Potent Pleasures (40 page)

“Don’t be stupid!” Sophie snapped. “He’s your husband—everything belongs to him now.”

“No, it doesn’t. My father negotiated a peculiar dowry based on the rumors surrounding Alex’s first marriage. He believed Alex, but he demanded that I retain my own property. And Alex … Alex didn’t care.” She pushed away the memory of a laughing Alex, insisting that he didn’t give a snap of his fingers for her money. That was Alex before their wedding, when he thought she was a virgin. What a tangled mess this is, she thought in a moment of dispassionate logic.

“So the house in Wales is my property. I shall go there until the baby is born, and then I am going to travel to America.”

Sophie thought about this. Charlotte was clearly hysterical, even given her collected tone. She couldn’t take Alex’s children and move to America; they would find her and throw her in jail. On the other hand, Sophie judged that Alex probably needed a cooling-down period. Not too long, because he had to be there for Charlotte’s delivery or he might never believe that the child was his.

“All right,” Sophie said with sudden resolution. “How are we going to get out of the house without Alex knowing?”

“Oh, Sophie. You are a sweetheart, but you can’t come with me. You’d be ruined.”

“Don’t be a fool. I won’t be ruined.”

“Yes, you will,” Charlotte insisted passionately. “You won’t be able to get married if you run off with me—my God, you probably shouldn’t even be visiting me now!”

Sophie looked at Charlotte wryly. Clearly this was the first time the thought crossed Charlotte’s mind. She was such an innocent!

“Sweetheart, don’t you realize that it’s all about money? I am my father’s heir. Nothing could ruin me except being found absolutely naked in someone’s bedroom.”

“I don’t believe you, Sophie. Look what ruined me: a faint and a touch on Patrick’s cheek.”

“You’re married,” Sophie explained. “Once you are married, it’s all different. A married woman can sleep with as many men as she wants, as long as she is absolutely discreet. Because common adultery is not really interesting. You may make the gossip columns but you won’t be ruined. But a wrong move in an interesting direction—say, showing affection for your husband’s brother, and compounding that with getting pregnant in his absence,
and
not showing how close you are to giving birth—well, that can ruin a woman. But even that kind of ruination can be salvaged, because you are so very rich, Charlotte, and so is Alex.”

Charlotte digested all this in silence. “It doesn’t matter,” she finally said flatly. “Because Alex thinks I did sleep with his brother. I suppose if I stayed here and the baby was born tomorrow, he would believe that the child was his. But he would still take the child away. He thought I was a … a trollop before.”

“Why?” Sophie asked.

Charlotte hesitated. She had never told Sophie the reason why she and Alex had had such a tempestuous wedding night.

“I slept with him before we got married,” Charlotte said. “I slept with him at a ball.” She couldn’t bring herself to say it was at the Cyprians’ Ball, so-called. “And he doesn’t remember it, and thinks I slept with his brother. So to him all of this gossip is confirmation that I really love his brother. Oh, God, how could I have been so stupid!” Because now Charlotte realized that of course Alex would believe the article. Of course he wouldn’t think the child was his.

Sophie was looking at Charlotte with fascination. She sat down next to her. “You slept with him—at a ball?”

Charlotte nodded.

“And he doesn’t
remember?
Lord, how many women has he deflowered at a ball?”

Charlotte shook her head helplessly. “We never discussed the place. He jumped to the conclusion, on our wedding night, that I had slept with Patrick. And then he refused to talk about it again. He promised … he promised.” Charlotte’s voice caught on a sob, but she steadied herself. “He promised to trust me.”

Sophie gave her a sympathetic squeeze. She had virtually no belief in male promises, but it didn’t seem the right moment to point that out. Charlotte was extraordinarily beautiful when she was her ordinary self, but pregnant … she was exquisite. It was very hard to believe that a man had allowed sex with Charlotte to slip his mind.

“I still can’t believe that he doesn’t remember sleeping with you—especially given that you were a virgin.”

Charlotte shrugged. “He says he never met me before.”

“Who should we bring with us?” Sophie said practically.

“Katy, Marie, and your maid,” Charlotte replied. “Keating and Mall are already in Wales, thank goodness.”

“The problem is that we need to get Alex out of the way. Let me take care of it,” Sophie said with sudden vigor. She left Charlotte to find Katy and instruct her to pack Pippa’s things. Sophie walked down the stairs, straining to hear Alex’s deep voice. The house was silent. Her feet resounded on the marble floor of the entrance-way as she hesitated a minute. Then she headed for the library. She entered and closed the door, leaning back against it.

Alex was drinking a glass of brandy, his third that day. He looked up without interest.

“If you have come to plead her case, you might as well forget it,” he said curtly.

“Where is your brother?”

Alex measured Sophie’s length with his heavy lidded eyes. “I feel sure that my lovely wife can answer that question better than I can,” he sneered.

“You need to find your brother,” Sophie repeated. “Where is he?”

“In Leicestershire, they say.”

“Can you find him?”

“Why bother? I’m sure he’ll show up here sooner or later. He can’t have had all he wants of Charlotte’s body, even if she is pregnant.” He threw back the glass of brandy and poured himself another.

“Can you find him?”

“I suppose,” Alex said with deadly irony. “But why bother?”

“Because you are an idiot and there’s always the chance that your brother can bring you to your senses,” Sophie said, speaking with just as much irony as he had used. “On the other hand, he
is
your brother; maybe he won’t be able to remember who he slept with in the past five years or so.”

Alex flashed her a look of acute dislike. “Hellion,” he said unemotionally.

“I may be a hellion,” Sophie bit back, “but I wouldn’t ruin my family when there was no evidence to justify it. Surely your conscience won’t allow you to throw away your wife like a used cravat before you even
speak
to her supposed seducer?”

“Seducer? I would say that she was almost certainly the seducer,” Alex growled.

“You are remarkably precise, my lord,” Sophie replied. “Are you afraid to talk to your brother? What will you do when he tells you that he met your wife only twice, for extremely brief periods of time?”

Alex stared at her, a small pulse beating in the corner of his mouth.

Sophie stared back, her eyes steady. “Will you simply condemn your own twin brother, out of hand, as you have condemned your wife? Without asking for an explanation?”

Alex felt as if a band was tightening around his forehead. “Just what would you have me do?” he asked harshly. “I left my wife when she had her monthly bleeding, and I return to find her pregnant. Exactly what explanation could she offer?”

Sophie ignored this statement. She was none too clear about the progress of pregnancy, and certainly not enough to quibble over medical facts.

“She says you promised to trust her.”

The words dropped into the charged silence between them like small leaden weights. Alex kicked the log burning in the fireplace. Maybe he should seek out Patrick. What the hell was he to do tonight, anyway? Banish his wife to Scotland in the dark?

“Can you find him and return before three weeks?”

“Yes,” Alex said absently, not even thinking about Sophie’s odd question. Braddon Chatwin lived two days’ ride from Downes Manor. “All right,” he said finally, straightening up with a last vicious kick at the burning log. “Tell my wife”—bitingly—”that she should be ready to travel to Scotland a week from now.”

Sophie nodded and slipped back out the door of the study. She didn’t trust herself to speak again, she was so angry. Ten minutes later the front door slammed and Alex shouted for his horse.

Sophie and Charlotte looked at each other over the piles of clothes littering Charlotte’s bed. Three maids were bustling about, helping Marie pack. Charlotte fingered a little pile of soft white baby garments.

“He didn’t … show any signs of relenting?” she whispered.

Sophie shook her head. Charlotte took a gulping breath of air. Sophie said firmly, “After we get to
Scotland
, Charlotte, you can buy more things for the baby.”

Charlotte looked at her, startled. Sophie nodded toward the four women in the room and drew Charlotte to the door. “Come on, darling. Let’s go play with Pippa. We can leave first thing in the morning.”

“No!” Charlotte protested in the hallway. “I want to leave tonight!”

“It’s not good for the baby. You need to rest.” Sophie’s voice admitted no arguments. “If we tell everyone that our destination is Scotland, it will throw Alex off the trail for a week or so.”

Charlotte nodded. It was true that every bone in her body ached to lie down, especially now that she knew Alex was out of the house.

“I’ll send a tray to your room,” Sophie said consolingly. “We can leave first thing in the morning.”

That night Charlotte fell into a sleep so deep that she hardly stirred on the pillows. Toward morning a dream flowered, a seductively tender memory. She was back in Scotland with Alex, in the days when they were so happy. They had gone for a picnic on the banks of Grouse Lake. Katy had taken Pippa back to the house for a nap, and Alex’s eyes were glowing as the carriage bore their child away.

“The coach won’t return for at least fifteen minutes.” Alex’s deep voice was seductive, suggestive. He slipped off one of Charlotte’s peach-colored slippers and ran his fingers over the delicate arch of her foot. “It’s not enough time for … a five-course meal,” Alex murmured. He bent his head and white teeth bit her toes gently.

He plucked a white daisy from the tender green grass by her feet and rubbed it on her thigh, just above the top of her stockings.

Waves of erotic heat washed up Charlotte’s legs. Alex began to move up her body with small wolfish bites, laughing at her gasping remonstrances. In her sleep Charlotte’s face eased into a blissful smile.

But then the dream suddenly changed. She was standing on the wharf that led out into the lake, and a fog had come up. Tendrils of snaky white were twining about her feet, drifting off the water. Fogs came up so quickly in Scotland; one minute the sun was shining and the next minute the world was ghastly, faintly shiny with dew. She looked about, calling for her husband. Then to her horror she heard a floundering, splashing noise and a little voice calling, “Mama! Mamaaa!”

Charlotte woke up, her heart beating so fast that she felt as if she were ill. The baby in her womb had woken up too and was dancing a brisk tattoo. She breathed in gasps, trying to calm down. She was in her own bed, and Pippa was fast asleep in the nursery. Pippa was not drowning in a black Scottish lake, calling for her mama.

Finally Charlotte’s heart slowed and she leaned back. Something in me has changed, she realized, soothing the small, sharp bumps that were her baby’s kicking feet. Pippa … I have to protect my children, Charlotte thought fiercely. To hell with Alex’s kisses and his passion. It was empty, without trust, based on lust. He had
used
her, like a meal spread out before him, and then he rejected her as casually as he might reject venison if he felt like eating veal.

And Alex didn’t care about the babies anyway. He ran off to France without a second thought about Pippa. Charlotte spread her hands on her tummy, caressing the round bump that she thought was perhaps a head, or maybe a bottom. “I promise,” she whispered into the hushed night. “I promise I will love you, and trust you, and never, never let you drown in a lake.” Her eyes filled with tears despite herself. It would be so lovely if there were two of them, if Alex and she could love each other
and
the babies. But there wasn’t any way that could happen. And so for yet another night the Countess of Sheffield and Downes cried herself to sleep.

Chapter 21

A
lex found his brother after four hard days of riding. He reached Braddon Chatwin’s country house in two days but found to his intense irritation that the “young master” had left a few days earlier. Alex slapped his gloves against his leg, staring with unconscious, arrogant rage at the wilting butler before him.

“What do you mean, man, you’re not sure where they went? Either you know or you don’t. If you don’t, say so clearly.”

“What I meant,” Treble said humbly, “was that his lordship expressed the intention to travel to Bath—and of course your brother, my lord, was accompanying him. But the party may well have stopped at Singleton Manor, that would be the Earl of Slaslow’s other estate.”

“The
party
” Alex barked, “what is this, a summer parade? Are there women traveling with them?”

Treble cast his eyes on the marble floor at his feet, looking vainly for support. He looked up only to say, “I used the word loosely, my lord. The group consisted of the Earl of Slaslow and your brother. And—” he half mumbled, “there is also an acquaintance of your brother’s, a young female, my lord.”

It was Alex’s turn to lapse into silence. “Female” could mean only one thing: Patrick was transporting a ladybird with him. Nothing new there. Except that it meant Patrick had left a pregnant Charlotte alone in order to disport himself with a mistress. Treble shook with terror, seeing how the earl’s face seemed, impossibly, to grow even darker and more menacing.

“Did this
—female—
arrive with my brother?”

“Yes, my lord.” And when Alex stared at him, his eyes boring into his skull, Treble added uncomfortably, “The young woman arrived shortly after your brother and the master came from London; that is, I believe that the assignation was made in London and the young, uh, lady simply took a few days to pack. She is traveling with a good deal of clothing,” Treble said with feeling. It had taken his staff almost five hours to unload the trunks from the roof of the carriage; it was worse than receiving a duchess, in his opinion. The girl didn’t travel with her own sheets the way nobility did, but she had brought forty-eight hats, each in its own hatbox!

Alex turned his back with a curt thank you and walked back down the marble steps. Before him the sky was streaked a bitter orange color, layers of clouds stained by the setting sun. Alex stared at it blindly. He was beginning to have a very curious sense of uneasiness. Would Patrick have tired of Charlotte’s body so soon? He himself had
had
her, Alex thought savagely, for some three months and he knew with a deep inner certainty that he would have happily taken her body to bed with him for the next three—hell, the next thirty—years.

Perhaps Charlotte had cut off the affair. Perhaps Charlotte did love him, and she succumbed to Patrick only because she had lost her virginity to him. Alex scoffed at himself. What was he thinking? She slept with his brother for old times’ sake? Out of nostalgia?

The brutal fact was that Charlotte was bleeding when he left and when he returned she was pregnant. And nothing mattered but those two facts. He ignored the plaintive voice of Treble calling after him, asking whether he wished to spend the night at Selfridge Manor. The last thing he wanted to do was sleep anywhere his brother had been. Alex strode over to his waiting horse and swung up in one swift, muscled lunge. He nodded at the mounted manservant who was leading Bucephalus.

“I’m going to the Fox and Keys, Harry,” he said curtly. “You’d best walk Bucephalus. It’s been a long day.”

Two days later, Alex galloped into the drive of Singleton Manor, one of Braddon Chatwin’s country houses, around nine in the evening. His eyes keenly swept the front of the sprawling stone manor and he felt a glow of satisfaction. He’d finally caught them. The pale gray stone of the manor house was darkened by glowing candlelight shining from many of the house’s windows; Braddon had to be in residence.

Alex threw Bucephalus’s reins to the bowing footman. He paused for a second next to the portly butler as he held open the eight-foot-high door.

“Where is he?” Alex snapped.

“It is an honor to see you again, my lord,” Braddon’s butler Vorset said gently. He was too old to be bullied by young sparks like this one, he thought to himself. “The master and your brother can be found in the library.”

Alex paused for a moment, his stern face cracking into a reluctant smile. “I’m glad you’re still on your feet, Vorset.” Vorset had never snapped at the ill-behaved twins when they visited Braddon during school holidays, years ago. To tell the truth, Alex and Patrick had led Braddon into some of his worst scrapes, which Vorset knew but never revealed to Braddon’s parents.

Vorset nodded slightly, his eyes kind. Like the rest of England, he knew something of Alexander Foakes’s marital problems. “The library is off to the right, my lord,” he murmured, leading the way.

Alex followed the old butler down the well-known, wide passageway to the library. Lord, he hadn’t been in this house for some ten years. After his mother died he and Patrick had been farmed out to whomever was available for holidays. They used to tear about Braddon’s house as if they were wild pigs released indoors by accident.

Vorset opened the library doors without announcing him, a tribute to his closeness with the family. As Vorset disappeared back down the corridor, Alex paused in the doorway. There was a huge fire burning in the marble fireplace, taking the chill off the air. The draft going up the chimney was making the candelabra flicker. Still, the scene before him was clear enough. Braddon Chatwin was moodily reading what looked to be a stud report. And nestled in a settee before the fire was Alex’s brother. For a moment Alex forgot his rage and just let his heart feel glad to see Patrick again. His twin was like his arm, he realized suddenly. No matter how much he hated him, he would be devastated if anything happened to him. Patrick looked thinner, his skin tanned dark brown by the Indian sun. He was whispering into the ear of a lovely redhead, who was giggling softly at whatever nonsense Patrick was murmuring.

Alex cleared his throat deliberately.

Braddon looked about; no one else even looked up. Braddon’s clear blue eyes met Alex’s for a brief moment and then he said, “Patrick, my buck, there’s someone here to see you.”

Patrick didn’t move, his black curls bent over the mass of red hair seated next to him.

“Patrick!” Braddon insisted.

Finally Patrick looked up. But something about Alex’s coiled aggression as he leaned casually in the doorway made him pause. The twins could always read each other without speaking; Patrick knew from the other side of the room that Alex was filled with a cold, cold rage, greater than anything Patrick remembered.

Patrick walked slowly over to Alex and stopped in front of him. His eyebrows arched as he asked his twin a silent question.

Alex’s black eyes raked Patrick’s face. For a moment the library was absolutely still, and no noise broke the air but the hiss and crackle of green logs burning in the fireplace.

“Hell,” Alex said quietly. “You didn’t do it, did you?”

Patrick stayed where he was. “I didn’t sleep with your wife, if that’s what you mean.”

Alex’s face was a tight, cold mask. When he didn’t respond, Patrick dropped an arm about his brother’s shoulder and turned him around. Alex turned automatically, as if he were sleepwalking. The two men walked out of the library without looking backward.

“Lud!” Miss Arabella Calhoun breathed. (She was the red-haired enchantress who had been sharing Patrick’s sofa.) “He’s a mean-looking one, isn’t he?”

When Braddon didn’t answer she stretched a dainty foot out before her and carefully inspected it on all sides. She quite liked these slippers. They were French, of course, and pale blue, embroidered with small white doves.

Braddon drifted over and rested his arms on the back of the sofa.

“What do you think, Braddon?” Miss Arabella asked dreamily. She used the earl’s first name because she believed in maintaining terms of the greatest intimacy with all male friends of her current
amour
. And the minute Patrick walked out of the library with his brother she realized that in fact her particular
amour
might be a thing of the past. Patrick appeared to have family problems. Arabella shuddered. She hated family problems: so dreary, so tiresome, so unromantic.

“Think of what?”

“Think of my slippers!”

Braddon stared at them. This is why he never got anywhere with women. What could a person say about shoes?

“They’re very … they’re very small.”

Arabella shot him an annoyed look. This one was a lout, that was for sure. But he was looking at her so anxiously that she relented.

“Well, Braddon,” she said, patting the cushion next to her. “Since Patrick took himself off without even bothering to say a word, why don’t you join me?”

And it was a good thing she extended that invitation. Because around an hour later, when Vorset appeared to offer drinks and refreshments, he announced that the Earl of Sheffield and Downes and his brother had both galloped off without mentioning when they might return.

“Well, I like that!” Arabella said, her eyes filling with easy tears. She turned to Braddon, who was sitting very close beside her. “Isn’t that the rudest thing you ever heard? I didn’t have to accompany that bounder all the way out into the country. Men line up by the theater door every night just to ask me to dinner!”

“I know,” Braddon said, taking Arabella’s hand. “I was one of them.” He stared soulfully into Miss Arabella’s eyes, and she felt herself perk up a bit.

After all, as she confided to her maid later that night, one man is much like another, aren’t they? And while Patrick was more handsome, Braddon was much more amenable. Shoes—hats—everything was so expensive these days!

As a silvery slip of the moon swung into the sky above the dark forest lining the road, Patrick reached out and jerked on his brother’s reins. Alex’s horse was lathered with sweat and panting heavily, his sides blowing in and out painfully as they drew to a halt.

“We must stop now, Alex.”

Alex shot him a ferocious glance. Patrick calmly ignored it, leading his horse off on a road to the right whose crooked sign read
Buffington, One Mile
.

“Buffington has a decent inn,” Patrick shouted back over his shoulder.

Then he stopped and wheeled his horse about, sensing that his brother wasn’t following him down the Buffington road.

“For goodness sake, man! She’s not going anywhere; Charlotte is pregnant. She’ll be there waiting for you, and a few hours won’t matter.”

Alex’s face was an immobile, dark, shadowed mask. Patrick walked his desperately exhausted horse back the few steps to the cleft in the road. Alex looked at him.

“She’s going to leave me, Patrick,” he finally said, hoarsely. “I promised I would trust her, and I failed her. I have to get to the house and follow her. I have to find her.”

Patrick sighed. He hadn’t been able to get any sense out of his twin since Alex grasped the fact that his brother not only had no part in his wife’s pregnancy, he hardly knew the woman.

“Charlotte is not going anywhere! She’s
pregnant
. Pregnant women don’t travel.” Patrick vested his voice with a deep layer of authority, dismissing his memory of pregnant women trundling happily up and down the roads of India. “Think of mother. Don’t you remember when she was pregnant? She went to bed for months.”

It was an unhappy thought, one that drained the last bit of color from Alex’s face.

“My God,” Alex whispered. “What if she’s like mother, what if she dies, Patrick?”

“Charlotte is a sensible woman, Alex. She wouldn’t endanger the life of her child. She will be sitting in Downes Manor waiting for you when you get back. I’m not saying that she won’t take your head off. But she won’t risk the child’s life to run away.”

Alex blinked. That was the first argument he’d heard that made sense. Maybe he was wrong in his deep conviction that Charlotte was, even now, riding away from him on some road. That he would never see her again. She wouldn’t endanger the babe, that was true.

Patrick sensed his victory and grabbed Alex’s bridle again, forcing his horse to walk off toward Buffington.

“We’ll be up at dawn. Even if she did decide to travel to Scotland—and mind you, I think the chance is exceedingly slim—she necessarily will go very slowly. We won’t have any trouble catching up with her.”

Alex didn’t respond, just nodded. They plodded their way into the Queen’s Ankle, Buffington’s best inn, ate squirrel stew (the only food available), and fell into the two beds that graced the innkeeper’s sole spare room.

“Lord,” Patrick said crossly. “When do you suppose that fat ass downstairs last had the straw turned in this damned mattress?”

Alex didn’t bother to respond. He was staring up at the uneven planks above him, wondering where his life went wrong. What led him to suspect Charlotte of adultery? His mind kept replaying the scene in the little summer house, as if to torture himself. Charlotte would rise, a tremendous sweetness trembling in her eyes and mouth, and then … he would reject her. When he finally spoke, his voice was harsh and grating.