RAFE WALKED INTO FITZ’S bedchamber, carrying two of the late duke’s crystal snifters in his uninjured hand. He’d also tucked a decanter of the man’s best brandy into the crook of his arm. He said hello to his friend before depositing everything on one of the dressers.
“A man shouldn’t drink alone,” he told Fitz as he poured them each a measure of the amber liquid and carried one of the snifters over to the bed. “Reading again? You’re becoming quite the bluestocking, aren’t you?”
“I will admit to learning a few things I didn’t know. Shall I bore you with my newfound knowledge?” Fitz motioned with his head for Rafe to deposit the snifter on the bedside table, and then closed the book, using his finger as a marker, and held its cover toward Rafe. “Your sister Lady Lydia was kind enough to bring this to me yesterday, while we were all wondering when we’d be hearing the hoofbeats of the four horsemen of the Apocalypse thundering down on our heads.”
Rafe looked at the book, frowning. “Lydia visited you, gave you this? Really? What is it?”
“A retelling of the storm that all but blew this fair island away more than one hundred years ago. Imagine this, Rafe, if you will.” He released his saved page and turned to the front of the slim book. “Now where is that? Ah, yes, here. This is how the man tells it.
No pen could describe it, nor tongue express it, nor thought conceive it unless by one in the extremity of it. No storm since the Universal Deluge was like this, either in its violence or its duration.”
Rafe took the volume from Fitz and read the author’s name on the frontpiece before tossing the book down on the bed. “Daniel Defoe. Well, Daniel, I can’t agree with you. I couldn’t describe what happened here, and I was in the middle of it.
“You weren’t out there, Fitz. We faced some violent storms on the Peninsula, but never anything like we experienced yesterday. The entire episode seems like a nightmare now that the sun is shining so brightly. Except that two of our barns and several outbuildings have been all but flattened, all the haystacks were scattered to the four winds, I’ve got a half-dozen injured foresters, and John Cummings told me several dozen sheep are dead. It would seem that sheep, Fitz, instinctively gather themselves together in a low spot in order to shelter from a storm and won’t move from it, even when common sense says to get yourself the hell somewhere else. So they drowned.”
Rafe pushed his spread fingers through his hair. “Christ, Fitz, what a mess I’ve inherited. Give me a good war anytime.”
“Yes, I see your point. It’s a bleeding pity, that’s what it is, you being the duke, and being saddled with this great estate and all that terrible money. I could weep for you, truly I could.”
Rafe toasted his friend with his brandy snifter. “Point taken. At least this house is still in one piece, which is more than can be said for Rose Cottage. John and I rode over this afternoon to supervise the removal of the bodies. Rose Cottage looks like it took a direct hit from one of Bonaparte’s cannon. I can’t believe we got Charlie’s mother out of that wreck of a greenhouse alive.”
“How is the lady today?”
“Other than the very large bump on the back of her head and some fairly nasty cuts from the falling glass, I’d say she’s much recovered, if still somewhat dazed. I don’t know if she took refuge under that table on her own or if her servants put her there as the chimney came tumbling down, but even though she was pinned in place by it, that table probably saved her life.”
“You saved the lady’s life, my friend. That was a brave thing you did.”
“I only happened to be there, Fitz, that’s all. There were five fatalities that I’ve heard about so far. The two Seavers servants, and three others in the village who were mortally injured when their entire house collapsed around them. I can only wonder how large this storm was, how widespread the devastation. I think we’ve been spared a reenactment of Defoe’s storm, thank God, but not by much.”
Rafe got to his feet when a timid knock on the door was followed by his sister Lydia’s entrance, followed by that of Mrs. Beasley, a gray mouse of a woman who might be forty or eighty, it was difficult to tell. The only thing he felt certain of was that being governess to Nicole and Lydia had the ability to age a person past her years.
“Ah, Lady Lydia,” Fitz said in greeting. “Once again forgive me for not rising. You’ve more books for me?”
Lydia nodded, staying a good distance from the bed, several heavy volumes clasped to her breast. “I had thought, if you enjoyed Mr. Defoe, you might like to read one of his most wonderful works, Robinson Crusoe.”
Mrs. Beasley waited just behind Lydia until Fitz agreed that he would very much like to read the book, but would enjoy even more listening to Lady Lydia read it to him. Then she scooted past Lydia and took up a seat in one corner of the room before pulling an embroidery hoop from the knitted bag she carried with her and settling down as if she planned to remain where she was until Lydia quit the room.
“I have your permission, Rafael?” Lydia asked quietly, turning those huge blue eyes on him. What was she so damned nervous about? It wasn’t as if Fitz was going to leap from the bed and compromise the child. The man was old enough to be her…well, no, he wasn’t.
Still, he’d never heard that particular soft tone in Fitz’s voice, not in all the years he’d known the man. And the smile he’d offered Lydia, the one she had returned so shyly?
Was he, Rafe, reading too much into a simple show of friendship?
Because Fitz would never consider Lydia in that way. Even though Lydia was definitely beautiful, almost frighteningly beautiful. Especially if you were her brother, and you knew you were responsible for her. Responsible for her, and equally responsible for Nicole. Responsible for Ashurst Hall and every person who lived there. Responsible for the ruined barns and the scattered haystacks and the laborers’ cottages all needing new layers of thatch on their roofs. Responsible for every fallen tree and every stupid drowned sheep and…
“I see no problem, no,” Rafe said quickly when he realized everyone was looking to him to answer Lydia’s question, gesturing that she should take the seat he’d just vacated. “I’ll just take this with me,” he said, reaching for the decanter with his injured hand before remembering the cut on his palm, which led his thoughts straight back to Charlotte and how he’d felt when he’d realized she might be out in the storm and could be lost to him. “No, you keep it here. I’ll be back later.”
“Planning to tuck me in like some infant? Rafe?” Fitz asked as Rafe headed for the hallway. “Are you all right, friend? You’re looking a little queer.”
“I’m fine,” Rafe said, trying not to look at his sister again. “I just remembered something I’ve forgotten to do. I must write to my mother and invite her to join us in London for the Season.”
“But…but, Rafael,” Lydia said, proving that, although she didn’t talk much, she certainly did listen. “You told us the other night at dinner that Mama had already written to you about coming to Grosvenor Square for the Season. And that makes it all right that Charlotte comes with us, correct? Because Mama will be there, too, to lend us respectability?”
“Yes, Lydia, but now I must write to Mama with the particulars of her visit. I misspoke, that’s all. I mean, of course she wrote to me, just as I said she did.” He decided he’d better make his escape before he talked himself into even more lies. “Fitz, enjoy your story.”
Rafe abandoned his snifter on one of the hall tables, the part of him that felt a clear head was necessary to him overruling the part of him that would like nothing more than to drink until he couldn’t think anymore. He couldn’t even keep his lies straight, not when Charlotte was involved. She was invading nearly his every waking moment, coloring his every thought.
He headed for the duke’s—no, for his private study, and heavily plunked himself down behind the large desk. He sat forward, his elbows on the desktop, and lowered his head into his hands.
When had he last slept?
He’d been inspecting a fouled well with John Cummings and doing his damnedest to think of something to say about the thing that wouldn’t brand him as brick stupid, when the world had seemed to go silent and the estate manager lifted his head like a hound and sniffed at the air.
“A bad one coming, Your Grace, and will soon be upon us. You’d best return to Ashurst Hall.”
“And you?” Rafe remembered asking as the sky turned darker and the wind began blowing across the open field as if summoned to prove the estate manager’s point.
“My cottage is just beyond this field, Your Grace.” Even as John Cummings spoke, the wind intensified, so that both men were forced to clamp their hands to their heads to keep their hats from blowing away. “And you are closer to Rose Cottage, Your Grace. You might wish to shelter there, although you are of course welcome to come with me.”
“No, thank you, John, but I think I will ride to Rose Cottage. It seems a good excuse.”
“Pardon, Your Grace?”
Rafe hadn’t bothered to explain that he’d been hoping to find a way to see Charlotte again.
And then the wall of water that could not be called anything as mundane as rain had hit them, and the two men mounted their skittish mounts and went their separate ways.
Rafe was drenched through to his skin by the time he rode Boney straight into the small stables at Rose Cottage, and then raced to the house, banging on the knocker for a full minute before anyone inside could hear his knock above the howling of the wind.
“Your Grace!” the maid who’d opened the door exclaimed even as she dropped into a low curtsy. The same maid whose body he’d seen in the wreckage of the greenhouse not an hour later. “Is Miss Charlotte with you, please? We’re all that worried, what with her taking the path back to Ashurst Hall and all, and her papa gone to the village. We’re just us wimmen here, and can’t go fetching her, Your Grace.”
Rafe didn’t want to remember what had happened after that, when he’d learned that Charlotte had left Rose Cottage not fifteen minutes before he arrived, definitely not enough time for her to have walked to Ashurst Hall.
His panicked dash across the lawns, and plunging into the darkness of the wildly blowing trees.
His first sight of Charlotte frantic minutes later, looking so vulnerable as she fought against the power of the storm.
The way the wind molded her sodden muslins against her body so that they clung to her high, full breasts, outlined her long straight legs, all but defined her sex…
No. He wouldn’t think of that. He would banish that image from his mind now and forever. Only a bastard bankrupt of any last shred of morality would look at a woman in such duress and see anything beyond her fear and the need to rescue her.
She’d held on to him with all of her strength, her shivering body pressed hard against him. He’d looked down into her frightened eyes, her pale skin drawn tightly over her high cheekbones, her full bottom lip trembling in terror and cold. He’d kissed her, in his fear, in his concern for her, and she’d kissed him back.
Rafe flung himself back in the leather chair, as if to distance himself from his thoughts. Damn, what was wrong with him? He wanted to tell himself that his reaction had been no more than one of relief, having found her safe and unharmed. But fool that he was, he wasn’t idiot enough to believe that clanker.
And she’d been so brave. Through the worst of it, she’d never wavered, never dissolved into hysterics, even when she’d disobeyed him and entered the greenhouse, to see the cook’s body crushed beneath the toppled chimney.
It had only been after he’d had Charlotte and her mother safe in the cellars, and had chanced several forays upstairs to fetch blankets and bandages, bread and cheese from the kitchens, that she broke down once more.
How long had he held her in the darkness of those damp, dirt-floored cellars as the sounds of the storm raged above them? Three hours? Six? More? How many wretchedly impure thoughts had he fought down during those long hours? More than he cared to think about, even as now, at this very moment, he swore he could still feel Charlotte’s warm body pressed intimately against his.
Rafe abruptly got up from the desk and walked to the window to look out at the east prospect of the lawns surrounding Ashurst Hall. Two laborers wearing baggy brown trousers and gray smocks were busy picking up small branches and other debris and loading them into wheelbarrows. Otherwise, there was no imprint left by the storm on this, the leeward side of Ashurst Hall.
Rose Cottage hadn’t fared half so well. Rose Cottage land, being nearly surrounded by the Ashurst Hall estate, perhaps once had been better protected from the elements, but one of the late duke’s ideas of persuasion so Edward Seavers would consider selling to him had been the ruthless harvesting of all the trees on the western prospect of the house. Leaving Rose Cottage completely exposed to the worst winter storms.
When Rafe had at last dared to leave the cellars one more time, he found that nearly all the windows had been broken on the west side of the structure, and the furniture in those rooms was jumbled about, tipped over, the draperies torn by the sheer force of the wind.
But the morning room had suffered the most damage. When Charlotte had joined him, she told him that the room hadn’t been a part of the original structure, but a single storey added by her father with the express purpose of serving as a retreat for her mother as well as an entrance into the greenhouse so that she didn’t have to go out into the weather to tend to her flowers. Clearly the construction had not been on a par with that of the rest of Rose Cottage.
So now the Seaveres were in residence in Ashurst Hall, and would be for some time to come, while Rose Cottage was repaired.
Rafe raised his gaze to the ceiling. If he figured correctly, and he was confident he did, Charlotte’s assigned bedchamber was directly above his head. He didn’t know which chambers had been assigned to her mother and father, and didn’t much care, now that he thought about the thing.
He shouldn’t care where Charlotte’s bedchamber was, either, but he did. He didn’t want to imagine her in that bedchamber, sleeping, bathing, dressing. Undressing. But, again, he did.
“Damn. Blast and confound it, man,” he muttered, bringing his fist down hard on the windowsill. He took several deep breaths, hoping to steady himself. “What’s wrong with you? It’s only Charlie.”
“Well, yes, it is,” Charlotte said, her voice coming to him from the doorway, the door he’d forgotten to close. “Shall I go away again?”
Rafe turned around so quickly he nearly lost his balance. “Charlie! I…That is—Oh, hell. What do you want? Is something wrong?”
She walked into the study and sat down in the same chair she always occupied when in this room, her hands tightly clasped in her lap.
“Wrong, Rafe? I suppose that would depend. If you’re asking about Rose Cottage, I hear that it may be months before it is once again fit to be occupied, which you might consider unfortunate news for you, as you’ve volunteered to house us Seavers for the duration. If you’re asking about my mother, I’m happy to say that she’s taking nourishment and…and is much again as she was the last time I saw her before the storm.”
Rafe attempted to put her at her ease. “I think Ashurst Hall is up to the challenge of housing three more people. And how is Miss Charlotte Seavers?”
She looked him full in the face in that disconcerting way of hers that meant that, no matter how hard he tried, he would not be able to discern her true feelings. “Miss Charlotte Seavers is feeling quite sad at the moment, yet extremely grateful to the Duke of Ashurst. In point of fact, Miss Charlotte Seavers cannot imagine her fate, or that of her mother, if it had not been for the extreme and even foolhardy bravery demonstrated by the Duke of Ashurst. Miss Charlotte Seavers, in short, is eternally in the debt of the Duke of Ashurst.”
Rafe bowed, mocking her formality. “The Duke of Ashurst was only happy to have been of service to Miss Charlotte Seavers. In point of fact, the Duke of Ashurst believes his debt to Miss Charlotte Seavers for all her contributions to Ashurst Hall and the Daughtry family is still far from paid, and if there is anything else he may be able to do to assist Miss Charlotte Seavers, she has only to ask.”
“Really?” Charlotte asked, looking up at him from beneath, he noticed, her very long, thick lashes.
He tipped his head to one side, immediately on his guard. She hadn’t just happened to have dropped in to see him, or even to thank him. She’d come here with another purpose in mind. And that purpose had upset her, drawn a white line around her mouth, put a shadow in her eyes. “Yes. Really. Why? What do you want, Charlie?”
“Well, I’d begin by asking that you never again call me Charlie, but why doom myself to disappointment. Instead, Rafe, I’d like to ask you to never, never ever tell anyone how we gained access to Rose Cottage during the storm.”
“Oh, that.” Rafe smiled as he sat down in the facing chair. “It was necessary, Charlie.”
“It may have seemed so at the time. But was it necessary to pull my skirts up over my head?”
He pretended to think about the answer. “You mean exposing you that way? Is that what you mean, Charlie?”
She rolled her eyes. “You didn’t expose me, Rafe. I was still…covered. I mean, if my father should ask you how we—I wasn’t exposed, Rafe.”
The thin cotton pantaloons had been wet through, plastered to her body, and made nearly transparent. He should know, because her rounded bottom had been mere inches from his eyes as he’d boosted her into the opening. He should know, because he could still see her as she’d looked then, and as she’d looked moments later as she lay, winded, her legs splayed out on the flagstone, her nipples, taut from the cold, easily discernible beneath the wet muslin of her bodice.
Hell may have been crashing down all around them, but a glimpse of heaven had been there, too. Oh yes, he’d noticed….
“Rafe?” she prompted nervously when he didn’t answer. “I said, I wasn’t…exposed. Now you say it.”
He rested one elbow on the arm of the chair and slowly rubbed at his mouth and lower jaw as he looked at her. She was frightened. He didn’t know why, but he knew fear when he saw it. What in hell did she think he might say to her father? Rafe also felt sure that no matter how he tried to reassure her that he’d say nothing to anyone, she wouldn’t believe him.
Defeated, she frightened him. He didn’t like that she so obviously felt vulnerable. It was probably time to make her angry.
“Rafe—say it. Please.”
He dropped his hand and deliberately smiled at her as he got to his feet—for a soldier survived by knowing when to attack and when to beat a hasty retreat. Once he’d said what he was going to say, retreat would be the only sane option.
“You know what, Charlie? Now that you’ve brought the matter to my attention, I think I may have compromised you. In fact, when we take into consideration the possible damage to your maidenly reputation, and my responsibility as a gentleman to protect the gentler of the species, I think we should probably be married. See to it, will you, as you’re so good at organizing things? There’s a good girl.”
He hadn’t made it more than ten feet before one of Charlotte’s black kid slippers missed his ear by at least a yard before serving a glancing blow to a brass bust of Zeus and falling to the floor.
That was another thing—Charlie had atrocious aim. The apple she’d once hit him in the eye with had been aimed, she’d told him later, at his feet. She’d once shot an arrow toward a paper target he and his cousins had nailed to the side of one of the barns. And missed the barn.
He bent and picked up the slipper, carried it back to her. “Are you done feeling sorry for yourself now?” he asked her. “We did what we had to do yesterday, Charlie, what was necessary. And what we did was between us. But I wonder—why would you think I’d tell your father?”
“I…because…” She took the slipper from him and bent to slip it back on her foot. “I don’t know. I’m not thinking clearly, I suppose. The world is upside-down right now, isn’t it?”
He looked down at the top of her head, something in his chest twisting almost painfully. “Yes, I suppose it is. But we’re still friends, Charlie, aren’t we?”
She lifted her face to him and he saw the brightness of unshed tears sparkling in her eyes. “Yes, Rafe. We’re still friends.”