe my man arranged for a few rooms.”
The innkeeper’s torso jerked forward, an unaccustomed bow. Philip turned his chin aside to avoid Charlotte’s thrashing head. The innkeeper stared. “Two floors up, sixth door on the left. The servants’ rooms are across the hall, Your Grace.”
Philip swung around and carried her up the stairs, down the corridor, and into his rented room.
He kicked the door closed, his chest heaving with the effort to restrain her. She had never ceased struggling, and his cheeks stung where her hair whipped across his face, her knees and elbows landing with splendid accuracy against the pit of his stomach and across his lower ribs.
Before she could manage to incapacitate him with a thrust to his groin, Philip strode forward and tossed her onto the bed.
For a moment, he couldn’t move. For a moment, he forgot he was the ninth Duke of Rutherford, cold and disciplined and born to uphold the honor of his forefathers—a man trained since childhood to resist his baser instincts, to resist the call of temptation.
Her arms were propped behind her back, holding herself up, her knees bent as if prepared to launch herself at him again, her skirts fallen to her thighs and revealing a pair of luscious, slimly curved legs encased in scarlet-trimmed stockings. Her eyes sparked blue fire as she looked at him—dared him to do what every sex-starved muscle in his body demanded—to throw himself on top of her and soothe his anger and jealousy between her spread thighs.
Hell, even his oxygen-deprived brain argued that he had already gone down an irreversible path tonight by kidnapping her and using his fists like a commoner to knock down his competition.
Why shouldn’t he finish the evening out like a king, feasting upon the smooth, elegant curves of her body, slaking the lust he’d kept imprisoned inside for so long?
But it was the knowledge that she wanted him to do it, to prove himself to be no better than the hundreds of other men who hungered for her—it was this that stayed him, that stiffened his resolv
e to wait. Unlike the others, he was the only one who had ever claimed her heart . . . and he would be the only one ever to do so again.
Charlotte’s arms ached from holding the alluring position she’d immediately moved into when Philip threw her on the bed.
At times, her body was the only defense she could use, hers to manipulate into attracting men, to have them do exactly as she wanted. She knew how to use her lips, her eyes, the touch of her hand to full advantage—she could invite men closer or repel them with a single look, without her heart ever having to become involved.
Her beauty assured that, if she desired it, she would never have to be alone again. Yet despite her dozens of admirers, none had ever been able to soothe the ache of loneliness that she woke to each morning and escaped from as she fell asleep each evening.
Charlotte swallowed the jagged lump of disappointment as Philip’s eyes shuttered once again, hiding the flare of desire she’d witnessed for the space of a heartbeat. He was the only man who’d ever been able to see through her pretense, the only one to throw her beauty and her vanity back in her face.
But Charlotte had learned much over the years. She had watched him, studied him, tried to understand what had first drawn her to him. And she had discovered that just as she used a provocative pout or a husky softening of her voice, he employed patience and persistence to have his own way.
And, by God, it was time she showed him she was not the powerless little fool she had been when he had seduced and married her.
Charlotte turned her head to the side, tilted her neck, pasted an inviting smile on her lips, and looked at him through her lashes.
Hmm. Nothing. He betrayed not even a flicker of interest as he stared at her.
Sliding her legs along the bed, she moved slowly, silkily—the fluid motion meant to call attention to the lines of her body, sleek and feminine. As she rose to her feet, his expression grew darker, more intense, and for a frightening moment Charlotte felt as if he could see right into her soul.
She lowered her eyes to the opening of his shirt, the warm tone of his skin sprinkled with black hair. Electricity slid along her arms as she moved toward him, and though neither of them said anything, the tension radiating from his body told her he was not as unaffected as he appeared.