Noble Destiny (6 page)

“Well, I'm not likely to have one with a
man
,” he snapped. “Now, will you—”

“It
is
a woman!” Patricia crowed.

Dare scowled as he abruptly shushed her. “If you can't behave any better than this in public, I'll think twice about giving my permission for you to attend any other such festivities.”

“After next week, you won't have any say about where I go, but that's neither here nor there.” She waved away her brother's objections. “Tell me about this woman you're meeting! Who is she? Do I know her? Are you courting her? Oh, Dare, I do so worry about who will take care of you after I'm married—please tell me you've fallen in love and are about to offer for a woman who will love you in return.”

“Love.” Dare snorted, momentarily distracted by that unwholesome thought. “That sort of foolishness is what comes from reading those novels you devour weekly.”

Patricia watched her brother steadily for a moment, the light of laughter dying in her eyes. “No, I can see you're not in love with anyone, but I haven't given up hope that someday you will find the woman meant for you. I know you believe yourself too scarred by past events ever to give your heart again, but truly, brother, not all women are like the one who hurt you. You must have hope. You must leave yourself open to loving again.”

The blank, shuttered look that accompanied any reference made to the events of ten years past left Dare's face a cold, unyielding mask. “Yes or no, will you stay here and behave until Mrs. Whitney is free?”

There was no hope for it, he would not discuss the past. Patricia allowed herself an inner sigh of concern for him, but found a cheerful smile as she saluted smartly. “Aye, aye,
mon
capitaine
. Hoist your mainsail and belay those worries, brother mine. I shall stay here becalmed until my own darling captain comes to hoist my anchor.”

Dare paused as he turned to leave. “Patricia, just because you're marrying a sailor—”

“Captain, if you please, of the finest Whitney ship ever to sail the seas!”

“—captain, does not mean you must talk like Halibut Harry, the fishmonger's delight. And there had best be no anchor hoisting before the wedding,” he warned, his eyes dark with meaning.

Patricia grinned and shooed her brother off. With a shake of his head at the folly awaiting him, he started for the small room off the darkened end of the hall that Charlotte had indicated. Surely it would be a simple matter to help her, one quickly attended to. He would assist in evicting whatever it was that had taken up residence in her codpiece—women were so often squeamish about such things—then perhaps engage in a few moments of the particularly delightful form of word games that passed for conversation with Charlotte, after which, with a polite but firm excuse, he would take his leave. The nagging desire he felt to be near her would be assuaged, she would receive discreet assistance with regards to her codpiece problem, and none would be the wiser.

He was mentally forming the excuse he would use to make his escape when he entered the room. “My apologies for being delayed, Lady—mmrph!”

Dare didn't have time to do more than catch a glimpse of heated blue eyes before he was pulled into an intimate embrace.

With Henry VIII. A very well-padded, bearded, codpieced Henry VIII.

He unwound the arms clasped behind his neck in order to dis-attach his lips from the mouthful of scratchy red-orange wool that covered Charlotte's lower face. “I never thought the opportunity to voice this opinion would arise, but there is much to be said for women who shave.”

Charlotte, dismay filling her eyes for a moment at his rejection of her advances, smiled instead. “I beg your pardon, I forgot about the beard. One moment, I'll remove it, then we may continue with the ravishing.”

Dare shook his head in hopes of clearing away whatever it was that was keeping him from hearing her correctly. He knew Charlotte's verbal acrobatics were sometimes filled with leaps in logic that even a learned man would be hard put to follow, but the one she had just made was surely beyond even her fertile mind.

“About the problem with your costume—”

“That's been remedied,” she replied, frowning as she tugged on the side of the woolly beard. “'Twas just a leaf, not a family of dormice as I had suspected. Drat this thing. Crouch must have used extra glue on it. I can't seem to peel it off, and I ask you, how on earth am I ever going to attend to the ravishing in time if I'm wearing a beard!”

An ugly suspicion flared to life in Dare's mind. “Exactly whom do you expect will be ravishing you?”

Charlotte frowned as she muttered something about needing glue remover. “Pheasant feathers! You'll just have to keep your lips clear, is all. As for your question, no one will be ravishing
me
, Alasdair. I shall ravish
you
.”

“
You
what?
” Dare couldn't believe that even Charlotte, outspoken and uninhibited as she was, would suggest such a thing. A moment of honesty had him amending the thought to a disbelief that she would plan his ravishment in someone else's home, certainly not anywhere they could be easily…he sucked in his breath at the horrible realization that she had set a very clever snare for him, and he, a man who had prided himself daily on avoiding just such entrapment, had blindly walked right into her clutches.

“You needn't worry, I shall take care of everything. You won't have to lift a finger,” Charlotte promised.

He stared at her, dumbfounded. Having removed the black-and-gold velvet doublet, she was spinning in a frustrated circle as she attempted to reach behind herself to untie the tapes holding a large pillow bound over a linen shirt. “Pooh! I can't reach the dratted thing. If you could just unbind me, my lord, I will be happy to begin the proceedings. I don't imagine we have much time, and although my experience with ravishing gentlemen is limited, I assume it will take more than a minute or two.”

Dare stared in continued disbelief, his emotions tangled and confused as anger and outrage battled with a very unwelcome desire to laugh. He should leave that exact moment. He should walk out of the room and leave Charlotte to whatever horribly convoluted plan she had hatched in that Gordian knot of a mind. He should turn his back on her and never see her again, never again feel the velvet brush of her voice, never experience the brilliant, brief surge of joy that swelled within him when he caught sight of her, and certainly he should never, ever hold her in his arms again.

It just was not sane.

“So be it. I'm mad,” Dare growled to himself as he leaned against the door and crossed his arms over his chest, watching as Charlotte muttered and swore as she attempted to wriggle out of the pillow. He clamped down firmly on the wave of desire that swept through him at the sight of such unintentionally seductive movements, damning his eyes and his lust equally. No one would ever believe he could be aroused by a large, hairy, long-dead king, but with each wiggle of her rounded hips his desire, amongst other things, swelled. “This ravishment you're planning—do I assume it has something to do with your proposal of marriage a few days ago?”

Charlotte triumphantly kicked herself free of the pillow, turning upon him a look of innocence so profound it would make an angel feel impure. Dare wasn't fooled for a moment.

“Marriage? Proposal? Oh, that silliness! Good heavens, my lord, I'd forgotten all about
that
,” she replied with what he knew were dimples beneath the beard. “No, this is totally unrelated.”

“Ah. Would you mind, purely to satisfy my curiosity, informing me what exactly is the goal of your intended ravishment of my person?”

She paused for a moment in the act of unbuttoning her breeches. “You want to know why I wish to ravish you?”

Dare nodded. Yes, he did. He wanted her to admit that she was no better than the rest of the women in Society. He wanted his disillusionment to be complete and inexorably final. He wanted to kill the hunger for her that grew stronger within him each time he saw her. By God, he needed to exorcise himself of her!

“Oh. Well. That. Er…it's quite simple, actually. You look exceptionally well against me.”

A bubble of laughter threatened his iron control. “I do?”

“Yes.” Charlotte gave him another beardy smile and continued to work nimble fingers down the line of mother of pearl buttons on her purple-and-black breeches.

He resisted the almost overwhelming and completely irrational urge to take her in his arms and kiss away what infinitesimal bit of wits remained about her. “I see. I apologize for my incorrect deduction. I had imagined that your ravishment of me was part of a plan to trap me into marriage.”

Charlotte paused. “Oh?”

“Yes. It had occurred to me—thankfully you have shown me the error in my thinking—that you might have arranged to be discovered with me here.”

Her hand stilled upon the buttons. “Ah.”

“In this room.”

She blinked.

“In a state of extreme undress.”

She licked her strawberry-sweet lips.

“That isn't the case?”

She raised an outraged chin and shot him a steely look. “I am sorely offended that you could think me capable of such heinous and unworthy acts, Lord Carlisle. You would think a gentleman would be pleased with an offer of ravishment, but no, you have to be obstinate and suspicious and ruin the whole experience! I'm of half a mind to not ravish you at all!”

One heavy gold eyebrow cocked in question.

“But I shall,” she continued, nodding righteously as she resumed work on the buttons. “I shall overlook your petty thoughts this once, but don't expect me to be so generous next time.”

“So your intention in removing all your clothing and making love to me is not to be discovered, compromised to the point that I will be forced by honor into wedding you?”

“I just said that!”

“Then you don't mind if I lock this door?” Dare turned the small brass key in the lock and pocketed it.

“Er…” Charlotte watched him warily.

“I thought you wouldn't. Where would you care for the lovemaking to take place?”

Her lovely blue eyes didn't even blink. “Er…”

“That couch looks comfortable. Or perhaps you would like to have your wicked way with me on the rug before the fire?”

She glanced at the fire. “Er…”

Dare gave her a scandalized wiggle of his brows as he strolled over to stand next to a large leather armchair. “Don't tell me you prefer more
inventive
positions? The armchair, perhaps?”

Charlotte looked with blossoming interest at the armchair. “How could that be possible?”

Dare couldn't help but laugh. She really was the most refreshing woman he'd ever met, uninhibited, direct, every word and deed unexpected, but he had had enough of playing her game. He had spent well over the few minutes he had allotted to attending her codpiece needs, and his future relied upon his keeping his sister's soon-to-be aunt satisfied of his character and morality. “Lady Charlotte, I'm afraid I must turn down yet another of your charming but irregular offers. I have left my sister alone too long. If you will forgive me—”

Charlotte approached the leather chair, prodding gently at it as if she expected it to explode before her eyes. “How exactly does one conduct a ravishment in a chair?”

Both of Dare's eyebrows rose.

“Where, for instance, do the legs go?”

His eyebrows rose even higher.

“And what about the…instrument? How exactly is it wielded in such a situation?”

Dare mused upon his luck in having thick hair, for if he had not, his eyebrows would have found themselves at the back of his head. “Lady Charlotte—”

She stared at the chair with a puzzled frown, one hand holding her unbuttoned breeches together. “I simply cannot picture it. Not even in Vyvyan La Blue's famed
Guide
to
Connubial
Calisthenics
is an armchair mentioned.”

Dare opened his mouth to take his leave once and for all.

“I would have remembered such a thing if it were!”

He shook his head. He had to gather his wits, and do it now, else he'd be lost in the mad twirl of her thoughts.

“It wouldn't be an easy thing to overlook, and I paid diligent attention to the chapters on creative use of furnishings as Antonio was so very fond of brocade.”

“Regardless—”
Brocade?
Surely he was not hearing her correctly.

“You wouldn't think a man would find brocade a thing of enjoyment, but Antonio loved to have me wrap him in long lengths of it, then use a carpet beater on him.”

“I must be…did you say carpet beater?”

She nodded, tracing a finger down the curved back of the chair. “Yes, he said it made the brocade soft and pliable and soothing to the skin, although how he could appreciate that with all the twitching and spasming and moaning he did as a result of the application of the carpet beater is beyond my understanding.”

He thought that was the least of what was beyond her understanding.

“Still, he looked forward to the brocade beating sessions, so I guess there must be some merit in what he said.”

Dare took a good, firm grip on his wits, and made one last effort to save his sanity. “Lady Charlotte?”

Charlotte turned to him with a sweet, completely misleading expression on her bearded face. “Yes, my lord?”

He looked deep into her lovely eyes, fathomless and clear, and he knew a yearning not felt since he was young and foolish and in love for the first time. But he was no longer young, and foolish though he might be, he had no place for love in his life. “Good evening.”

“But, my lord…”

He walked to the door and unlocked it, glancing back over his shoulder to forever burn the image in his mind of the woman who had somehow, against his will, stayed in his heart after five lonely years. She was beautiful. Ethereal. A goddess, still as marble, clad in rumpled silk stockings, her ruff skewed slightly to one side with her exertions, the long lace fall of her linen shirt tangling with the hand that clutched her breeches together, the codpiece dangling in disarray. Her face was pale against the burning red of her beard, making her eyes glitter bright and clear as the bluest of summer skies.