by Jane Goodger
Charlie laughed again. “I’m afraid that promise is a bit like a rooster promising an egg, but it’s nice to think about, now, isn’t it?” The men chuckled and Rose smiled, feeling unaccountably proud of Charlie. He looked up then and caught her eye, his smile slipping a bit before he recovered. “If you’ll excuse me, lads, my wife is here to fetch me.”
He walked toward her, looking at his horseshoe tool thoughtfully, as if he’d never considered it might have any value to anyone else but him. As they walked toward the other end of the dining hall, Rose said, “I didn’t really come to fetch you. I was curious what you were talking about that was so interesting to the other men. I had no idea men could be fascinated by a tool.”
“Neither had I.”
“I think you should try to patent it, Charlie. I can think of no reason you should not.”
“Perhaps,” he said, sounding dispassionate, but he took another long and thoughtful look at the tool before shoving it into his pocket.
That night, Charlie had the most erotic dream in his memory and woke up to the blackness of the stateroom with a painful erection and no way to assuage it. He was almost embarrassed, for in his waking moments he never would have allowed himself to think such carnal thoughts about Rose. Oh, he had carnal thoughts, but his dream had been downright indecent; he hadn’t known his mind could actually conjure the images it had, at least not with Rose as the centerpiece of this lust. Now he’d be tortured with those images—real or not—in his waking moments and he knew it would be some time before he’d be able to get those thoughts out of his head. Hell, he could practically still taste her, the dream was so real. She had been so responsive, coming around him over and over, hot and pulsing, pleading with him to keep pleasing her. When he’d awoken, he’d been very near release. For several long minutes he relished the aftermath of the images, finally letting out a groan of pure frustration. He would never have her that way, never bury himself inside her, feel her slick heat, taste her arousal. Tease her nipples with his tongue.
“Jesus,” he said, rather too loudly.
Rose sat up and Charlie winced at the clear sound of her hitting her head against the bunk. “Charlie, what’s wrong?”
She stood so her head was even with his, and by God, it took more strength than he knew he had not to put his hand behind her head and kiss her until the dream came true. He could picture her, her brown eyes drowsy from sleep, her hair pulled back in a messy braid, her lips soft and plush. He said another silent curse. “Just a nightmare,” he said gruffly.
He’d hoped that would be enough explanation and Rose would settle back to bed. It was a futile thought.
“It must have frightened you quite a lot. What was it about?”
“I don’t remember.”
Rose laughed, clearly not believing him, and for one small moment he weighed telling her precisely what his dream had been about. Perhaps then she would stop pestering him.
“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t wish,” she said pertly.
“I don’t.”
“Good night, then.” She didn’t move, and he could still feel her soft breath against his face. “Are your eyes open?”
“Yes.” Why was she torturing him?
“Funny how we do that in the dark. We cannot see, yet we open our eyes as if we can.”
He grunted and was tempted to roll over and give her his back, but he stayed where he was, mere inches from her soft mouth, telling himself he was a fool to even think about kissing her again. Foolish, foolish thoughts that would lead to nothing except more frustration.
“I’m wide awake now,” she said unnecessarily. “Mrs. Browne was ill today and I didn’t see her for dinner. I do hope she will be better tomorrow. I missed her company. She did look rather ill.”
“I’m sure she will be.”
“I wonder what everyone is doing back home,” Rose said, not taking the hint that he wanted to sleep. “Do you think my brothers are scouring the countryside looking for me?”
“No doubt Marcus got on the next ship to America to chase after you.”
She gasped, and he wished he hadn’t said what he believed to be the truth. “Marcus is not stupid, Rose, and when they received that telegram from the Liverpool office, I’m certain they put two and two together.”
“That means they know I’m with you.”
“Probably,” Charlie said, feeling slightly ill. He knew he was just fooling himself that her brother wouldn’t have gone carefully over the manifest of every ship to leave port the day they’d set sail. “I only pray he doesn’t think we actually got married when he sees Mr. and Mrs. Charles Avery. Or maybe it would be best if he did think we got married. Either way, I’m a dead man for sure.”
“Don’t say that. I won’t let him hurt you. And Marcus certainly wouldn’t murder you. He might want to, but he wouldn’t.”
Charlie laughed. “And how are you going to stop him?”
She laid a hand against his cheek and he closed his eyes, hating that such a simple touch left him reeling. “I’m so sorry to put you in this situation. Once I explain that you saved me, he’ll understand.”
It wouldn’t matter if he had saved her; the only thing that would matter to Marcus was that he had thoroughly compromised his sister by staying in the same cabin with her.
“Of course, it won’t matter, will it?” she asked, sounding a bit lost. “Being here, with you, in the same cabin. We didn’t think things through, did we, Charlie? I was so afraid, I wasn’t thinking about my reputation; I just didn’t want to be alone. Marcus will never understand. In my entire life, I’ve never acted so rashly. I’ll die if you are the one who is punished, Charlie. I swear I won’t let that happen.” She pulled him toward her and pressed a quick kiss to his mouth, sealing a promise he knew she wouldn’t be able to keep, even if she tried. She pulled back, just enough so their lips weren’t touching. “I’m compromised.”
She said it simply, without inflection, and Charlie tensed. “Yes.” It was the truth, after all.
“So I suppose it doesn’t matter, does it, if I kiss you again?”
He lay unmoving, every muscle in his body singing with a new kind of pain. “I think it does matter, my lady.” She laughed, softly, rejecting his feeble attempt to remind her who they were, who he was.
“No.” She kissed him again, softly. “It doesn’t. Besides, it’s only a kiss. What harm can that do?”
He ought to show her, he ought to show her what a real kiss was like, what a man who was dying to bed a woman would do to a woman who was practically offering herself to him. She wasn’t, his mind screamed, at the same time his cock sprang to painful life and pressed against his breeches.
“Kissing can lead to other things, my lady. Things you may not like.”
She was quiet for a long moment and he felt her withdraw slightly, as if repelled by his subtle reminder of Weston. And then, damn her, she kissed him again, her lips so soft against his, teasing him, making him want to respond with every fiber of his being.
“You forget yourself, my lady,” Charlie said coldly, desperately.
“No, Charlie.” She sounded breathless and her hand on his jaw tightened slightly. “You don’t understand. You’re helping me to forget.”
Bloody hell, if she knew what her words, what her touch was doing to him, she’d stop. Then, without thinking, he reached down, grabbing her beneath her arms, and hauled her up on top of him, ignoring her shriek. She lay prone upon him, her breath harsh against his face, but she wasn’t struggling. “You want me to help you forget?” He sounded nearly incredulous. “By God, Rose, what will I do to help me forget?” And then he kissed her, the way he longed to, pushing up his hips so there would be no doubt what her innocent little kisses were doing to him. Damn her, but she wasn’t repelled. She deepened the kiss, allowed his tongue into her mouth with a groan.
With a will he didn’t know he possessed, he gentled, shifted, and turned so that she was no longer on top of him, but r
ather against the bulkhead on her side. He let his hand sweep down her body, from her shoulder to her back, and then to her round buttock, so smooth and lovely beneath his hand. Only a thin bit of muslin separated his palm from her flesh, a thought that had him stifling a moan. One of her hands went to the back of his neck and held him there as if he would escape. The other was trapped between their bodies and tantalizingly close to his aching cock.
“I’m just a man, Rose. And you’re a lovely woman, giving me kisses, telling me to do things I have no right to do. I want you, Rose, in all the ways a man can want a woman. But we cannot. We cannot.” He kissed her, as if contradicting his words, sweeping his tongue into her sweet, sweet mouth, relishing the way her breath caught, the way she shyly pushed her small tongue against his.
She pulled back slightly and let out a soft breath. “I know. I’m sorry.”
He chuckled. “Now, what have you to be sorry about?”
“As a woman, as a lady, it is up to me to put a halt to things. But I have let you take liberties with myself, liberties I should not have allowed at all. I . . . I wouldn’t want you to think . . . We are from different worlds, after all.”
Charlie stiffened and swallowed—hard. He knew what she was saying, knew it had to be said, but that did nothing to stop the hot humiliation that washed over him. “I’m not thinking about anything”—he said, turning and easing himself off the bunk—“except getting a taste of some fancy tail.”
“I’ve made you angry.”
“No,” Charlie said, sounding angry even to his own ears. “No,” he repeated more gently. “This circumstance, it makes it easy to forget who we are. What we are. I do apologize, my lady. I will not forget again.”
“Charlie, that’s not what I meant. Well, not entirely. Oh, Charlie, please do not be angry. Please.”
He dropped his head, feeling suddenly unaccountably weary. “I cannot be angry with you, my lady.”
“Rose.”
“I think that’s something we’d best forget. When in company, I will call you Rose or nothing at all. But when we are in this room and when we are alone, I will call you whatever I damn well please, and it pleases me to call you my lady,” he said. “It’s best. My lady.”
“Very well.” She sounded every bit the lady she was, and Charlie knew, if he was to maintain even a bit of control over his baser impulses, he’d best remember that.
Rose lay awake long after she returned to her own bunk, feeling slightly embarrassed by her behavior and downright awful about making Charlie angry. She didn’t know what had come over her. Curiosity, no doubt, and a real wish to discover if she were repelled by all men. Obviously, she was not. Certainly, she’d proven that point if no other, proven she was practically wanton, if she were honest. Or perhaps it was just Charlie and that he was a friend, familiar, safe, someone who would never hurt her. She couldn’t imagine kissing another man, not even the very handsome Daniel Cartwright, whom she planned to marry. If he’d have her. Which he no doubt would not.
Stupid, silly girl. What was she going to do when she reached New York? It had all made perfect sense when she was lying in bed, her heart racing with fear. She would escape. She would go to New York, ask Mr. Cartwright to marry her, and he would, eternally grateful that she’d shown up, practically unannounced on his doorstep, to offer her hand in marriage. It all seemed so comical now.
Almost certainly, Mr. Cartwright would pity her, but he would no doubt send her packing and she would head back to port and take the first ship back to England, where she would spend the rest of her ruined life in her parents’ near-forgotten property on the Yorkshire moors. She wouldn’t even qualify as a companion, not with such a soiled past. She was beyond ruined.
At odd moments, ever since she’d made the fateful decision to run away, her body would be swamped by fear. It would travel from her head to her toes, a black wave of dread that would leave her reeling. No matter how many times she tried to push such thoughts away, the wave would hit her and she’d be left feeling quite ill. It was as if she stood at the top of a steep hill and pushed a granite ball down toward a cherished piece of art. She watched with terrible anticipation, knowing there was nothing she could do to stop what she had done. The moment the ship had left port, she could not reverse her decision.
Rose looked up at the bunk above her, wondering if Charlie slept. She didn’t understand what was happening to her, and with Charlie of all people. He was her servant, at least he had been. Not two weeks ago, if she had even thought about kissing Charlie, she would have been horrified. There were some lines one simply did not cross, and she had leapt over that line with pure abandon.
Perhaps the worst of it was, she wanted to again. She wanted to kiss him, to touch him. She liked Charlie, perhaps too much. He was right, of course. Being forced to share small quarters, pretending to be married, created a false intimacy. She remembered when she was sixteen, putting on the play Romeo and Juliet. She was Juliet and a young lord by the name of Samuel Lansing had played her Romeo. They had gotten caught up in the drama of the play and very nearly fallen in love. But once the play and the summer party was over, it was as if someone waved a wand and that feeling disappeared almost immediately. That’s what was happening between her and Charlie. She didn’t truly have feelings for him. She couldn’t.
And yet, even now, when she thought about saying good-bye, her heart ached far more than it should.
Chapter 9
Avoid, at all times, mentioning subjects or incidents that can in any way disgust your hearers. Many persons will enter into the details of sicknesses which should be mentioned only when absolutely necessary. All such conversation or allusion is excessively ill-bred. It is not only annoying, but absolutely sickening to some, and a truly lady-like person will avoid all such topics.
—From The Ladies’ Book of Etiquette, and Manual of Politeness
The ship had been following the coast for three days now. When the passengers had first spied land a collective shout had arisen, and those who were well enough to be on deck rushed to the starboard side to see what America offered. For three days, it hadn’t offered much more than rocky shores and wooded fields. It was certainly a letdown after all they’d heard about this Promised Land. Lately, Rose had taken to wandering listlessly about the ship, missing the company of her friend, Mrs. Browne. Neither she nor Charlie had seen the woman for two days. Rose sat on the opposite side of the ship from Charlie, huddled out of the wind by one of the lifeboats, while he watched the shore.
They were one day from New York and activity along the shore had increased. Houses and larger buildings could be seen from the ship, and the waters had become dotted with fishing boats. Charlie was standing by the rail watching the men fish, though they were too far away to see what sort of fish they were catching, when Roger came up next to him, placing his forearms on the rail, one fist clenched tightly in the other. Charlie looked from Roger’s hands to the man’s face, knowing immediately something was wrong.
“I could go for some nice haddock about now,” Charlie said, testing the waters. He’d found on this trip that Roger was not a talkative man, and when he did talk, it took him a while to ease into what he really wanted to say. And by the way he was kneading his hands together, Roger was a man who wanted to say something.
Suddenly, Roger pressed his fists against his mouth, stifling an awful sound of anguish.
“What’s wrong, man? Is it Mrs. Browne? Is she still unwell?”
Roger dropped his hands, kneading, kneading, his eyes bleak and unseeing on the horizon. “She died, Charlie. Yesterday,” he choked out. “It weren’t nothin’. Just a bad cold, we thought. Didn’t even think to call in the doctor. And then, like that, she turned and didn’t wake up.”
Roger looked at him with red-rimmed eyes filled with terrible grief, and Charlie put a firm hand on his back. “I’m so sorry, Roger. My God.”
Roger searched his face, almost wild. “I haven’t told anyone, Charlie. I don’t want t
hem to know. I don’t want them . . .” His throat closed on the last word and he turned away, his hands frantically moving against one another. “I don’t want them throwing her overboard. I want to take her to America. She wanted this—despite the tears, it was what she wanted.” He swallowed, trying to control his emotions. “I want to bury her in America. I couldn’t let them take her. They might, mightn’t they?”
“I don’t know,” Charlie said. “But I won’t say a thing, Roger, not if you don’t want me to.”
“Looks like she’s sleeping, it does. Just like she’s sleeping.” Roger stifled another sob, gripping the rail hard, as if he could stop his grief if only he could hold on to that rail tight enough. “I can’t go home,” he said bleakly. “I can’t go home without her.”
A passenger walked by and Charlie took his hand from Roger’s shaking back, not wanting to draw attention to Roger’s obvious grief. “Can I do anything to help?”
Roger gave him a quick glance. “What’s there to do? Just don’t tell anyone, please. Not even Mrs. Avery. Promise.”
“I promise.”
Charlie left Roger standing by the rail, unable to offer the man any words of comfort that would make a difference. He walked along the deck, nodding to people he knew, his cheeks turning ruddy from the cold wind. He found Rose huddled, shielded from the worst of the wind, in a corner by a lifeboat. She looked up when she saw him and smiled, and just that innocent smile made his chest hurt.
“I wonder where Mrs. Browne is? She can’t still be ill,” Rose said. Her hair, usually so neat, had escaped its pins so that long strands whipped about her face. It was April, but it felt more like February, and a few snowflakes flew, stinging cheeks and making the gray Atlantic seem even more forbidding.
“I saw Mr. Browne earlier. She’s still a bit under the weather and not up to seeing visitors.”