Chapter Five
An hour later.
The foyer, the corridor, a bedchamber and another bedchamber.
Charlotte was stomping the snow from her boots and shaking out her cloak when Miss Mapplethorpe and her niece came down the stairs, arms linked.
“Have you been to the stable, my lady?” the aunt said.
“Yes! My coachman says that no one will be traveling today, or perhaps even tomorrow.” Delaying her yet longer from joining her friends at Kingstag Castle, where they were gathering for Christmas and to lift Serena’s spirits after the cruel jilting by her long-time fiancé.
The jilter was playing cards with Mr. Fortier and two other gentlemen. Charlotte could hear the sound of his delicious voice in the taproom, rising in laughter.
“The storm is here to stay, it seems,” she said.
“Dear me,” Miss Mapplethorpe said, “it will be wretchedly cold for those poor coachmen, not to mention the horses! They must all be chilled to the bone.”
“It is remarkably cozy in the stable, in fact,” she said, depositing her cloak on a peg. Cozy enough to make a handsome young duke’s eyes shine as he had looked pleadingly at her the night before. “Is luncheon served yet?”
“Our hosts have just announced it, my lady,” the duke said from the taproom doorway.
Charlotte could not fathom why the simple words should send her stomach to her toes and her heart into her throat. But everything the Duke of Frye had ever said to her had made her sillier than a widgeon. Even with a bruise coloring his handsome jaw and a thin line of plaster along the bone where the skin had broken, he was outrageously handsome.
She tipped her chin upward. “Thank you, sir.”
He had the gall to smile with every one of his white teeth. With a quick bow, he passed her by and went up the steps two at a time.
“I will join you for luncheon,” she said to Miss Mapplethorpe and her niece, “but first I must change out of these soaked stockings.”
Ascending, her foot was on the landing when the sight ahead made her gasp: Horace Church slipping into Miss Mapplethorpe and Calliope Jameson’s bedchamber and stealthily closing the door behind him.
Charlotte’s mind whirled. Only one explanation suggested itself.
The inn mistress appeared in the corridor. Rosy-cheeked and cheerful, she suited her pleasant little establishment.
“Good day, ma’am,” she said as she moved past, then paused at the top of the stairs. “Oh, my lady?”
Charlotte turned to her.
“Seeing as it’s Christmas Eve tomorrow, and the snow not looking to let up, I thought we’d have a party. For the little ones’ amusement.”
“That sounds delightful,” Charlotte said. “May my maid and I help with preparations? Sally is very clever with garland and I can tie quite a respectable bow.”
“That’s kind of you to offer. Tomorrow’ll be time enough.”
When the inn mistress had disappeared downstairs, Charlotte hurried forward, looked both ways, and entered Miss Mapplethorpe and Calliope’s room.
It was empty. No handsome duke reclined invitingly on the bed. No jilting scion of high society lounged attractively in the chair before the hearth. He must have slipped out when she had her back turned, speaking with the inn mistress.
She would find him and confront him. He could have no good reason for his subterfuge.
It struck her that he could much more easily seduce innocent maidens as a duke than as a mere mister. But Horace Church’s smile was enough to weaken her knees to jelly, so she supposed his game of playing the commoner served him well enough.
Scoundrel.
As she reached for the door handle, footsteps in the corridor halted on the other side of the panel.
“Good day, sir,” said a man’s crisp voice.
“Good day, Mr. Clayton,” Mr. Sheridan’s voice replied, its oily obsequiousness clear even through the door.
“I understand that you gave up your chamber for Miss Mapplethorpe,” Mr. Clayton said.
“I did, indeed,” Mr. Sheridan replied.
Charlotte swallowed a yelp.
“A lady should not be obliged to suffer when a gentleman can come to her rescue,” Mr. Clayton said, which Charlotte thought was easy for him when another man had done the rescuing.
The door handle turned.
Charlotte cast her gaze about desperately. Nowhere to hide.
Dropping to the floor as the door creaked open, she propelled herself under the bed.
And came face-to-face with the Duke of Frye.
Before she could even gasp, he clamped a big hand over her mouth and shook his head.
Caught between a rock and a hard place, she most certainly was. But the devil one knew was always safer than the devil one did not.
She nodded.
He released her just as the door clicked shut. Then Mr. Sheridan’s feet appeared beside the bed. A moment later, he removed his boots. Then both feet left the ground, the underside of the bed sagged into Charlotte’s behind, and Mr. Sheridan released another long sigh.
Only then did she again turn her gaze to the man prone beside her.
A crease marred his noble brow.
She frowned.
He frowned back, the plaster twisting over his wound.
She pursed her lips.
His gaze went directly to them. And remained there.
She discovered the urgent need to moisten her lips with her tongue. Every etiquette book in the world was clear on the subject of lip licking: it was not recommended, and never in public.
But this was not public; it was the dusty floor beneath a bed in an inn. Also, Horace Church was the devil, and she fully suspected it was his diabolical gaze that was making her mouth dry as bone.
Darting her tongue between her lips, she licked them.
His face lost all expression.
Oh. Of course. He could play at being a commoner, but when she made one tiny indiscretion he acted all righteously displeased.
Typical man.
She rolled her eyes.
But when his gaze rose to meet hers, it was not displeasure she saw there. Rather, the opposite. The blue was positively fevered. Blazing.
Every kind of explosion went off inside Charlotte. A gasp escaped her throat.
His Adam’s apple rose and fell sharply. Then he looked at her lips again.
Their shoulders were nearly touching. She could practically hear her heartbeats pounding against the floor.
Atop the bed, with a rumbling snort and grunt, Mr. Sheridan began snoring. At first it was soft and rhythmic. Within minutes it was a cacophony.
Charlotte nodded and jerked her chin forward.
Ever so slightly, the duke shook his head.
She nodded more emphatically. Dust stirred up by her hair brushing the bedframe’s slats cascaded down in a cloud.
The duke shook his head again.
Mr. Sheridan’s snoring scaled the heights.
Charlotte nodded yet again.
The duke scowled—silently. That he was outrageously handsome even while scowling was surely her punishment for wanting to close the inches between them and lick his lips too.
Bridling the wanton within her, instead she shinnied out from beneath the bed, turned the door handle, and slipped out into the corridor.
Within moments he followed, shutting the door quietly to the sound of Mr. Sheridan’s roaring snore, grabbing her hand, and drawing her along the corridor. He pulled her through a doorway at its far end, closed the door, and dropped her hand.
Charlotte, who had managed to avoid holding the Duke of Frye’s hand for nearly a decade, found her throat entirely clogged.
“You could have woken him,” he said. His eyes were gorgeously intense.
“Is this your bedchamber?”
“Why did you go in there?”
“I have never been in a man’s bedchamber before,” she said a bit dazedly, staring at his shaving gear on the dressing table and feeling a remarkable tingling in her belly.
“You were in a man’s bedchamber thirty seconds ago,” he said, which proved that their little sojourn under the bed had not muddled his brains too. “Why did you go into Sheridan’s room? You might have been hurt.”
Her muddled brain abruptly cleared.
“I was following you! I thought you had gone into Miss Mapplethorpe and Miss Jameson’s room.”
“Why would I have done that?”
“Why would you have gone into Mr. Sheridan’s? You did not intend to steal from him, did you?”
He looked at her like she was daft. “Of course not.”
“Well, you are engaged in subterfuge. It’s not so ludicrous a notion.”
“Charlotte, I own a castle of no fewer than sixty rooms. And five thousand acres of land. And six hundred sheep. And a house on Grosvenor Square. And another house in Bristol. And a coronet, not to mention any number of priceless—”
“All right. I take your point. You know, it strikes me that it is peculiar—him napping in the middle of the day.”
“Does it?” Abruptly his eyes were sparkling. She had always loved that sparkle. She had liked to imagine it was especially for her, even though she knew it was not.
“Yes, of course,” she said. “He cannot be over fifty. Isn’t that a bit young to take to napping in the afternoon?”
“He was up late last night playing cards. Until nearly dawn.”
“How would you know that? I thought you slept in the stable.”
“Fortier told me.”
“And that is another thing: if you are in fact not common Mr. Church, who is common Mr. Fortier?”
“Heir to the duke of Le Cap.”
“Heir to a duke! Where is Le Cap?”
“Haiti. But he was educated here. We’ve been friends forever. Capital fellow. Wonderfully honorable. Nothing like me, of course.” He smiled.
More little explosions went off in her belly.
“Now, of course, you must tell me exactly what this is,” she said.
“I cannot.” He looked entirely implacable.
Having grown up surrounded by men, and having spent a successful season in London before traveling to America, and then two years in society in Philadelphia, Charlotte knew how the masculine brain functioned. And not only the brain.
She moved closer to him and tilted her face up. “Are you quite certain?”
He drew a hard breath that lifted his chest.
“Yes,” he said rather deeply. “And, just so you know, Charlotte Ascot, you needn’t bat your lashes like that to make my brain go to porridge.”
Her mouth fell open. Pink and lush-lipped and glistening and inviting.
So he kissed it.