What Not to Bare: A Loveswept Historical Romance (13 page)

“David?” Gotam appeared at his bedroom door. “You have a visitor.”

Not her again, not so soon. She’d said tomorrow at four o’clock. So why did he immediately think it was her and feel disappointed to know it couldn’t be?

A question even he could not answer. Even without the distraction of purple gloves.

“Who?”

“Lord Bradford. I’ve put him in the small salon.”

David rose and straightened his jacket. “I’ll be right down. Can you ask for tea?”

Gotam scowled. “We’ve only got a little bit of the good stuff left. Barely enough to make it while we’re here. Can I make the other tea?”

David waved his hand. “Fine, fine, whatever you want. Why do you even bother asking? You’re just going to do what you want.”

Gotam nodded as though David’s response was precisely what he expected, and headed downstairs.

David hoped Lord Bradford hadn’t heard about his niece’s visit to his house—that would be the opposite of staying away from scandal. It would be walking into it, in fact.

So it was with a feeling of trepidation that he descended the stairs and entered the small salon. This room thankfully lacked all the pink roses that were in the other receiving area.

Lord Bradford rose as David entered, holding his hand out for a handshake.

Good. He didn’t punch him in the nose.

“Please sit, sir,” David said, gesturing to a chair. He took the seat opposite.

Lord Bradford clasped his hands around his substantial middle and frowned. Uh-oh. Perhaps he should worry about his nose.

“I’ve heard that Lady Radnor has recently arrived? I assume you’ve seen her?”

David nodded.

“I needn’t tell you”—except he was telling him—“that discretion is essential,
especially when dealing with the widows of army generals.”

“Of course, my lord. Absolutely understood.” David cleared his throat. “Actually, I am not interested in continuing the former acquaintance with her ladyship. And spending time with your niece will prove to be useful in that regard. Lady Radnor might not wish to appear to be second in my affections, so perhaps she will lose interest.”

He hoped. Although she had said many complimentary things when they were naked together, that might have just been her enthusiasm for what they were doing at the time.

“Yes, it seems your assignment is going well. Charlotte’s mother told me she wasn’t lacking a dance partner at all last evening. Were you there?”

The mysterious Millers. “No, I was not.” So she was asked to dance for every dance. He felt both annoyed and proud.

“Thank you for taking care of my girl,” Lord Bradford said. “She’s precious to me. My sister tells me Charlotte has a suitor already. A Mr. Goddard.”

Mr. Goddard … hm. Had he met him? Was he worthy of Charlotte? Would he answer all her questions? Would any man alive be able to?

“So your assignment to court her might be over sooner than you thought,” Lord Bradford added.

He felt an immediate wave of disappointment. “But as we’ve discussed, it wouldn’t be wise in terms of Lady Radnor to stop my attentions to your niece.” Because, damn it, he liked spending time with Charlotte, no matter what she was wearing. Or not wearing, more precisely.

“Ah, excellent point. Never mind, that is, unless this Mr. Goddard actually proposes and Charlotte accepts. Then I would imagine Lady Radnor would see through your subterfuge. But by then you should be back on your way to India, leaving all of this intrigue behind.”

Right. On his way back to India, which was what he wanted.

Wasn’t it?

***

It was definitely more fun to write about clothing and fashion when one had a real live fashionable person to ask questions of. Especially when the live fashionable person was the opposite sex, and had a crooked smile, and was tall and muscular and …

This was not getting the column written at all. Charlotte bent her head to her desk and squinted at what she had written thus far.

Frogs, dirt, and—what had she written? Smallclothes. She would have to ask about smallclothes, now that she knew men didn’t wear chemises.

She drew another piece of paper toward her, one with much more writing on it than the first. “Ask about smallclothes,” she wrote down, following such questions as “Did men even look at ladies’ shoes?” and “What was the best part of a hat?”

She could not wait until tomorrow. But another column was due tomorrow, and unless she wrote something, she would be disappointing Emma. And herself. The column, and figuring out how to write it, was proving surprisingly fun. Even without the added attraction of Lord David’s information.

And his kisses, and the way he looked at her at certain times, after her gloves were off.

She wondered how he’d look if she removed more of her clothing. A shocking thought, of course, but not one that hadn’t already crossed her mind a few times. More than a few times.

She would have to ask him about that, too.

But meanwhile, the column. Frogs, dirt, and earthworms. That was an excellent start.

And tomorrow would be an excellent continuation.

Thank goodness for an inquiring disposition. And a gentleman willing to answer whatever it was she had in mind.

And she had a lot in mind.

If this was to be her last Season, she was going to have fun during it.

***

It was three fifty-five when she knocked on the door, Sarah right behind her, shielding
her from the street, in case anyone she knew passed by. It opened before she’d even lowered her hand, and David’s servant, Gotam, yanked them both inside.

“Good afternoon, ladies,” Gotam said. Was it her imagination or had he smiled more when looking at Sarah? “May I take your coats? Lord David will be down in a moment. You are early.”

Charlotte would have been embarrassed at being early, only she had wanted to arrive just after breakfast, so she was proud of herself for only being five minutes early.

“Lady Charlotte,” David said as he strode out from the room they’d been in yesterday. “Right on time, welcome. Gotam, you can entertain Lady Charlotte’s maid—Sarah, isn’t it?—while we talk?”

“Of course. This way, please.” He allowed Sarah to pass in front of him, then jumped ahead to open a door to what appeared to be a library.

Leaving the two of them alone in the hallway.

And one of them, at least, wanted to start kissing immediately.

“This way, Lady Charlotte,” David said, gesturing to the open door he’d emerged from.

“I think you can dispense with the ‘Lady’ part, don’t you? Just Charlotte is fine.”

He chuckled as he shut the door behind them. “Yes, of course. Please call me David.”

“Not Mr. Gorgeous?” she teased, sitting down and raising her gaze to his.

He smiled, and instead of sitting in the chair opposite, as he had the previous day, he knelt down in front of her. He was not going to pro—

“I have to tell you something.” He sounded quite serious, not at all the way a man would if he were professing his undying love or anything foolish like that.

Well. Good, then. She attempted to put her heart back in her chest.

“What is it?”

He reached for her hand, frowning as he saw her glove. She didn’t wait for him, just removed both of them and laid them in her lap.

He took her hand. His was so warm and so large.

He cleared his throat. Uh-oh. Perhaps he had learned the throat-clearing trick.

“The thing is, Charlotte, I have not been entirely honest with you.”

She leaned back in her chair and raised one eyebrow at him. “You’re not really incredibly handsome?”

He squeezed her hand. His expression was sheepish. “Well, I suppose I have to admit to that. Thank you.” He paused, and glanced away. “You know I am acquainted with your uncle.”

She mentally scratched that question off the list she had tucked into her pocket.

“In fact, he is in charge of some of my assignments.”

More scratching of questions.

“And so when I returned home, he asked me to do something for him.” Now he looked guilty. And she hadn’t even had that on her list in the first place.

“What did he ask you to do?” And what did this have to do with her?

“He cares for you, very much.” She nodded; she knew that already. If that was his confession, then he didn’t understand the concept of confessing.

“So he asked me to—to pay attention to you, to try to remove some of the stigma caused by that nickname.” His features hardened, as though it hurt him to think of it.

That was very sweet. Only … “What? My uncle asked you to pay attention to me in a sort of pity courtship?” Her voice rose with each word until she hit a note that made him wince.

He did not let go of her hand, even though she tried to wrest it away from him. “I cannot believe my uncle would think I was so pathetic that I needed someone to be told to speak with me. And you,” she said, finally yanking her hand away. She pointed her index finger at him and jabbed him in the chest. “You might be who you are and everything, but that does not mean you can—oh, I have no idea what I am saying. I thought we were friends. Real friends. Not just someone you had to be told to speak to.”

She wished she were alone, because then she could do what she really wanted to, which was cry and drown her sorrows in a plate of tea cookies.

But if she were alone, he wouldn’t be here, and he wouldn’t have confessed.

“Wait.” She drew her finger back from where she had stuck it into his chest. “Why are you telling me, anyway? I wouldn’t have found out if you hadn’t told me.” An awful thought, even worse than all these thoughts currently running through her mind, struck her. “You didn’t force yourself to kiss me, did you?” She put her face in her hands
and spoke in a choked voice. “I kissed you first. I asked you to kiss me. And you did, because you were following my uncle’s directions. Oh, could this be any worse?”

He took her hand and pulled it away from her face. She couldn’t bear to look at him, to see the pity and whatever other pathetic-Charlotte emotion he was feeling, so she squeezed her eyes shut.

“I have to be honest, I did it at first because he asked me to. No,
ordered
me to,” he corrected. “But I wanted to tell you about it because I want to keep spending time with you. I could have kept it from you, but I felt it was only fair to be honest. I like you, Charlotte. You are making my time in England way more interesting than I thought it would be when I returned.” She opened her eyes. He wasn’t looking at her as though she were pitiful. Thank goodness.

“Why did you return?” Damn, here she was asking him questions again. She waved her hand at him. “Never mind, I don’t want to know.”

He smiled. “Yes, of course you do.” He took her other hand and laid their hands in her lap. “But first I want to talk about this thing, and why I did it. Not so you’ll forgive me, since I don’t know if you will, but so you can see why.”

She nodded. “All right. Tell me.”

He dropped her hands and rose, turning his back to her as he began speaking. “I love India. I love living there and working there. It’s the one place I’ve been where I am valued for who I am, not what I look like.” He looked back over his shoulder at her and twisted his lips into a wry grin. “I know you might find that hard to understand.”

He put his arm on the mantle and looked into the fireless grate. “I needed to come home for a while. To avoid a scandal. The reason itself isn’t important. Your uncle is one of the people tasked with giving me my assignments. If I don’t complete my assignments properly, I don’t get to do what I like doing best. I wouldn’t be able to return home, I wouldn’t feel productive. I’d just be the second son whose only value was in my family name.”

He paused, and Charlotte half-rose from her chair to go to him, but stopped when he resumed speaking. “When your uncle told me what he wanted, I’ll admit it—I was resentful. I felt that once again I was being valued for something over which I had no control.” He turned back to face her. “But I also have to admit, since I’m being painfully,
incredibly truthful, that my feelings of resentment faded when I saw you in that rose gown. The boring one. You remember?”

She nodded.

“And I realized that there were ways of hiding behind how you looked that I hadn’t understood before. And that I wanted to get to know you, the person Charlotte, and not just be distracted by what you were wearing.” His eyes traveled from her hat—the one with the artificial grapes—down to her shoes, which also featured grapes. “Even though I have to admit that not being distracted by your clothing is one of my tougher assignments.” He advanced toward her, his blue eyes dark in concentration. “I can understand if you no longer wish to visit me, but I will say I am grateful that your uncle assigned this task to me and not to another handsome face.”

Oh. Her heart fluttered in her chest. She walked to close the distance between them and took his hands in hers. “Here,” she said, raising their joined hands to her hat, “you can do the honors of removing this, if you want.”

He laughed. “You’ll forgive me, then?”

His hands were already removing the pins from her hat and dropping them into his pocket. She felt it loosen, then fall entirely off, dropping with a soft plop onto the carpet.

“I will. But only if you answer my questions.” She took the sheet of paper from her pocket. And cleared her throat.

“Tell me, are your smallclothes made of linen or cotton?”