The Devil Is a Marquess (Rescued from Ruin Book 4) (13 page)

The thought of watching her swell with his child should have horrified him. He did not like children. They were messy and foolish. As a boy, he hadn’t understood why his father ignored him, why his mother only showed affection when she wished to manipulate Rutherford. Now that he was older, he saw that children were an inconvenience at best, a nuisance at worst.

And a necessity if you want the other half of your fortune.
The fortune should be his reason for wanting to bed her, to watch her breasts and belly swell with the fruit of their union.

However, the one hundred thousand had nothing to do with it. Something base and unrefined in him wanted to plant a piece of himself inside her, to bind her to him in a way that could not be broken. It was selfish. But, then,
he
was selfish. He had always been so.

Why should you not? She is your wife. Take her.

Breathing deeply and steadily, Chatham shoved away from the washstand and quickly tugged a clean shirt over his head. He ran both hands through his hair. Sat on the lone chair and removed his boots and stockings. Washed and dried his feet.

Still, the desire for her was like a plague. It would not leave him.

What you need is to forget. Perhaps there is a bottle of wine or two left in the cellar.

He wanted that bloody nagging voice to slither back into its dark hole and die. He wanted the tension that seized his groin to abate. The temptation to either consume her or lose himself in the blissful arms of drink was a battle waged on two fronts. How long could he keep fighting?

Take her,
the voice whispered.
Keep her with you.

He stood abruptly, his nonexistent nobility overwhelmed by want. The desire carried him back into the bedchamber, his movements fast and purposeful. Until he saw her.

She was asleep, breathing lightly, one freckled hand curled next to her cheek. He wanted to groan. Then wake her. With his mouth.

Instead, he set his flickering light on the table, sat with a defeated
whump
upon the mattress, and dragged the basket of his father’s journals from beneath the bed. As he stared at the leather covers, he contemplated whether a midnight jaunt into the icy waters of the sea might tame this unruly lust.

A delicate sigh sounded behind him. “I am excited, Chatham,” his wife murmured, drowsy and soft. “Excited to see Chatwick Hall return to her glory.”

He did not reply. He could not. The journal in his hand crinkled as his fist tightened.

“Do you remember it? From before?”

Striving to release the tension so he could converse with her instead of leaping upon her, Chatham used a technique he had employed on several occasions to quell a lingering lust—he deliberately pictured his last governess, an aged, grizzled old hag with rotted teeth and a tendency to pinch until his eyes watered.

Soon, the sharpness of his arousal eased enough for him to toss back the blankets and crawl beneath them. Carefully avoiding looking at Charlotte or her breasts, he plucked at the pages of his father’s journal and attempted to answer her question. “It has been a very long time. I remember some parts better than others.”

“Why have you not returned in so long?”

His hand smoothed over a page. He stared at it without seeing. “This was my father’s home with his first wife.”

“Oooh. I do recall that. Tragic. For him, I mean.”

“Mmm.”

“She died of consumption, did she not?”

His father’s spidery scrawl danced in the light from the candle. “Yes.”

“I heard they were dreadfully happy together. A true love match.”

“Dreadfully. Weren’t you asleep?”

She stretched and yawned, then chuckled. “I was for a moment, I think. But then you came to bed. I like talking with you.” When he said nothing, she nudged his hip with her elbow. “Tell me the story.”

“What story?”

“About your father. And his first wife. And your mother. And you.”

“That would be a long tale, Charlotte. Go to sleep.”

She scooted closer to his side and wrapped her hands around his arm, pulling it away from the journal and grasping his hand between hers. “Please. Tell me. I wish to know who lived in this place. What their lives were like.”

He needed her to stop touching him. She was half asleep. He could not very well seduce her now.
Why not? She is yours.
To stifle the voice and the rising need, he gently pulled his hand away. “Very well. I will give you an abbreviated version. Then you must sleep. You have a staff to hire in the morning.”

She tucked her hands beneath her cheek and smiled up at him. “Abbreviated it is.”

Sighing, he began with his father’s first marriage. “They were, as you say, quite blissful together. My father was devoted to her and she to him. However, they were never able to have children, and like most peers, Rutherford wished to sire an heir. So, when she died—of consumption—he waited an appropriate period before marrying a woman twenty years his junior and getting her with child. That is how I came to be. The end.”

“Chatham.”

“I thought we agreed that you would go to sleep.”

“You are an appalling storyteller.”

“I don’t recall claiming otherwise.”

She tsked. “Come now. I shall not sleep until you tell it properly.”

He raised a brow.

She appeared determined, her eyes wide and flashing green in the firelight.

The sooner he could drive her to slumber, the better, he decided. With a deep breath, he elaborated, “Rutherford rather … languished without his beloved Margaret. This was their home together, obviously. For ten years. After her death, it was another ten before he could bring himself to remarry.”

“That is a very long time,” she whispered.

“Mmm. In any event, my mother was the jewel of the season when he finally decided to seek a brood mare.”

She swatted his arm. “Do not say such things.”

“Such things are true, love. Rutherford had no affection for my mother. Lady Catherine Delsworth was a rare beauty—still is, to be fair about it. Good stock. That was his only consideration. He was forty and wished for a fertile goddess. She was nineteen and wished for a title with overflowing pockets. A perfect match.”

“Except that it wasn’t.”

His mouth quirked. “Indeed. My mother persuaded herself that she had fallen in love with him, running entirely contrary to her nature. Lady Catherine never loved anyone so much as her own reflection. Rutherford, I am certain, soon realized he had married a vain child and lost interest. Not that his interest had been particularly keen from the start. One always had the sense that he was simply watching the clock, waiting to die.”

“But he was only forty. And, if he was anything like you …”

Curious about where her sentence was headed, he prompted, “Yes?”

“Well, I just mean … that is, many women find you … you know.”

“No. Why don’t you tell me?”

“Stop teasing. You
know.
” She tugged his sleeve. “Now, continue with the story, please.”

She found him “you know.” Interesting, indeed. He tucked the tidbit away for future analysis. “Not much remains to tell, really. I was born a year after they married. Spent my first eight years or so here and at another estate in Sussex. Then I was shipped off to Eton, where I wreaked havoc and generally proved a bad influence on all the other boys. On to Oxford for a spell where the same held true. A typical boyhood filled with mischief and mayhem.”

“Somehow, I doubt ‘typical’ describes you in any fashion.”

He met her eyes and gave her a slow smile. “Have I mentioned how much I admire your astuteness, Lady Rutherford?”

She smiled back, but her eyes spoke of sadness. “Who were your companions when you lived here?”

His own smile faded. “We are in the wilds of Northumberland. Companions were difficult to come by. I had numerous governesses. Frightening them was one of my favorite games.”

“Such a bad boy. I can certainly picture that. What about playmates? You had no brothers or sisters, but perhaps cousins or—”

“It’s late, Charlotte. Time to sleep.”

Green-and-gold eyes welled and shone in the candlelight.

His heart gave a peculiar, panicky squeeze. “Bloody hell, what’s the matter?”

A tear spilled over and slid down a freckled cheek while her shapely lower lip trembled. “I’m sorry, Chatham.” She swiped at her cheek with the back of her wrist.

“Sorry for what? Sweet Christ, you haven’t done anything—”

“All day I have wandered the rooms in this house.” Her voice was wobbly and distorted by tears. It tore at him like claws. “Empty and echoing. I imagined being a little boy running about. Playing with his wooden soldiers near the fireplace. Running through the wood at the edge of the property. No one to keep him company.”

“Yes, well. I had no wooden soldiers, so whatever has distressed you, put your mind at ease.”

Against his will, she took his hand again and warmed it between hers. “Your hands are always so cold. As though you are forever locked inside a frigid room, all alone.”

“Stop this.”

She sniffed, but she did not stop. She did, however, take an unexpected turn. “When I arrived from America, I was five years old. My mother was dead. My father could not bear to look at me. He hired a governess to take me across an ocean on one of his ships. I scarcely remember the voyage, only that I was wretchedly ill for much of it. He sent me to live with people I did not know in a place I had never been. A place that was not my home.”

He hadn’t known that, hadn’t realized she’d been sent to England so soon after her mother’s death. Her preoccupation with returning to America made more sense now.

She swiped impatiently at another tear. He used his thumb to help her then frowned. “You appear to have adjusted well enough. Not a trace of America in your speech. A relief to my ears, I assure you.”

“I was miserable. For the first year or two, especially. Nothing was familiar. Aunt Fanny tried, but I was difficult to manage.”

He tried teasing her out of her tears. “You? That cannot be true.”

Her lips pursed. “Cousin Andrew was still in leading strings. The twins were not yet born. I was lonely, Chatham. So very lonely.”

Swallowing, he turned his eyes away, not wanting to imagine her as a child, as small and innocent as Lucy. A girl with bright-red hair who had been torn from her home and sent across the sea to live with strangers.

“I have always believed America is where I truly belong. If I could simply find a way to return there, I would not feel this … emptiness any longer. In England, I have forever been
wrong.
I do not fit. I am too tall. Spotted. My hair—”

“There is nothing wrong with you. If you do not fit, perhaps it is England that is the problem.”

She sighed and gave him a watery smile. “This is why I like you so much. Beneath your cruelty and cynicism is a man who understands … everything.”

He did not know what to say. Her damp eyes were listing now.

No one liked him, never mind “so much.”

He bloody well did not know what to say. She scared the devil out of him.

“Don’t be frightened, Chatham. I get a bit overset and sentimental at certain … times. Apologies if I have distressed you.”

One of her hands drifted to her pillow while the other settled on her lower belly as though it pained her.

His brows rose as the truth dawned. Carefully, with fingers now chilled outside her grasp, he brushed away the last tear from the corner of her mouth, stroked her unfashionably red hair, wondering at its softness, and bent to lay a kiss upon her head.

He did not know why he did it, except that he could not help himself.

“Sleep,” he whispered against her hair, the sweet scent of her rising to greet him. Lily of the valley and pears and something else. Sharper. Darker. “Sleep now, love.”

With a sigh, he pulled away and took up his father’s journal, determined to focus on something other than her. Charlotte. The woman who deserved better than to be seduced and used as a brood mare. Better than to have been shipped to England and sold to the loftiest title her father’s money could buy. Better than to have married him.

From Chatham, to whom she had offered kindness and acceptance and friendship, she deserved no less than equal measures in return.

And he would give them to her, he decided. He would grant her the protection such a lady merited—no matter how he must deny himself. Charlotte would remain his wife, his friend. When their year together was over, he would let her go so that she could return to America.

He would let her go, he vowed.

Even if it killed him.

*~*~*

CHAPTER ELEVEN

“A lord engages in neither trade nor labor. To do so is vulgar. And while vulgarity may be profitable, even enjoyable to some, pray resist the urge to reveal your plebeian tendencies to the rest of us.”
—The Dowager Marchioness of Wallingham to her son, Charles, upon learning of certain investments recommended by a certain widow.

Sweat glued the linen of his shirt to his back. His muscles strained and flexed and burned. His hands were raw, his throat dry, his lower spine aching. And it was not enough. He must be utterly exhausted come nightfall or he would get no sleep at all.

“Only ten more feet or sae, eh? Appears you have a knack for settin’ stone.” Peter’s comment pulled Chatham’s head around as he placed the heavy rock and turned it until it settled into position.

Huffing out a wry chuckle, Chatham replied, “If by ‘knack’ you mean I’ve managed to stack a great lot of rocks for two months, then I’ll agree with you.”

Peter sat upon the three-foot wall and removed his hat to wipe his forehead with the frilly handkerchief Mrs. Jameson had embroidered for him. Weeks ago, Chatham had asked Peter about the thing—white with pink roses and trimmed with a ruffle. Aside from it being too small and too white to be useful, it was bloody embarrassing for a man to be seen with an item so dainty in his possession.

Peter had given him a faint smile and said, “She made it before we met at the fair in Alnwick; it were aught she had to give me. When next we came upon one another at the Newcastle fair a fortnight later, she said it were intended for her husband then pressed it into me hand. Me mam thought her touched in the head.” He had laughed, low with affection. “Not I. We both knew I was her husband the moment I clapped eyes upon her.”

Snorting, Chatham had pulled out his flask and taken a long pull of honey tea for which Charlotte had acquired the recipe. She now brewed it for him daily. “Sentimental rubbish. It is a woman’s handkerchief. Perhaps you should wear her skirts as well.”

Peter had leveled a calm stare at the flower-embossed metal clutched in Chatham’s grip and retorted, “Or use her flask.”

After that, Chatham had not mentioned the handkerchief again.

Now, he turned and looked out over the fields of his southeastern corner, leaning back against the wall he was building and crossing his arms over his chest. Long rows of grain spread for acres, an undulating sea of green. It had been a mild spring, and the start of summer had come early. Now in mid-June the crops were thriving.

Nothing had ever felt this … gratifying. He scarcely understood the sense of accomplishment, would not have predicted it. But
he
had tilled the earth. He had planted the seeds. He had tended and watered and killed the bloody vermin that dug and formed mounds beneath his crops. In another month or so, he would bring in his first harvest. He, Benedict Chatham, was a farmer. Laughable, really.

“Seems her ladyship has returned to Grimsgate.”

Distracted from his thoughts, Chatham blinked at Peter. “Lady Wallingham?”

“Aye. Arrived two days ago. Brought a dozen or so nobs along from London. Proper house party, I hear.”

He pulled Charlotte’s flask from his pocket and took a swallow. “Well, I shall await my invitation with bated breath.”

Peter chuckled at his sarcasm and drank from a flask of his own, larger than Chatham’s and carved of wood.

They had fallen into an easy rhythm over the past two months as Peter had aided him in planting the southeast corner. Accustomed to grasping concepts quickly, Chatham had instead struggled to absorb the knowledge that seemed to have been bred into Peter’s bones. More than once, he had accused the man of drinking farming from his mother’s teat. Peter had only laughed and explained again—patiently—about weather conditions and harvest timing and soil modification and countless other factors, many of which relied more upon instinct than information.

For Chatham, the experience of being the dullard was agonizingly unfamiliar. At Eton and Oxford, he had been notoriously rebellious, earning a well-deserved reputation for havoc and debauchery. Some of his behavior had been aimed at punishing Rutherford, but mostly, he’d been bored. Studies were easy. Women were easy. Everything was easy. His mind had spun constantly like a wheel that traveled nowhere, wanting stimulation, wanting something to solve or devise or master. Anything to occupy it and stop the frantic spinning. Then he had discovered the sweet numbness of drink and the equally sweet oblivion of sex, two comforts of which he was currently deprived.

To his great relief, the spinning had not returned since his first fumbling attempts to operate a plow. That farce had ended with him being dragged fifteen feet through Northumberland’s coastal soil. The experience had proved humbling, but he had not been bored. He was glad of the physical labor. It gave him an outlet that was sorely needed when he must lie beside Charlotte each night without touching her. Taking her.

“Lucy has grown right fond of Lady Rutherford.” Peter nodded toward the cottage, where Emma Jameson and Charlotte were chatting and taking cuttings from the herb garden while Lucy presented Charlotte with a handful of daisies.

Watching Charlotte bend and kiss the girl’s dimpled cheek then straighten and laugh at something Emma said, Chatham’s heart kicked and writhed while his blood ran like fire. She had forgotten her bonnet. Her hair shone near crimson in the light, her tall frame swathed in layers of muslin nearly the same shade as her skin without the freckles. When the breeze blew, the fine cloth molded to her hips and buttocks and thighs. He swallowed hard and tore his gaze away to lift the next stone.

“Me wife has taken a liking to her, as well. Of an evenin’, the two of ’em sing her praises ’til a man prays to be struck deaf.”

Chatham grunted a response. He was not a grunter, by and large, but in this instance, it was all he could muster.

“Emma does get a mite weary of the talk about takin’ the tea to market, but she is glad for the company.”

“Lady Rutherford has an interest in trade,” Chatham replied, glancing around for the next stone. “If she is persistent, it is because she sees potential.”

“Aye, so Emma tells me.” Peter’s long pause probably meant something, but Chatham did not care to unravel the riddle.

Lifting a fifty-pounder with ease, Chatham wedged it into place at the base of the growing wall. His strength had increased substantially over the past weeks, the muscles in his shoulders and arms and chest and legs growing until he scarcely recognized his own body. Partly, it was the result of laboring dawn to dark every day, but it was also, he suspected, the quantity of food he now ate. His appetite had returned with voracious force in more areas than one. Charlotte had made it her mission to satisfy the hunger she knew about. He took pains to shield her from the other.

Stacking another stone upon the last, he wiped at the sweat on the back of his neck. He must exhaust himself. There was no other way.

Peter climbed down to help Chatham lift a particularly heavy stone. “Why do you not hire hands for this the same as you done for Chatwick Hall?”

Chatham released a breath and heaved, using his thighs as he’d learned to do. Peter’s dark eyes met his, amused and knowing as they sidled the distance to the base level of rocks and lowered it into place.

“Lady Rutherford needs the help more than I.”

“Come harvest, you’ll have no choice. Corn ripens when it’s ready, not when you are.” Peter dusted his hands together. “Leases were paid in May, were they not?”

Annoyed with the turn of the conversation, Chatham sought to cut it short. “I shall hire for the harvest. Satisfied?”

A knowing smile creased Peter’s eyes. “Not my satisfaction you should be concernin’ yourself with.”

Chatham dusted his palms on his breeches and narrowed his eyes on the farmer. “I suggest you tend your own fields and leave mine to me.”

Peter’s smile grew. “Have to plow before the seed can be planted. Reckon you’ve learned that much.” Then he laughed. He had never been particularly intimidated by Chatham or his title, much to Chatham’s chagrin.

“Most amusing. Are you intending to help, or are you simply here to needle me?”

A girlish giggle came from behind him. The sound of Charlotte’s answering laugh carried to him on the breeze. It washed over his body, gripping his cock as surely as if she had taken him in her hand. He gritted his teeth and closed his eyes, struggling to picture the rotten-toothed governess. Even that did not work most days.

They were coming closer. He could hear her saying something to Emma Jameson about selling honey tea.

“Chatham, tell her I speak true,” Charlotte called to him across the wall. “Her tea is unlike anything I have ever tasted. There must be many who cannot tolerate ale and cannot afford tea leaves. This is the ideal—”

“Leave it, Charlotte,” he snapped. “She is exhausted of the conversation, as am I.” With that, he tugged at his gloves and, without turning, stalked along the length of the wall until he could no longer hear her voice or smell her scent or bloody well die for want of her.

*~*~*

Swaying at the sting of his rejection, Charlotte swallowed around the lump lodged in her throat and watched her husband stride away from her, his newly broadened shoulders rigid. A day that had begun so bright and promising dulled until the sky itself seemed gray instead of blue.

A tiny hand tugged at her skirt. She quickly swiped at the corner of her eye, glancing furtively to ensure Emma and Peter were not looking at her. Peter adjusted his hat, cleared his throat, and wandered away to tend his fields. Emma pretended interest in a crow that landed nearby. Charlotte drew a shuddering breath before bending to Lucy. “What is it, little one?”

“I don’t wish to marry him any longer,” she whispered.

Charlotte knew her smile wavered, but she offered it anyway and stroked the girl’s pale gold hair.

Emma patted her daughter’s shoulder and ushered her toward the cottage. “Lucy, retrieve Lady Rutherford’s bonnet and bring it here, there’s a good girl.”

One hand absently drifting to her own hair, Charlotte realized she had forgotten it again. Whenever Chatham was near, she found her attention so fixated that she lost track of nearly everything. Her bonnets. Her thoughts. Her breath.

And he could not bear to be near her. It had begun weeks ago, subtle at first. From the beginning, she had cherished their late-night conversations, stayed awake deliberately to greet him when he came home after laboring so hard. She would help him remove his coat, lay out a fresh shirt and warm water for him, and tend the many cuts and blisters on his hands. They would talk of the day, laughing over Esther’s disgruntled mutterings and Chatham’s mishaps with the plow. She liked touching him, caring for him. She liked falling asleep with his scent in her lungs. She ached to look at him, the way his body changed and strengthened. She’d never been prouder of anyone for the way he had taken on the challenge of farming with sheer ferocity, near blind devotion.

Then, gradually he’d grown colder, quieter. First, he had refused her help with his coat, then his wounds, then he’d come home later and later until she could no longer keep her eyes open to greet him, to stroke his arm and sandwich his hand between hers as she fell asleep. Missing him was an ache she could scarcely bear. But, then, seeing him was a different sort of ache—heat and longing and restlessness … just thinking of his arms and his hands and his shoulders and, above all, his eyes, she could melt into a puddle.

She knew he did not feel the same attraction. A man of Chatham’s former habits would surely have demanded his husbandly rights by now if he did, for her father had made Charlotte his only option. But at least she had thought he valued their friendship.

Feeling the emptiness of her days without him quickly deepen, she had determined to seek him out, even though he’d responded more with surly abruptness than welcome. So had begun her visits to the farm and her friendship with Emma.

The farmer’s kindly wife now gazed at Charlotte with calm sympathy. “Are you all right, m’lady?”

Pressing her lips together, she nodded and tried to smile. “He is tired, that is all.” She waved to the three-foot stone wall her husband had built with his own hands—hands she had once thought useless. “The wall is nearly finished, and he has labored long.” Her voice was constricted with the hurt that welled in her chest. She did not wish to cry in front of Emma.

“May I speak plainly, m’lady?”

Frowning, Charlotte blinked. “Of course you may.
I
always do. And I do wish you would call me Charlotte.”

“I cannot do that, but I will give you a bit of advice, if it please you.” Emma’s features were pretty and soft, her blond hair glinting like wheat in the sun. Kindness shone from her just as brightly.

Charlotte nodded her permission, afraid to hear what she would say.

“Bed him.”

She must have misheard. “B-beg pardon?”

“Bed him until neither of you can walk a straight line.”

Flatly, she did not know how to respond. It was like hearing a perfectly sane person abruptly speak gibberish.

“M’lady, it’s as plain as a pikestaff that man is sufferin’ from whatever has kept you from his bed.”