Wed Him Before You Bed Him (12 page)

“She certainly is
that,
” Baines agreed, with more enthusiasm than warranted. When David glared at him, he said hastily, “Merely an observation, my lord.”

David bit back a hot retort. What in the bloody hell was he doing provoking Baines, the only man with whom he could discuss any of this? David dared not bare his soul
to his friends—they would be appalled by his wicked behavior to a woman who'd done well by them. And the only way he could explain was to reveal
her
past actions, which he didn't wish to do.

The taproom maid set another tankard in front of David, who stared blindly into its foam. “Pritchard will evict her without a thought in eight months. I have no doubt of that. I have to get her out of there before that happens.” He drank deeply. “I
will
get her out of there, damn it!”

Baines eyed him over the tankard. “Why not just tell her the truth?”

“That Cousin Michael, a man she's trusted for years, was setting her up for failure? That I hated her that much? It would devastate her. And then she won't trust me to help her. She doesn't have the money to save the school without me; nor will she take the money from me outright. She's too proud for that.”

He stared down into his ale. “It's better this way. All I have to do is keep shoving that thirty thousand pounds in her face and giving Sarah the credit until Charlotte sees the writing on the wall and moves the school. Hopefully she'll do it before Pritchard can evict her.”

“I wish you luck,” Baines said. “You're going to need it.”

A frown creased David's brow. “Don't I know it.”

He would also need time with her to break down the barriers of their past. Would she give it to him?

The next day, as he approached the school, he grew nervous. Two days of thinking things over might have convinced her to refuse the legacy. Then what would he do?

Expecting to be shown into her office, he was surprised
to be taken down a dim hall and ushered into a small sitting room instead. As he waited for the butler to fetch her, he popped a peppermint in his mouth, then strolled about the room. He noted with curiosity the books on racing, the carafe of wine, the needlepoint cushions stitched with such odd sentiments as “Bread and jam warm the heart” and “The truth always shines in a clean face.” He was just tipping a cushion over to read it better when Charlotte entered.

“Good morning, Lord Kirkwood,” she said, her voice brisk and businesslike. “I see you are admiring my students' work.”

He turned to face her. “It's…er…not the usual sayings embroidered on cushions, is it?”

She laughed as she closed the door behind her. “No. The usual material is rather dull. I let the girls invent their own. Then I display the most interesting ones in my sitting room. I find it inspires them to work harder and be more creative.”

“A novel idea.”

“Too novel for my fussier parents, I'm afraid.”

“Yet they keep enrolling their daughters here.”

Her amusement faded. “Not lately.” Taking a seat on the edge of a Windsor chair, she gestured to a settee opposite. “I hope you do not mind meeting in my sitting room. People are always darting in and out of my office. Here, we will have more privacy. I do not want any of my staff or servants hearing us discuss this delicate matter until it is…more firmly resolved.”

Though she clearly wanted privacy for perfectly respectable reasons, his blood rose into a wild heat at the
idea of them alone together. He sat down abruptly, fighting to quell his inappropriate reaction.

It didn't help that she looked so bloody fetching today, in a simple blue gown that led the eye inexorably down to the breasts that strained against her bodice. He rose again and began to pace to keep his traitorous body under strict control.

“I received your mother's invitation to the dinner for Amelia and Major Winter that she's throwing at your town house,” Charlotte said, to break the uncomfortable silence.

Winter was David's cousin, who had married Amelia, one of Charlotte's former pupils, while in Charlotte's care.

“I confess I was rather surprised that she invited me,” Charlotte went on. “Under the circumstances, I assumed it would be a small family affair.”

“It is. I think it's a little soon, but Mother is languishing under the restrictions of mourning, so she has convinced herself that a private dinner won't offend sensibilities too much. And when she wrote to my cousin's wife about it, Amelia insisted upon your being included. I take it that Amelia doesn't know about our past together?”

“No,” she said in a small voice.

He wondered if Charlotte knew that he'd offered for Amelia and had been refused before he'd turned his attentions to Sarah.

“Do you plan to attend tonight?” he asked, wishing he didn't care so much about her answer.

“Of course. It will be my first chance to see Amelia and Major Winter since they arrived in England. I wanted to go to Devon to visit with them as soon as they reached her parents, but matters at the school…”

She trailed off, not needing to finish the sentence. He
knew better than anyone that it wasn't a good time for her to leave.

“Have you had the chance to show the agreement to your attorney?”

“Actually, yes. He said it is all in order.”

He let out a breath. “So you mean to accept the legacy.”

“I have a few questions first.”

Gritting his teeth, he halted to face her. “What sort of questions?”

“Why would you want to give up your valuable time to oversee the building of my school?”

“It's a condition of the bequest. Assuming you accept the money, I am bound by the terms of it as surely as you.” That was sort of the truth, wasn't it?

“Let me put it another way. You did not have to pursue the matter. Assuming you were alone when you found the codicil, you could have burned it and no one would have been the wiser. But you did not. I want to know why.”

The woman had a maddening ability to ask pertinent questions. Perhaps it was time to make her as uncomfortable as she was making him. “Because no matter what you think of me, Charlotte, I do have a conscience.”
That
was definitely the truth.

She colored. “Still, it probably would not have pricked your conscience too much to make it so that the money came to me without your having to be involved. So why didn't you?”

“Perhaps because I thought helping you build your school would be a challenge. And there are few enough challenges in my life these days.” He stalked up to loom over her. “Are we done with the questions?”

Neatly slipping out from between him and her chair,
she rose and went to stand beside the fireplace. “Just one more.” She paused as she stared into the flames. “Did Sarah know about…did you ever tell her that you and I—”

“No,” he said curtly. “And since I gather that you never told her, I doubt she would have found it out on her own. My mother wouldn't have mentioned it, and neither would Giles. As you might imagine, I myself never spoke of it to anyone.”

“Except Anthony, Foxmoor, and Lord Stoneville,” she murmured. “Though I suppose that does not count since you left out my name. Indeed, I am grateful that they did not know who the ‘vindictive bitch' really was.”

He groaned as his past sins rose up to taunt him. “Confound it all to hell.”

“I'm sorry. I-I did not mean to throw that in your face. I understand why you said it. Honestly, I do. When Anthony casually mentioned it to explain why you hate the press—”

“Anthony ought to know better,” he snapped.

She faced him with a tight smile. “My point is, I am well aware that you have no reason to be fond of me.”

He couldn't address that without blatantly lying. “I don't see what that has to do with anything.”

“Actually, a great deal.” She steadied her shoulders. “You see, I didn't only show the document to my attorney. I also showed it to Charles Godwin.”

He fought to keep his temper in check. “You showed it to a bloody newspaperman?”

Alarm sparked in her eyes. “No! I mean, yes, I did, but not because of his affiliation with the press. I consulted him because he is my friend.”

Though he knew that, it still provoked an unwelcome
burst of jealousy. “Just how close a friend
is
Godwin to you, anyway?”

Her expression went cold. “My friendship with Charles is none of your concern, my lord.”

David bit back an oath. She called Godwin “Charles,” but he was still “my lord.” “And the legacy is none of his concern. The last time I checked, Charles Godwin had no experience in legal matters.”

“True, but he does know quite a bit about the parties involved. And like me, he found it curious that Sarah would have bequeathed anything to the school.”

“Tell Godwin he can keep his opinions about my late wife to himself.”

Charlotte stared him down. “Charles did have an interesting suggestion for how this ‘bequest' came about.”

David's heart began to pound. “Oh?”

“He pointed out that while Sarah might indeed have left money to the school out of some vain impulse to have her name plastered on a building, the part about
your
involvement seems suspect. He is of the opinion that you might have turned the situation to your own use.”

Damn Godwin. The man was too bloody clever by half. “Why would I have done that?”

“First, I need to explain how Charles and I met.”

“I already know—he served in the same regiment as your late husband.”

A strange look passed over her face. “Where did you hear that?”

You told me in one of your letters.

Confound it all. “Sarah must have mentioned it,” he hedged.

Her expression cleared. “Oh. Of course.”

“But I don't see what that has to do with anything.”

“You will.” She drew in a steadying breath. “Shortly after Charles joined the regiment, Jimmy and I and Charles and his late wife were invited to an officer's dinner where the talk turned to scandal.”

Folding her hands at her waist, she began to pace. “When the men began saying what a shame it was that poor Mr. Masters had been savaged by a cruel female in the papers, Charles jumped in to defend the woman.”

Her breathing grew labored, her tone agitated. David's breathing was none too steady, either.

“As it turned out,” she said, “Charles had been working for the
Morning Tattler
when her letter arrived there. He told his editor that the letter was clearly personal and not meant for publication. When his editor published it anyway, he was so disgusted that he quit the paper and joined the army.”

While David was still reeling from that piece of information, she turned to fix him with a tormented gaze. “That is how Charles and I became friends. In time, I revealed my part in the matter. And that my letter had never been meant to be anything but private.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “I swear it is the truth. It was supposed to go to your town house. The boy who took it brought it to the papers. I never knew why or how.”

David could only stare at her, words failing him. That piece of the puzzle had never made sense—how she could be so vicious as to smear his name publicly. And to hear that it was an accident only increased the knot of guilt in the pit of his stomach.

“So you see,” she went on, “Charles knows
everything
about us.”

“Apparently so,” David choked out.

“And he suggested that perhaps you…insinuated yourself into this situation because you wish to gain control of it. Because you wish to destroy everything I have worked for.” She dropped her gaze. “He had a notion that, well, this legacy is your revenge for what I did to you.”

“Revenge?” he echoed hollowly. She was a little late to accuse him; the irony of it was too painful for words.

Except
she
hadn't dreamed up this “notion” Godwin had. That ignited his already simmering temper to a roaring flame.

He strode toward her. “You think I would wait eighteen years until my wife happened to commit suicide, and then concoct an elaborate scheme using my late wife's money to
revenge
myself on you?”

“I-I didn't say I agreed with him,” she retorted, nervously backing away.

“You didn't say you didn't, either.” He grabbed her arms, drawing her close to stare down into her face. “Trust me, Charlotte, if I'd wanted revenge against you, I would have taken it years ago.” As he very nearly had.

“That is exactly what I told Charles,” she said evenly.

He blinked at her. “So why bring it up?”

Her eyes met his, as blue as a thousand summer skies. “To see what you would say to it.”

Her breath was uneven, her face alight with an expression that was painfully familiar. And suddenly he was tired of the dancing around, the parsing of their past, the evasions that seemed to fill Charlotte's life these days.

It was time to cut through the nonsense. Especially when he had her this close to being in his arms again. “If I'd wanted revenge,” he rasped, letting his gaze drop to her
mouth, “I would have done something more direct. More personal.”

She swallowed hard. “Like what?” she whispered.

He caught her head in his hands. “Like this,” he growled. Then he covered her mouth with his.

For a moment she froze, her lips trembling beneath his. Then, to his shock, she parted them ever so slightly. And he knew she wouldn't resist him.

It was like going home. Only he was older, so the home-coming was sweeter.

Fire erupted between them, so intense he thought it might singe them. His hands were instantly in her hair to hold her still for a kiss that was too hard and hungry to be cautious, and she was meeting his mouth with an eagerness that matched his own.