Taming Charlotte (13 page)

“Maybe Mrs. Richardson gets a lot of sick headaches,” Patrick suggested wryly. “Tell me more about your father and your uncle and this stepmother of yours.”

There was no reason to keep the family name a secret anymore, as far as Charlotte could see. Now that she was actually Patrick’s wife, just as she’d claimed to be in the letter Rashad had sent to America for her, she meant to make a real effort to trust him.

“I grew up on Puget Sound, back in Washington Territory—you don’t remember it, but we met in Seattle one day—”

He interrupted with a low, hoarse burst of laughter and “You were the wench who climbed up in the rigging of my ship and couldn’t get down.”

Even then, all those years later, after the most intimate relations with Patrick, Charlotte blushed at the memory. “It’s about time you recalled that,” she said. “Now, do you want to hear about my family or not?”

He grinned. “Yes, goddess—tell me everything.”

“My father is Brigham Quade. He owns a considerable stand of timber and a mill, among other things.”

Patrick sighed. “I know Brigham, Charlotte—everybody who’s ever ventured within a hundred miles of Seattle does. By now he’s probably about to dock in Europe and tear the place apart, stone by stone, until he finds you.”

“No,” Charlotte said, somewhat sadly. She loved Patrick, and she knew in her heart that home was at his side, but she still missed Papa and Lydia and Millie and all her rambunctious little brothers and cousins. “I wrote and told Papa I’d married you.”

That announcement garnered Patrick’s full attention.
“What?” he demanded, raising himself on one elbow to frown down at her.

“I couldn’t let my family suffer, Patrick, so I told them I was happy. Papa will yell and swear when they get the letter, but then Lydia will calm him down and he’ll accept what’s happened. Isn’t that better than letting them believe I was forced into white slavery?” When he didn’t answer, she went on. “Besides, what I said is all true—now. I did marry you, and for tonight anyway, I’m happy. And you needn’t think I can be so easily distracted, either—I want to know if you intend to keep our wedding vows or not.”

“I didn’t make any vows, remember?” he pointed out, but there was a smile in his eyes as well as his voice. “Ours wasn’t exactly a conventional ceremony, obviously. However, since it’s important to you, I’ll make a promise now. For whatever time we may have together, I will ‘cleave only unto you.’ “

“I’d better not catch you cleaving to anybody else,” Charlotte warned. She was troubled by the words “whatever time we may have together,” but decided to consider the implications of that remark later, when her mind was clear again.

Patrick laughed. “Fine.” He moved to kiss her, but she stopped him by putting her fingers between his mouth and hers. “What?”

“You haven’t told me about your family.”

He frowned, shrugged one shoulder. “I’m the only son of a very wealthy man, whom I dislike intensely, and the feeling seems to be mutual. He sent me to school in England after my mother died, and when I was finished I apprenticed myself to my uncle, who was captain of the
Enchantress
until he died three years ago.”

Charlotte moved her hand in a circle on Patrick’s belly, intending to comfort him but soon discovering that she’d done something else instead. “What a lonely life you must have had.”

Gently he lowered the cover again, so that Charlotte’s breasts were bared to the moonlight and to him. “I have everything I want,” he said gruffly. “A fine ship, a home so like Paradise that even Adam and Eve probably couldn’t tell
the difference, more money than one man could ever need—and now a sweet, fiery wife to warm my bed.” He took one of her nipples into his mouth and suckled.

Charlotte stretched in luxurious surrender, her toes curling. “D-Don’t you want a son?”

Patrick tongued her thoroughly before lifting his head from her breast. His indigo eyes looked black in the darkness, and somber. “Several,” he replied, “and daughters, too.” He lay between her legs now, and slipped himself an inch or so inside her, just to tease. His tone, however, sounded serious indeed. “Will you give me a baby, Charlotte?”

She was already fevered with wanting, even though he had done very little to arouse her. “Y-Yes—oh, yes…”

“ ‘Oh, yes, take me’ or ‘Oh, yes, I’ll bear your children’?” Patrick asked, giving her only slightly more. His voice was full of mischief.

Charlotte arched her back suddenly and claimed him, delighting in the way he groaned in response and offered up a visible struggle for self-control. “Both,” she replied, gripping his taut buttocks and holding him prisoner inside her for several long moments. “I want you to take me, and start a baby growing inside me this very night.”

Patrick groaned again, and began to rock his hips, and Charlotte could say no more. The pleasure consumed her as quickly as wildfire.

J
UST BEFORE DAWN, PATRICK AWAKENED HIS BRIDE AND THEN
went to the door to summon a servant. Sleep-fogged, Charlotte bathed in the tiled pool and again donned her white robes.

“You’re sending me back to the harem?” she asked Patrick, confused and a little alarmed when she returned to the bedchamber to find Rashad waiting patiently beside the door, his thick arms folded.

Patrick’s manner was conciliatory, but his words did nothing to reassure Charlotte. “Just for a little while,” he said. “Khalif and I have business to discuss.”

Indignant color pulsed in Charlotte’s cheeks, but she offered no protest, sensing that Patrick had made up his mind on the matter.

Reaching the
hamam,
the central gathering place within the harem, Charlotte encountered Alev. The other woman took her arm and hustled her out into the enclosed courtyard, and her manner was terse.

“Did you spend the night with Khalif, then?” she demanded.

Charlotte didn’t like Alev’s tone or the implication of her question. “No,” she replied coldly, pulling free of Alev’s hard grasp on her elbow. “I was with my husband.”

Alev arched one eyebrow in a silent query.

“Patrick Trevarren,” Charlotte explained, somewhat smugly. “Khalif married us in his chambers last night.”

Alev’s relief was apparent, but there was a spark of something else in her eyes, too. A sort of amused skepticism. “And already your ‘husband’ has sent you back to us?”

Charlotte’s face burned, and she narrowed her eyes. “Patrick had business to discuss with the sultan,” she said. “As soon as that’s completed, I’m sure my husband will send for me and we’ll leave.”

Taking Charlotte’s arm again, Alev sat down on the bench under the elm and pulled her companion after her. “This marriage—was it a Christian ceremony, or did Khalif simply utter a few words and make a pronouncement?”

Charlotte swallowed. The nuptials had not been performed by a priest or a minister or even a justice of the peace, which might well mean the marriage was binding only in the kingdom of Riz. It was even possible that the impromptu service had been nothing but a sham, cooked up between the two men, and designed to lure Charlotte to Patrick’s bed…

“Well?” Alev prompted, when Charlotte was silent.

“Khalif married us himself,” she said miserably. She couldn’t bring herself to voice her suspicions; besides, the situation was probably obvious to Alev anyway.

Alev nodded, her brows knitted together in a thoughtful frown. “Then you and the captain are forever joined in the sight of Allah,” she said. “Unless, of course, your husband decides he wants to divorce you.”

Charlotte was still in shock from her earlier conclusions. “Divorce me?”

“If you displease your sea captain, Charlotte,” Alev said importantly, “all he has to do is clap his hands together and say ‘I divorce you’ three times.”

“That’s awful!”

“Under our laws,” Alev went on, “such a parting of the ways is entirely acceptable. And that’s not all—a man can
have as many as four wives, and all the concubines he desires.”

Charlotte stood, then sat again, forlorn. She’d given herself to Patrick wholeheartedly, believing herself to be his wife. Matters had seemed so simple when she’d lain beneath him on his couch, and in the bath in the small courtyard outside Patrick’s bedchamber. Now Charlotte was badly shaken.

“Patrick and I are Americans,” she pointed out, her voice revealing her uncertainty. “Islamic laws don’t apply to us.”

“They do when you are living in an Islamic country,” Alev said, without rancor. “And Trevarren sent you back to the harem, didn’t he? Besides, that would mean the marriage wasn’t legal either.”

Charlotte’s misery intensified. She rose and began to pace back and forth in front of the bench. “You don’t suppose he lied to me?” she asked, speaking more to herself than Alev.

“It wouldn’t be the first time a man had twisted the truth to lure a woman into his bed, would it?”

Charlotte stopped and glared down at Alev, who was still seated comfortably on the bench, her face and figure dappled by the shadows of the elm’s many leaves. “Why are you trying to upset me?” she demanded. “What have I done to you?”

Alev sighed and stood. “I did not mean to be unkind,” she said. “You don’t seem to understand that things are very different here, and I was trying to warn you about having expectations that can only lead to disappointment.”

With that, the other woman vanished inside the seraglio, and Charlotte once again peered speculatively up through the branches of the elm tree. Had Patrick merely used her? Did he intend to abandon her in the harem again, now that he’d taken his pleasure with her?

She had to find out.

Charlotte laid one hand to the rough bark of the elm tree. The last time she’d attempted an escape, she’d nearly perished in the desert, and she certainly didn’t want to go through that ordeal again. No, if Patrick had indeed deceived her, she would learn of it prior to his departure and find a way to stow away on board the
Enchantress.

Having a plan, however outlandish it might be, always made Charlotte feel better. She took a few more minutes to calm herself, then returned to the harem.

In the early afternoon, the other women stretched out on their couches to sleep, but Charlotte was far too restless to lie still. Her heart leaped with relief when Rashad caught her eye and gestured for her to come to him.

With unusual obedience, she hurried to meet the eunuch in the doorway.

“Your husband wishes you to join him in his chamber,” Rashad said.

Charlotte’s heart tripped over a beat, then fluttered wildly, like an excited bird beating against the bars of its cage. She was filled with dizzying joy and with an equal measure of resentment that Patrick had the power to treat her like a slave.

When they reached Patrick’s quarters, the door was open. Rashad gestured for Charlotte to pass over the threshold and, when she had, left them alone.

Charlotte’s temper simmered, though she managed a sweet smile. “Hello, Mr. Trevarren,” she said.

Patrick had just popped a fat purple grape into his mouth, and he chewed and swallowed before answering, “ ‘Mr. Trevarren.’ I like that. It sounds old-fashioned and deceptively obedient.”

Charlotte’s stomach seemed to do a somersault. “If you want obedience, I would suggest you buy a little monkey in the
souk
and train it to dance on its hind legs whenever you snap your fingers,” she said. Her emotions were still in a wild tangle; one part of her wanted to fling herself into Patrick’s arms, while another would have liked to claw his ears off.

He laughed and folded his arms. “You are either very brave or very foolish, my love. I haven’t decided which.”

She drew a deep breath and held it for a moment, but she could not hold back her greatest concern. “One of the women in the harem told me you can divorce me by clapping your hands three times. Is that true?”

Patrick’s indigo eyes sparkled with some private mirth. “Absolutely,” he replied.

Quiet rage set Charlotte’s face aflame. “She also said you could have four wives if you so desired, and all the concubines you wanted,” she ventured, struggling to keep her tone of voice even.

He nodded. “Here in Riz, I can take more than one wife if I choose, though the unions wouldn’t be recognized outside the Arab countries, of course. As for concubines, there is no limit, here or in the Christian world.” His mouth twitched almost imperceptibly at one corner as he paused, studying Charlotte. “Come here.”

She wanted to resist him, but she could not. She moved toward him, stepped into his arms. “I will not be your concubine,” she said, in pure bravado.

Patrick slipped one side of her robe down, revealing her shoulder and the rounded top of her breast. “You will be whatever I ask you to be, Charlotte,” he said huskily. “And we both know it.”

He kissed her, and although Charlotte fought to summon up some shred of rebellion from her beleaguered soul, she found herself surrendering instead. Patrick undressed her, touched and admired her exquisitely vulnerable body at his leisure, and finally arranged her like a feast on the velvet couch.

After that, he pleasured her unmercifully, with his hands and his mouth and finally, blessedly, his shaft. Charlotte was utterly spent when at last he let her rest, collapsed across his chest in a daze of satisfaction.