Chapter Twenty-three
As the carriage slowed Charlotte roused herself and pushed the curtain aside to glance out the window. Sometime during the past few hours while she sat in her solitary corner, daylight had given way to a dusky purple twilight. She watched out the window as the carriage drew to a stop in front of tonight’s inn.
The Liar’s Arms. Well, that seemed appropriate.
They’d reached Oxted, then. They’d arrive at Bellwood by luncheon tomorrow. The familiar panic began to well in her throat, but she took a deep breath and swallowed it back down. She couldn’t stay at Hadley House—she saw that now. Later, yes, in the future, but not yet.
She let the curtain fall back across the window. Three days to make the journey from Hampshire to Kent. It was more than they needed, but Julian insisted on setting a leisurely pace to Bellwood so as not to exhaust her—frequent stops for rest and refreshment, no travel after the sun set—yet despite his careful attentions, weariness gnawed at her bones.
Three days. She leaned her head back against the squabs and closed her eyes. Three days ago she’d lied to Julian. It felt like an eternity had passed since then.
She’d been calm enough at first, riding next to him in the carriage, his warm thigh pressed to hers. It became more difficult when he wrapped an arm around her and urged her to rest against him, but she managed to keep her peace, even when he stroked her hair to soothe her into sleep. But as the miles disappeared under the horses’ hooves she felt the faintest tickling behind her lips, and soon afterward it became painfully clear that…
The truth will out.
The tickle became an itch, then a sting, then a burn, and then such a raging conflagration nothing but the most violent effort on her part could keep the truth from blazing forth and burning to ash everything in its path.
And the main thing in its path was Julian.
So she’d done the only thing she could think to do. She’d retreated behind pleasantries and careful smiles. By mid-morning on the second day she’d stopped smiling and lapsed into monosyllables. This morning she’d pressed her lips together and gone utterly silent. At last, unable to bear the hurt look in his dark eyes, she’d opened her mouth long enough to say she preferred to ride in the carriage alone. Julian hadn’t said a word, but at the next inn he’d procured a mount and left her to her lonely fate.
A liar’s fate.
But she hadn’t lied. She simply hadn’t told the entire truth. It wasn’t the same as a lie.
She’d been telling herself that since they left Hampshire, but three days later it still felt like a lie, and now here they were at the Liar’s Arms.
Which seemed appropriate.
A light rap sounded on the carriage door. “Lady Hadley?” Julian’s voice, cool and distant. “I’ve secured rooms for us. Will you alight?”
Charlotte winced at the formal address. “I beg your pardon, Captain.” She wiped her eyes with her gloved fingers, took a deep breath and opened the carriage door. “I must have fallen asleep.”
Julian held out his hand to assist her from the carriage. He released her the instant the toe of her slipper touched the ground, but his gaze narrowed on her face. “You do look fatigued. Are you well?”
“Yes, quite well. You said you secured rooms?”
“Yes, and I ordered you a bath.”
She fixed one of the meaningless smiles onto her face. “That will be lovely.” Against his wishes she’d declined taking a maid with her on the journey. Hardly proper, but at the moment Sarah was on the road somewhere between London and Bellwood, and if she couldn’t have Sarah, she chose not to have anyone. “You’d make a wonderful lady’s maid, Captain.”
She meant to lighten the mood and perhaps wipe the grim look from his eyes, but Julian’s face remained stiff. “I’ll order dinner delayed for an hour, then. Will that do?”
She wilted like a flower under a boot heel at his cold tone, though it was nothing more than she expected. And dinner—dear God, the very idea of a stilted, near-silent dinner with Julian made her throb with exhaustion, but she didn’t want to hide in her room like a coward, either. Perhaps she’d feel better after her bath. “Yes. Thank you.”
But she didn’t feel better after her bath. The warm water eased the aches from her sore limbs, but any illusions she’d cherished about her deceit vanished into the curls of steam rising from the tub.
The Liar’s Arms. She kicked listlessly at the cooling bathwater. It wasn’t as if the name of the inn was a sign of some sort, or a condemnation of her actions. It was nothing more than a simple coincidence. And anyway, she hadn’t lied. She hadn’t revealed everything to Julian about what happened after Hadley died, but that was a lie of omission only, which wasn’t the same as a true lie.
Charlotte rose from the bath and reached for the length of toweling a maid had placed on a chair. A chair from The Liar’s Arms.
Which was an appropriate name, because she was a liar.
And she’d remain one.
That is, as long as she could keep from blurting out the truth before they reached Bellwood, and to do that she’d have to avoid Julian as much as possible. One more reproachful look from his dark eyes was all it would take to break her.
She pulled on her night rail and wrapper, yanked on the bell to summon a servant, then paced from one end of the room to the other until a maid appeared at the door. “Take a message to Captain West, if you please. Tell him I’m too tired for dinner tonight and will retire at once. He should dine without me.”
“Shall I have a tray sent up, your ladyship?”
Charlotte’s stomach rebelled at the thought of food. “Nothing to eat, but a glass of port will be welcome.”
The maid bobbed a curtsey. “Yes, my lady.”
Charlotte leaned back against the door and stayed there until the maid returned with a tray holding a single a glass of port. As soon as the door closed behind the girl Charlotte sank into the chair before the fire. She curled her legs underneath her and sipped at her port while she watched the flames dance in the grate. They seemed too bright, somehow, so bright they made her eyes burn and tear.
It was better if Julian didn’t know. It wasn’t as if he could change it. He’d said it himself, that morning at Hadley House after they’d made love.
It just is.
She turned her hand and watched the ruby red liquid swirl and cling to the bowl of the glass. It was in the past, and God knew it had taken all the strength she had to leave it there. It had nearly destroyed her, and if she let it back into the present, there was no telling what it would do to Julian. She wouldn’t steal his chance at happiness from him—
Slam!
Charlotte jumped up from her chair and spilled half the glass of port down the front of her white night rail.
“Charlotte! I know you’re not asleep. Open this door. Now.”
Charlotte clutched the night rail to her throat. What in God’s name was Julian doing out in the hallway, shouting—
“I will not leave until you open this door!”
No, not just shouting, but pounding against the door until the wood threatened to splinter. She hurried across the room and pressed her mouth into the gap between the wall and the door frame. Had it grown wider since he started pounding? “What do you want? Didn’t the maid deliver my message?”
“Oh, I got your message.” He gave the latch a violent wrench. “Now open this door.”
“I will not,” she hissed into the gap. “I told you, I’ve retired for the evening. I’m not decent.”
“Decent?” He gave a disbelieving snort. “It’s a bit late for you to worry about that now, when just the other night I had my mouth on your—”
Charlotte threw open the door, grasped his arm, pulled him inside the room, and slammed it shut behind her. “For God’s sake. What’s the matter with you? Do you want the entire inn to hear how you…”
Well. There was no way she was going to finish that sentence.
He smirked. “How I what?”
“Never mind what.” She crossed her arms over her chest and glared at him. Every innocent traveler within shouting distance didn’t need to know he’d put his mouth on her—
Well. There was no way she was going to finish that thought. “What do you want, Captain West?”
An angry growl tore from his throat. “Don’t call me that.”
He was growling at her?
“Don’t call you Captain West?”
“You heard me.”
She gaped at him, and for the first time noticed he looked a bit disheveled. His dark hair fell over his forehead in a tousled mass of waves, he’d left his coat somewhere, and his cheekbones were flushed, as if he’d—
“For pity’s sake. You’ve been drinking, haven’t you?”
He waved a hand at her night rail. “So have you. Either that or you’ve stabbed yourself.”
Charlotte glanced down at the red port stain on her night rail. Damn it. “That’s your fault. You made me spill my port when you tried to smash my door to bits.”
He leaned a hip casually against the door. “I wouldn’t have had to smash your door to bits at all if you’d simply come down to dine as you said you would.”
“Is that what this is about? My not coming down to dine? I beg your pardon. I didn’t think you’d mind, and I confess I find the extremity of your disappointment surprising.”
“Do you?” In the blink of an eye he abandoned his relaxed post to prowl toward her. “You think I don’t care if you eat? You can’t afford to miss another meal, Charlotte. You’re already too thin.”
“Is that so? Well, I don’t recall you complaining about my figure the other night!”
Oh, for pity’s sake! She hadn’t truly just said that, had she?
He ran a finger across his lips as his hot gaze raked over her. “Oh, I’m not complaining, sweetheart. On the contrary. Your figure is all I’ve been able to think about for the past four days.”
Charlotte shivered at the heat in his eyes. He was looking at her as if he could see through her night rail. Could he? She pulled her wrapper tighter around her waist.
He laughed. “Do you think that’s going to do any good? You don’t even need to be in the same room for me to see your body, to hear your cries and gasps—”
“Stop it, Julian! Why are you saying these things to me?”
“You’d prefer I didn’t? Ah, that must be why you hid from me tonight.” He closed in on her and pulled her against his chest. “Because you don’t want me to look at you? Because you want me to call you Lady Hadley, even though it chokes me? Because I can’t bear to be confined in a carriage with you without touching you?”
Charlotte’s knees buckled at the wild look in his eyes. “No.” Her voice was a whisper. “Because it’s better this way, Julian, for both of us. You’re betrothed—”
“You think I don’t know that?” He pressed his face into the curve of her shoulder and inhaled desperately. “I swore to myself I’d stay away from you tonight, and I tried. Ah God, I tried, but I can’t.”
Her eyes slid closed as he kissed and sucked at her neck as if she were a feast laid out only for him. With every moment that passed she vowed to push him away, but her fingers refused to obey. Instead they tangled in his hair to hold him more tightly against her.
He’s not yours, and he never will be.
But he was. Not to keep, not to hold forever, but tonight, just for one more night he was hers, and she could no more refuse him now than she could rip her heart from her chest.
A harsh breath tore from his throat. “I won’t let you go so easily, Charlotte. I lo—”
“Hush.” She pressed a finger to his lips. She didn’t want his declaration—not now, when it didn’t belong to her. He would be another woman’s husband and another child’s father, and she…
She would lose him again and again, every time she was compelled to see him with his wife and—dear God—eventually his children. She’d never marry again, not without love, and she’d never love anyone but Julian. Her heart would fall into pieces every time she looked at him, and she’d never be able to see that as anything other than a punishment.
She wouldn’t see him again after he left her at Bellwood. This wasn’t a beginning between them. It was an ending.
But not yet. Tonight she’d lie in his arms and love him and try to forget she’d lose him tomorrow. She leaned her forehead against his for a moment, laid her hands against his chest, and felt his muscles tense under her fingers, then slowly, tenderly she found his lips with hers.
Oh, God. So sweet.
And after all, endings didn’t have to be bitter, did they? They could be sweet, sweet enough to be mistaken for another beginning.
His gathered great fistfuls of her night rail into his hands. “I won’t say it, then.” He held her gently with a hand against her throat and looked into her eyes. “But it’s no less true for my silence, Charlotte, and you know it, just as I do.”
He didn’t give her a chance to speak, to deny it, but kissed her deeply, his mouth open, his tongue seeking hers, and she knew there could be no denial, not with the taste of him on her lips, and she met him eagerly, her mouth clinging to his, ravenous, every thrust of his tongue chasing the breath from her lungs.
Her breath, her heart—they were his.
She tore away with a gasp and grasped his wrists to stop him when his hands shot out to cradle her face and bring her lips back to his. “No.” She twined her fingers with his, raised his hand to her mouth and touched her open lips to his knuckles. “I want to watch your face this time.”
Julian’s lips parted in a sigh as she pressed a brief, hot kiss to the inside of his wrist. She lowered his hands to her waist and held them there for a moment to let him know not to move.
“Charlotte…”
“Shhh.” She traced a finger around his lips. “Soon.”
His skin was hot under her fingertips, the heat of him burning her hands through his shirt as she slid them over his chest and leaned forward to taste the hollow of his throat. He shuddered as her tongue played against him there, his hands squeezing her waist.
She tugged the hem of his shirt from his breeches and admired each inch of his skin as it was revealed, his stomach, corded with muscle, his skin darker than hers, olive-tinted, and so smooth under that seductive trail of dark hair low on his belly. She sifted it through her fingertips so she could hear his breath come short and feel his chest heave, then she took his hands from her waist and held his arms up to lift the shirt over his head, so his chest was bared for her.
“Let me touch you.” He dragged his hands from her waist up her rib cage. She shivered as they brushed the sides of her breasts. He noticed, and a faint smile touched his lips. “Or do you want to drive us both mad?”
“Am I driving you mad?” She raised herself to the tips of her toes to press her lips behind his ear, against his neck, his throat, soft, brief, open-mouthed kisses, just a taste until she opened her mouth against the center of his chest, felt his heart leap up to meet her lips as she licked him there and teased at his nipples, circling first with her fingertips, then the tip of her tongue.
His sharp indrawn breath made heat bloom in the secret place between her thighs. “Touch me then, before we both go mad.”
She felt his smile against her neck as he ran his teeth lightly over the sensitive skin there. He moved down her body, his hair tickling her chin. She gasped as he opened his mouth over her nipple, hot and wet against her straining flesh. A sigh slipped from her lips as he suckled her. How could his lips be so soft and so demanding at once? She wanted to ask, but when she opened her mouth all she could manage was an inarticulate moan. “Julian…”
He didn’t give her time to say more, but tossed aside her wrapper, dragged her night rail over her head, and lifted her into his arms. He lowered her onto the bed, then stood there for a moment, his hands on his falls, his eyes dark and hot as he looked down at her. “Do you want me, Charlotte?”
She gazed up at him. The firelight caressed him, trailing glowing fingers over one side of his face and burnishing his shoulders and chest to a deep gold. His hands hesitated over the buttons on his falls as he awaited her answer.
Want him. Didn’t he know everything in her ached for him? Not just for his body, but for him, body and soul, for everything he was, and everything he would become. She wanted him beyond reason, and beyond any right she had to want him. “Yes. So much, Julian.”
So much it breaks my heart.
Some emotion flitted across his face—pain, almost as if she’d spoken the words aloud, but there would be time for pain later, a lifetime, and she wouldn’t give it a place here and now.
She held out her arms to him. “Come here.”
And his face, ah, her heart did break then, for there was such yearning there, and she knew it was mirrored in her own face just as desperately, but hopelessly.
He came to her, moved over her, and she pushed the thought from her mind. Nothing else mattered but this moment, his legs twined with hers, his skin under her fingertips as her hands roamed over his back to his hips, his thighs—
“Ah Charlotte, yes,” he groaned as her hand closed around his cock. His hips surged forward as she stroked him. Triumph darted through her as she tightened her fingers around him and he gave another guttural moan and arched into her caress. Dear God, she wanted to make him shatter now, with just her hands on him, his magnificent body so much stronger than hers, but a body she’d rendered weak with desire as he panted and strained for his pleasure—
“Inside you.” He covered her hand with his own to still it. “Inside you, here.” He slipped his hand between her legs, slid a finger inside her, and brushed his thumb over the aching center of her, once, then again, until she abandoned any thought to bring him to pleasure with her hand and wrapped her legs around his waist to urge him closer, gasping when the head of his cock nudged inside her.
He hissed in a sharp breath and sank into her with one urgent thrust. “Ah, you’re so wet for me…always this way, sweetheart,” he murmured to her as he moved inside her, whispering words of passion and desire tangled with love. She clung to those words, hoarded them greedily, deep in her heart as she held him deep inside her body, his surging strokes taking her higher and higher until, with a low moan she found her pleasure and Julian followed, burying his face in her neck with a hoarse cry as he shuddered over her.
He gathered her close against him and eased over onto his side, his arm wrapped around her waist and his face buried in her hair. “I’ll find another way to take care of Jane,” he murmured after a moment. “I won’t let you go, Charlotte. I can’t. I love you.”
She said nothing, but watched the fire and listened to his breaths grow deep and even. Just before he drifted off to sleep he sighed, long and low.
Charlotte turned her face into the pillow.