Chapter Four
When she was a girl, Charlotte had dreamed of her future with Ewan, and it had been all sunshine and flowers and castles on the hill. As she got older, she’d wanted his kiss or to hold his hand.
Womanhood had changed all that. Her marriage had taught her something about pleasure, and her heated dreams had turned to Ewan’s hands on her. His mouth on her. Their bodies tangled in sweaty, pounding passion.
But never, not in all the years she had wanted him and loved him, had she ever dared to hope for as much tenderness and pleasure as she had just experienced. Ewan might have been a virgin before that night, but his natural talent made up for any lack of experience.
And now she lay in his arms, her naked legs tangled in his, her body still trembling from two powerful orgasms, and she dared to hope that she could have flowers and castles, kisses and held hands and all the passion that boiled between them.
That is, until he moved. Slowly he detangled himself from her and sat up, putting his back to her as he sat on the edge of the bed. His shoulders were rolled, his back slightly hunched. It was a posture of pain. Of defeat, and her heart hurt as she stared at him this way.
She sat up and reached for him. Her hand touched his shoulder and he flinched before he turned to look at her. His dark eyes were empty as he signed, “I’m sorry, Charlotte.”
She shook her head as she joined him on the edge of the bed, swinging her bare legs so they hung just next to his. “Why?” she whispered, leaning in to kiss him.
He let her for a moment, his lips softening, his body edging toward the surrender she wanted so badly. But then he stiffened and pulled back. She looked at him in the fading firelight and saw the same expression on his face that he’d had the night she confessed her heart to him. The night he’d turned her away.
If she didn’t want a repeat of that horrible experience, she had to back off. Go slower. Take what he would give and ease him into more, rather than throwing herself at his feet and begging for it here and now.
She drew a deep, long breath. “Don’t back away from me, Ewan.”
His hands stirred to reply and she caught them so he couldn’t.
“Please,” she whispered. “This doesn’t have to be anything more than pleasure, does it? We want each other, don’t we?” She released his hands and let her fingers trace the harsh line of his jaw, smiling when his whiskers tickled her skin. “I feel it when I touch you. I see it when you look at me. Or would you deny that’s true?”
He sighed deeply and shook his head. “I wouldn’t sport with your intelligence, Charlotte, and try to deny what you know.”
Her smile broadened at his admission. Tonight she’d gone so much further with him than she’d ever hoped to dream. That gave her hope she could have even more. If she were careful.
“I’m not trying to force anything more out of you,” she lied. “When the holidays are over, I will go back to London. Back on the marriage mart.”
His eyes widened and there was desperation that slashed across his face as he signed, “Why?”
She shrugged gently. “Money, Ewan. And it will be expected of me. So I know where my future lies—I know you won’t give me that. But right now I’m here with you. And I want you, just as I always have. There is only a little bit of time where we’ll be alone like this. Can’t we do this? Just this? Won’t you grant me that when you deny me everything else?”
He jerked his face toward her, and in that charged moment she saw that he wanted more than she asked for. He wanted all the same things she did. But then the expression changed—he pushed those wants away, buried them deep under a layer of self-recrimination and staunch belief that he had earned no happiness or future thanks to the silence he couldn’t control.
But she’d seen the truth, the one he’d always denied, and hope flared harder and hotter in her than it ever had before.
She leaned closer, brushing her lips against his shoulder, dragging them up his neck to dart her tongue against his ear. He tasted warm, he tasted perfect, and she felt him shiver at her touch. He turned into her, gathering her into his arms, dragging her across his lap.
She had her answer, and it was lost as she was swept back onto the pillows once more. His mouth ground down against her, heated and heady and sweet. She lifted into him, opening herself to everything he wanted, anything he desired. She would give him all that and more if it meant even a sliver of a chance to conquer the heart he guarded so jealously.
He pushed her legs open with his knees and she gasped as he speared her still-wet pussy with one long, heavy thrust. He was so big inside of her, stretching her to her limit, until she squirmed with the pleasure of the fullness. She lifted into him, tensing against him, releasing him, watching as his mouth twitched and his gaze darkened with undeniable desire.
He slid back and then all the way to the hilt again and she arched beneath him. He hit spots inside of her that she had never known existed. Places that made her body sing a new song of pleasure, one very different from any she’d learned in her marriage or at her own hand.
He buried his mouth into her neck as he thrust hard and fast, swirling his hips so that he hit that magical place deep within her and also stimulated her tingling clitoris with his hips. She began to shake as she dug her nails into his shoulders, as she whispered his name over and over because she could remember no other word than that.
He never faltered, he never altered, he just drove and drove and drove, lifting her higher and higher before she toppled into a spiral of pleasure. She screamed against his lips as he kissed her through the crisis. Her mind was empty except for sensation—nothing mattered more than their joined bodies and everything that she felt from her head to her flexing toes.
She was shaking as she came down from the high unlike any she’d ever experienced. He was still driving into her, his neck flexed, his eyes shut, and then his lips opened and he let out all his breath. She stared, captivated by the beauty of this man who was always in control finally letting go. He withdrew but remained above her, and she felt the warmth of him pump between them as she clung to him, holding him closer, never wanting to let him go.
Now she just had to find a way to make him see that here was where he had always wanted to be.
Ewan opened his eyes slowly and was greeted by the most wonderful and unexpected sight. Charlotte lay beside him, her body tucked against his, her hair splayed across his arms and chest. In his bed. They had moved there during the night. He’d meant to go alone, to avoid the inevitability of someone coming to look for him in the wee hours of the morning and finding them in her room.
But she had resisted and she had seduced and followed. Now they were here together and he had never loved his bed more. The light in the chamber was dim, but just enough that he could examine her while she slept.
She was beautiful, of course. Charlotte had always been beautiful. Even when she was a little girl, her bright hair and green eyes and quick laugh had turned the heads of many a boy in their acquaintance. As she grew up, her beauty had only increased. She’d never had an awkward phase like so many little girls. She’d just flowered, and Ewan had hung on every moment of her transformation from girl to woman.
And there was no denying she was a woman now. A confident woman, one who would pursue what she wanted with dogged and singular focus. Denying her had always been almost impossible. Now was no different.
He drew in a soft breath and reached out to trace the soft slope of her shoulder, the line of her arm. His fingers trailed over her side beneath the blankets and he memorized the swell of her hip with his hands. She stirred a little and he froze, watching as her lips parted on a contented little sigh. She didn’t wake, though. Was it because she was a heavy sleeper? Just exhausted from a night of passionate exploration?
She wanted him to find out. She wanted him to take this time alone and make it theirs. But…he wasn’t sure. In the light of day, even with her tucked against his body, he knew that wasn’t right. It wasn’t something that a gentleman and a lady did.
Only that body didn’t seem to care. Even now when she curled her hand against his chest and burrowed closer, his cock swelled to life and demanded he do things to her. Wicked, wonderful things.
His mind wanted things, too. After all, he had loved Charlotte since the moment she took his hand and dragged him inside to listen to his father the day he’d been abandoned with his aunt and uncle. Loving her had only become easier as wanting her became more and more painful.
He loved her now, looking down at her, a little smile on her face as she dreamed of…well, he could only imagine what she dreamed of. If he were any other man, he would have offered for her years ago. The moment she was out in Society, he would have gone to her brother and asked for her hand so that no one else could ever make a claim.
But he wasn’t any other man. He wasn’t normal. He wasn’t right. He was damaged. His father had told him that five times a day for ten years, and Ewan knew he was right. What other man had to carry a notebook around in his pocket just to communicate? And if the notebook was missing? He was reduced to pointing and grunting like some animal. People stared. Whispered. Laughed. Talked about him like he wasn’t there or wasn’t intelligent enough to hear their mocking.
Was that a life for Charlotte?
And what if they had children? What if he passed along his brokenness to some little boy or girl? Then he would have to watch that child tread down a horrible path like he had.
He flinched at the thought, at the pain that accompanied it. He wouldn’t pass that pain to anyone, not even his worst enemy. How could he even consider passing it to this woman he loved and any children they would produce together?
Whatever Charlotte was trying to do with this seduction, he might not be able to resist physically. But he had to remain strong when it came to everything else. When it came to a future he knew they couldn’t have.
A knock on the outer door to his chamber broke through his troubling train of thought, and Charlotte stirred again at the sound. She lifted her head, eyes bleary with sleep, and when she saw him, she smiled. She snuggled into him.
“I thought you might be a dream,” she murmured, voice still thick with sleep. “I’m so glad this is real.” The knock came again and she shook her head. “What time is it?”
He signed, “Early. I need to answer it.”
He leaned in to kiss her, then managed to extract himself from her arms and get out of the warm bed. He grabbed for a robe that was draped on the back of a chair and checked its pocket for his notebook before he slipped from the master chamber and into the entryway.
When he opened the door, he found Smith awaiting him. While the butler was normally pulled together, this morning he had clearly been interrupted in the midst of his toilette. His hair was slightly disheveled and his jacket was crooked.
“I’m so sorry to wake you, Your Grace,” he said with an incline of his head. “But the rain continued overnight. The water is rising like last year.”
Ewan nodded before he wrote, “Then we’ll need to sandbag and move the tenants closest to the water’s edge.”
“Half a dozen men have started down to the river to start filling the bags with sand, Your Grace,” Smith responded.
Ewan glanced over his shoulder. The irresponsible part of him wanted to let his staff take care of the issue and just stay in bed with Charlotte all day. But he couldn’t do it. And perhaps it was best to have a day apart anyway. It could only help him find the distance he liked to keep between them.
“I will ready myself and join them,” he wrote. “I will not need a valet.”
“Very good, sir,” Smith said. “Will you require anything else?”
Ewan shook his head, reached out to squeeze Smith’s shoulder in thanks and stepped back into the chamber. As he made his way back into the bedroom, he found Charlotte there, sitting up in his bed, his sheets barely wrapped around her body. Want rose up in him, pounding through his veins and making his cock hard and achy beneath his robe.
“Flooding?” she said, concern heavy in her voice.
He shed out of the robe and went to his wardrobe to find some of his working clothes. As he stepped into his trousers, he signed with one hand, “Yes, the proximity of my property to both river and sea makes it a beautiful place, but also dangerous. This year and last the heavy rains have caused flooding. My father let the tenants deal with it themselves, but I see it as my responsibility.”
“And so you fill bags with sand?” she asked, watching his every move as he dressed. Her focused regard did not make this easier. “Is that what Smith said?”
“That’s right,” he signed, then tugged his shirt over his head. When his hands were free again, he continued, “It provides a temporary dam that directs the water away from the houses. This repeat of last year’s situation means we must build a retaining wall in the spring. But for now, I must go out and help the men.”
She pushed to her feet, the sheets fluttering away and revealing her utterly naked body. He swallowed hard past a suddenly very thick throat and fought desperately to focus on what she was saying.
“I’m coming with you.”
He blinked, and her nakedness faded slightly into the background at her shocking statement. He shook his head and signed, “Too dangerous!”
She arched a brow and grabbed for her gown from the previous night. As she struggled into it, she said, “You’ll need all the help you can get. And wouldn’t it be easier to communicate through sign rather than trying to write notes in the rain?”
He pursed his lips. She wasn’t wrong there. In inclement weather outside it was sometimes a struggle to communicate. A slowdown in what they were doing could mean damage to his property or even injury to his people. But he looked at Charlotte, still gorgeous and sophisticated even with her dress half unfastened and her hair around her shoulders, and had a hard time picturing her slogging through the rain and mud in her gown.
“You’ll get soaked,” he protested swiftly. “And be cold.”
She shrugged. “I have a few heavier gowns and most of them are in mourning colors. I wouldn’t be sad to see them destroyed. I even have boots, since I visited Meg and Simon before coming here and Meg loves to take walks through the property, rain or shine.”
Ewan sighed. Once again, it was impossible to say no to her. She stepped up and leaned in to kiss him gently. “You can’t break me, Ewan. I’m stronger than I look.”
“I never doubted that,” he signed slowly.
She touched his cheek and then turned her back. “Fasten me, will you? Then I’ll run and change into something old and ugly and pull my hair back. It won’t be a quarter of an hour, I promise you. Enough time for you to make any other arrangements.”
He buttoned her, trying to ignore the jolts of awareness when his fingertips brushed her soft skin. Then he turned her to face him. “You must promise me you’ll be careful,” he signed.
She nodded. “Always, Ewan. I’ll meet you in the foyer in two shakes!”
With that, she gathered her slippers and rushed from the room, leaving him to stare after her. He’d thought today might be a way to distance himself from the way Charlotte wrapped herself so easily around him.
But now it was about to turn into a view into his very soul for her, and a look into hers, too. Because he well knew that the way those of rank dealt with regular people said a lot about who they were. In her, he had no doubt he would see kindness, but also the distance that her rank required.
And she would see how much he belonged in the common rabble. What she did with that knowledge remained to be seen.