One Night Is Never Enough (16 page)

Roman smiled more broadly and sauntered forward, dropping into the opposing chair and kicking his feet up onto the desk.

“One of these days, Merrick, you are going to die with that cocky expression upon your face.” Dark promises. “What do you
want
?”

Roman lifted a negligent shoulder. “Oh, nothing grand. Just a small matter I’m sure you can help me with.”

The powerful man across from him went rigid under the tension of the lie—so unused to people demanding things from him. Other people, peons, didn’t
demand,
they jumped to
his
commands, and nearly every citizen in England was a peon to the man across from Roman.

But, alas, Roman had
always
been terrible at knowing his proper place. “What do you know of the Chatsworth family?”

The man eyed him. “Upstarts. But the oldest daughter is considered unnaturally beautiful.” His eyes narrowed. “What could you possibly want with them, Merrick?”

Roman smiled and flicked a paper containing Charlotte Chatsworth’s
possible
future onto the desk.

Chapter 11

S
oon.
Four simple letters in a word that caused her to tremble in anticipation and dread.

Charlotte curled her fingers around the note in her fist, staring at the door before her. A riot of conflicting emotions flowed through her. Knocking would make everything real. Would take her imaginings and flights of fancy from the past two weeks and thrust her fully into motion.

Would take the enticement of words spoken from silken lips and make temptation tangible. Instead of finding her in the shadows, this visit would anchor something between them in rising daylight.

He had asked, amidst inked notes and freshly plucked, dewy flowers. And she had responded. Jumped to the call.

If she were the Charlotte she had been born to be, it would have grated against her pride and her judgment, that she was falling so easily. Falling into whatever her role was in his
patiently
crafted plan.

But today, she was someone she hardly knew, alive, and on edge. Expecting him to emerge from the shadows—for he always knew where she’d be, as if she were a blooming flower in a bare field instead of the bare flower in the blooming field.

A bud really,
desperate
to bloom, desperate to open herself to the hot sun. Sucking in water, air, and soil in order to do so. Planting herself in places best designed for the sun to appear. Allowing the sun to stalk her slowly, to push away the dark shadows. Waiting.

Every evening she gambled on that bloom, putting herself dangerously in reach of Bethany’s clutches, cursing the way her heart jumped each time she caught a flash of golden hair—feeling disappointment curl alongside the relief when the head belonged to someone else.

Yet every once in a while, the Charlotte of old peeked through, demanding an explanation. Demanding decorum. Demanding accountability.

It was that Charlotte whose hand paused atop brass and painted wood.

That Charlotte who was responsible for far more than her own reputation.

That Charlotte who rebuked the new Charlotte when she drew too near the shadows or the blazing sun. Not yet allowing the
patiently
waiting hand to pull her through to either sunlight or unending darkness.

That Charlotte who demanded an answer—
why was she here?

She curved her fingers around the note.

Seven in the morning. Your park. Wear a cloak. Bring this note.

There had been a hack. A driver. An already paid fare. A trip to the north of town. A brick house surrounded by a profusion of pink flowers, delicate and feminine.

It was the old Charlotte who didn’t know if she would actually rap the knocker her fingers rested upon.

And suddenly the decision was made for her. The door opened, her fingers gripping air, and there he was, leaning against the frame, arm stretched, holding the edge of the swinging wood.

Darkness underlined his eyes but didn’t diminish his attractiveness. It simply provided a more accurate representation of a deeper part of his nature, bringing it to the surface. She wondered how much sleep he had caught and why he wasn’t currently abed.

“Good morning.” His lips quirked. “I nearly expired from old age, waiting to see if you would actually knock on the damn thing. My heart couldn’t take it any longer.”

She lifted her chin and stepped inside, brushing past him as she did so. “So you are saying that if only I had had a few beats more, I would finally have been rid of you?”

She caught his lazy grin as she passed. “I plan to haunt you even in the afterlife,” he whispered, the air of his words brushing her ear, the door engaging behind her.

She swallowed, then lifted her chin. “You haunt me now. I doubt you will have trouble then.”

His lazy grin grew. “I had wondered if you would come,” he said, leaning back against the door.

She had wondered that quite keenly herself. For she could no longer use the excuse of him seeking her out. She had made the choice to come.

“Rather cocksure of you to think I would find your note. That I will find each of them.”

Pressed up against the wall of a cupboard. Stroked in the fronds of a back garden. Lips and hands on hers.

She tipped her head in order to keep the blood firmly from her cheeks.

She could feel the echo of those hands and lips each night as she closed her eyes, and each morning as the shadows slipped away. Could feel the whisper of them on her now even though his body wasn’t touching hers.

He pressed back against the door, shifting, smiling. “I am rather fond of that feeling.”

A pair of children scrambled down the stairs, one screaming after the other, hair on both in extreme disarray.

“Give it back t’ me, ya bloody bugger!” the little girl yelled.

“You’ll have t’ catch me, wench!” the little boy yelled back, leaping down the last four steps in one go, then racing around the corner. The girl tore off after him, pushing a swinging door wide as she raced through. The door hit its apex, revealing a woman inside the room. The door swung the other way, showing the woman still standing there, dressed in pink with her hair pulled back. Their eyes met, and the woman’s widened, then narrowed. The door hung for a moment, then swung closed, its next jag not opening far enough to show her again. Only bits of blank air and nondescript cupboards.

Charlotte stared at the swinging door as it gave its final death knell, something in her freezing. Stupid, girl. To make assumptions based on whispers in the dark.

“Yours?” Her voice was calm, even. Polite inquiry her refuge, as always.

“Good God, no.” He shuddered, pushing away from the door. He couldn’t have seen the woman to know that Charlotte was asking about more than just the children. But the thought of her presumption was still accurate. What difference did it make if they
were
his, all of them? None.
Silly, stupid girl.

“Come. The fleabags will be back soon.” He held a hand toward the stairs. “After you. First door on the right.”

She stiltedly climbed the stairs, thoughts and lingering questions choking her. Why she had come, what she was doing here, where she was going . . . was she so resigned, or heaven forbid
eager,
to be ruined that all rational thoughts ceased around this man?

She stepped into the first room on the right and was surprised to find herself in a study that was less appointed than his rooms at the hell though still comfortable.

He motioned for her to be seated. She was surprised when he sprawled in a cozy-looking chair to the side and slightly behind her, which required her to turn in her seat in a less-than-ladylike manner in order to see him. He smiled.

All of which unnerved her. “I must be back by noon,” she said coolly.

He waved a hand. “This should only take an hour. Today.”

She simply stared at him, her arm pressed against the back of the chair, waiting for him to elaborate. Wondering . . . but no . . . he couldn’t mean . . .

“Working off the night in one-hour increments seems far removed from the spirit of the bet we undertook.”

He laughed with a tenor approaching delight and picked up a lash from a side table. A
lash
? Did he mean to bind or whip her?

“You didn’t assume I was calling in your night’s debt when I asked you here, did you, Charlotte?”

He examined the leather, amusement curving his lips—whether at the implement he held or at her assumption, she didn’t know. He obviously knew what she was thinking though—he
winked
at her—the bastard.

“I
assumed
nothing. But with your blatant
summons
cast in parchment, and your whispered words in the night, I wonder what you think I might be willing to do.”

“I am
hoping
that you will be willing to do quite a lot.” He continued to smile, pulling the leather strips through his fingers. Like a recalcitrant schoolboy lounging in his chair, turning the tables on his strict teacher. “But I am
thinking
that we might negotiate your father’s debts. Give you time to breathe.” He said it as if he savored the taste of the word.

Breathe. Just as she’d stated—a confession—in the middle of the night. Breathe. She could barely accomplish the task at the moment. As if he had taken all her secrets, yanked, then exposed them to the world.

“Pardon me?”

He looked at her below hooded eyes. “It is what you desire. You said as much. Time to breathe. I can give that to you.” Artful, silky promises.

She wanted to ask
how,
but it wasn’t the most pertinent question. “Why?”

“Oh, it will benefit me too. Mutual benefit, that is the key, is it not? Using each other to get what we desire?” He smiled, something unreadable in his eyes. “Like the Delaneys’ plan.”

“I . . . yes.” She had thought of the Delaneys’ plan as
working together
, but someone else might easily see it as mutually using each other to gain a desired result.

“Then we are settled.”

She stared at him. “Nothing is settled. I have no idea of what you are specifically speaking.”

“Is there something you’d be unwilling to do for obscene amounts of money?” he asked nonchalantly, his voice a smooth layer covering jagged edges.

“Yes,” she said forcefully. “Of course there would be.”

There were many, many things she’d be unwilling to do.

The uncomfortable tendril of thought wrapped through her though the list dwindled significantly when she substituted “to forge a good marriage” instead. But her world was of social survival. Insignificant things, such as having enough money to purchase food, weren’t pertinent. Her father had repeated that sentiment for years now. Gospel.

And if she was as good as she was supposed to be, then she would secure a title
and
a plethora of money. Gospel—the chapters that Bethany, and those like her, would love to gleefully revise, striking her family’s name from their registers.

She gave Roman a tight smile. The right side of his mouth curved, but the expression in his eyes was dark. As if he knew of what she was thinking.

“What if I can assure you that you will have space to breathe?” he asked, voice less casual, more enticing. “For what would you be willing to bargain?”

Her heart picked up speed. “I already owe you one night. I can claim no grasp of intelligence if I were to wager with you again.”

The edge of the waterfall of leather, the apex as the strands drew, then fell, touched her chin. “I don’t doubt your intelligence.” He lifted her chin with it gently, examining her throat. “What I want is you, unrestrained, and out of control.”

Want. Desire. Longing.

“You already have that,” she said, knowing the heavy beat more than gave her away already. “I find no semblance of control when you are near.”

He smiled, real pleasure in his eyes now. “I crave your admissions, and you give them away so freely.” He whispered the last, pulling the leather underneath her chin. “It is enough to drive a man from drink totally, addicted to your lure instead.”

Baited folly. “And you know exactly what to do and say to make me think beguiled thoughts,” she whispered in return.

Pathetic, enchanted thoughts. That had no business in her mind or on the path she had to tread.

He leaned forward, his lips so close to hers. The odd arrangement of him sitting in the chair, with her half-turned, canted toward him, just made it more like they were bridging some invisible divide.

“Do I?” The bound-leather strips disappeared from her flesh, and two bare palms touched the edges of her cheeks. “Will you tell me what those thoughts say?”

“No,” she whispered. A thousand times this scenario seemed to have played in the last two weeks. And each time she just became more entangled in the net. It had started to get so that she couldn’t see the escape. Knotted. Drowned. “It would give you far too much power. And you already have it all.”

“Do I?” He smiled and drew her lips to his. A soft touch. Then a more consuming one.

She shivered, her own hands clenched around the edge of the chair as she strained toward him. The Charlotte of old clung in that clench. In that lingering refusal to give in completely to her own insanity. The craziness he called up within her. Everything else about her—her own mouth upon his, her body heating, edging toward him—was the new Charlotte who was one heartbeat away from grasping the dark fingers of the devil’s temptation.

If he pulled her from her seat, if he bent her over the desk, or laid her upon the small settee by the fireplace . . . right now, the new Charlotte would win. Would defeat the old Charlotte with one easy flick of her wrist. One easy lift of her skirts. One beautifully engaged press of bodies. Hot, not cold; wanting, not simply satisfied.