Miss Lottie's Christmas Protector (Secrets 0f A Victorian Household Book 1)

by Sophia James

  ‘Which is exactly why your brother should not have hived off, leaving three women alone to cope.’ He shook his head. ‘And now it’s just you, Charlotte, with disrepute and lawlessness at your doorstep and no true defence in which to rebuff it.’

  ‘Save for you?’ She had finally grasped the main thread of his argument and her heart sank.

  ‘Exactly.’

  They were left facing each other over a roomful of questions, caught in the crossfire of a gang warfare and a lucrative prostitution racket. The food felt dry in her mouth as Lottie reached for some lemon water.

  It was true what he said. The Fairclough Foundation lay unprotected, all her father’s dreams eroded by a present danger that had arisen from nowhere and they had little personal money left to try to rebuff the threat.

  Their only shield was Jasper.

  Was it worth it?

  That thought had her breath hitching, the terror in her heart changing into sheer and utter surprise. Always she had fought for the ideals of the Foundation and spent every moment of her working life thinking of how they might help the women in need who came to them. Yet now with Jasper’s life balanced in this way she was no longer certain that she did not wish to simply quit the whole thing and leave. Leave her mother and father’s dream to find her own.

  ‘Perhaps I would like one more small glass of wine.’

  He poured her exactly the same measure as he had the last time.

  ‘It was easier when Papa was alive, the Foundation and its running, but lately things have become a lot more difficult.’

  ‘Because of your brother’s absence?’

  ‘Silas wasn’t altogether happy about being stuck here, which is why he moved to work in Liverpool and then America. He wanted to forge his own pathway, find his own life, I suppose.’

  ‘And you, Charlotte. What is it you want?’

  ‘To be happy. I want the Foundation to be as it was once, a proper home, like this one is for you.’

  At that he laughed and looked around. ‘It’s more of a family heirloom than a home. Mine to watch over and pass on. I haven’t stayed in it much. I haven’t stayed anywhere much.’

  The hound now lay beside him sleeping, a study of loyal admiration as Jasper’s fingers ran across soft brown ears.

  When he saw where she was looking he smiled. ‘I think this dog suits me. Certainly he is well up for a fight. How was it you got him?’

  ‘Someone dumped him in the river. His legs were tied and because he was such a big dog the man who saved him was not able to keep him. He would have cost too much to feed, so he brought him to us.’

  ‘The Foundation deals in abused dogs now, too, then?’

  She laughed. ‘Mama was not pleased, but Amelia was on my side and they were off to the country party the next day.’

  ‘Your sister was kind. I remember that.’

  ‘I always wondered why you did not stay around to get to know her better?’ Lottie hated the way she had asked this, a curiosity in her voice that was not becoming. Stiffening, she waited for his answer.

  ‘She was a dutiful girl, but I prefer recklessness and the ability to be brave.’

  He was speaking of her.

  ‘I like a woman who knows her mind and goes after the things she thinks are important, no matter how difficult the situation might be.’

  The air seemed to change around them, hidden things revealed in light. She felt the hairs on her arms rise into thrall.

  ‘My family often say that I am highly impetuous and very stubborn.’

  ‘Then all the better for it.’

  He had risen from his seat now and she did the same, one of his fingers tracing the line of her cheek and running in a single stroke across her upper lip.

  She shivered.

  ‘When you arrived at the tavern with your hair undone, your dress unbuttoned and with a story so absurd it could only be believable, I thought no one could have risked their own life for mine like you did. Spectacularly.’

  ‘It was a mutual thing. You were there to save Harriet, a stranger you didn’t even know. I could hardly do otherwise.’

  He breathed out, both his hands now around her arms holding her still.

  ‘But that is where I beg to differ, Charlotte. You could have left in the carriage and never looked back. You could have sent in the footmen and waited with Harriet, but you did not.’ He frowned, the line between his eyes deepening. ‘I am not an easy man. I am not a man filled with altruism or philanthropy. I am damaged and impaired and I am not even sure if...’

  ‘Shh.’ She leaned forward and took his mouth with hers, felt him move, felt him take in breath, felt the heat rise and slam into desire.

  Jasper was so new to her and yet there was something about him that was known. She’d often felt alone in her life, but in his company she did not, she simply felt whole and perfect, so when one hand entwined around the back of her neck she went gladly.

  * * *

  What was it about Charlotte Fairclough that made him lose all good sense and logic? He should be limiting his reactions and slowing down, but he could not, his mouth slanting against hers and changing the angles so that they were closer, joined, bound into something that was both ancient and new.

  He’d never felt like this before, caught between the lines with a woman he could not quite work out. His tongue moved, a need mirrored in his body, hardness forming, nothing hidden as the same desperation he’d felt before rose, the world spiralling away into just here and now.

  ‘Hell, Charlotte.’ Her eyes snapped open. ‘I don’t know if I can stop.’

  He had to tell her, had to let her know. Had to allow her the choice of not just a kiss.

  ‘Then don’t.’

  Her words were soft, whispered, ragged, borne on the edge of her own need, her golden eyes melting into darkness.

  And just like that it was easy, taking her to him, finding her centre, knowing her warmth and her sweetness. A certain truth.

  For all his life Jasper had been running towards something and away from something else. But here he was stopped, still, at a final destination. Like James Bruce on that small hillock that signified the undiscovered source of the Blue Nile in Ethiopia. Like Captain James Cook in the Pacific, finding places he had always only just imagined. Every adventure book he’d ever read and loved had that final knowledge of an arrival and it felt like that here, in the drawing room of his town house on Arlington Street on the edge of Green Park in Piccadilly. With Charlotte Fairclough.

  Home was not the sole domain of a building. No, home was also possible in a person, the right person, the one who would not falter or crumble or disappoint or disappear. He felt her tongue caress his own, their mouths wide now, tasting and knowing, nothing held back or concealed.

  Moving her against the wall, his hands resting on each side, he took in a breath and felt her do the same. She was trapped, in his care, watching him with her swollen lips and flushed face and a pulse that beat like a drum in her neck, her nipples as hard as cherries as he reached out and touched.

  ‘Beautiful.’ His voice was deep and he cleared his throat, one hand pushing back the thick blue wool and finding cambric. His mouth fastened over the fabric, the wet of it sticking, pale pink skin darkening under the caress.

  Her head tilted backwards and she said his name, mindless and repeated. She was like a vessel waiting for him to fill, all new and ready. Her curves were surprising. She always looked so small in her clothes buttoned up over flesh, but here the abundance of her breasts drove him on. He felt the weight of them in his hands and bent again to suckle, pulling the cambric clear so that it was skin against skin, her nipple budding in response.

  ‘Hold me here.’ He placed her palm against his face and sucked harder, no longer gentle, and her fingers clenched against his cheek, her breast rising in his mouth.

&n
bsp; ‘More.’ Her order now, whispered and throaty.

  His teeth closed down so that she took in breath, waiting, and the sharp edge to his lust was so foreign it made him feel lightheaded.

  Like a young boy, green to it all, unable to slow down, whorls of need drawn on her skin, the porcelain white lost into a mounting urgency, passion filling all the cracks of his more usual caution.

  ‘My God, Charlotte.’

  He drew back, her breast naked in the light, and she made no move at all to cover herself, instead watching him, her whisky eyes dazed and glassy, a stamp of her lust drawn in around desire.

  So beautiful that he almost wept.

  He lifted the fabric of her gown back, covering the bounty, draping it into modesty. Her hair fell about her shoulders in riotous curls, the colours of brown and gold and a deeper amber all mixed into one.

  Yet still she did not move, did not rouse herself into the ordinary, her breath fast, her tongue wetting her lips and her neck a thin stretched column of white.

  Laying one finger across the pulse, he listened, the beat far faster than her stillness might have relayed, her own want as ripe as his.

  The deep throb of his arousal was worrying, unappeased and pressing. He must not go further. He could not take her like this, unpromised and a virgin likely to boot, on the floor of his unlocked front salon, a dozen servants roaming the house.

  God, what had he been thinking? Turning away, he poured himself a brandy, drinking the lot in one long swallow and pouring the next.

  She merely watched him, all words gone, but talking with her body. Like a temptress. Like a siren, unpractised but fatal. The emptiness in him surfaced fully and he could not help anger.

  ‘Your brother would kill me should I go further. Dress yourself.’

  When she didn’t he turned, a hand running through his hair, the room alight with intention.

  Then she leant against the wall behind her as if to find a balance. There was something in her stance that was sensual and lustful and covetous. Something innocent, too. A sacrificial lamb came to mind and he pushed the thought away.

  No recriminations and so very easy.

  And what then?

  Lust was simple. It was what came next that was harder and if she stayed around she would know him soon as he knew himself, wandering the corridors sleepless, screaming with the pain, only a few years of true mobility left if he was lucky and less if he was not. A half-man filled with bitterness, a shadow man who had so long been out of the light.

  But she was not finished and it was that which undid him for she simply pulled her bodice off her shoulders, the thin straps of her petticoat falling with the navy wool until there were only her breasts beckoning him and calling him home.

  A brave and bold move, the light in her eyes telling him that she understood what she offered, the implications and the complications.

  ‘I want you, Jasper.’

  Impetuous. Stubborn. Reckless. All the things her family had called her and counting against him here. Unchangeable.

  He touched the red whorl on the rise of one breast, his mark, his brand, waiting for denial or panic. Neither came. She was true to her word and he took in breath.

  ‘And after?’ He had to say it, had to make her realise all that he might not be able to promise.

  ‘Then I will know.’

  She didn’t say more and for that he was glad. The knowledge of intercourse? The knowledge of pain? The knowledge of anger or the knowledge of guilt?

  She’d come into this without any promise of for ever. She had not even asked him for it. She had brought her body and her braveness and she laid it before him in a way that took courage. So bloody much of it he was wordless.

  ‘Not here in this room.’ That much he did know. Not here in a place where interruption was certain. He lifted the drooping neckline of her gown again back in to place. He could do nothing to tame her hair, the curls floating like an unbridled siren about her head.

  * * *

  Jasper would throw her out? He would bundle her off in his carriage without dressing her properly? He would refuse to quench the fire of her want without even stopping to tell her why?

  She pulled back, a flame of anger snaking through the utter certainty of her path and felt the wool of the gown scratch against the nakedness of her breasts even as his hand against her back shepherded her on.

  Not to the front door after all, but up a staircase, with myriad portraits looking down upon them, dark stern faces from the past. Breathing in, she made herself relax, made herself fluid, reaching for the anticipation, the hope and the promise. The beat of lust had returned and she relished it.

  She was twenty-two and she knew what she wanted. A crossroads, a choice. She could not go back. She wanted Jasper as she had never wanted anyone before, she wanted to hold him, know him, taste him and feel him moving within her. She wanted to be formless and boneless and spent.

  In less than a day she would be back to the rules of ordinary life, the conventions of the altruistic, the expectations of goodness, the contracts of the Foundation in all their forms of servitude. After this any chance at something different would be gone and she would be who she had always been, dutiful, restless and lonely.

  His chamber was enormous, the dark burgundy velvet across the bed catching the light of candle and that of flame burning in the grate. Near the window sat two large leather chairs and a mahogany desk piled with books and notes.

  A perfect setting. She stood and watched him, her mouth dry. She wished he might just come across and take the clothes from her and carry her to his bed like the heroes in the clandestine romances her sister had gathered. The wine was wearing off, too, the warmth in her stomach clotting into fear.

  Would he hurt her? Did it hurt? Would there be blood?

  She pushed those thoughts away and smiled because if he saw her fear he would leave. She knew it.

  ‘You are brave, Charlotte.’

  His words were soft.

  ‘I am here of my own accord, Jasper. There is only that courage in it.’

  ‘Have you lain with anyone else?’

  She wanted to nod and tell him yes, but she knew that there were ways a body could refute such an untruth and so she didn’t. Instead she said nothing and saw his concern.

  ‘If you are virgin, then it may be painful.’

  She turned away and the words stopped. Unfastening her hair, she felt the heaviness of curls come loose. A suitable answer. Dramatic. Unconventional. Theatrical.

  Then she hitched up her skirt and turned back.

  No longer questions. A line had been drawn. She saw how his gaze drank in her breasts and her thighs and the soft line of her hips and knew then that she had him. He was a man, after all, and surely there were limits on self-control.

  ‘If you are untutored, you can tell me to stop at any time and I will. I promise.’

  Long limits, then. Far longer than the men she often came into contact with at the Foundation through the women who had been abused by them.

  But she believed him and it became easier again.

  ‘I want...everything.’ The fear had left altogether now, desire filling in caution. ‘Your sister said you have had many women who wanted you. She said you treat women well and that you know how to make them happy. Nanny Beth said that with a good man there is fulfilment and contentment in the bedroom and she said that if you were lucky there is more.’

  ‘More?’

  She blushed, not wanting to mention love. This was love on her behalf and lust on his, but for now it was what she would settle for. She loved him enough for the both of them. She loved him so completely that it hurt.

  He was damaged and lonely and fearful and broken, but she could try to fix him and make him understand the love that she felt. She wanted him to know that lust was only a pathway to somethin
g better if it was done perfectly, without expectation and demand, without repayment or compensation.

  Two halves to make a whole. The cleaving of souls. The last honesty and the perfect redemption. This is what they would understand together tonight. She prayed for it to be such even as she spoke.

  ‘Lust holds its own liberty, Jasper.’

  When he frowned she wondered if he understood things quite as well as she’d hoped.

  Chapter Twelve

  If she believed that, then she was a virgin. The girls whose amorous interludes had produced a child came to mind, women and men caught in webs that neither wanted, expectations leaving them shackled. Hardly liberty.

  He’d never fathered a child because he was unfailingly careful, the lamb intestine condoms he favoured softened with lye and sulphur. The fashion was to use such barriers to counter disease, but he had always used it for control, the horror of an unplanned birth making him fastidious about protection. Freedom was a choice that was important to him and, save for the debacle with Verity, he’d never given it up. Seen from his perspective now, he thought he must have been delusional at that time and that his escape from a marriage with a woman like her had been a lucky one.

  Charlotte was a different kettle of fish altogether. She held courage and honesty and integrity. With her skin mellowed gold against flame and candlelight she was an innocent Venus asking to be deflowered.

  That thought brought his blood up, heated in her acquiescence. I want everything, she had said, and his erection rose beneath the superfine of his trousers. He did not wish to frighten her as he reached out, knowing the bounty of one breast and then the other, feeling his way.

  He thought she might move or falter, but she didn’t, rather she stood there watching him, her breathing hitching as his touch strayed lower. He waited again for denial, but all he got was a softening. Her legs opened and she smiled at him.

  ‘God.’ He couldn’t help it. ‘God help me, Charlotte, but you are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen.’

  The wrong words because her eyes darkened and for the first time she flinched.