Chapter 16

Lottie would rather jump into an icy lake than enter into a marriage of convenience with Quinton Chance. Nothing about the man had ever proved convenient. He was too tall, so she must go up on tiptoe to kiss him. And he was too handsome, so she found herself inconveniently aroused whenever he was near. And his tongue was too sharp, too quick, and she found herself laughing despite her best interest when he turned something she’d said on its head. Even when it was an insult to her, she appreciated the wit of it.

Inconvenient, that.

Inconvenient, too, were his attempts to haul her off and kiss her at every unpredictable moment. Now, for instance. They stood on the outskirts of a room stuffed with preening gentlemen, all vying for Prudence, Imogen, or Isabella’s attentions, and he snuck his hand behind her back, trailing fingertips down her spine, cupping her rear. Reminded her of Pepperidge except his advances had not been welcome. Nor had they been entirely covert. Quinton wore the Noble Smirk as he drove her to the edge of sanity, looking all the while as if he moved not an inch from his proper posture. Their grazing arms, her skirts, hid it all.

He bent so his lips whispered against her ear. “Can we leave yet? There’s a bower in your garden out back, and I’d like to test its capacity for kissing. I have high hopes it will prove suitable.”

She swatted his shoulder. “We cannot. For several reasons. First and foremost, I must act as chaperone.”

“But your Great-Aunt Millicent is just there, a perfect chaperone.”

The woman sat slumped in a chair in the opposite corner of the drawing room. A feather from her coiffure drooped out of her white hair and over one closed eye; wrinkles rumpled her gown, and her arms hung loose on either side of the chair.

“She’s sleeping. She stayed up late playing cards at Lady Fairworthy’s last night. Came here from there with the sun, actually. Still wearing last night’s ball gown.”

Quinton squinted at Aunt Millicent, then raised his brows. “Does she win?”

“Sometimes. She had to sell off a bit of jewelry last Season to pay her debts, but she wandered in this morning with a bounce in her step, so I can only assume she had a good night.”

“I must congratulate her, then.” He wound his arm around her waist, pulled her closer. “Your other reason for refusing me the bower? I thought you were on a course of seduction, Merriweather. Have you abandoned it now that you’ve won your prize?”

“Quite brazen of you to call yourself a prize, my lord.”

“I speak from your perspective, naturally.”

She elbowed his ribs. “I deny you the bower, Chance, because I wish to bask in my victory. Our victory.”

The suitors decorating the room were a miracle made possible by the irresistible and incorrigible man pinching her rear. She did her best not to jerk and laugh and shiver with inappropriate longing. Focused on the miracle instead, on the necessity of ignoring his advances and remaining, as far as the collected eyes could see, entirely proper.

“I was scared to invite the suitors back,” she admitted. “Afraid they would not come. But there are seven here today. I am pleased.” Mr. Bailey and Viscount Norton hovered closest to Prudence, who gritted her teeth and managed a smile that seemed more of a feral warning. She had not Lottie’s patience for social niceties, could not hide her frustration so well as Lottie could. She said she did not wish to wed. But should she change her mind, she now had the option. Thanks to Quinton.

“Mr. Bailey does not appear to be happy to court my sister,” she remarked, leaning into the arm wrapped around her back.

“He looks…”

“A bloody mess.”

“Yes, that.” Quinton snorted a laugh.

“Lord Norton is much more presentable. Perfectly handsome, I think. Perhaps a bit of a peacock, but one does not mind a man with style.”

“He’s a nice fit for Prudence.”

“Why did that sound like a warning?” She blinked up at him.

“Because it was one, and you are not daft. I told you when this began, I’m feeling decidedly possessive of you.”

A welcome change from his usual avoidance, one she’d reveled in for a week and a half. He slipped his warm, sure palm up her spine and caressed the back of her neck with his knuckles, tugged a curl at her nape, and she rolled her head to lean into his palm, sighed with more contentment than she’d ever thought possible.

“Thank you.” She stepped from his embrace and held his hand between hers, the posture of a vow. “You have saved us when my foolhardy actions would have ruined us.” Bother. Tears? She squeezed them away and gave him her truest smile instead, the one that bloomed from her heart. “These past ten days have been terrifying. I’ve counted each one with suffocating worry, but each day has been better than the last, and each event you appear at my side has become easier. And if my sisters still have choices for their futures, it is because of you, and I… and I…”

“Say it, Merriweather. You’re no coward.”

She felt brave when he called her Merriweather. As if that particular creature had no fears, knew only victory, had only respect from the man at her side.

“Well, Chance, you see, I’ll never be able to thank you enough, and I will spend every day trying to do so.”

With his free hand, he stroked his thumb down her cheek, his lips smiling, but his eyes holding something much more serious, though they crinkled at the edges, starburst lines of merriment. He leaned low and whispered near her ear, “Then come investigate the bower with me.”

She laughed, impossible joy ricocheting through her. But it became a yawn.

“Tired?” he asked. “I can wake you up.”

He’d awakened her years ago, pulling newborn desire blinking into the sun of his charm, stretching wakeful in the dawn of their first kiss. She wanted nothing more than to be caught up in his arms and kissed beneath a fragrant bower. But this was no longer about her, them, seduction, and courtship. Hers at least. Everything now for her sisters.

“I am tired.” Another yawn. “Exhausted. Ten days of worry, no sleep, smiling, acting, acting, acting. You understand. You’ve been acting as well. The doting future husband who adores me.”

His hands, still tangled with hers, tightened, less of a reassuring squeeze and more of an involuntary tic of shock. His laugh lines had disappeared, replaced by lowered brows separated by a Thames-deep crease and thinly pressed lips.

She pulled her hand away, held it by the wrist behind her back. “You do not have to pretend so well, my lord. I know it has been some time since you felt anything but animosity for me.” One of the things that had kept her up at night in the last ten days. She’d had such brave hope before the incident in Hyde Park. She could seduce him into liking her once more. But how could he like her when she’d cornered him, taken advantage of his nobility, as she had, to save herself. Her sisters.

“Lottie.” His hand caught her wrist and dragged her toward the exit. “We’re going to the bower. Now.” He raised his voice higher. “Aunt Millicent! Wake up!”

That lady startled awake, shedding feathers as she jerked upright. “Hmph? Wha?”

“Mind your nieces and their beaus,” Quinton ordered. “I’m taking this one for a walk in the garden.” He pulled her toward the French doors that opened into a small square of blooming trees and climbing roses.

Not that she had a choice, with him dragging her along, but she followed him out into the scented summer air and to the very back of the garden where a bower nestled like a dream in a cloud of white blooms, ivy climbing and twining with its trellis to the very top.

When they stepped beneath its cool shadows, he spun her toward a bench and nudged her gently to sit there. Then he stood before her, hands on hips, looking like a general readying to lecture the troops. He turned from her for a moment, giving her an opportunity to admire the strength and width of his back beneath the smartly cut linen of his coat, muscles bunching as he pushed both hands through his hair before facing her once more.

His face was pale and serious and unlined with any emotion, but the words he planned clearly agitated him.

“Are you going to kiss me now?” she asked.

He dropped to sit beside her, holding his palms up flat and empty over the spot where his knee kissed hers. “I do not hate you, Charlotte Merriweather. Not even a little bit. I’ve tried to. Damn have I tried to, every argument and quip and cutting insult meant to convince myself, as well as you, of the depths of my dislike, but… how can a man dislike a woman who gives him a puppy to soothe his grief? How can he dislike a woman who offers up her first kiss with such passion and trust? Forget other men. How could I dislike a woman who is as clever and fierce as you are? For years, I’ve scowled at you because I… I’ve disliked myself a little and visited that upon you. Hell.” Pink rushed across his cheeks, and he reached into his pocket, pulled something out small and white and handed it to her. “For you.”

She held a rose, its white paper petals sharp and flat against the blue lace of her gloves.

“Did you fold this yourself?” she asked, inspecting its every angle and line, folded with careful precision.

“Of course.” He snapped his jacket straight, checked the length of his sleeves against his gloves. “Give it here, let me show you.”

“Show me what?” But she handed it over.

Beneath his long fingers, unfolding and smoothing, the paper took on a new shape, its white edges blending into the snowy white of his gloves. When he handed it back to her, she laughed.

“It’s a mouth now. And with just a few flips of the paper. How clever.”

He shrugged. “Simple enough. Roses and kisses seem to go together, do they not?”

Roses climbed up spindly wood around them, dotting a green blanket of vines and thorns that spread out over their heads, blocking the hot golden sun.

“Did you bring me here specifically to give me this?”

“Perhaps. You made it damn difficult to get you out here, though. I want you to know, Lottie… all will be well. Not just the scandal and your sisters, but us. Yes?” He took her hands, searched her face, the pressure of his fingers on her demanding. “Yes?”

She wanted to agree. But… “Why did you dislike yourself for so long? Why visit that dislike upon me if you… if you—”

“Because you are my weakness, Lottie.” He dropped her hands and pushed his fingers through his already wild hair.

She turned from him, something fragile inside of her trembling. “You keep saying that. I do not think it is the compliment you seem to think it is.”

“I do not know what it is other than the truth. The world falls away when I’m with you. I’ve thought little of anything else these last ten days but when I next get to see you again, when I can touch the back of your arm and know by the soft spot and my fingers there that you are mine.”

When he explained it that way, it did not sound like weakness. It sounded like infatuation, like what she’d felt for him these many years. And if he admitted to infatuation now, then perhaps something deeper would come in time. Perhaps what he called convenience was merely the beginning of that which she desired more than anything—love. With him.

She’d thought she only wanted a practical place to learn the art of love making. She’d wanted so much more all along. Turning back to him, she stripped her lace gloves from her hands, folded them neatly, and tucked them into his coat pocket. Then she brushed her fingers up his jaw and slid them into the hair at his temples, soft and thick. She kissed him then, putting into it all her hopes for them, showing him with each nip and slant that she was not a weakness but a strength.

“Do not fear me,” she whispered against his lips. “I will not hurt you. And you will not hurt me. I am made of stern stuff, Chance. You should know that well.”

He crushed her to him with a dark chuckle. “You terrify me, but I gladly embrace my fears.” He took over then, devouring her, claiming her, as if she hadn’t been his since the first moment their lips had met. But now, perhaps, he was hers as well, and that drove her heartbeat higher. She crushed his cravat with grasping hands and raked her skirts up, revealing first her stocking, then her naked thigh to the hot air. Smoothing up and down from knee to hip and back again, over and over. Sometimes his palm flat and learning, then other times his fingertips dragging grooves across her skin.

Those fingertips found the curls where her legs met, where she felt hot and wet and eager. She flashed a gaze toward the house as he scattered kisses along her jaw, her neck.

“Shall I stop?” he asked, not stopping.

“No.” A breathy word as she resituated her skirt over his hand. They were well hidden behind branches and bushes and trees. And unless one of the suitors decided to take one of her sisters for a walk—in which case they’d hear the door opening before anyone saw them—they would remain hidden. “Don’t you dare stop, Chance.”

He pushed through her curls, raking his fingers gently through her sex, then slipping a finger inside her. She bit her lip on a whimper, and his hand on her upper back pulled her closer, pressed her breasts against his chest. There was not much for her to touch besides the hard edge of his smoothly shaven jaw and the soft tangle of his hair. Everything else covered when she wanted to reveal it as he’d revealed her. Her breasts felt full, her nipples tight, and the merest brush of his body against them rippled pleasure through her every nerve, collecting in a tight knot of growing need at the center of her body where his hand worked, his thumb circling magic around her tight nub, teasing. And his fingers slipping in and out of her in a rhythm they would mirror on their wedding night.

Four nights. So far away. Too far away.

His teeth tore at her earlobe, and she gasped back into the present.

“Come for me,” he demanded, his thumb flicking over her nub.

She gasped, almost a scream, and he swallowed the sound with a kiss, long and deep and slow. Quite thorough as he stroked her, made her pant and cling and—

And shatter. Every muscle tightened as she burrowed her face into his neck, inhaling the sharp citrus scent of him, the hint of smoky cheroot clinging to his clothes. She rolled her hips against his hand, unable to control her body’s need to seek out further satiation in his touch, his kiss, his power.

He held so much power over her. She collapsed limp against him, trembling from the waves of her orgasm. And also from fear. Not of this perfect thing between them, not of his touch. But of that very power he exerted over her. Because he’d helped her sisters. Because he’d saved her. Because he held her heart, her love, in his palm and did not even know it.

How easy to be careless with something you did not know you possessed.

He stroked his hands up and down her back as her body settled into a normal rhythm, and despite her fears, she found herself falling to sleep in his arms.

He nudged her cheek with his nose. “Wake up, Merriweather. Time for us to return.”

She straightened with a sigh, smoothing his cravat, his waistcoat and jacket. “True. Aunt Millicent has likely fallen back to sleep.” She stood on unsteady legs, the paper mouth falling to the ground.

Quinton knelt to retrieve it, refolded it into a rose, and handed it back to her. “You look terrible.”

“Oh, thank you, my lord. You’re quite handsome yourself.”

“I mean no insult. I’m stating facts. You must sleep this evening. Go to bed early and—”

“Will you join me? Sneak into my room after the house is sleeping and—”

“That would produce the opposite results I’m interested in. No sleep at all if I did that.”

“Those are exactly the results that most interest me.” She leaned into him, and they stepped out from under the bower arm in arm. As he walked her back toward the house, she yawned once more. His arm around her waist held her up, held her steady.

“We are married in four days, Merriweather, and then you shall sleep as long as you like. In fact, I’ll not let you out of the bed.”

Another yawn. “You mean something less restful, I assume.”

“Can’t sneak a euphemism past Lady Charlotte.”

“Certainly not. But you should decide on a consistent goal, my lord. Keep me awake or let me sleep? Which is it to be?” She slipped the folded rose into her pocket.

“Both. Why can’t I have everything I want after all?”

She chuckled and pushed out of his embrace as they entered the drawing room. Aunt Millicent had, indeed, resumed sleeping, and Prudence, sandwiched between the American and the former vicar, slumped in her seat. She’d declared they were the only two she could take seriously since they were the only two who had not cared about the gossip. But she did not seem friendly toward them now. She leaned as far from Bailey as she could and stared blankly at Lord Norton whom, it appeared, had nothing at all to say.

Isabella, however, had plenty to say and appeared to be in deep conversation with one of the other gentlemen, her fingers tapping on the arm of her chair, likely revealing the agitated state of her mind better than her composed expression did.

Imogen had… disappeared? Oh, no, there she was, alone in the corner of the room, reading. Naturally. Hopefully, a suitable book for such company. They could not afford to mess up again as Lottie had.

“Shall I send them all home?” Quinton asked. “Things appear to have devolved since we left.”

“No, that’s not nec—”

“The ladies are done now.” Quinton’s voice barely rose above the volume he used in regular speech, but the implacable command behind it turned every head, stopped every conversation. “I’m sure the ladies appreciate your company. When is the next tea, Lady Charlotte?” He patted her hand as if what existed between them was a normal, placid thing.

“Next week, same time.” Next week, same time, and she’d be married. To Quinton Chance. Impossible to believe.

The men filed out, and Quinton pushed her toward the door as well.

She dug her heels into the carpet. “Just what do you think you’re doing?”

“Not me. You. You’re going upstairs to rest. Now. Lady Prudence?”

“Yes?” Lottie’s sister asked sweetly. “Deliver my bride to her bedroom and do not let her escape. Do you understand?”

Prudence wrapped her arm around Lottie’s waist and saluted Quinton. “Yes, my lord!”

Three of Lottie’s favorite pairs of arms pulled her up the stairs, and she looked over her shoulder for a final glimpse of Quinton. He stood below, watching, a faint smile about his lips. He winked, and her heart fluttered, and in that moment of weakness, she let her sisters carry her up and topple her into the bed. They pulled the curtains tight and left her alone with whispers to sleep and dream of handsome viscounts.

She would. Ones who winked. And kissed and more beneath bowers. Lottie pulled the folded paper from her pocket and yawned, flipping it over and over in her heavy hands. She would be glad to rest, finally, when her sisters were safe from ruin, and she could collapse into the strong arms of the man she loved.