Noble Destiny (13 page)

“Charlotte.” Dare's breathing was hot and ragged as he tore his mouth from hers. She whimpered and tugged on his head to make him kiss her again.

“No, Charlotte, you have to listen to me.” Dare seemed out of breath, angry even as he tightened his jaw. Charlotte leaned forward to kiss a trail along it. He moaned softly into her hair, his fingers flexing into her hips before he suddenly, inexplicably,
cruelly
pushed her away from the warm haven of his body. “Stop trying to drive me insane! A man can take only so much, woman! Stay there, right there, don't move an inch. Just stand right there and I'll stand here and then you won't drive me mad with your lips and…your…”

Charlotte, her restless body set aflame with the desire evident in his eyes, moved forward.

“STOP!” he yelled, and retreated behind the machine. “Stay there, and stop looking at my chest like that or I won't be able to control myself.”

“But I don't want you to control yourself. I want you to be wild, just like your tongue when you kiss me. I've never thought a tongue could be so thrilling, but yours is. I like how it dances all over my mouth. I like how it strokes and teases and turns quite bossy with my tongue. And I can't stop looking at your chest, I like it. I want to touch your chest. I want to taste it, too. Don't you want me to taste it?”

Dare took a deep, shuddery breath as he ran an agitated hand through his hair. “God give me the strength to survive this night. Stop thinking of my tongue and my chest and the hot silkiness of your mouth and how your breasts fit perfectly into my hands and the alluring way your hips curve just right, and listen to me. What I have to say to you is important. It's vital that you understand me.”

What with all the talk of hips and breasts and tongues, not to mention the wild, nearly uncontrolled look in her husband's eyes, Charlotte couldn't help but blink back disappointment that he wasn't attacking her and ravishing her on the spot, although she conceded that ravishment on a dirt floor was probably not the most comfortable of experiences.

“Very well,” she said, clutching her hands to keep from reaching out to stroke all that lovely golden skin. “As you don't wish for me to taste you and touch you and perhaps stroke your manly instrument in the manner that Vyvyan La Blue says is most effective, then I shall stand here and listen to you.”

Dare closed his eyes for a moment and swallowed hard. Twice. “Thank you.”

“I will, however, continue to think about your tongue.”

A tremor rippled through his powerful frame.

He gripped the machinery before him with both hands. He seemed to be having some sort of difficulty with his jaw, because his words came out tight and sharp. “I am a man of honor. When you trapped me into marriage with you, I was well within my rights to expose you and leave you to the condemnation of the
ton
. But I didn't do that. I didn't allow you to become an object of pity and scorn. I offered for you publicly, and I wed you publicly.”

Charlotte nodded. She stepped to the side to better see his groin.

“You will admit that I could have left you with your breeches dangling around your knees, and walked away without further consequence to me.”

Charlotte narrowed her eyes. She was familiar enough with male anatomy to know what she was looking at. She waited, watching for the sign.

“That I married you proves I have honor. That I refuse to touch you until such time as I desire it, proves I am in control of my life regardless of your plans otherwise. I will not have a woman, any woman, dictating to me what I shall and shall not do. I realize you want children someday, that you…er…embrace the physical side of marriage, but you must understand that I will be the master in my own home.” Dare paused for a moment, his breath hissing through clenched teeth. Charlotte leaned closer, her eyes on the tautly stretched fabric concealing his manly instrument. Her fingers itched to touch him.

“WHY THE HELL ARE YOU STARING AT MY CROTCH LIKE THAT?”

Charlotte jumped at the bellow, her gaze snapping up to meet infuriated blue eyes. “I was waiting to see if you twitched,” she explained. The man certainly had a lot to learn about marriage if he didn't know all the specifics about bedding his wife. Everyone knew there had to be twitching before the bedding could begin.

Dare certainly looked a bit deranged as he ran a hand through his hair again, his eyes blazing, his broad, manly chest rising and falling with quick breaths. She wondered if she should comfort him again.

“Twitched? Did you say twitched? Do I understand you correctly? You are watching my crotch to see if my…er…
twitches
?”

Regretfully, Charlotte decided that now was not the time to comfort by physical touch. Instead, she would contrive to comfort him from where she stood. She smiled a calm, gentle smile that radiated soothing thoughts. “Yes. It's very simple, really. Would you like me to explain it to you?”

Disbelief, amusement, and resignation paraded across his face. “Yes,” he replied, crossing his arms over his chest and leaning one hip up against the machine. “Please. Enlighten me.”

Charlotte had a hard time swallowing at the sight of all those muscles bunched, but she made an effort. She was, after all, supposed to be comforting him. The poor man was obviously clueless about how things worked in a marriage. As the wiser, more experienced partner, it was up to her to fill him in on the fine details.

“The harlot I consulted in Italy was most specific about what was necessary for a bedding,” she began.

“Harlot?” Dare blinked a couple of times at her. “You consulted a harlot?”

“Yes, for Antonio. His manly instrument didn't work correctly, and so I went to a harlot to see what I could do to help it. Her advice was sound, I'm sure, so you needn't worry that just because it did not work on Antonio, it won't work on you—”

“One moment.” Dare held up a hand to stop her. She clutched her hands tighter and made an effort to send calming rays of comfort toward him. “Are you telling me that your husband couldn't…er…couldn't maintain an erection?”

“Erection!” Charlotte beamed at him. “What a very good word that is. Apropos, too. Erection. I like that. Yes, the answer to your question is no, Antonio's manly instrument refused to erect for me.”

Dare rubbed a hand over his face. His voice sounded as if it were stretched as thin as taffy. “You're a virgin?”

A faint blush made its way up her cheeks, but she ignored it. This was her husband she was speaking to. Such discussions as virginity and the erections of manly instruments were allowed with him. She shook her head.

“So he consummated your marriage?”

She nodded, happy that he understood. “Yes, the night we were wed.”

“Just…er…just the once? He never gave you pleasure any other time?”

“No. As I said, his manly instrument didn't care for the erecting process. Which brings me back to the harlot—she said, and quite sensibly I think, that twitching indicates an interest on the owner's part. Your manly instrument seems to be capable of the erecting process. Thus I was watching for the twitching to tell me whether or not you find me toothsome.”

Dare stared at her for a second before throwing his head back and laughing. Charlotte frowned. There seemed to be a pronounced note of hysteria in his laugh, and to be truthful, she didn't see what he found so funny. She was being as honest and instructive as she could be—helpful, too. How many wives, she wondered, would take the time to share their knowledge with their husbands?

“I was only mildly curious, you understand,” she said with great dignity, ignoring her husband, who was still howling with laughter. Really, she was almost offended by his reaction to her offer of help. “Antonio's instrument didn't find me erect-worthy. I just thought I'd see how yours felt about the subject. And I must add, I think it's quite rude for you to carry on in this manner when all I was trying to do was give you the benefit of my experience as a wife of four years. Most men, I imagine, would be happy to have such knowledge imparted to them!”

Dare wiped his eyes and made an effort to stop laughing. “Charlotte, you might as well be a virgin for all the experience and knowledge of men you have.”

Charlotte tightened her lips. He was laughing at her! All because Antonio's instrument hadn't liked her. Tears pricked at the back of her eyes, but before she could do more than allow her lower lip to tremble, he was there before her, all golden skin and muscles and a wonderful scent that was pure Dare. He took her hands in his, kissing the back of each.

“I wasn't insulting you. I'm sorry if you think I was. I am humble and honest enough to admit that a part of me is pleased you are virtually all but untouched.”

She allowed herself to be mollified and was about to bestow upon him her best dimpled smile when he went and ruined her good mood.

“But it changes nothing. I am in earnest, wife. I will not allow you to cozen me into your bed. I will bed you if, and when, I choose. No amount of kisses and seductive looks and teary entreaties will stir me. Do you understand?”

Charlotte stared at him in horror. He couldn't be serious. Could he? No. He was overwrought. He needed more comforting. He was worried about the something blocking something else in his engine that could explode. That was all. Still… “You're not serious?”

He nodded, releasing her hands as he turned back to his machine. He picked up his cloth and resumed polishing the gauge. “
You
wanted marriage,
you
trapped me into it, but
I
will be the master of my own fate. Now, it's late, I suggest you go to bed. Have Patricia's maid attend you. I will see you in the morning, when we will go over the household budget.”

“But…but your manly instrument! It's erecting all over the place! Just look at it; it wants me!”

Dare refused her invitation to gaze upon his groin. Charlotte would have insisted, but she had to admit he looked as if he were at the end of his patience.

“That doesn't mean I'm going to bed you.”

“That's…that's…surely that's not legal, is it? You can't
not
bed me!”

He didn't even bother to look at her as he spoke, the beast. “I can, and I will. Go to bed, Charlotte. I have work to do here, and you can't be of any help unless you know how to increase the efficiency of a marine condenser.”

She gritted her teeth against the desire to tell him just what he could do with his inefficient condenser, but she told herself a good wife did not think such thoughts, no matter how much her pigheaded, obstinate, foolish husband might try to goad her into it.

Besides, a sudden vision had come to her, a vision of a book in blue leather with lovely gilt letters and marbled endpapers. Vyvyan La Blue, she was certain, would have a thing or two to say about husbands whose manly instruments erected at will and yet whose masters refused to put them through their paces. Vyvyan always had something to say, and the connubial calisthenics described had always looked so appealing.

“Very well,” she said, her chin high as she skirted the machine. “I shall retire for the evening. Good night.” She stretched up on tiptoe and placed a chaste kiss on his cheek.

He mumbled a good night that turned into a yelp as she boldly placed her hand on his crotch. His instrument twitched in response to her caress. She smiled a very, very smug smile as she turned and left the room without another word.

All would be well. He wanted her, his manly instrument was twitching as it should be, and as for all the rest of his outrageous statements…well, that would sort itself out in time.

Wearily, Dare climbed the three sets of stairs leading to his bedchamber, his mind filled not as it should be—with a solution to the problem of the obstruction of the free passage of heat from the boiler to the water of the cold cistern—but with thoughts of the warm, vital, utterly enthralling woman who was now legally his. There wasn't a person in the whole British Empire who would bat an eyelash if he were to march straight into her bedchamber and claim those marital rights due him as her husband. Certainly Charlotte wouldn't complain, he thought with a tired chuckle as he turned down the hallway toward the bedchambers. She all but stripped him in his workroom, and the way her body melted against his indicated she wasn't immune to his touch. If she only knew the power she held over him…he shook his head, thankful she had no idea of the effect she had on his heart and soul. He glanced downward and ruefully added
body
to the list.

Of their own accord, his feet stopped before the door to her bedchamber. He found himself holding his breath, listening for sounds from the room. A powerful wave of desire washed over him as he stood gripped with indecision, wanting nothing so much as to fling open the door and spend the rest of the night making his wife happy. His lips twisted wryly as he eased the tight material of his breeches across the proof of his arousal. Just the thought of her so close, so tantalizingly near left his heart pounding with the effort to keep his needs under control, his whole body straining for release at the image of her awaiting him in bed, warm, welcoming, loving…

He grimaced at the last word. That was the problem, she didn't love him. Hell, he doubted if she even
liked
him. She was physically attracted to him, but so were a good many other women, and while he had no complaints with a purely physical relationship based on mutual satisfaction, that was not what he wanted from a wife. A wife was different.

Not that he had
wanted
a wife, he pointed out to himself as he turned away from her door. But he had one now, and it was up to both of them to make the best of it. He wanted Charlotte to be a friend, a partner, someone who desired to share his life, not just his bed.

Dare hissed an oath as he strode down the hall to his small dressing room, cursing his foolish pride, cursing his need for something more than a lover. Why couldn't he be like other men and take what was offered without looking to engage her affections? He stripped off his breeches and boots, throwing them heedlessly in a corner before washing the dust and grime off his torso. Towel in hand, he glared down at himself. Despite the cold water he was still hot and hard and in desperate need of relief.

“Traitor,” he growled to his arousal before stalking to the window, looking out at the empty moonlit streets, trying to ignore the demands of his body that swept all else from his mind. Certainly looking at a street would be safe. There was nothing out there to remind him of the warm, supple woman lying in the room next to his. No, there was just a street out there, a common, everyday sight. True, the crescent curve of the street reminded him of the sweet curve of her hips, but that was the merest of coincidences. And that the silvered light glinting off a puddle of water was just as bright as the sunlight striking her golden curls was of no account. Of course, there was the deep indigo of a shadowed doorway that mimicked her eyes as they darkened in passion when he took possession of her sweet, alluring mouth…

“Dammit!” he snarled, dropping the drape and whirling away from the window. His arousal was throbbing now, actually
throbbing
with want and need and desire. He considered easing himself just so he could sleep, but grimly told himself he wasn't that desperate.

“Yet,” he muttered with a curse as he blew out the candle and headed for his bedchamber. It was going to be a long night, this wedding night of his, but it would be better spent lying sleeplessly in his dark bed where everything he saw wouldn't remind him of his bride in the next room.

The bed loomed up, melting into the darkness of the room, the long bed curtains turning it into a yawning black embrace of heaven or hell, he wasn't sure which. He slid between the covers, ignoring the almost painful touch of cool linen across his heated parts, willing himself to concentrate on something not remotely related to the cries of need from his body. His engine, that's what he'd think about. Engines were masculine. Engines were hard, not soft and sweetly scented like a woman's welcoming body. Engines had long, steel shafts that fit tightly into waiting oiled bearings. Engines had pistons, lots of pistons, all of them pumping tirelessly, pumping and pumping, driving the shaft in a long, endless motion, building the pressure higher and higher until it was so great, the blow-cock triggered, releasing a great blast of steam…

“Oh, Christ.” Dare moaned into the arm flung over his face. He truly was going mad if even the thought of his steam engine did nothing but conjure images of Charlotte. God's carbuncles, his mind was so consumed with her, it even manufactured the sweet scent of her perfumed skin to taunt and torment him.

His entire body stiffened. Slowly he moved his hands, flexing his fingers, then turned his head toward the arm draped across his cheek and brow, the arm that most definitely did not belong to him.

“Charlotte?” he whispered.

“Mmm?” came a muffled, sleepy response from the shadowed side of the bed. The soft arm slid down his face to his chest. Dare cursed fluently in Gaelic as he leaped from the bed and grabbed for the flint.

“What the—Ow! Bloody chair—devil are you doing in my bed?” he roared at the disembodied arm lying in a pool of moonlight as he lit a candle.

“Hmm? Alasdair?” The soft glow of the candlelight revealed Charlotte sitting up, sleepy confusion on her face, her hair a mass of streaming gold that glinted as bright as a polished sovereign. “Oh, good, you've come to bed. I must have fallen asleep reading about the Beltane Fire.”

Dare stared at his wife as she pushed the hair out of her eyes and stretched. Even covered with a virginal night rail, she was a goddess, a wanton temptress, Aphrodite and Venus rolled into one enticing package. He clutched the candle tighter and tried manfully to drag his hungering gaze from the soft swell of her breasts. “Beltane Fire?”

“Yes.” She smiled and pushed back the bed linens, scooting over to the side of the bed he had just left. “It's one of the connubial calisthenics. I thought it looked particularly…dear God in heaven!”

Charlotte froze in mid-scoot, her eyes huge as she stared at Dare. All of him. Every last blessed inch of his hide. Especially the traitorous parts.

“I think the word ‘erection' does not do your manly instrument justice, Alasdair,” she breathed, her eyes luminous as they feasted on his arousal. “I'm thinking something more descriptive like monument or colossus or tarantula would be in order.”

“
Gargantua
, not tarantula,” he snapped, dropping the candle as he scrambled to find his dressing gown. He could feel her eyes on him, touching his flesh, sending rivulets of molten desire through his veins until he thought he would go mad. Lord help him, he would never survive the night, let alone the few months he expected it would take before she had grown to care about him. He wrestled his dressing gown over a body that cried out for completion, and relit the extinguished candle.

He took hold of resolve that was slipping away with every rise and fall of her breasts, and set his jaw. He had to be strong. He had to be unflinching even in the face of the most tempting woman on the face of the earth. He had to stand firmly behind what he knew was right.

She leaned forward, the loose neckline of her night rail slipping down over one shoulder, exposing the creamy curve of her breast.

He
had
to
be
out
of
his
mind.

“Oh. Why did you put that on? I liked you much better without it. You have nice flesh. It looks very touchable.”

He swore that if he squinted he could see the rosy shadowed peek of her nipple through the thin lawn material…good God, what was he doing? He dragged his gaze up to her face.

The pink tip of her tongue ran lightly across her bottom lip. His eyes followed it. The world as Dare knew it darkened and spun for a moment. He wondered idly if he was about to swoon. He'd never heard of a man swooning outside of the battlefield, but then, no man he knew of was so close to going up in the flames of unrequited desire as he was.

“Alasdair?”

He opened his eyes. She was standing before him, a book clutched to her stomach, her breasts straining against the material pulled tight across them. He hadn't been imagining it earlier; he really could see the blushing crown of each glorious breast. His mouth watered at the thought of the taste of them, of the silky smoothness of her breasts, of the weight and feel of them in his hands, of the scented paradise her body offered.

“Is something the matter? Is it…” For the first time since he had met her five years before, she looked unsure of herself. She made a whispered choking sound. “…me? Is something wrong with
me
?”

She bit her lip and blinked rapidly, as if fighting tears. The resolve he held on to so firmly began to melt at the sight of his wife, his bright, effervescent, witty Charlotte standing before him believing herself to be inadequate. God's knuckles, what was he doing to her? She was all but an innocent, and his honor, his determination to be in control of his life was hurting her. How could he be so cruel to her?

“Dare? Don't you want to bed me?” The words, almost too soft to be heard, pierced his heart.

“I…I'm sorry, Charlotte.” His voice was as rough as granite. “I tried to explain to you earlier. It doesn't have anything to do with my desire to bed you. I want something more than just your body.”

She clutched the book tighter, tears trembling on her lashes. “I don't understand. What do you want if you don't want me? Is it someone else? Why did you offer for me if you want someone else?”

He shook his head, fisting his hands to keep them from pulling her to him. “I don't want anyone else. And it should be quite obvious, even to you, that I am not immune to your many charms. But you are my wife. I didn't want to take a wife because…well, for many reasons, not the least of which is I'm in no financial position to support a woman like you as she deserves, but most importantly because I didn't want to settle for a convenience, just a body to slake myself on. I expect more from my wife.”

Dare willed her to understand. He couldn't say the words in his heart to her, not yet, but he hoped she would realize that what he wanted to grow between them was something more profound than just lust.

Her throat worked as if she were swallowing back tears. “You desire me?”

He nodded, unwilling to trust his voice.

“But you want something more from me than just…” She looked toward the bed.

His eyes glittered at her. “Yes. I want something more.”

She bit her lip, an annoying habit in any other woman, but endearingly sweet and innocent in his wife. It melted his resolve even further. That his proud, confident Charlotte was standing before him unsure and insecure…his heart ached with the knowledge that it was his determination to have more, to have all of her that brought her to this, and yet he was unable to condemn them both to the misery that would follow if they settled for anything less.

“What do you want me to be?”

Companion, friend, wife, lover. “It's not so much what I want you to be, Charlotte. It's what we both should feel. I haven't seen you in five years, and we knew little enough about each other then. You put me in a position where I had to marry you, but that doesn't mean I'm willing to throw away our chance at happiness. I think we can have a happy life together, but only if we are first given the chance to learn about one another, to grow to…to have feelings for each other, something more than just the physical desire that we both feel.”

Her eyes shimmered with tears. Then her gaze dropped to his feet as she made her soft admission. “I can't help the way you make me feel. My body burns for you. I want to touch you and taste you and have you touch me. My womanly parts tingle at the thought of you, Dare.”

It was his name that did it; it was the soft exultation of his name off her sweet lips that pushed him over the edge. He told himself he was just going to show her pleasure, give her relief from desires that were, after all, entirely natural and wanted in a wife. He told himself he owed it to her to give her something since he couldn't give himself, but the truth was he just couldn't keep from touching her.

He scooped her up in his arms, reveling in the weight of her, his senses swimming with her scent and the texture of her silky hair, of the shy kisses she pressed to the column of his throat. Shy? His Charlotte? He would have laughed at the thought, but for her hands on his bare chest, stroking his skin with a touch that set fire to his blood. He moaned his surrender, dipping his head to plunder her sweet mouth.

His tongue moved boldly, teasing her, stroking her, sucking her lips into his mouth as he laid her on his bed, magically whisking away the suddenly unbearable material that separated her flesh from his.

“Magic.” Charlotte sighed in happiness as the hot lure of his mouth returned. She tried to wrap her arms around him to pull his hard body against hers, but he resisted, murmuring instead a promise to please her. Please her? She wanted to tell him that he had far surpassed mere pleasure and was into uncharted realms of ecstasy, but she couldn't remember how to form words. Maybe later she would, when she wasn't being driven witless by the feeling of his mouth on hers.

Foolish woman, she thought a few minutes later when his lips had left hers. Foolish woman to think that it was just his tongue twining around hers that stole her wits. No, she knew better now. Her back arched of its own will as he licked and sucked a path down her neck to her collarbone, her legs tensing under his hand as it slid upward on her thigh. The skin on his hand was rough, but it felt wonderful on her sensitive flesh as she obeyed the silent command to part her legs. Her mind felt as if it were fracturing under the twin sensations of his mouth steaming a trail toward her aching breasts and the restless need building in the deepest center of her, directly in the path of his hand.