Chapter 11

“Don’t look like you’ve lost your spine.”

Quinton counted to three, but when he turned around, his father’s best friend remained in the doorway of the private room at Brooks’s, a newspaper curled in one hand, the planes of his face unyielding.

“Damn,” he said, turning back to the large table where he’d laid various architectural plans flat. “Thought you a hallucination. What will it take to exorcize you, Barnaby?” Usually he welcomed the man’s advice, his strengthening presence, but today he felt unhappy with everything and everyone.

Barnaby’s bootsteps continued forward, then the man himself appeared at Quinton’s elbow.

“What is this?” He shook the paper at Quinton’s nose.

“A newspaper, now please do go walk in front of a speeding coach.”

Barnaby growled. “Still a mean pup, I see.”

“Just as I should be.”

Barnaby chuckled. “I taught you well. But the paper says you plan to wed.”

Quinton snatched it from Barnaby’s grasp and opened it. One of Kingston’s publications, The Daily Current. And there, the blazing headline—Viscount N’s Noble Intentions. He skimmed the article, clearly written by Clearford, who’d begun to make the writing of a courtship column for the Current as much of a habit as flinging knives. Nothing of interest in the paragraphs, just what Quinton already knew.

He flung the paper to a nearby chair. “You disapprove, I take it.”

“Hardly. A viscount must take a wife. You should have years ago.”

Quinton returned his attention to the cottage plans spread before him. He liked John Catcher’s designs best. He promoted more whimsical elements, but the ornamental touches seemed to hide strong foundations and good materials. Yes, he wanted John Catcher as his architect. This other fellow, Simon Parker, meant to save a pound or two with his designs. Nothing aesthetically or foundationally pleasing about them. Cheap now, but they would cost in the long run. In repairs and lives.

Catcher it was. The decision made. Finally. It had taken long enough. Too long. This whole wife thing had proved more distraction than he’d anticipated.

Quinton rolled up the plans. “I’m marrying now.”

“Not considering the duke’s sister, I see.”

“The duke’s sister?”

“That brazen chit the day of your father’s funeral.”

“Why would you think—”

“You were sweet on her.”

“I wasn’t.” Not then. Not that day. But he was… something on her now. An unavoidable truth. He’d made her come two evenings ago, felt her lips on his skin, her hand on his cock, had wanted to take everything from her and give none of it back. Thank God, he’d found the will to walk out the door. What would Barnaby say if he knew? He’d never know.

And Lottie would never have her way. Courting him? Absurd. Just because she’d lost all three of her suitors didn’t mean she could have him.

“I know she’s about all the time, Quin. She’s helping your mother.”

Quinton placed the cottage plans in his satchel, slung the strap over his shoulder, and strode out the door. “She is. Mother needs it. Do you disapprove of that?”

The man disapproved of just about everything. He’d become less palatable in more recent years. But he’d been there for Quinton when it had felt like he’d had no one else. He’d acted as a father in Quinton’s own father’s stead. He couldn’t toss Barnaby away like an old newspaper. He owed the man striding at his side, mouth twisted into a dour frown. He’d warned him, helped him erect stone walls before he’d even needed them, helped him come to terms with his duties and obligations.

“She saw you cry.”

Quinton’s steps faltered just before he put a toe outside.

Lottie had seen him cry. She’d seen him enraged. She’d seen him scared. She’d seen him so brimming with passion he’d almost lost control of himself. Had lost control for several perfect moments. She scared him. Because she’d seen so much of him, parts of him no one else even knew existed.

He slipped easily back into a swinging stride and into the afternoon sunshine. “You don’t have to worry. I’ve no interest in Lottie.” Not quite true. He’d taken quite a lot of interest in the parts of Lottie hidden by her skirts. And if he had the opportunity to do it again, his interest would—

Hell. It would have to remain unsatisfied because he could not lie to himself. His interest in her—dangerous. That sharp, quick tongue of hers, for instance. As perfect for kissing as for teasing.

“You still have that dog she gave you the day your father died.”

“She owed me a beast. She took my cat,” he grumbled, jogging down the street to where his phaeton waited. “Barnaby, you become tiresome. Do you trust me?”

Barnaby made a humming sound in his throat. Spoke of doubt without a single cursed word.

“You insult me. Is there a damn thing soft about me?”

Barnaby chuckled. “That I can answer truthfully. You’re stone.” Said with pride.

“Excellent. Then trust I’m not about to melt for some duke’s sister with a bounteous bosom.”

A gasp.

Quinton stopped walking. Perched atop his phaeton now near enough to touch—a blue-eyed duke’s sister with a bounteous bosom.

He whipped around to face Barnaby, pushed him away from the phaeton, away from Lottie. Just away. Couldn’t get him far enough away. Panic choked him. Who the hell knew why? “Go. We’ll talk later.”

When he turned back around, Lottie stood poised to swing down from the conveyance on her own, her skirts inching above her calves, her bonnet at an awkward tilt, a heavy-looking, too-large reticule dangling from her wrist and banging against her hip.

“Not you!” He grabbed her forearm to halt her progress and pressed her back up and onto the seat. He found her oddly malleable, allowing him to put her exactly where he wanted her before jumping up into the phaeton himself.

“Let me down,” she said meekly, but trying not to sound meek as he joined her, the conveyance rocking around them.

“No.”

“You hate me, so let me down.”

He took up the reins and urged the horses into a trot. “No. And I don’t hate you.”

“Oh yes, you possibly appreciate my bounteous bosom, but—”

“What are you doing in my phaeton?”

“Why have you abducted me?” Her fingers wrapped tightly around the seat edge. Her cheeks had gone from a jolly red to pale as snow, and her eyes were hard as ice.

He couldn’t think. Couldn’t concentrate with her apple scent teasing him, the warmth of her body rocking against him, her clear fear like a blade hanging above them. Scared of him? Or something else? She’d give him nothing in this state, insulted and terrified. He’d have to fix it to find out anything.

He took several calming breaths while she did her best to put space between them on the small bench. So different from the sultry, demanding Lottie of a few nights ago who’d wanted only to be nearer, of the Lottie from the woods six years ago, too. Then, she’d brooked no distance between them, wanted only more touching, more kissing.

Lottie always wanted more from him.

And he could never give it.

“I should not have said what I did,” he finally said. No use trying to deny he’d meant her. She knew, and he wasn’t about to deny it. She deserved more respect than that. “It was wrong of me. I do not expect forgiveness, but I give you my sincerest regret. I will not mention your person to another man ever again.”

She peeked at him from the side of one eye. “I’m not put out about the bosom remark. They are bounteous.”

His mouth went parchment dry in an instant. Don’t look, don’t look, don’t look. Not like he needed to look to know just how plentiful they were. He even knew how they felt pressed against his chest. Like heaven. Hell. Don’t look.

He looked. The direct result of which was that his trousers became too tight. So, he flicked his gaze upward. Only to find her grinning.

“What I take offense to, Chance,” she said, “is your insistence that I’ll never make you melt.”

“You won’t. You can’t.” A lie. They both knew it. Physically, at least, she’d melt him like flame obliterated ice.

“Shall we test that theory?”

“No.” How had he lost control of the conversation?

And when had she released the seat’s edge? Her pinky flirted with the outside of his thigh, and her other hand traveled to her shoulders, where he saw for the first time that she wore a dark pink shawl. Unseasonable choice for the summer heat. Surely, she was hot, and—ah, yes, a droplet of sweat trailed down her neck and caught in the small, delicate shelf made by her collarbone.

He swallowed, tightened his grip on the reins because he’d never known an impulse so demanding as the one that told him to find out what the drop of sweat tasted like on her skin.

Her pinky drew trails of teasing sensation down the outside of his thigh, and the shawl fell off her shoulder, somehow falling, too, across her hand, his thigh, obscuring his lap.

And her hand knew what to do with such obscurity. It moved, palm flattening against his leg and smoothing up and around to lie in the crook of his hip. Her fingers turned outward, brushed against the wool covering his cock.

This touch in this place at this moment before these people. But hidden. A scandal. What Pepperidge had done to her beneath the table but… wanted. Wanted so very much.

“Shall I stop?” she asked, her expression calmer than the surface of a windless summer lake. “Shall I remove my hand? I will if you request it.”

Yes, she absolutely should.

“Do you dare keep it there?” he heard himself ask instead. A challenge. Because he always challenged Lottie. As she did him. “Or are you scared, Merriweather?” When had he decided to play her game?

Had they ever stopped playing a game? Since the day in the wood—circling, plotting, advancing, retreating—a dangerous dance.

One he should abandon.

But after the other night… if they’d been preparing for battle before, now they were locked tight into it.

She squeezed his thigh, looking into the distance. He bit his lips to hold back a groan of pleasure because when she squeezed, the minute up and down of her fingertips brushed his hard length.

“Again,” he growled. If she wanted to play the seductress, he could play the rake. He’d mastered that role early in his adult life.

She squeezed again, then rubbed her hand toward the center of his body, covering his aching cock. She moved only her hand so that to any onlooker she appeared to sit primly with her hands in her lap, shawl covering them. She appeared that way to him, and he knew better, knew that under that shawl the prim duke’s daughter rubbed him, squeezed him, brought him to the edge of madness.

A prim duke’s daughter. His childhood friend. Impossible.

“How in hell do you know what you’re doing?” Another impossibility—keeping his own expression calm, keeping his body stiff, giving nothing away. But he locked down every muscle that wanted to slide into the warm waters of desire, and he clamped his jaw tight to silence sounds of delight.

She hummed. “I shouldn’t tell you. But… I think I will.” Her head tilted as her hand continued winding his body like a clock. If she didn’t stop, he’d drop the reins, press her into the seat, throw her skirts up, and take her. Let all bloody London see, too. If she could take him as she pleased, he would do the same to her. And relish it.

Some tiny gentlemanly restraint must remain in him, though, because he ground his teeth to dust and focused on her words instead of on her hand.

“I’m an avid reader,” she said, her words breathless as if stroking him was exquisite torture for her too. “If you take my meaning.”

He did not.

“Books of a salacious nature. With… arousing illustrations and titillating descriptions and, oh, they’re quite educational.”

“Erotic books.” She’d been reading erotic books. He almost came. The image of proper Lottie reading a scandalous book in bed. Touching herself?

“In fact.” She could barely speak now; her breathing came with such rapidity. “I used to run a library for them. I”—a sigh that lifted her breasts high as she bit her bottom lip—“shared them with others.”

If every bit of his existence hadn’t been fixated on her hand stroking his cock, he might have felt shocked. But the only emotion outside of raging desire that even existed anymore was relief. Gratitude. Thank God for those books. Without them, he’d not be—

Hell, he’d not be about to make a bloody mess of himself.

“Stop, Lottie.”

“Stop what, Chance?” Said with wide-eyed innocence.

“Stop what you’re doing because I cannot stop you, and I do not relish the thought of walking into my house with my seed dripping down my leg. Do they describe that in your books?”

“Oh!” Her hand shot away from him.

He hated it. He wanted it back. “Tell me more about the library.”

“Why?”

“Distraction.” He was hard as a rock and needy and he couldn’t be. Not for her. Not now. “How’d it come about?”

A beat of silence. “After my parents died.”

Hell, that did it—arousal gone. Thank God. Or curse the heavens? Hard to tell which.

“And?” he growled.

“They were my mother’s books. She used to lend them to her friends. When we discovered the scheme, we took over.”

“We?”

“My sisters and I. Not all of them. Annie, Prudence, the twins only. The others are too young, naturally. We don’t do it anymore. Handed off the responsibility to others. I have a book in my reticule, the very one that inspired me today. Well, Samuel’s Guide also played a role. He suggests seeking out the woman you’re courting in unexpected locations. Would you like to see the book? Lord Bottom’s Baguette.”

He almost dropped the reins. “What in hell…” He shook his head. “No, thank you.”

“Well?”

“Well, what?”

“You’re rather quiet for someone who’s just found out my darkest secret.”

“I’m still recovering from your… attentions.” And from that book title.

“Ah.”

“Courtship, you realize, does not usually include such salacious actions.”

“So Samuel’s Guide says, but that particular text has proven imperfect for my purposes. Therefore, I’m writing a new book. Or rather, using others.” Her voice sang with confidence, but there, just in the last syllable of the last word—doubt. And in the thin press of her lush lips, too. And in how she clutched her hands atop that pink shawl.

He hated that doubt, wanted to eviscerate it. He’d told her the truth two nights ago—she was his weakness, the woman who’d seen him cry, the woman who made like softness.

“Why tell me your secrets?” he asked.

“Who else would I tell? You may insult me, but you would never betray me. Except in one way.”

“And what way is that?” The only question he could ask to wrestle control back from the simple truth she’d put upon her lips and into the air between them—she trusted him. She trusted him, and damn but he adored that. Needed it.

“Never kissing me again.”

He wanted to kiss her. More than he wanted air he wanted his lips against hers. He forced his hands on the reins to loosen, and said, “You’re dangerous, Merriweather.”

“Oh? How so?”

Truth spilled out before he could stop it, a gift for the truth she’d given him. “You’re a goddess. Men could lay themselves at your feet and pledge their lives to you, and it would only be what your beauty demands. But—hell—beyond that, you’re bloody conniving. And I mean that in the best way possible. An entire erotic library right under the ton’s nose, and you were never caught?” He knew his voice held nothing but awe, but he couldn’t hide it, didn’t want to. A woman like her… she needed to know. And even if he couldn’t do a damn thing about it, he would be the one to tell her. The one who should do it. Ripping off the head of any man who tried to beat him to it seemed, suddenly, quite the most logical reaction.

“You’ll find a man to worship you,” he said, the words weak and heavy on his tongue.

“But it won’t be you?”

No, it wouldn’t be him.

He spit out a curse. “Let’s go to Gunter’s. Would you like an ice?”

“I’m not a child to be placated, I’m—”

“You’ve got that little line between your brows that says a megrim’s coming, and since you’ve none of that tea on hand, an ice will do. Cold things seem to help.”

Her mouth dropped open, snapped closed. “How do you know?”

“I pay attention.” He’d always paid attention to her.

Some commotion on the street startled his team, and his horses reared up and back, just a little. Lottie launched herself at him, wrapping her hands around his upper arm, burrowing her face into his shoulder with a barely suppressed scream.

“Lottie,” he cried, bringing the horses back under control.

She remained stiff beside him, clinging.

“What the hell, Lottie, look at me.”

She shook her head, her body trembling. She seemed to have stopped breathing, and her body pressed against his revealed the rapid beating of her heart.

He pulled the phaeton to the side of the street and stopped it, knocked her bonnet onto her back and ran his knuckles over her temples, smoothed her hair, a calming—he hoped—rhythmic pattern of reassurance. When her trembling slowed into shuddering breaths, he placed his knuckles beneath her chin and lifted it. Her eyes were squeezed shut.

“Look at me, Lottie.” Slowly, so slowly, her hand still clawed into his upper arm, she opened her eyes. “You’re safe.” He cupped her cheek. “You’re safe.”

She shook her head, her lips pursed into a thin line.

“Say it with me. We’re safe.” She did not say it the first or the second time he repeated the words, but by the third repetition, she chanted with him. “We’re safe. We’re safe.”

Color returned to her cheeks but in a mottled pattern, and her muscles were still rigid as a board.

“Now breathe,” he commanded.

Dutifully, she did, a large exhale, a large inhale, over and over again until her body loosened and her pulse slowed. She released his arm and distanced herself from him on the seat, folding her hands in her lap.

“I do apologize. Sometimes it happens that way. The horses startled me.”

“Why? Is it like this in every carriage and coach, or is it just my phaeton?”

“All of them,” she admitted with a little laugh bereft of joy.

“I don’t understand. As children, you often traveled with your parents between London and the country. We traveled in dog carts to the village. You never seem affected then.”

“I wasn’t. It is a rather new development. Though some years old.”

“New. But old. And the thing to have changed between childhood and now… your parents’ accident. They died in a crash. Carriage rides remind you of it.”

“You guessed it in one. Lady Charlotte Merriweather is scared of carriage rides. Though it’s not so much the reminder of their deaths as it is… I cannot shake the notion it will happen again, and then my sisters will be gone. Samuel. Others I love. One minute they’ll be there, then the next they won’t. Yet the cursed coach remains. Seems unfair. Ridiculous, I know, but—”

“Not ridiculous. Quite understandable, actually. I’ve heard Kingston’s young brother is excellent at burning coaches. Should I get him to light one on fire for you?”

She laughed, her normal coloring returning. “No, that will not be necessary.”

“Does anything help it? The fear?”

“Not really. When in London, I walk as much as possible. And when long trips are necessary, I will often have a drink or two of brandy before leaving. That will put me right to sleep, and then I can sleep the whole way there. That is the only thing that helps, but…” She flashed him a look from the corner of her eye.

“But what?”

“But I must admit I felt no fear with my hand busy beneath the shawl. It seems our stimulating activities quite distracted me from my fear. Perhaps I have found the perfect way to travel.” The corner of her lip hitched up. “Will you help me survive the ordeal of carriage travel in the future?”

“Enough, Lottie.” He snapped the rains and guided his horses back out onto the street. “The megrim’s getting closer. I know it.” He knew no such thing, but if she continued seducing him, he’d soon give in. “What flavor ice would you like?” And why shouldn’t he give in? Just for an afternoon, a brief liaison to break his curse. Then he could remember the other ladies he courted, their names and faces. Now Lottie’s light obscured them entirely. But she wanted him to touch her, to tease her, to take her.

Perhaps he should. Give her what she wanted, what he wanted to. Then they could both move on. He could choose a wife, and she could cultivate another group of eager suitors.

“Are you growling?” she asked.

“No.” He encouraged the horses to go faster. The sooner he’d cooled her rising megrim and saw her safely with her family, he’d seek out his mother, choose a wife, and put thoughts of seduction, of letting himself be seduced, far behind him. Because oh how she tempted him to relent.

The temptation lay in the unexpected. Not in her brazen touch or scandalous intentions. But in the parts of her he’d not known existed. The girl he’d thought he knew so well still had hidden corners to be discovered, and more than seduction, he’d wanted to dig into her secrets, share them with her, prove she did not misplace her trust in him. He’d always known her to be a formidable creature. Even as a child, she’d been more leader of her wild band of sisters than her brother had been. Was he surprised she organized an erotic lending library and hid a fear of carriages? No, because of course Lottie would. But yes, too, because he’d not known. He should know. Everything about her. Always.

What else did she hide from him? That question was the secret temptation.

But what would happen if he knew? Would the bit of him that would cry on her shoulder any time as long as she promised to cry on his, too, run like spilled ink all over his soul, weaken him? What would happen if her fears were realized, and a crash took her life? Would he melt away into nothing as his father had done, his duty and obligations be damned?

Berkeley Square rose before them. He’d get her an ice, then fashion his heart of that substance as well. No more Lottie secrets for him. While knowing her touch made him hard, knowing her heart softened him to his very core. And soft was the worst thing a man like him could be.