The Duke's Indiscretion (18 page)

“Put your hair down, Charlotte.”

“My—” She shook her head minutely. “I beg your pardon?”

“You have beautiful hair,” he said with a lift of a shoulder, “and I want to see it down.”

Perplexed, she scoffed and sat back a little in her seat. “I don't think this is the appropriate time, sir.”

He tapped his fingers together. “I have some secrets of my own, but I won't tell you any of them unless you take your hair down for me. Right now.”

Aghast, she simply stared at him, more intrigued by his confession of secrets than shocked by the
manner in which he wanted to reveal them.

Tilting her head to the side, she narrowed her eyes and asked, “It depends on the value of the secrets. And how many you're hiding.”

He laughed, then leaned forward to rest his wrists on the edge of the desk. “They're
enormous
secrets.”

She watched him candidly for a moment. “Do these
enormous
secrets have anything to do with your tools?”

“Maybe,” he replied casually. “But you'll never know if you refuse my request.”

In a manner, he was teasing her, and oddly enough, she quite enjoyed the interaction. But she absolutely could not resist such a temptation, and he knew it, too. Through an exaggerated sigh, she raised her arms and began pulling each pin from her unruly hair, dropping them into her music bag on the floor at her side. With the last one out, she shook her head a little to let her massive strawberry-blond curls fall loosely about her shoulders and down her back.

He reclined in his rocker again, resting an elbow on the arm, his chin on his fist, staring at her most intently, his gaze traveling over every inch of her hair and face and torso.

Charlotte squirmed a little in her seat, trying to remain composed. “Well?”

His mouth turned up slyly. “The first secret, darling wife, is that I
am
a professional.”

“And what is it, sir, that you do professionally?” she asked, unable to hide the captivation in her voice.

He waited for a moment, rocking back and forth minutely.

“You really are quite breathtaking with your hair
loose,” he admitted quietly.

She suddenly felt hot all over, sensing a strange turn in conversation—a turn, of which she wanted no part.

Smiling blandly, she replied, “And you are a very handsome man, your grace. Now, what does a handsome man like you do professionally?”

His eyes narrowed and he tapped his fingertips against his chin, his lips curled in wry amusement. “I do illegal things professionally.”

She stilled, riveted, her smile fading.

“Do you like that secret?” he asked seconds later, his voice low and husky.

Her heart started beating wildly again in her chest. “I—I'm not sure,” she acknowledged after a harsh swallow.

He watched her, all humor removed from his features. Then abruptly, he stood and began walking around his desk, toward her.

“Stand up, Charlotte,” he ordered as he moved to her side.

She looked up at his face. “Why?”

He smirked. “Because I told you to.”

Her body felt like lead of a sudden, but after only a moment's hesitation, she managed to gradually raise herself up to meet his gaze.

“Do you want to hear another secret?” he asked, placing his palm at the base of her throat.

She felt the warmth of his skin against hers, the strength in his fingers, and her eyes grew large as a fearful thought occurred to her. “If you kill people professionally, I don't want to know.”

He actually laughed. “No, I've never killed a soul,
though a couple of women have tempted me.”

She stiffened and he felt it.

“I meant my sisters, Charlotte.”

“Oh,” she muttered, fairly captured now by the remarkable intensity in his eyes, the heat of his body so close to her own.

Suddenly, he leaned forward and brushed his lips against her jawline. She sucked in a sharp breath, then leaned back a little and instinctively lowered her lashes as he trailed very slight kisses down her neck.

“I suppose you'd like me to tell you another secret,” he whispered.

Reeling, she had no idea what to say.

“Would you?”

She felt her legs weakening, and, afraid she might fall, she reached up and clutched his sleeves over his arms. “No. I—I want you to tell me what you do that's illegal.”

He drew the tip of his nose up the side of her neck until it touched her earlobe, then murmured, “I want to…But…”

“But?”

“But not now…”

Ready to shove him away in frustration, Charlotte thought she might actually faint when at that moment, he moved his head around and placed his lips on hers, just barely touching, and then invited her into the kiss with slow, soft pecks until he finally captured her mouth completely.

She fought him with control as long as she could, her mind racing, trying to understand why he would kiss her now, here. And then all reason evaporated as
he drew his tongue across her top lip and pushed his fingers through her thick curls to draw her against him.

On instinct, she wrapped her arms around his neck and held him tightly, kissing him back as she cradled his head with both hands. He worked his numbing magic on her, inflaming her from the inside out, his tongue darting into her mouth to tease and taste and suck as his own breathing grew fast and hard. And then just as suddenly as he began the glorious assault on her body, he released her, pulling gradually away, caressing her cheek with his palm as he did so.

Trembling, it took her ages before she could open her eyes to the depth of his, her mind now a whirlwind of turmoil and questions, her body heated and aching for something more. He continued to watch her, but his breathing had quickened, his eyes looked glazed, and her first coherent thought was that
she
had affected him this way.

They stood like that for a moment, gazing into each other's eyes, and then he reached up with one hand and closed it over her covered breast with his large palm.

Her breath caught in her chest; she couldn't move.

“I want to tell you all my secrets,” he disclosed in a husky timbre, “but I have to trust you first.”

She blinked quickly several times, feeling the rage of heat between her legs, unable to respond. Then he drew his second hand up and placed it over her other breast, holding it still for seconds before he drew his thumbs across her nipples, back and forth.

She whimpered, mesmerized, clutching his arms again to keep from falling.

“Can I trust you, Charlotte?” he whispered, his
breathing now shaky, his jaw tight.

She felt like melting. “Yes…”

He closed his eyes and dropped his forehead to hers, gently massaging her breasts with both hands as if he cherished them.

“Colin…” she breathed.

And with that, he drew his lips across her brow and released her, stepping away as he took her hands from his arms and kissed each one on the knuckles.

Charlotte closed her eyes again, shaken, and not just because he'd touched her. There had been no groping in his caress, just an intimacy between them that hadn't been there before, and that she couldn't begin to describe. And she wanted more of it.

“I have lots of things to tell you, and we have some decisions to make,” he murmured.

She nodded.

“But I'm hungry, you're hungry, and we need to hide the Handel again,” he added, squeezing her hands gently before letting them go.

Disconcerted, she raised her lashes and pulled away from him, searching for her music at her feet. “Thank you, your grace,” she said, her voice sounding thick and scratchy to her ears.

“I'll put the composition in my safe, behind my desk,” he said. “But it will be in here and you may see it at any time.”

Wiping her palm across her forehead to push her curling hair aside, Charlotte righted herself and managed a weak smile, forcing herself to look at him once more.

He'd crossed his arms over his chest, his face still flushed from an obvious passion, but his eyes were lit with amusement. Suddenly, she was desperate to get away from him and into the confines of her own private bed chamber.

“I—I'm tired, sir,” she asserted, trying to keep her tone matter-of-fact. “I think I'll retire and have dinner brought to me.”

For a moment or two he said nothing. Then the relaxed humor he'd shared with her fled his face and he turned away. “As you wish, madam.”

Charlotte felt an immediate sense of wrongness about the entire situation, as if she'd started seducing
him
and then quit with the tease. But then he made her feel that way, she decided. He had started the kiss.

Drawing a deep breath for confidence, she said, “When are you going to tell me?”

He glanced up briefly. “Tell you what?”

Clutching her music bag in her hand, she bit her lip, then replied, “What you do professionally.”

He almost grinned. She could see a twitch of his mouth even as he looked now at the Handel score, lightly folding the newspaper back over it with his tweezers.

“Soon,” he maintained vaguely.

That's it? Soon?
Confounded and confused, Charlotte concluded that he had no intention of revealing anything more about him now or he would do so. She also knew he was irritated with her for wanting to leave his company after the…engaging time they'd just shared. There was really nothing more
for her to say.

And so, dignity intact, she excused herself and left him at his work, alone in his study to hide her treasure, wondering if he realized that her doing so was the first great sign that she trusted him.

G
ripped by his own determination, Colin waited until he heard Yvette leave Charlotte's room for a final time, then stood at their adjoining door for another moment or two to give her time to settle before he surprised her with a nighttime visit.

It had been four long hours since they'd been together in his study, since he had stared at the absolutely priceless treasure she possessed. Under any other circumstance, he would have spent those few hours alone following her departure to contemplate the score's originality, giddy with an excitement only a former thief and forger could feel, ready to begin a copy if for no other reason than to know he could make a solid and undetectable reproduction. If he'd kissed any other woman as he kissed his wife, he could have left her without a second thought to pore through music scores to verify the signature. But strangely, between the night they'd married and this afternoon, something had changed in
him. In the last few hours he'd thought of nothing but her—her thick and gorgeous head of hair, her sharp, beautiful blue eyes, the way her voice turned husky when he aroused her, and especially her stunning, perfectly curved body that he wanted to see nude again—and again and again and again. It had been a remarkable thing, he decided, that a woman could make him think of her more than a project, but Charlotte had managed to do it without even trying, and without purposely changing into her Lottie English persona that forever managed to make him hard with need. In the last four hours his thoughts had dwelled on his renewed desire for her, his wife, and finding some way to get her to respond to him sexually. Her satisfaction in bed had become his primary focus.

Pressing his forehead to their adjoining door, he squeezed his eyes shut and took a deep breath to calm his nerves before he entered. Then with resolve, he righted himself once more, turned the knob, and walked into her room.

The night was dark, with no moon to speak of, and she'd already dimmed the light on her bedside table. It took him a second or two for his eyes to adjust, though he immediately noticed her shapely form outlined in shadow on the bed to his right, heard the rustle of her sheets as she realized he'd entered.

“Colin?”

“Charlotte, could I have a word with you?” he asked evenly.

“Of course, come in,” she replied after only a mo
mentary hesitation, sitting up a little from under the covers.

“You can leave the lamp off; I won't be a minute,” he lied as he slowly walked toward the bed.

He'd purposely left his door open a crack so there was just enough light from his room to see what he was doing, and what little there was allowed him to find his way easily and sit near the foot of the bed on the side where she lay.

“What is it?” she asked hesitantly.

He brought his knee up and rested the side of it on the mattress, then leaned back on one hand, watching her in the near darkness. “I just thought of something, an idea, actually, regarding the Handel sonata.”

“An idea about it?”

“Mmm…more like a way to use it.”

She sat up a little. “Go on.”

She sounded more alert and he smiled to himself, noting a shade of intrigue in her voice and realizing this would wake her up enough for his seduction attempt.

“My idea,” he continued, “is to make a copy of the Handel composition. A perfect duplicate.”

She turned on her side and lifted her head to rest it on her hand, her elbow braced on her pillow. “I don't understand. Make a copy for what?”

He grinned. “To expose the person, or individuals, trying to steal the original.”

Silence lingered for a moment, and he could almost hear the possibilities rumbling in her head.

Finally, she said, “You think to lay a trap.”

He nodded once. “Exactly.”

She stretched out beneath the sheets and her legs bumped against his arm, though she didn't seem to notice.

“Do you think you can find someone who can copy such a piece?” she asked.

He relaxed into the mattress, leaning over so that her shins were more or less locked beneath the crux of his arm as he rested his own head in his hand.

“I can,” he disclosed, his tone low.

She sighed. “It's an interesting notion, but I can't imagine anyone who would be able to do so with the skill enough to fool someone who really knows Handel's works, or even music in general. And we'd have to expect the person trying to steal it knows his music.” She paused, thinking, then added, “You'd have to find an expert, and I'm sure it would cost a fortune. I'm not sure I would be able to trust anyone else with it, either.”

She didn't understand, and an immense pleasure in revealing himself right now sliced through him.

“I meant, dear wife, that
I
can do it. I can make a replication.”

He expected her to be shocked or puzzled into silence. Instead, she laughed.

“Colin, darling,” she purred with great exaggeration, “is this one of your little secrets?”

He didn't know whether to feel smug or irritated by her apparent lack of faith. But then she really had no idea where his true talents lay and what he could do with them. She also had no clue what he did with his time, as she'd said so often, which made this moment something he'd remember for a long time.

Nonchalantly, he began running his fingertips over
the coverlet, along the length of her shin, with just enough pressure she had to notice. “I told you I had a few secrets. Forgery is one of them.”

He felt her try to tug her leg up, but he held it too firmly and she abandoned the attempt.

Skeptically, she remarked, “And what if I told you that's a little difficult to believe?”

“I'd say you don't trust me not to lie to you yet.”

That comment seemed to hit her, on more than one level. She stirred a little on her pillow, and with the minimal light filtering in from his bedroom lamp, he could see the slow widening of her eyes, the tilting of her head.

“You're not joking, are you?” she murmured in whisper.

He inhaled deeply and shook his head. “No, I'm not joking, Charlotte. I've never lied to you, and the truth is, I'm a forger. By profession.”

She sucked in air through her teeth. “That's…absurd, but—”

“But you believe it, don't you?” he finished for her. “You saw the way I took care with the composition, the unusual tools I used to authenticate it, the time and manner in which I reviewed the paper, the signature. It's what I do for a living.”

“A
living
?” she returned at once. “You're a titled gentleman with a wealthy estate, sir. I rather believe you were pretending to authenticate it simply to impress me.”

He fought the urge to laugh. “Impress you? Darling, I don't need to pretend anything to impress you.”

“Ridiculous,” she scoffed.

He rubbed her kneecap with his thumb. “But again, I speak the truth.”

That silenced her for a moment or two, and she jerked her leg away from him with annoyance. Still, he could positively feel her quick mind churning with ideas, and he let her take her time in processing the information before he delved into his past.

“Then—so this is the illegal secret you kept from me,” she charged, her tone turning somber and flat with distaste. “You forge documents.”

He pressed his palm to the bed and sat up, inching closer with his body, his hip next to hers, hoping she wouldn't notice, or at the very least, pull away from him. “I do. And I'm very, very good at it.”

“And for
whom
do you do this illegal forgery?” she asked with extreme emphasis. “There can't possibly be that many people who would need your expert, or professional, services.”

Colin thought about that for a moment. He'd come into her room tonight expecting to tell her everything, to gain her acceptance, her trust, even her admiration. But something about her reaction made him pause. She'd certainly kept secrets of her own during their short marriage, and had been quite unwilling to confess them even as he discovered them himself. Keeping one of his own secrets from her now, perhaps the most important secret, might actually be the prudent thing to do, though admittedly he wasn't sure why he felt that way. True, he was, indeed, a forger by profession, and he didn't want her to think she'd married a nefarious liar and criminal. But for some completely irrational reason, it sud
denly occurred to him that he wanted her to want him, to like him, to desire him for the man he was now, a man with a faulty past and good intentions, not for the champion he'd become for their government. For the first time in his life, he wanted a woman to care for him beyond his charm, his mystery, and the revelation shocked him.

Dropping his voice to a near whisper, he said, “Charlotte, you asked me once what I do with my time. The fact is, my time is my own, and it has been since I returned from university.”

That got her attention. She sat up a little more, intrigued without trying to hide it.

He grinned slyly. “I have an advanced degree in chemistry.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Chemistry,” he repeated. Shrugging, he added, “As a child, I had a keen interest in explosives.”

She gasped, then giggled, and her reaction made him chuckle. “It's not as frightening as it sounds. It's probably more accurate to say I enjoyed the composition of gunpowder.”

Amazement slicing through her voice, she repeated, “Enjoyed gunpowder…”

“Yes, and…other interesting substances that one could mix to create a loud bang.”

She was speechless for a moment. Then she shook herself and ran her fingers through her hair. “I'm—I don't understand. What does a fascination with gunpowder have to do with forgery?”

“Ah, yes. Forgery.” He leaned over, resting his head on his hand again, this time with his chest
closing over her hips, barely touching. “It didn't start out that way, of course. I make it all sound rather grand, but in actuality, I studied basic chemistry in the beginning, probably because it was the only thing that held my interest as a child. Later, at Cambridge, I began an extensive study into the chemistry of substances like paint, paper, ink, and so forth, because I had the very good fortune of working for and with a German scholar called Rolf Nuerenberg, who had spent his entire career transcribing ancient Persian documents.”

Very carefully, he reached out and placed his palm on the side of her hip, on top of the sheet, and to his good fortune, she didn't even notice.

“I had no idea you were such an interesting, gifted man, your grace,” she returned, her tone carrying a whiff of humor.

“And very smart, Charlotte,” he added as he stared into her darkened eyes.

She sighed and relaxed into her pillows again. “I knew that about you the first night we met.”

His brows rose. “Really.”

She smiled at him. “I refuse to elaborate.”

“A shame, that,” he said, teasing.

“Yes,” was her vague reply.

He couldn't help but grin as he lifted his palm from her hip and reached out for her hand, covering it with his own at first, then lightly caressing her fingers.

“When I returned home from my studies, I was very bored,” he revealed, his voice low. “My family expected me to carry on with my duties as the heir to
my estate, move my way into court, support causes, be socially active and marry a titled lady. In other words, no more gunpowder, no more chemistry, no more fascinating work on ancient documents. To me, nothing could have been more mundane.”

He heard her exhale a long, slow breath in understanding, and it occurred to him at that moment how very much their lives paralleled each other's—duty first, and abandoned dreams.

Rubbing her knuckles, he said, “When I was nearly twenty-five, I was arrested for attempting to produce counterfeit currency.”

He felt her entire body tense beside him, though she didn't attempt to pull away. He continued before she could comment.

“Of course I knew it was wrong, and I didn't need the money. I never wanted to do it for the money. I wanted the challenge, the excitement. I simply wanted to see if I could do it, if what I produced could be accepted as real.”

“This is unbelievable,” she whispered.

He nodded. “Indeed it is, but it's the truth.”

“I married a criminal…”

“I was never convicted of a crime, Charlotte,” he replied gravely.

“And yet you committed one.”

“No,” he insisted. “I never cheated anyone and I never actually sold counterfeit money. I was more or less in the planning stage, working on the process, when I was caught.” He gave her a moment or two to digest that, then said, “Three things kept me out of prison. The first, I'm embarrassed to admit, is my
title. I also swore before a judge that I would never do it again and at the same time offered my willingness to help others with my expertise whenever I could. My plea was accepted and the rumors of my arrest were silenced. The only thing I was ever truly guilty of was stupidity. In the last ten years I've done nothing but try to right every one of my wrongs, and to this day, I believe I've succeeded.”

For a long time, it seemed, she simply stared at him in the darkness, totally unaware of how close he was to her, of how he gently caressed her hand, her fingers and knuckles.

“So you can duplicate money, musical scores…what else?” she asked at last, her tone cool and calculating.

“Actually, the Handel sonata will be my first for music.”

“That's not the point,” she said, dismayed.

He sobered a little. “I know. The truth is, I have a special…gift, shall we say, for noticing and creating detail. I can analyze handwriting, forge documents, and over time I've learned my craft. I can tell by careful examination if something is an original or a copy.”

She waited for a moment, watching him as if she might discern lies from his features in the darkness.