Failing. Always failing.
“He was weak because he hurt a child,” Charlotte said, her gentle voice drawing him from that vivid past and back into the present. “He was weak because he could not see past something that does not define you any more than your hair color or your eye color does.”
“How can you say that?” he signed, his heart throbbing as he stared at her.
She shrugged. “Because it’s true. Of course it is part of you. An important part. But you are Ewan because you are brilliant. You are Ewan because you are kind. You are Ewan because you are loyal.”
“I am the Silent Duke,” he jerked out, his hands shaking as he signed those terrible words. A nickname he hated.
“You are Ewan,” she whispered, and now she was moving toward him, tracing his cheek with her fingertip. Loving him with her eyes. Pretending the rest didn’t matter. “How he treated you was abominable. But I also saw how your uncle treated you. Doesn’t that count for something too?”
He thought of his uncle Aldous. Also tall, taller than his father. Broader than his father. The man who smiled and ruffled hair. The man who was stern only when Ewan didn’t try. The man who was proud of him.
“Of course it counts,” he signed. “Without Aldous and Mary, I would have been lost. Sent to that asylum to rot as my father wished.”
He heard her suck in her breath, saw her flinch at the thought. But she let him continue.
“That he loved me meant the world to me. But you must understand, Charlotte, it isn’t his voice that is in my head. And it isn’t his voice that matches most in Society when it comes to those who aren’t…” He faltered before his fingers slashed out one word. “Perfect.”
“And their voices matter more?” she asked. “More than Aldous and Mary, more than Matthew, more than Baldwin and all your friends? More than…more than mine?”
“If you had to live in my head, Charlotte, you would understand,” he signed. Then he stepped back, out of the dreaded, hated gallery, back into the brighter hall. “I’m sorry, I find myself tired after this morning. Why don’t you have your breakfast? Perhaps we can reconnect at midday.”
He didn’t wait for her answer, even though it was impolite not to. He just turned on his heel and walked away from her. From all she wanted. From all that he could not give.
He walked away, and it was almost impossible to do it.
Chapter Ten
Charlotte had always known she was taking a risk by coming to Ewan’s home and hoping, planning to pursue the life she wanted with him. It had been a risk when she’d believed his house would be brimming with family and friends. It was a greater risk when they ended up alone. It was a risk to kiss him, to touch him, to fold herself around him and hope.
But even though she’d known the risk—she’d taken it with eyes wide open from the first second she’d entered his home and found him skulking in the foyer—his rejection hours before still stung.
And now she stood at the window in his music room, staring out at the sea in the distance, trying to make that sting lessen. It wasn’t working. His words danced before her eyes, painful curls of his fingers and that expression…the one that said she would never understand and that he would always be alone.
She sighed and crossed the room to take a place at Ewan’s pianoforte. He did not play an instrument, but when she pressed her fingers to the keys, she found it in perfect tune.
“Of course it is,” she muttered out loud as she mindlessly let her fingers dance across the keys. It was likely yet another thing he had done for her. Oh, her mother played, too. His aunt did a very little. But the pianoforte was for her. Like the beautiful bedroom. Like the favorite food. Like the way he pleasured her. All of it was for her except for the one thing she wanted above all other.
His heart.
She shifted her fingers and slowly began playing his favorite song, “Robin Adair”. For a while, she played it silently, but the lyrics rang in her head, and at last she began to sing.
“‘What made th’ assembly shine? Robin Adair. What made the ball so fine? Robin was there. What when the play was o’er? What made my heart so sore? Oh, it was parting with Robin Adair.’”
She’d always thought it strange that Ewan liked the song so much. The story of a woman who loved a man who had parted with her fit Charlotte’s life more than his. He had always been her Robin Adair, for he made everything worth doing, but he never stayed with her at the end.
She glanced up from the pianoforte, and her fingers faltered on the keys and she trailed off in singing the lyrics. Ewan stood leaning on the doorjamb, watching her intently. Their eyes locked and he stiffened, like he wanted to turn away from her.
She straightened her spine and started playing the song over, this time without singing. She arched her brow, silently challenging him, silently willing him to surrender.
He drew in a long breath, then pushed off the door and came into the room. She watched him, still playing, as he shut the same door. As he turned the key. As he strode across the room. She scooted over and he took a place beside her on the piano bench. He shut his eyes and she continued to play, putting all her love for him into each note as she focused on her fingers and the placement of each.
She was halfway through the second playing of the song when he leaned over and she felt his breath against her neck. She shivered, her own breath coming short as he pressed a kiss to the flesh there. Somehow she continued playing as his mouth traced her throat, her shoulder to the scalloped lace edge of her gown. He slipped a finger beneath the same edge and slid it, tugging it off her shoulder and following the skin he’d revealed with his lips, his tongue, the slight nip of his teeth.
She caught her breath and her fingers fell away from the pianoforte. It didn’t matter anymore. They didn’t need music. She turned on the bench, folding herself into him as she lifted her lips. He angled his head and kissed her, his tongue probing deep, devouring her with all the passion that burned and boiled beneath the surface of their friendship and always had.
She mewled softly, a sound of pleasure she couldn’t deny, catching his lapels and grinding up into him. It had been a very long day, an emotional day, and this moment, this touch, this man was what she needed more than anything.
From the fervor of his touch, it seemed he felt much the same. His hands came to the back of her gown and he unfastened the hooks there, parting the fabric so he could slide his fingers beneath both it and the chemise she wore. His hands caressed her bare skin and she broke from the kiss as her head dipped back and she hissed out a sound of pleasure.
His mouth moved to her exposed throat as she did so, and she dragged her fingers into his hair as he sucked and licked the sensitive, delicate flesh. As he trailed down a path with his lips, tugging her dress lower and lower until it fell around her waist between them.
She was naked from the waist up and he drew back to stare at her. His dark eyes were dilated with need, focused with desire, and she arched slightly, perhaps even a bit proudly, to show herself to her best advantage.
Although he had touched her more than once, seen her this way more than once, his hand trembled as he brushed the back of it against her breast. Electric pleasure shot through her whole body and she shivered with it, surrendering to the undeniable power of her body yearning for his, knowing that her desires would be fulfilled.
He cupped one breast, stroking his thumb over the nipple, then lowered his head and sucked gently. She jolted, her eyes fluttering shut, her legs shaking as he swirled his tongue around and around her. She wanted him. Soon. Now. Hard and fast, slow and languid, it didn’t matter.
She shed his jacket, tugging at his shirt, pulling until she parted it in the front and revealed that masculine, muscled chest. God, but he was perfect. Chiseled from granite, awash in warmth, made for her.
She pressed her hands to that chest and pushed him back, forcing him to stand so he wouldn’t careen to the plush carpet beneath the
pianoforte. He stared down at her, watching as she reached up and unbuttoned the placard on his trousers. She lowered it with aching slowness and his hard cock popped free, curling up toward his stomach as she pulled the trousers down and left him exposed.
She licked her lips as she reached for him, caught him in her palm, stroked him from base to head. He grunted deep in his throat, his hands fisting at his sides as she repeated the stroke with tortuous and deliberate speed. She wanted him. She wanted to take him and claim him and make him hers. She was tired of fighting him on that issue. She just wanted his surrender.
“Lay down,” she ordered.
He arched a brow and pointed across the room at the chairs by the fire. His expression was rather adorably confused, for the room had no settee.
She shook her head. “On the floor.”
He smiled regardless of whatever questions he might have about her plan. He kicked away his boots and the trousers still around his ankles, and then did as she asked, spreading himself out on the rug next to the pianoforte, in front of the fire. He was leaning back on his elbows, watching her with focused intent. The golden glow of the flames danced over him, and her heart stuttered.
God, how she did love this man. Always. Forever. Despite…not despite his mutism. Despite the fact that he tried so hard to keep her at arm’s length, to protect her from exactly what she wanted.
Today she was taking it.
She stood and slid her gown away. Then she toed off her slippers, but she left her lacy stockings on as she got on her hands and knees and crawled over to him. She straddled his lap and he caught the back of her head, pulling her down for a kiss that devoured her entirely. She melted into it, into him, cupping his cheeks, surrendering her body and soul to him in that charged, heavy moment.
As they kissed, his hands slid down her sides. He found her hips and she felt his fingers pressing hard into her flesh as he positioned her over him. She needed no further direction. She aligned her wet body to his hard one and he slid inside without any resistance.
She threw her head back with pleasure, for his cock fit so very well inside her sheath. He hit all those spots, those amazing and unexpected spots, and she ground down to take him the rest of the way home. He stared up at her in wonder, watching as she placed her hands flat against his chest and began to ride him.
She forgot propriety or worry or questions in her head. She forgot everything but the connection of their bodies and the way he lit her on fire. She ground down, hard and fast, seeking her pleasure with greedy fervor, watching his face as it twisted and changed with his own pleasure. She rolled her hips, circling him, and gripped her inner muscles to keep him seated inside her.
He lifted beneath her at last, his lips parting and his breath coming short. Pleasure built in her, steady and unrelenting. She found herself moaning like a wanton as she reached for it, pushing harder and faster until the world blurred and she tilted her head back as her body spasmed out of control.
He lifted through it all, pumping against her, watching her face as she rolled and rocked and twitched through the crisis. She collapsed over him when she had nothing left to give, pressing kisses to his neck and his cheeks, finding his lips and claiming them.
He hadn’t come yet and seemed content to let her kiss him as she came down from her high. She pulled back, staring into his eyes, and a thought popped into her head. A terrible thought. A cruel thought, even. And yet…
She pushed her hands into his, tangling their fingers as she held him steady against the carpet and went back to riding him. She thrust her body with purpose, drawing him back, helping him get lost in the rhythm of the sex.
She felt him losing his grip on the control he always kept so well. She felt his thrusts grow more erratic and he met her eyes, curved his hips. She understood the message he was sending. He was going to come. He wanted her to move so he wouldn’t do so inside of her.
She didn’t. She turned her gaze slightly and kept pulsing, drawing his pleasure, knowing it was wrong to do it with such a purpose.
He grunted deep in his throat and pushed upward again, sending her the message a second time that he was losing his grip and needed her to release him.
And yet again she ignored the cues, pretending not to understand as she shut her eyes.
He grunted again, this one more desperate, and then his more powerful physical strength won out. He rolled her onto her back and his cock slid free of her just as he pumped his release. His seed splashed across her skin and he stared at her, gaze filled with terrible understanding. It was accusatory, disbelieving, and it cut her to the core with guilt and pain.
Ewan supposed he’d known Charlotte was desperate. He’d known from the moment she touched him in the parlor the day she arrived. He’d felt it in every touch and heard the lilt of it in every conversation since.
He’d tried to pretend he could ignore that desperation. That he could surrender to this wicked, undeniable connection between them during the time they were alone and then detangle himself without hurting her.
But now he lay on his side, half-under his pianoforte, knowing her intentions when they made love. Knowing full well that she had been trying to force him to come inside her body, create the threat of a child…and make him do the honorable thing by marrying her.
His hands trembled at the betrayal of that. “Why?” he signed, his hands jerking so hard he feared she wouldn’t understand his meaning.
She hadn’t moved from the place on her back where he’d left her, and she turned her face. “I’m sorry.”
He cupped her chin and forced her to look at him again, so she couldn’t evade his words. “Why did you do that, Charlotte?” he signed, making each word clear and steady when he felt anything but.
She hesitated a moment and tears flooded her eyes. “I love you.”
He flinched and found himself scooting away, as if he could escape those words. She’d tried to tell him that once before. He’d stopped her then. Now he hadn’t and the confession hung between them, a bullet that had been fired and now could never be taken back.
“Don’t,” he signed.
She rolled out from under the pianoforte and got to her feet. Tears streamed down her face, even as her eyes snapped with anger. “Why? So I said it. You’ve always known it. So have I. Why does saying it make it so much worse?”
“Because I can’t!” he signed, following her to his feet.
She spun away and grabbed for her gown. As she struggled to detangle her chemise from her dress, she choked out, “You say that, you think that, but it isn’t true. You could if you wanted to. If you dared.”
He caught her arm and spun her back. “So you would force me?”
She jerked away and stared at him. “I know it was wrong,” she said softly, guilt was clear on her face as her head bent. “I knew it the moment the notion occurred to me. I knew and I did it anyway. And I’m so sorry.”
His anger toward her softened. Her words of love still rang in his ears. He looked at her and saw her pain and her devastation, but he also saw her hope. So much hope for him, and for a future together. Almost enough that if he reached for it, plucked it like a flower, it would allow him that golden life she had pictured in her mind.
“Do you know what I imagine when I dare to think of the future you describe?” he signed.
She swallowed and her gaze lifted in surprise. “You picture it?”
“Of course. A dozen times, a hundred.” He scrubbed a hand over his face when her eyes lit up. “I picture us exactly as you do. Joyful, blissful, happy. For a time. Until you tired of being sequestered in the countryside. Until you were embarrassed by the whispers rather than enraged.”
Her lips parted. “You think so ill of me that I would be embarrassed by what people said? That I would hold that over the feelings in my heart?”
“Even my uncle sometimes flinched when people said he’d taken on such a burden. When they asked him a dozen questions
about my fitness.” He turned his face and signed. “I cannot imagine it would be any different for you.”
She made a soft sound. A sob, truncated as she bit it off. “Ewan, I have no idea if what you think of your uncle is true. I never saw him display anything but deepest love and kindness to you. I never heard him express anything but the most full-throated acceptance. I can only speak to my own heart. I can never imagine a time where I would feel anything but love for you. It’s always been that way, so long that my love for you is as much a part of me as my…hair or my eyes or the way I sign my name to a letter.”
“Would that remain the same when you knew I didn’t want a child?” he signed. He watched her face fall and knew the answer. “If I had come inside of you and we had married, but no child had been born of this day, would you have been hurt when I celebrated that fact rather than mourned it? Would you grow to hate me when I refused to give you a chance for motherhood?”
She stared, and he could see she didn’t understand. Couldn’t. What he felt deep in his bones and in his soul, she had never even considered. That was where they were worlds apart.
“Why?” she whispered. “Why would you deny your title an heir and yourself an opportunity to love a child?”
He hesitated for a moment. In his mind’s eye he could see that child so clearly. A little girl with her mother’s bright smile. A little boy with her eyes. Golden children, a mix of both of them.
But he had one thing to give to that mix that made his heart almost stop.
“I would not force anyone else, especially anyone I loved, the life that I have led.” He jerked the words out slowly, painfully, his fingers feeling thick and useless with each one.
She swallowed hard and he could see she finally understood. “You—you fear your children would inherit your…”
The Silent Duke Page 10