One Night Is Never Enough (14 page)

A thousand emotions curled inside her, ramming together, trying to escape through her throat, her skin, the heart of her chest.

His lips curved, and white teeth flashed. “I thought I might find you here.”

Her mouth opened and closed, heat blazing a rapid trail upward through her body. She suddenly felt as if she were floating above the ground in that rapidly ascending balloon.

“
What?
”

He slowed his speech into deliberate syllabic chunks. “I thought I might find you here.”

“I heard you the first time,” she hissed, looking about in sudden panic, hands frozen, clawed around the stone. Panicked by her reaction. Panicked by the threat of discovery. Panicked that the man she couldn’t stop thinking of was here in front of her, able to see any flaws or defects—that she was truly as unexciting as she’d been bred to be.

The guests continued milling about. No one had looked in her direction yet. No one had noticed that there was a man clothed in darkness, violating the space. That he was sitting awfully close to an unmarried lady in a darkened spot.

Suddenly, the shadowed bench, though still public and safe, seemed wildly dangerous and wrought with reputation hazards. Wrought with the most dangerous hazard she had ever encountered.

“It took longer than I’d expected, but I was right.”

She refused to gape more, so she pressed her lips together until she could control
some
of her thoughts.

“
What?
You—you’ve just been lying here in wait? Thinking I might—might come out here on my own? Are you
mad
?”

“I knew it was a matter of time. You suffocating indoors, needing to come out and be free.”

She stared at him, words stuck in her throat. “You know me not.” Her voice came out in a cracked whisper, the balloon ascending that much higher.

“Then I guessed correctly, did I not?”

She glanced back to the veranda, swallowing. She should rise and return to the other guests immediately. Remove herself from his suggestion. Remove herself from the very real danger he represented in all forms.

She turned to him instead. “Why are you here?” she hissed.

He smiled, fierce triumph in his shadowed, silver eyes. “To see
you.
”

The tingle of awareness became a rush, a heedless tumult of sensation.

When the young swains, brushing up on their wooing, sang her songs or read her lines, she would politely applaud or smile. Perhaps feel a bit of embarrassment for herself or the person wooing. But never had she felt the rush of feeling that some women expressed. Their hands going to their chests, their breath coming in gasps, their lids fluttering in invitation.

She had scoffed at such reactions before . . . all the while, secretly wishing she could experience such foolishness, such emotion. One lift of perfect lips and three uttered words by this man was all it took.

Thrilling foolishness.
“And now that you have?” she asked, her voice little more than a whisper as she watched his lips.

“Ah. The real question.” He didn’t break the shadows, but something about him seemed to lean toward her. “Now that I have, I can’t seem to resist wanting more.”

Want. That was the ache in her belly that had turned from cold marble to heated brick. “Do you know what would happen if you were found here?” she asked, all cold decorum lost.

“I’d be forced to move my feet nimbly like one of the oafs inside? Bowing and fumbling and positioning my cravat ever higher?”

“You’d be arrested.”

“Taken away in chains, I hope.”

She narrowed her eyes. “It isn’t something to be taken lightly. A man sneaked into a gathering just last week and is up for sentencing on charges of fraud and trespassing.”

“Mmmm . . . but I have . . . coerced many of the men inside, and have information on most of the others. I think I might get away with a . . . lesser punishment.”

She couldn’t respond for a second. “If that is true, then I think you in more dire straits should you be found. I imagine many men would be well pleased to be rid of you.”

He just smiled. “Concerned for my safety?”

“Your sanity, perhaps.”

“But I risk it all to be in your presence, dear, magnificent Charlotte.”

Again, a tingle of awareness restarted its sweep.

He smiled. “Quite the array of clodpots vying for your favors, aren’t there? I was surprised you managed to extricate yourself from their grasp.”

There was a hint of something in his words. Some emotion quickly covered.

“I am hardly as sought after as you suggest.” Most men were put off by her coldness—and unavailability—here in her third season. “And you could hardly see from here.”

“No?” His smile curled farther, darkening. “Mmm . . . that decrepit man asking if you liked the expensive lilies he sent, when everyone knows you are partial to flowers with Sainfoin-like spikes.”

She stared at him. “What—what on earth . . . how do you know what Lord Tewksbury said? And what I like?”

She would have known if he had been in the room. Behind her. Breathing against her neck. He had to be bluffing. No one was that stealthy. Especially not someone as remarkable as the man in front of her.

The man in front of her who was currently wrapped in shadows, unnoticed until he chose to reveal himself. A man who could creep up and stick a knife in one’s gut and be on his way before the victim hit the floor.

Hot eyes watching . . .

The edges of his eyes crinkled in darkly amused knowledge.

Her heart picked up speed.

“You are guessing.”

“Am I? Or I could be using knowledge gained from listening to your father’s prattle.”

She pressed her lips together. “Hardly something to admit to me.”

“You don’t admire my honesty?” His eyes were lazy.

“I question your purpose.”

“I’m simply on a mission of collection.” He hummed. “Is there anything I should be collecting from you, dear Charlotte?”

She felt her skin heat at the mention, at the look in his eyes. Inexplicable giddiness that there was collection to be had . . . uncertainty that this was a simple transaction for him.

What was wrong with her?

“I’m not sure there is. We didn’t properly finish the game. You fell
asleep.
” There. She had firmly impugned his manhood. And in the cold light of a new day, it seemed slightly depressing that a man hadn’t even been able to stay awake to ravish her. Maybe she really
was
just that boring.

He chuckled, a deep rumbling sound. Water over rocks. “With another woman, I would have taken the pleasure offered, then turned her away for a full measure of sleep. We are
not
finished, Charlotte, you are correct.”

God, she couldn’t stop the lift, the euphoria.
Wrong, so wrong.
“And what is it that you propose? Did you bring your chessboard? Shall we play in the garden? Use one of the rooms inside?”

He smiled lazily. “You know well that we finished that particular game. I am quite sure that your quick mind played out the game to its conclusion. Five moves more. You are perfectly aware of who the winner was and what
he
won. But would you rather I take you into one of the closed rooms within to . . . discuss . . . it?”

“What? No!” Her heart was nearly beating through her chest. Anticipation. Anxiety.

“At your next stop then? Or one thereafter?” He moved closer with each word. “Perhaps I should lie in wait. Make you anticipate my presence around each shadowed corner, ready to twirl you into the darkness.

“And I will, Charlotte. You can think of our night together as a prelude. You escaped with your virtue intact. And you could remain that way.” Eyes languid with promise pinned hers, and she could hear the thumping beat of her own heart. “But you don’t want to remain that way, do you, Charlotte?”

His lips brushed her cheek, then the lobe of her ear, as he whispered the last. She leaned into him, terribly aware of the leap of her pulse beneath his fingers. Of the way his mere presence seemed to tilt her toward him, her head automatically giving him better access to her neck. Waiting for a vampiric kiss.

Her eyes closed, the steady beat becoming louder. Like footsteps in the grass, the beat of her heart.

“I should be done with the game and depart with you now.” Her heart raced at the words, at the tickling of lips against her skin. “Alas. I’m not sure you’d forgive me. And I plan to make the taste of your skin a serial pleasure. One that neither one night or two can satisfy.” His lips brushed her neck, the side of her throat. “Soon.”

A whisper of fingers ghosted the flesh of her wrist before lifting.

“Come to cower in the shadows,” a strident voice challenged. “Or to meet with a lover?”

Charlotte’s eyes popped open. And she frantically looked at the
empty
space before her, her body leaning across the bench and almost touching the foliage. She nearly gave in to a hysterical little laugh before composing herself and turning to the voice.

“Simply smelling the jasmine,” she said. “Is that what you came to do as well?”

Bethany Case’s eyes darted about the space, actively seeking another body. But Charlotte had chosen the spot for the
lack
of real privacy it afforded. Which had made Roman’s successful concealment all the more baffling.

And her subsequent actions all the more alarming.

She half expected him to be spotted at any moment. A cry erupting about an intruder. About her indiscretion. And yet the garden seemed void of anything but invited guests.

She smartly chose not to look too closely, for inspection would prompt her nemesis to do likewise.

“I smell something foul.”

“Yes, now that you are here, I do as well.” Charlotte rose, brushing her skirt.

Bethany’s fingers wrapped around her arm, clawing satin. “Soon, Chatsworth. Soon you will be naught but a distant,
fond
memory.”

“Oh?” She peeled the claws from her arm. “Are you leaving dear England?”

An ugly laugh issued. “You have been very fortunate so far, but no one is that perfect. You will slip. And I will be there to watch you fall.”

“I’m sure that you will,” Charlotte said simply, and stepped to the side. “You’ve always been a cockroach.”

She heard the murderous growl, but continued walking calmly along the path.

“Soon, Chatsworth,” the ugly voice called. “And the damage will be irreversible.”

Charlotte tried to shake off the portent. The echo of Roman’s promise, dangerous in a different way. Bethany’s tune had changed little. Why should she listen to her now?

Because you are skating the edge of ruin. Half-willing to shove yourself into the mill.

The dance floor was full, and she was happy to walk around it, not meeting anyone’s eyes. Not wanting to be trapped into a dance.

For there was no wild, drugging happiness to be found for her here on the floor. Merely political moves like the shifting of the chess pieces over a cold board. It seemed a lifetime ago that she had thought otherwise in this venue, but she remembered it in a secret part of her soul, a part that was yearning to bloom once more. That chaotic passion of youth.

The tendril of it peeking up and threatening to overtake her with its insanity.

She located the Downings. Leaning into each other. Blowing toward each other like trees in favorable winds. Charlotte’s smile stayed firm, and she kept her eyes on them instead of glancing back to the garden.

“Did anything of note take place before we arrived?” Miranda asked brightly.

Charlotte’s gaze strayed unwillingly, unwisely, watching the lights from the room bounce off the glass of the open doors. “No, nothing of importance.”

Bethany Case entered from the garden patio, her sickly sweet smile turned Charlotte’s way. Challenging. Promising that no good would come to her enemy.

And for the love of everything proper, a man who ruled part of the underworld had just been there, lounging in the fronds, touching her, drawing her steadily toward him, wanting.
Collecting.
Which meant he could show up anywhere, at any time.
Soon.
Could come to the next event and throw her over his shoulder and make off with her into the night.

“Well, perhaps we will have more luck at our next destination. You are going to the Slatterlys’?”

“Yes.” There was a low wall at the Slatterlys’. She bet Roman knew exactly how to hold her properly in order to scale it together.

“I must tell you all about—”

But Charlotte couldn’t concentrate on her friend’s words.