Do You Want to Start a Scandal EPB Page 16

  Part of her wanted to rebel at his possessive tone, but part of her found it thrilling, too. There seemed no point in denying it, anyhow. He had her heart. He had her body.

  She was his.

  The sooner she accepted that, the sooner the true challenge would begin.

  Making him hers.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Charlotte dreamed of being on a boat, rocking to and fro. Then the sea grew violent, tossing her this way and that. Where was Piers? He would make this stop. The waves themselves would not dare disobey him.

  “Charlotte. Charlotte.”

  Her eyes fluttered open. “Piers?”

  She looked at his hand curled tight on her arm. He wasn’t her safe port in the storm. He was the one shaking her.

  “What is it?” she asked. The words came out in a sleepy slur: Whaeesit.

  Cool grass tangled with her toes. The hunt. The stream. The meadow. Their joining.

  She struggled up on her elbow, pushing away a lock of hair crusted to her cheek.

  Oh, Lord—had she been drooling? Had he seen?

  As her vision came into to focus, she could see that his expression was grave.

  Now she snapped awake.

  She clutched his shoulder. “Is something wrong?”

  He shook his head. “No.”

  “Then what’s the matter?”

  “Nothing.” He turned to pull on his breeches.

  “Are you certain?” She hugged his waist and propped her chin on his shoulder. Beads of cold sweat had risen on his hairline, and his heart was pounding in his chest. She could feel it through his ribs and hers. “Piers. What is it?”

  “It was difficult to wake you, that’s all.”

  She pressed her forehead to his back. “So sorry. I sleep like the dead. Everyone in my family knows it—and the servants, besides. But I hadn’t thought to warn you.”

  The sun was sinking lower, and shadow cloaked the meadow.

  “Goodness.” Charlotte sat up and began reaching for her chemise, jerking it over her head and pushing her arms through the sleeves. “They’ll be wondering about us by now. I don’t suppose it will have escaped notice that the two of us disappeared together.” She reached for one of her stockings and jammed her toe into it, then paused, remembering something worse. “Oh, no. That demon horse. She’s probably halfway to Scotland by now.”

  “She knows where she’s fed and watered. She’ll have returned to the stables.”

  “I hope you’re right. Otherwise, I don’t know how I’ll explain it to—”

  “Charlotte,” he interrupted. “If there are any explanations required, I’ll make them.” He tilted her face to his, then gave her cheek a light caress. “I will take care of everything. From this moment forward. Do you understand that?”

  “I . . . Yes, I suppose I do.”

  I’ll take care of everything.

  It was a promise she’d been waiting to hear since she was a girl, but she wasn’t a girl anymore. Especially not now, after what had just happened in this meadow.

  All the questions she’d submerged an hour or two ago . . . they bubbled to the surface of her conscience now.

  How was this going to work? Not only now, but for the rest of their lives? He’d sworn to look after her. Would he ever allow her to look after him? Trust her with his fears and secrets? Would he ever let her come anywhere near that fiercely guarded heart?

  Desire and pleasure were all well and good, but they wouldn’t be enough to sustain a lifetime.

  Only one thing was clear to Charlotte as they left the meadow. From this point forward, there was no going back. Never mind the lovers in the library. Now she had an even greater mystery to solve—and it was Piers.

  “I can’t wait any longer. We must do it now.” Delia inched closer to Charlotte on the drawing room divan.

  Charlotte looked up from her book. “Do what?”

  “Ask them,” Delia whispered. “The Continent? The Grand Tour? Our escape from stifling parents and English society . . . ? Is any of this sounding familiar?”

  “Oh, of course.”

  Charlotte felt a stab of guilt. She hadn’t been thinking of Delia and their plans when she made love to Piers.

  She hadn’t been thinking of anything. Just feeling.

  Feeling glorious and adored and impetuous and in love.

  But apparently, she ought to add selfish and heedless to the list. All the while, Delia had been counting on her as a friend.

  “Of course it does, all of it. But we can’t ask them now.”

  “There won’t be a better time. Papa is pleased with the stag he shot this afternoon, and he’s had at least two glasses of port. Mama was proud of that dinner, and she has Lord Granville’s farewell ball to plan. They’re in a charitable mood. We won’t have a more advantageous moment than this.”

  “But . . .”

  “But what?”

  But your father still believes me to be a shameless, fortune-hunting hussy, your brother believes I’m a murder target, and your sister has threatened to ruin my life.

  “Is it your mother?”

  “Yes,” Charlotte said hastily. “Yes, the problem is my mother.”

  That was one good thing she could say for Mama. She made such a convenient excuse for everything. At the moment, she had her feet propped up on a footstool as she leafed through the pages of a ladies’ magazine.

  “She’d never agree,” Charlotte said. “Not now.”

  “You don’t think she’s still trying to match you with Lord Granville?” Delia asked.

  “It’s likely.”

  Highly, definitely, certainly likely.

  “But you’ve made it clear how much you dislike the man,” Delia murmured to her sketchbook. “And for the past few days, he’s taken no notice of you whatsoever.”

  “I know he hasn’t,” Charlotte said, more dispiritedly than she ought to have allowed herself to sound.

  Somehow she and Piers had managed to avoid notice after returning from their tryst in the meadow. Everyone had been resting or preparing for dinner, and they’d all assumed Charlotte was already upstairs in her room. Piers hadn’t needed to offer any explanations.

  And now, for two days, he’d scarcely spoken at all.

  He was avoiding her, belatedly—just as she’d begged him to do when they first met. Now, however, she wanted nothing more than to see him, speak with him. Be held by him and breathe in the scent of his skin.

  At the very least, take a stroll around the garden one afternoon.

  She couldn’t understand why he’d become so suddenly aloof. Unless . . .

  Unless everything she was feeling had simply left him cold.

  “You do still want to go, don’t you?” Delia’s voice grew small, hesitant. “I wouldn’t blame you if you’d changed your mind. I know I won’t make the most convenient traveling partner. I walk slowly, and I—”

  “Never think it. I couldn’t imagine a better companion.”

  “Oh, good.” Her friend looked relieved. “Because if I have to spend another season sitting in the corners of ballrooms—”

  “We’re going to break free, the two of us.” She reached out and squeezed Delia’s hand. “This time next year, you’ll be painting views of the Mediterranean. I promise.”

  Somehow, Charlotte would make it happen.

  She looked across the room, at Piers. He could make it happen. They needn’t marry straightaway. He would likely even pay for the journey, arrange for them to stay with his diplomatic acquaintances overseas. A chance for their daughters to socialize with princesses and archdukes? Sir Vernon and Lady Parkhurst—and Mama—couldn’t refuse that, no matter how protective they were.

  Charlotte dared to believe she could convince him. He was a man who understood loyalty. He knew the importance of keeping a promise.

  But she would need to speak with him first, and for the past half hour he’d stubbornly kept his nose in a newspaper.

  Look up, she willed. Look
at me.

  He turned a page of The Times instead. It must have been a particularly riveting issue.

  Delia set aside her sketchbook. “Do let’s ask them now. If they refuse, so be it. I just can’t bear any further suspense.”

  Charlotte put out her hand. “No, wait.”

  “Vegetables.” Lady Parkhurst laid aside her pince-nez and looked up from her lists of recipes. “I can’t decide on vegetables for our supper at the ball.”

  Hallelujah. Saved by vegetables. All lessons on nourishment aside, Charlotte had never expected to think those words.

  “I was hoping for something in the French style,” Lady Parkhurst went on, “and my egg-plant in the conservatory has produced some lovely aubergines.”

  “Aubergines?” Sir Vernon asked. “What the deuce are those?”

  Charlotte gripped Delia’s arm, hard. She couldn’t dare look at her. If she did, they would both burst out laughing.

  “If you ever took an interest in my plants, you would know. It’s the latest variety from the Continent. Produces a long, purplish fruit like so.” She drew the shape with her hands. “Why, some of them must be seven or eight inches long.”

  Charlotte stared hard at the carpet and breathed through her nose. Beside her, Delia began to quietly wheeze.

  “A purple vegetable?” Sir Vernon snorted. “What do you do with the things?”

  “Well, that’s the question, isn’t it? I haven’t any recipes. Though I hear the French do wondrous things with their aubergines.”

  Piers looked up from his paper, casting a worried glance in Charlotte’s direction. Evidently he’d been paying some attention to her after all. He was probably wondering if he needed to call a doctor to diagnose her convulsions.

  “Lord Granville, you’ve spent time on the Continent,” Lady Parkhurst said earnestly. “How do you like your aubergine?”

  There was no holding it back then. A shriek of laughter escaped Delia, and Charlotte tried—with only modest success—to covers hers with a coughing fit.

  Mama closed her magazine. “Girls, really. Whatever is so amusing?”

  “Nothing, Mama. I was just showing Delia a humorous passage in my novel.”

  “What sort of novel?” Frances asked, setting aside her needlework.

  Delia tried her best to help with the subterfuge, pointing at the book. “You see, there’s a girl, and she meets with a . . . a . . .”

  “A pigeon,” Charlotte supplied.

  “A pigeon?” Frances asked.

  A pigeon? Delia mouthed.

  Charlotte gave her friend a yes-I-know-but-I-panicked look. “It wasn’t an ordinary pigeon. It was a malicious, bloodthirsty pigeon,” she went on. “A whole flock of them.”

  Frances blinked. “I’ve never heard anything so absurd.”

  “Precisely!” Delia declared. “So you can see why we found it so hilarious.”

  Charlotte had finally managed to contain her laughter. Then she made the mistake of looking at Delia, and they giggled all over again.

  “I sometimes wonder if the two of you aren’t spending too much time together.” Sir Vernon studied them over his glass of port. “I won’t have it said that I raised a foolish daughter.”

  Once everyone had settled back into reading or needlework, Delia whispered, “I suppose this isn’t the time to ask about our Grand Tour after all.”

  “No,” Charlotte agreed, and though she would never say it aloud, she mentally added: Thank heaven. “We may as well go up to our beds.”

  There was one other confession from this evening that she would not only keep to herself, but take to her grave:

  Mama’s “marital duties” lesson had come in useful after all.

  Chapter Sixteen

  When Piers opened the door of his bedchamber later that evening, he’d scarcely shaken his arms free of his topcoat before he noticed a small, folded paper had been pushed under the door.

  He hung his coat on a peg with one hand, unfolded the paper with the other, and read the single line of script:

  I need to speak with you.

  It wasn’t signed, but he knew it could only be Charlotte. And if she’d risked this method of communication, the matter must be urgent.

  Seeing that the corridor was empty, he wasted no time. He knocked lightly on the door of her chamber.

  No answer.

  He rapped again. “Charlotte.”

  Nothing.

  He tried the door latch.

  Locked.

  He freed his stickpin from his cravat and inserted the sharp end in the lock. He was typically able to keep impatience and frustration at bay, but this time they slipped past his defenses. His fingers fumbled with the stickpin, and the damn thing clattered to the floor, rolling into a darkened crack between the floorboards. Curse it.

  Piers stood back from the door. He wasn’t about to get down on hands and knees to search for the pin, and he wasn’t going to head off in search of another one, either. She ought to have heard him and opened the door by now, unless . . .

  Unless there was something wrong.

  He shifted his weight to his left leg and delivered a swift kick with his right, breaking the door latch and sending the door swinging inward on its hinges. Not the most surreptitious way of breaking into a room, but undeniably effective.

  As usual, her chamber looked to have been ransacked. His mind told him the reason for the shambles was untidiness rather than life-and-death struggle—but his heart wasn’t so easily convinced. His pulse accelerated as he searched the room.

  “Charlotte?”

  The carpet was littered with piles of discarded clothing. A pelisse and bonnet draped over a bedpost gave the look of a scarecrow. A hodgepodge of hairbrushes, ribbons, and tins of dusting powder covered the dressing table.

  As he made his way to check the window, he tripped over a boot and went sprawling. Luckily, a heap of petticoats and chemises broke his fall. He struggled to regain his feet, a task which required disentangling himself from yards of sweetly scented linen. “Godforsaken son of a—”

  “Piers?”

  Charlotte stood in the doorway that led to her suite’s small dressing room. She looked first at the broken door. Next, at the flouncy lace petticoat in his grasp.

  And then, finally, her gaze met his.

  “Piers, what on earth are you doing?”

  Excellent question.

  Going mad, perhaps. Losing the cool detachment and sharp instincts he’d amassed over the years, certainly.

  He couldn’t even enjoy the relief of seeing her in nothing but a thin, half-unbuttoned chemise, her unbound hair tumbling below her shoulders in thick waves.

  “What am I doing?” He tossed aside the petticoat. “What the devil are you doing? You didn’t answer the door.”

  “I didn’t hear a knock.” She nodded toward the attached dressing room. “The maids prepared me a bath.”

  “A bath.”

  “Yes. A bath. Water, soap, tub.”

  Well, that . . . was a perfectly reasonable explanation.

  Damn it.

  He pushed both hands through his hair, dislodging an errant stocking in the process. The garment slithered to the floor, and his last shred of dignity went with it.

  Charlotte sealed her lips over a laugh.

  “This isn’t amusing,” he said curtly.

  “No,” she said, with affected seriousness. “It isn’t. To begin with, I don’t know how I’m going to latch my door now.”

  He picked up her dressing table chair with one hand, carried it over to the door, and propped it under the broken latch. “Like so.”

  “Why were you rifling through my underthings?”

  “I wasn’t rifling through your underthings. I was being attacked by them.”

  She shrugged. “You know tidiness isn’t one of my virtues.”

  “There’s untidiness, and then there’s . . .” He gestured at the room. “. . . a linen death trap.”

  “That’s a bit m
elodramatic, don’t you think?”

  “No.”

  She pressed the heel of her hand to her mouth and smiled behind it.

  For God’s sake. This was all so amusing to her.

  Piers tried to remind himself that she didn’t understand. That he didn’t want her to understand. If he was serious about his responsibilities, she—and anyone in his keeping—would never comprehend the vigilance that went into ensuring their safety.

  If protection wasn’t a thankless task, that meant he wasn’t doing it right.

  Nevertheless, he couldn’t help lecturing her. “I like things in their places. That way, I’m ready to react. In a moment. In the dark. On any occasion. Especially an occasion when you declare that you need to speak with me.”

  “I didn’t mean to alarm you. I hoped we could chat tomorrow. I had no idea you’d come straightaway.”

  “Of course I would come straightaway.” He caught her gaze and held it. “If you tell me you need me, I would never delay.”

  “But you’ve been ignoring me for days. Ever since we . . .” She didn’t complete the sentence. She didn’t need to. “You’ve scarcely acknowledged my presence.”

  “Believe me. I’ve been aware of your presence.”

  Constantly, exquisitely, achingly aware.

  He couldn’t escape it. She’d begun recalibrating his senses the moment she came through that library door. His peripheral vision was now trained for flashes of golden hair; his ears, trained for her melodic laugh. He found himself following the drifting scent of her soap and dusting powder, like a dog panting after the butcher’s wife.

  He had years of experience and training. She’d unraveled them in a week, and he was left at loose ends. This distraction, this madness of desire and yearning—it was everything a man in his position needed to avoid.

  On second thought, perhaps his senses hadn’t been muddled. After all, they had been meticulously attuned to detect the slightest hint of peril.

  This woman—this beautiful, unbiddable, all-too-perceptive woman—was his personal embodiment of danger. She could ruin him. Destroy everything he’d worked to become.

  And she would do it all with a smile.