She flicked her horse with her reins and left at a canter.
Gerard watched her slight figure greet O’Mally.
“Tonight, Charlotte,” he promised softly to himself. “And we will both be satisfied.”
His body hardened at the thought. But another sensation invaded his chest. One he’d not felt for a very long time.
An ache.
Almost midnight and still no sign of Hawkworth. She should be glad. She was glad. Desperately relieved. He would have spoiled everything and the end was almost in sight. Lord Graves was a hair’s breadth from an offer.
“You waltzed with Hawkworth yesterday,” Graves whined.
She resisted the urge to bat him away like an annoying gnat on a summer’s eve. Shocked at the disloyal thought, she smiled at him and replied in soft tones. “His Grace did not take account of my wishes.”
The young man stiffened. “If he offered you some insult—”
“Not at all.” She lightly touched his arm with her fan. “It was more a misunderstanding. Tonight, I have danced three dances with you, more than with any other gentleman. To dance again would not be seemly.” Unless they were married. She let the unspoken words hang in the air.
He wooed her against his family’s objections and she would not provide them with the ammunition of scandalous behaviour. Meeting the Duke in the park could have been a disaster. She’d thought to talk to him as a friend, beg him to leave her in peace, until he’d shown his true colours. Lust, not friendship, drove their relationship.
And her taunt about marriage had stabbed at the heart of matters between them. A duke could not marry the daughter of a debt-ridden sot, any more than the ducal heir could have. The old duke had been brutally frank. His heir would be more than pleased to set her up as his mistress, but never as a wife. Nothing had altered in the intervening years.
Gerard was no knight on a white charger arriving to save her from her dragons.
“You will let me take you to supper,” Lord Graves said, his jaw jutting. “You promised.”
More whining. She contained a sigh of impatience and nodded gravely. “I am looking forward to it.” It would be different when they were married. He’d be less inclined to remain underfoot. “If you will excuse me, for a moment, I have a torn flounce that needs pinning.” And a headache brewing.
The darling boy looked anxious. “Hurry back. I will fetch you some champagne.”
Oh how she longed for respite from his constant youthful chatter and jealous eye. Feeling as if she might at any moment die of suffocation, Charlotte fled the ballroom.
It would be fine after they wed, her mind repeated like a mantra as she hurried along the hallway to the ladies’ withdrawing room. She would make him a good wife. They would retire to the country. Breed lots of children she could love. And Father would be saved.
An arm shot out from a doorway, curling around her waist and dragging her into a darkened room.
Her stomach jolted. She opened her mouth to scream, but nothing came out when a warm finger pressed against her lips and a familiar voice said, “Hush.”
The scent of his bay cologne swirled around her. “Your Grace?”
“Charlotte.”
He spoke her name in his deep voice. He cupped her face in his hands. “Have you forgotten my name so soon, sweet?”
The endearment tore at her heart, ripped open the wounds she thought long since healed.
She jerked her head away to no avail. “Let me go.”
He sighed. “I wish I could. Say my name.”
“Gerard,” she spat at him, desperate for release in case she committed the error of this morning. “Let me go, before someone sees us.”
He released her. Her cheeks felt suddenly chill. She stared at a face shadowed from her gaze, the shadow of her girlish dreams and the shadow of her lonely nights. “Why are you doing this?”
“This?”
“Plaguing me? Following me?” When you never followed when I most needed you, the broken voice whispered in her head. The voice she usually ignored. She turned away, strode to peer through the gloom at a portrait above the mantel. “Why did you drag me in here?”
The striking of a tinderbox sounded behind her. Candles flared to life, the room, a library, took shape around her as he lit the scattering of candelabra and the sconce between the bow windows.
She swung around. “Why, Gerard?”
He blew out the taper and tossed it in the empty hearth. A wicked smile touched his lips. “Did I tell you how beautiful you look tonight?”
She tossed her head. “You and a hundred others.”
“You’ve grown cruel, Charlotte. The adulation of striplings has gone to your head.”
The words were spoken lightly but they lashed like a whip. “You were the same kind of stripling once,” she replied, wielding her own lash.
In three strides, he came to stand before her, his body no longer that of a boy but of a powerful male. Large and full of arrogant confidence. He gripped her shoulders, his gaze searching her face, his lips thin, his eyes hard enough to break her. “That boy is gone,” he said softly and his mouth descended on hers. Ravishing. Punishing. Blissfully hot. The kiss of a bold, hungry man.
How she longed to yield, to feel again the joy, to relive their passion. Her body trembled with eagerness. Pride came to her rescue. She stiffened against his onslaught, fought for command of her traitorous body and heart.
He lifted his mouth, but didn’t release her. “Why?” he murmured against her lips. “Why, Charlotte?”
She shrugged free from the circle of his arms, strode with short impatient steps to the window and shifted the edge of the drape. Outside, street lamps wavered in the mist, blurring her vision. An image of her father languishing in a French debtors’ prison hardened her resolve and her voice. “Why what?”
He came up behind her. “Why did you leave?”
She spun around. Incredulous. “Why would I stay?”
His jaw flickered. “And so here you are back again, married, widowed and once more plying your wiles on a green youth.”
Pain like a clenched fist in her stomach almost doubled her over. “He is a fine young man.”
“And wealthy.”
Heat rose to her hairline. He made it sound so sordid. She paced away from him, her silk skirts catching at her legs, her heart beating a retreat. She clenched her fists against the fear. A terrible fear she could deny him nothing. “What makes you think you can once more interfere in my affairs?”
“Affairs? A good choice of words.” He gave a hard laugh. “Have you forgotten what we had together?”
An ache carved a swathe through bone and muscle all the way to her soul. “We had nothing,” she cried. “And you know it.” She eyed the distance to the door. If she ran …
He cut off her retreat with one smooth step, held her upper arms. Fury blazed in his eyes along with the hotter fire of possession.
“We had this,” he growled and claimed her mouth with a plundering kiss.
Even as she began to fight, he softened his mouth, wooed her with his sensual lips, planted small kisses to the corners of her mouth, the tip of her nose, her closed eyelids.
Every inch of her face garnered his attention and her heart opened like a parched rose in the desert to a gentle rain.
Yielding, she sighed and twined her arms about his neck as her body remembered the sensations of his touch. He nuzzled her throat, kissed the pulse beneath her ear, and murmured, “I missed you.”
“Oh, Gerard.”
More kisses rained on her face and lips, tastes and licks remembered and yearned for over long tearful nights.
One step at a time he eased her into the window embrasure. Under the spell of his delicious mouth, she startled when the window frame touched her back. He pressed into her, his thigh parting her legs, his hands cradling her face. “Remember?” he asked.