Potent Pleasures (31 page)

Then she ordered a bath and lapsed into the steaming water, exhausted to the bone.

“Marie,” she called out from behind the screens that protected the bathtub from the cruel drafts which circulated in every room. Marie was muttering to herself in French as she hung her mistress’s gowns in the great wardrobe. She didn’t approve of Scottish castles, practically hanging off into a cloud of mist, this one was. The damp! And what were they to wear? She had packed the mistress
—and
herself—for Italy. And Italy this was not!

“Marie!” Charlotte called again.

“I’m sorry, my lady.” Marie’s annoyed little face appeared between a gap in the screens. “Would you like me to ring for more hot water?”

“Yes, I would, thank you, Marie. And would you please send a message to the earl, telling him that I intend to retire for the night and will simply have a tray in my room? I am exhausted.”

Marie didn’t think much of hiding in one’s bedroom; she thought Charlotte should go out there and battle her husband. But looking at Charlotte’s white face, she had to agree. Perhaps it would be better to take up cudgels tomorrow, when Charlotte had slept and looked her best.

“Of course, my lady. Should I instruct Mrs. McLean to call a seamstress to the castle tomorrow? I’m afraid that we must have those wools that we bought in Glasgow made up into dresses as soon as possible. You and Pippa will be down with colds in no time flat in this weather.”

“That’s a very good idea, Marie. When Pippa returns to the nursery, will you ask Katy to send her in with me? I should like to have supper with her, please.”

Marie bustled away. She sent for more hot water, and had the fire in the fireplace built up so high that sparks flooded up the chimney like fireflies caught in a draft. The room was warming up, Charlotte thought. Thank goodness, this room was considerably smaller than those making up the matrimonial suite down the hall. Out of the bath, she sat in a comfortable chair by the fire, so tired that she couldn’t even move. When Pippa was brought in she seemed just as drowsy, so they sat together in the big chair and Charlotte told her a story about a horse who could fly, called Peggy. Pegasus seemed a mouthful for a one-and-a-half-year-old girl.

After a while they had supper on a tray and Pippa was so tired that she didn’t even try to toss food into the air. She just sat quietly on Charlotte’s lap and opened her mouth docilely as Charlotte popped in bits of food.

Finally Charlotte toppled her into Katy’s arms and, pulling on a nightdress, crept into her warm bed. Marie built up the fire one more time and left. Charlotte lay awake for a while, staring at the fire as it danced in the grate, casting twisting shadows on the old stone walls. What was going to happen to her and Alex? More important, perhaps, what did she
want
to have happen? Now that they had met again, and all the hysterical fear she had that he would say something horrible, call her a disgusting name in front of Pippa or the servants, had died down, she felt at sea. All her energies had been directed toward controlling what she had thought would be a dreadful reunion, with Alex shouting insults. Indeed, she had simply forecast an Alex as enraged as he had been three weeks ago, on their wedding night.

Despite herself, Charlotte’s eyes filled with tears. Maybe it
was
her fault. Maybe she should have summoned the courage, before they got married, to detail exactly when they had met before. Instead, she had taken the coward’s way out, and believed her mother when she said no one would ever know she wasn’t a virgin. Alex was right in one regard: She had lied to him, at least by omission. Because he had thought she was a virgin, and she wasn’t. Charlotte sniffed. She had cried enough in the last three weeks to sink a boat, she thought with a twist of wry irony.

So what did she want? She wanted … she wanted what she couldn’t have. Alex
before
. An Alex who had never said such awful things to her, who had never thought such ugly things about her. Tears brimmed over again. But Charlotte was so tired that she couldn’t even cry long; she slipped into sleep between one sob and the next.

Meanwhile Alex dined in the same cold, regal splendor as he had for the last two weeks. He had sent his secretary back to London as soon as they arrived, with instructions to return with warm clothing. So Alex sat at one end of the vast table alone. The dining room in the castle was a monstrosity, designed to be full of men at arms and barking dogs. The ten footmen ranged along the side of the wall merely looked silly; in the old days, Alex thought, there were probably thirty or forty servants dodging around many tables. And it was bitterly cold, summer or not. Alex looked around in acute dislike. What was he doing here, in this drafty fortress? His old nurse would have said that it was at the back of the north wind, it was so chilly.

He pushed away his food halfway through supper. Hell, he had a wife, didn’t he? Why not talk to her? He was tired of eating alone. He walked upstairs, brushing past his surprised butler just as McDougal ushered in the fish course. In his room Alex paused. Should he knock on the adjoining door? After finding Maria in bed with the footman, he always knocked on her door. Thinking of that, Alex sharply pushed open the door to the adjoining chamber. But it opened to the same slightly dusty, empty magnificence that had been taunting him for the last few weeks. The bed hangings were moth-eaten. He had thought of having them cleaned for Charlotte, but forgot about it. Alex quickly pulled his own bedroom door shut, realizing that all the heat from his fireplace was escaping into the cold damp next door. So where the hell was his wife?

He bellowed down the corridor.

“McDougal!”

Silence punctuated the faint wail of wind in the corridor. He shouted again.

“McDougal!”

Then he heard panting steps winding up the stairs.

“Yes, my lord,” puffed his rotund butler.

“Where is the countess?” His narrowed eyes dared McDougal to be impertinent.

McDougal’s face didn’t shift a muscle. “She is in the north bedroom, my lord, being as she is wishful for more light.” He bowed and exited precipitously. McDougal had heard an unexpurgated version of the events in Depford from the countess’s own maid, Marie, and he didn’t want to witness an explosion of the new earl’s temper. Foakes seemed all right when he visited here some four years ago—in fact, they had all been pleasantly surprised given that he was an Englishman—but that was before he inherited. And turning into an earl could have a perishing bad effect on a person’s temper, McDougal knew.

Alex turned down the corridor to his left, wondering where in the deuce the north bedroom was. More light, ha! In a bedroom with that name? He judged he was roughly facing north, so he headed all the way up the corridor and grabbed the first door handle he saw. A wave of warmth greeted him as he opened the door. He walked inside and closed the heavy wood behind him, leaning against it. The room seemed to be empty. He was in a small bedroom that he didn’t remember even seeing on his last visit here. There were windows on two sides, hung with thick red velvet curtains. Finally he walked over and looked in the bed, the only place he couldn’t see from the door. And there was his wife. She was tucked under a blanket, fast asleep.

For a moment or two Alex just stared at her. Charlotte’s hair had grown from its fashionable short cut; soft, dusky curls spilled down over her collar and lay rumpled behind her raised hand. From what he could see, she wasn’t wearing a temptress’s gown tonight; there was a white ruffle framing her face. Annoyed at himself for even thinking about her nightdress, Alex plumped down on the bed and shook Charlotte’s shoulder, rather roughly.

She woke silently and stared at him, her eyes black and shadowed by the only light, coming from the fireplace. Then she gasped and instinctively pulled back.

Alex didn’t move, but he was startled. Was she so afraid of him that she thought he might hit her?

In fact, Charlotte was shocked to see him. Her traitorous mind had spun her into a dream in which Alex was begging forgiveness and kissing her breasts at the same time, and she had been falling into a swooning whirlpool of desire—and here he was, sitting on her bed. Staring at her with an arrogant eyebrow raised. Her heart thumped in response to a flood of scorching desire: to touch him, to reach out and pull him down to her, to kiss him sweetly, to tell him she … And just as quickly, Charlotte’s blood cooled. She was never going to be lured into acting like a whore again. That much she would grant him: She responded to him in a way that no lady ever would. Well, she
was
a lady, she reminded herself. Just because one’s husband had a sensual mouth that made butterflies skip in one’s stomach was no excuse for losing control.

“What are you doing here?” she asked, her voice as smooth as butter and about as warm.

“Looking for my wife,” Alex responded. He was determined not to get angry. After all, he just wanted a little companionship, and that was his marital right. There was no need for them to have an argument about it.

“Why?”

“Why not? It’s lonely sitting down there at a table built for Scottish giants, all by myself.”

“I am very tired, my lord,” Charlotte said evenly. “We traveled a long way today, and I would be grateful if you would allow me to return to sleep.”

“You traveled all of three hours,” Alex retorted. “I asked Keating when I was trying to figure out why it took you ten days longer than me to arrive here.” He reached out and trailed a finger down his wife’s delicate cheekbone.

She flinched away from him and his eyes narrowed.

“We need to talk about our future,” Alex said. “You see, I have decided to take you back. Under a few conditions, the primary one being that you never sleep with another man besides myself. You will do nothing to taint the reputation of my name. In return, I will not repudiate you for having slept with my brother.”

“I did not—”

Alex raised his hand, cutting Charlotte off. “Apparently you lost your virginity to my brother. However, no matter how unfortunate the joke on both of us—had you waited a few months, I suppose you could have married Patrick—we are the ones who are married now. And I think we should make the best of it.” He paused, but his wife didn’t seem disposed to say anything. She stared at the blanket, her face shadowed.

“I will share your bed,” Alex said with deliberate cruelty, “whenever I please. However, let me repeat, no one else must share that bed with you, or I will banish you, and I shall not summon you back to London until one of us is on our deathbed.”

Then Charlotte realized that, in fact, they did need to talk. She pushed herself up in the bed, resting against the headboard so she didn’t feel so vulnerable. Then she folded her hands in her lap, just as her mother did when she argued with her father.

“My lord,” she said composedly, “it seems I must remind you of your own words in Depford. You said that you would never sleep with me again.”

“Well, perhaps I won’t
sleep
in this room. The bed is a trifle small for my taste, after all.” Alex’s eyes devoured the gentle swell of Charlotte’s breasts, even muffled as they were in folds of white cotton.

It was Charlotte’s turn to narrow her eyes. This man seemed to think that he could do anything he wanted: be a monster one day and expect to seduce her the next.

“I refuse.”

There was a moment of dangerous silence.

“You refuse? Exactly what do you
refuse?
”

“I refuse to sleep with you, no matter how euphemistically you might want to phrase it. Surely,” she added with deadly irony, “as a
whore
I should have the right to choose my own clients.”

“That’s just what you don’t have,” her husband responded, his eyes gleaming coolly at her. “I’m your husband. I can
have
you, whenever—and wherever—I please. And I please to have you here, in this bed.”

Charlotte thought about this for a moment. She knew that Alex had the right; she simply thought he would never want to exercise it, given the utter disgust he exhibited on their wedding night. Finally she gave a little shrug. He had probably realized that he needed an heir. But she’d be damned if she would let him seduce her again and then savage her with insults.

“All right,” she said. She reached under the covers and pulled up her nightdress to her waist, pushing down the blanket. Then she lay back and closed her eyes. Despite her calm exterior, Charlotte was absolutely pulverized with terror. She had just done the boldest, most mad thing she had ever done in her life. Here she was, totally vulnerable. The cool air brushed her thighs and she shivered. Sex like this was going to hurt, she knew it intuitively. Her legs seemed to have turned to a shaking mass of jelly.

Alex was staring at her incredulously. Silence descended on the room, broken only by flurries of crackling sparks from the fireplace. After a while Charlotte opened her eyes.

“Have you changed your mind?”

Alexander Foakes was slowly finding that he was more angry than he had ever been in his life.

“No,” he breathed, with a harsh smile. “No, I haven’t changed my mind.” Charlotte closed her eyes again, terrified by the look on Alex’s face. For some reason this was making him look more enraged—if that was possible—than he had been on their wedding night.

“What’s the matter?” she asked, opening her eyes again.

“What’s the matter,” Alex repeated, his voice grating. “My wife lies there like a dead turnip and asks me, ‘What’s the matter?’”

“I don’t know what you want,” she said, just a little shakily. “Why are you complaining?”

Alex didn’t reply. She is trying to get revenge, he realized suddenly. She’s angry about the things I said in Depford. He stretched out his hand and ran it up the long, sleek line of Charlotte’s thigh. Then he reached under the nightdress and ran his hand over the silky ripple that was her ribs, stopping at the beginning of a womanly curve. The intoxicating weight of her breasts made his blood beat furiously. If he couldn’t seduce his own wife, then he didn’t deserve his earlship.