Seduced At Sunset (6 page)

Mr. Torrington’s eyes narrowed, as if he were impressed by
her clever deduction. She supposed not many women would have knowledge of such
things.

“It appears we have something in common, Lady Charlotte,”
he said. “We both have stage names, so to speak. Though your profession is far
more civilized than mine ever was.”

Charlotte blinked at him. “I am astonished.”

“So am I,” he replied. “What are the odds I would end up
in a row boat with Victor Edwards, who had clearly based much of his main
character on
me
.”

“That is
not
true,” she quickly
said in her defence. “Jesse was a composite of a number of different boxers,
and the circumstances of his life were born out of my imagination. You must
admit, your situations are not the same at all. Jesse gets a happy ending,
while you simply disappeared. Good gracious. You were in America all this time?
Why was your disappearance such a mystery? Was there anyone who knew what
happened to you?”

“My family and a few close friends knew the truth,” he
explained.

Charlotte remembered how his housekeeper had been so
knowledgeable about head wounds on the day Charlotte was robbed. “Mrs. March
must have tended to your injuries more than once,” she said. “Now I understand
why she was so secretive about her skills.”

“Yes, and if you don’t object, Lady Charlotte, I would
appreciate it if you could refrain from mentioning my presence here to anyone.
I wish to keep my privacy.”

She looked out over the still waters. “I will keep your
secret if you will keep mine,” she replied. “For the very same reason. I do not
wish to be famous. I only want to live a normal, quiet life, and write
stories.”

“About boxers?”

She smiled at him. “No. The next book is about an orphan
boy who is taken in by gypsies, and later discovers his real father is not
dead, as he was led to believe. He is a high court judge and his mother was one
of the judge’s housemaids, who was murdered after giving birth.”

“By whom?”

“By the judge’s wife.”

“My word,” he said. “Have you no mercy, Lady Charlotte?
Your poor, unfortunate characters. Does this one have a happy ending, at least
for the boy?”

“I haven’t decided yet,” she replied, “for I have only
just begun.”

“Then I will look forward to reading it when it is
finished.”

As soon as Drake secured the boat to the jetty, he
shrugged back into his jacket and offered his arm to Lady Charlotte.

He always felt revitalized after his early morning
exercise, but today was different from all the other days, for his body was
smoldering with a level of desire he had not felt in years.

Surely, there was a simple explanation for it, he told
himself, for Lady Charlotte was a beautiful woman with soft full lips, hypnotic
eyes, and abundant curves in all the right places. Even the silky tone of her
voice made his body tremble, made him want to smother her words with his mouth
and devour her whole.

But that was not the whole story. Discovering that she was
Victor Edwards—a successful novelist, but also a woman who knew a thing
or two about a boxer’s life, and somehow, miraculously understood a violent
man’s soul—seemed to heighten his attraction to her.

For the first time he had revealed his past to a woman who
would likely become his lover. It was not conceit that led him to expect such
an affair to occur. Lady Charlotte had been more than candid with her words,
her actions, and her eyes. He saw the way she looked at him... how her gaze
raked admiringly over the length of his body, how her hands stroked over her
clothes whenever their eyes locked and held. There was a shared sexual desire
between them, that required consummation.

In addition, this morning, something new had entered the
equation. He had believed initially that she was a bored member of the
aristocracy who wanted him for a few weeks of idle pleasure, to satisfy some
wicked fantasy about a savage man who would remain outside her social circle
and not taint her reputation with the roughness of his hands.

But Lady Charlotte was not idle or bored. How could she
be, when her mind was occupied by the composition of lengthy tragic novels? He
had read her book. There was depth to her characters, but where did her
awareness of such people come from? How could this privileged woman write about
such struggle without knowing something of it herself? As he did.

He was curious now. He wanted to peel back the layers and
open her up. In more ways than one.

As they entered the coach and settled into their
seats—this time he sat beside her, not across from her—he watched
her with passionate interest and delicious anticipation.

“That was most enjoyable Mr. Torrington,” she said,
folding her gloved hands upon her lap and looking up at him with tantalizing,
gleaming eyes.

“Yes, it was.”

As the coach moved forward up the rutted lane, his thigh
bumped hers and continued to rub against it. The press of her hip against his
own quickly flooded him with arousal, which made him resent the fact that he
must behave as a gentleman, for she was the daughter of a duke, and he wasn’t
entirely sure she knew what she had asked for. Until he knew for sure, he must
continue to obey the rules, at least for the moment. But damn, how he wanted to
forgo such social strictures and touch her now, in a most improper way.

His heart pounded in his chest and thrust hot blood
through his veins like a violent force of nature. For a long moment, he
refrained from looking at her, though he could feel her eyes on his profile.

“Are you nervous?” he asked, looking the other way so as
not to arouse his desires any further. At least not yet.

“Should I be?” Her voice was both innocent and seductive.
It sent another surge of lust to his loins.

At last, he turned to meet her gaze. “Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because we are alone, Lady Charlotte, and you must know
what I am thinking about. What I want.”

“And what is that, Mr. Torrington?” she asked, as if she’d
rehearsed the words a thousand times.

She knew damn well what it was. The flirtatious flash of
light in her eyes gave her away, and Drake found himself more deeply aroused
than before.

He leaned closer to take her mouth in a passionate kiss,
but hesitated just before their lips met, for he needed to know that he had her
consent. That he was not mistaken. That she wanted this, too.

He felt the heat of her sweet breath on his mouth. Then
she lifted her face so the morning sun reflected in her clear eyes.

It was enough to push him over the cliff edge of desire,
and when he pressed his mouth to hers, his hard body shuddered with yearning.

A single kiss was not going to be enough. Not nearly
enough.

Her mouth was warm and wet and eager for sensual play. Her
tongue darted out to meet his, and he groaned with need.

It had not been that long since he kissed a woman, but
something about this encounter had been different from the beginning. He felt
like an untried schoolboy, desperate for a taste of a real flesh-and-blood
woman with soft skin and warm hands to pleasure him. He was completely
overpowered, out of control, enormously aroused to the point of agony.

The coach continued to bump along the narrow road and
Drake could see no reason to withdraw. Without ever breaking the kiss, Lady
Charlotte pulled off her gloves and laid her hands on his cheeks. She shifted
her body on the seat to face him, and he, too, shifted to gain better access to
her delicious mouth.

He slid a hand over her hip and under her sweet backside
to lift her legs across his lap. She yielded beautifully to the new position.

Before long, she was sighing with ecstasy and clutching at
his shoulders, but he wanted her on her back, and realized with a sudden pang
of consciousness that this kiss had spun out of control very quickly.

He dragged his mouth from hers, while a hot shiver of loss
rippled down his spine.

“Please don’t stop,” she breathlessly said. “We don’t have
to yet.”

They were still some distance from Mayfair, and though he
wanted to maintain control, her passionate plea bombarded his senses. He gave
in without a fight.

As if to make up for time, her hands roamed quickly,
searched over his shoulders, chest, arms, and hips, then slid back up to his
hair. He began to perspire and shake, for he had a giant erection that was
throbbing like a son of a bitch.

He really should stop this now, or he would soon be making
love to Lady Charlotte right here in the coach—though perhaps that was
what she wanted.

Was it what
he
wanted? He
certainly didn’t want to be rushed.

“Stop,” he said, bringing the kiss to a rather sloppy
finish and holding her away at arm’s length. “Not here.” He wanted to do this
properly, and do it well. “Meet me tonight.”

She blinked up at him as if in a foggy haze, fighting to
catch her breath. “Where?”

He considered it for a moment, pleased, of course that
there was no argument, but at a loss as to how to answer the question. He didn’t
want to take her to the opera or invite her to dinner, and he suspected she
didn’t want those things either. She wanted him as a lover—in
private—as he wanted her. They’d already pushed beyond the boundaries of
any sort of polite courtship. They wanted each other’s bodies. That was
obvious, and it had been obvious from the start. On top of all that, this was
guaranteed to be a brief sexual affair, for he was in London for a limited time
and she knew it.

“At the Harper Hotel,” he said. “There is an entrance at
the rear of the building where you can enter discreetly. No one will see you. I
will have the room key, and I will be there just inside the door to meet you.”
When she gave no reply, he drew back slightly. “Have I presumed too much, Lady
Charlotte?”

She shook her head. “No, but please allow me to explain
that I have never done anything like this before. I have never in my life taken
a casual lover.”

He inhaled deeply with relief.
Casual
lover
. There they were... the words on her lips, spoken in plain terms.
It was what they would be to each other. It represented consent, intention. A
promise of temporary pleasure.

Then he pondered her declaration, and the underlying
message he could glean from it. She claimed she had never taken a casual lover,
but she was unmarried. She was not a twenty-year-old debutante. Was she a
virgin?

He couldn’t possibly ask the question. He’d already taken
enough liberties this morning, which left him curious and intrigued.

Was he to be her first? Or was there some other story?

The coach turned onto the main road. Drake forced himself
to sit back and allow Lady Charlotte a few moments to collect herself before
they reached Mayfair, for it had been an unexpectedly heated ride from the
jetty.

“I will accept your invitation,” she said as she tucked a
few loose strands of hair up under her hat. “What time?”

“Can you be there at midnight?” he asked.

“I can do anything I want,” she replied with a wicked grin
that made him want to leap across this seat and take her right then and there.

“And is this truly what you want?” he asked.

The coach pulled to a halt in front of Pembroke House.

“Oh, yes,” she replied, leaning close and touching her
lips lightly to his. They were soft and smiling, and he smiled in return as she
drew away and slid alluringly toward the coach door.

“What have you done to me, Mr. Torrington?” she playfully
asked as he reached past her to flick the door latch and push it open.

“Nothing yet,” he said. “But summer has only just begun.”

“And I have the utmost confidence that we will make the
most of it.”

With that, she slipped out of his coach, leaving him
positively ravenous with anticipation for their forthcoming encounter.

Chapter Five

Charlotte knew her cheeks were flushed when she walked
into the house and was greeted by the butler. She hoped he would consider her
high color a consequence of the cool and dewy morning air, for it was not yet
nine o’clock.

She handed over her hat and gloves and proceeded upstairs
to the breakfast room for eggs and coffee, which she sorely needed to snap
herself back to reality after the dreamlike seduction in Mr. Torrington’s
coach. It had been everything she’d wanted—and more.

She could barely fathom all that she had learned about him
on the river, and all that he had revealed, much less what had occurred between
them on the return trip. Charlotte had been wildly attracted to him from the
first moment he swept her into his arms and carried her into his house.
Watching him row the boat at high speed against the current of the river had
only added heat to the flame, and the passionate kiss in the coach had sealed
her fate.