Charlotte, you can’t.” John’s tone was stern, but she waved him away. Deep down, she knew she should put the letters back immediately and never open them again, but she simply wasn’t that good a person.
The first letter was sweet. It was a letter she might have written to John, were they not in such constant contact.
Luella—sharp, venomous viper of the ton—had been besotted. The way she had openly expressed her devotion to Lord Berridge and her plans for their marriage was difficult to read, given Charlotte knew those hopes had been dashed.
The second letter was heart-wrenching. It was full of confusion—why had he not responded to her previous letter? Why had he not come to see her father, as he promised he would?
Charlotte couldn’t bring herself to read the third letter. The whole situation made her sick. How could men be so awful? And to share it with his friends? To finally visit Luella’s father, not to propose, but to blackmail?
“I have no words. This is disgraceful.”
John shifted away, arms crossed. “Charlotte, whatever your feelings for that woman, you cannot use those letters against her.”
Pardon? She also shifted, putting enough distance between them that she could pin him down with a Wildeforde glare. “How could you think I would? I may not like her. In fact, to say that I loathe her wouldn’t be an overstatement. But I would never use a woman’s misstep against her.”
He frowned. “So you won’t share them? Or reveal their contents?”
Charlotte counted to five in her head before answering. “It is an insult that you think I would. Especially given what we did last night. I am certainly not a hypocrite. And while I’d love to best that woman once and for all, if I’m going to win, I want to win fairly.”
John removed his glasses and rubbed a hand over his eyes. “So do you plan on returning them to her?”
“Me? God, no. Can you imagine how she’d react if she knew her greatest rival had seen these? She’d never feel safe again. I may hold a grudge, but I’m not cruel. You do it. Tell her you came across them somewhere. That way, she has the security of knowing they’re out of that bastard’s hands and never needs to know that I saw them.”
John looked at her, head cocked. “You risked everything tonight for those letters. Selling them to help your brother never crossed your mind?”
She could understand his confusion. She’d told him that there was nothing she wouldn’t do to help William. What she’d meant was there was nothing she wouldn’t sacrifice, but she certainly would not cause such harm. Not even to Luella. “I can’t.”
The look he gave her in response was heavy with thought. He tapped his fingertips on his lips before finally speaking. “You are something I do not understand.”
* * *
He was in love with Charlotte.
He didn’t know when it had happened or if she felt the same. All he knew was that she was the kindest, most generous, most loyal and loving person he knew. She was a sunbeam, so pure and warm and good that it could break through the darkest cloud.
For her, he would change the course of his existence. He would stay in England rather than returning to his quiet shack in the wilderness, because with her, all the things he feared and loathed about society seemed like lesser burdens. With her by his side, he could be the lord he must become. Together, they could ensure their estates, their people, thrived.
The sky had taken on a green hue a scant hour ago. With the promise of a lightning storm on the horizon, tonight was the perfect time to propose. He just had to settle other matters first, which was why he was now standing in Lady Luella’s drawing room, staring out the window and watching the clouds roll in. Marrying her was no longer an option. Even if he and Charlotte lost every cent they had at the tables tonight, he would not marry another.
Besides, Luella deserved better than to be left hanging on a string, waiting to be needed or not. After Berridge’s treatment of her, she deserved to find someone who would treat her well, who would love her in a way that John never would.
“Lord Harrow.” John turned to see Luella in the doorway. Her face was pinched, her lips thinned, and her eyes narrowed. She remained motionless as he bowed.
“You’re here to cry off,” she said, stalking across the room and taking a seat on the chaise longue. She settled her skirts into perfect waves. John had seen Charlotte do the same thing. It was a delaying tactic, a moment to compose herself without revealing what she was thinking. The two women shared more commonalities than either would care to admit.
He kept his place by the window, hesitant to be within arm’s reach of her for the conversation that had to follow. “I can’t, in good conscience, marry you,” he said.
She pinned him down with her stare. “I can’t see how, in good conscience, you couldn’t marry me. There is a contract. You have a responsibility. A true gentleman keeps his commitments.”
The barb cut deep, and he worked to remind himself that this was not his commitment. Walter had made the bloody pact, and he’d failed to keep it the way that he’d failed all his other duties.
“Lady Luella, surely you would prefer to marry a man who wants to marry you.”
“Lord Harrow, as my father so eloquently put it, I am spoiled goods, a fact that is not a secret amongst the men of London. No man of wealth and good breeding wants to marry me. At least, none did until Walter. He could see past my…indiscretion. He truly loved…” She pulled a handkerchief from her sleeve and dabbed at her eyes.
Despite the way she was trying to corner him, he felt sympathy for her. She’d loved his brother, however little Walter deserved it, and she would never have the life with him that she’d planned. “My condolences for your loss,” John murmured.
“You are nothing compared to him,” she spat. “Nothing.”
The words echoed the insults his parents had thrown at him his entire childhood. They hurt less now, though. His brother might have been charming, but he had not been perfect. He had not even been good. Whether the rest of society saw that was no longer relevant.
“I am trying my best to do right by everyone.”
“Except me.”
Including her, though she couldn’t see it. They would be wretched together. By not marrying her, she would be free to find someone who was more compatible—another Walter. “I am sorry that I’ve disappointed you.”
“It’s her, isn’t it?” Luella said. “The perfect Lady Charlotte? If you were going to refuse me, you would have done so immediately. Something, someone, has changed your mind.”
He couldn’t deny it. If it weren’t for Charlotte, he likely would have married Luella to repair the estates and free Walter’s tailor from debtor’s prison. His happiness, what he understood of it at the time, would have been a price he was willing to pay.
But happiness had taken on a new meaning in the past week. It was no longer something he could bear to part with.
Luella took his silence as confirmation. “You’ll regret it. She always has a cause she’s pushing. You’re just another one of her projects.”
Her accusation struck true, leaving him anxious. He could only hope that she was wrong, that Charlotte felt more for him than she did for the dozens of other causes she championed. He hoped her feelings for him were as all-consuming as his feelings for her were.
“I regret the pain my family has caused you, my lady.” He reached into his breast pocket and withdrew the packet of letters Charlotte had recovered the night before. “I only hope that these can soothe the hurt.” He crossed the room and handed them to her.
She was still staring at them, hand at her throat, when he left.
* * *
Thunder cracked so hard the glass rattled. Torrents of rain beat down on the window. Charlotte hated this kind of weather. Parties were cancelled, Vauxhall was closed, and nobody walked through Hyde Park chatting. Storms had always meant time spent inside alone.
She stood at her bedroom window, her arms hugged around herself, and stared out across the garden toward Harrow House. When she’d gone over that morning with a tray of eggs, sausages, and bacon, Mosely had told her that John was out. At noon. He was usually not even risen at that hour, hence the breakfast.
Disappointed, she had left the tray with Mosely. She’d meant to spend the afternoon with William, but since the doctor had refused to provide more laudanum, her brother had been extra crotchety and had eventually asked her to leave. The rain had started not long after.
She’d toyed with the idea of going to visit Henrietta, but it was always a risk taking horses out into a storm such as this. Besides, it felt selfish to ask Swinton to drive in this weather simply because she was bored.
It was Grace’s afternoon off; Edward was in parliament, and when she’d passed Fiona’s laboratory, her sister had been so preoccupied with her latest gadget that she hadn’t even heard Charlotte enter.
“Drat.” A bolt of lightning broke through the grey clouds and she jumped. Thunder followed quickly after. The storm was getting close.
The door leading from John’s study into his garden opened. She only saw his face for a brief second before the umbrella hid it, but that second was all she needed for her nerves to break out into excited fluttering. He crossed his garden quickly, making straight for the door in the wall.
Charlotte paused only long enough to change her slippers for boots before she rushed down the stairs, caring not for the looks the staff gave her. By the time she reached the door that led into the yard, John was beneath her bedroom window, stone in hand.
“John,” she called, but her voice was drowned out by the sound of raindrops landing heavy on the ground. “Drat,” she muttered, watching him lob the stone. She hadn’t thought to bring her own umbrella, or a coat, or even a bonnet to protect her hair. With a wince, she took off into the rain and was drenched within seconds. The coiffure Grace had spent an hour on that morning melted in the wet. Her sodden skirts caught around her legs.
“John!” By the time he heard her, she was only feet from him, wiping the hair from her eyes. “What on earth are you doing?”
He closed the distance between them, holding the umbrella above her with one hand, cupping her cheek with the other, leaning down to press a quick kiss to her lips, giving no heed to the fact that it was afternoon and anyone looking out the window could see them.
“It’s a thunderstorm,” he said with an absurd smile.
“I know. And we’re out in it.” His eccentricities were charming most of the time. But she preferred them dry, not sopping wet.
He took her hand to guide her across the garden. “I have something to show you.”
It was then that she noticed the strap of a satchel that crossed his body. “Now? Here?” she asked as she tripped after him. Truly, most normal men would have come calling through the front door and shown whatever it was to her in the comfort of a drawing room.
Once they’d crossed through the gate, he handed her the umbrella and then reached into the satchel, pulling out a bright red kite.
A kite. In this weather.
Perhaps he hadn’t slept again. Perhaps he was experiencing some kind of delirium brought on by hours spent awake. Certainly, she had barely slept last night. She’d hoped they would repeat the kissing and more as they left The Lucky Honeypot, but the discovery of Lady Luella’s letters had stolen all romance from what remained of the evening. Charlotte had gone to bed deeply unsatisfied.
“You don’t think that perhaps this is not the time?” She gestured to the sky and then flinched when lightning flared. The storm was almost on top of them. Only a fool was out in this weather.
“There is no better time. Here.” He pushed a ball of cotton twine into her hands and then let it unravel as he ran the kite away.
This was worthy of Bedlam, but he was too far from her to hear it. As he jogged to create lift under the kite, she jogged after him. In the past, Edward and William had gotten the kite flying and had given it to her once it was in the skies. She’d never been forced to work for it before. Thank goodness she’d swapped her slippers for boots, though her toes squelched and the wet leather rubbed.
It didn’t take long for a gust to take hold of the red fabric. The string snapped and tugged and was more difficult to control than she could have expected. Drat. I should have put on gloves.
John strode over, anticipation writ clear across his face. The kite, then, was not the entirety of his plans because no one got this excited about a kite in the rain.
As he got closer, he frowned as though he was only just realizing how drenched she was, almost as if he hadn’t noticed the downpour himself despite his hair being plastered to his neck and his cravat hanging heavy.
He shrugged off his coat and put it over her shoulders, the warmth of him enveloping her. Even with the telltale tang of a thunderstorm surrounding her, she could still smell the heady scent of him.
Then he came behind her, circled her in his arms, and put his hands on hers to keep the kite from pulling out of her grasp.
His closeness made her blood thrum. She shivered, not from the cold or the wet, but from the awareness of him.
“Just a moment,” he murmured into her ear. He slipped his hand into the pocket of the coat she was now wearing. Through the heavy wool, he brushed against her thigh. The shivers moved inward, resonating through her.
He withdrew one of the foil-covered glass jars that she’d seen in his study days ago.
“What are we doing with that?”
“We’re capturing electricity. Bottling it up. The air is rife with it. Did you see that?” He pointed to a spot in the sky where lightning had just forked. “That’s electricity in its rawest form.”
“Are you mad?” She released the kite string, but his hands caught it. She may not be a scientist, but she had seen firsthand the blackened stump in the garden where lightning had struck a tree during a particularly wild storm in her childhood.
“No, not mad. We won’t bottle lightning. But there is electricity in the air. Do you see it?” He pointed to the fibers of the cotton string, which were lifting into the air, not unlike the hairs on the back of her arm lifted when she saw him.
Tentatively, she grazed her palm across the cotton, a tingle skipped across her skin, again not unlike the sensation of his hand on hers. Her fingertip got too close to the cotton, and it zapped her sharply, painfully, the irony of which was not lost on her. The more she leaned into the frisson that was between her and John, the more likely she was to be painfully shocked when he left.
She pulled her finger away and pivoted in his arms until she was chest to chest with him.
“Is this what’s between us, then? This feeling that makes my heart go off kilter and my body come alive? Is it electricity?”
He inhaled sharply, fleeting expressions of hope, then relief crossing his face before settling into something far more primal. “No. There is no scientific explanation for this feeling. There is no reason or logic or laws of nature that explain it.”
He felt it too then. She swallowed. “And is there anything to be done about it?” Because one way or another, it had to be resolved. She couldn’t continue in this state forever, with her nerves so heightened that the barest breeze sent shivers through her, with her head so giddy it was as though she’d been dancing too fast for too long and was on the verge of fainting…or of falling more deeply in love.
John let the glass jar drop to the ground with a clunk, taking the fluttering kite down with it.
“Only this.” He captured her face in his hands and drew his lips to hers. The heat of him quenched her shivering and ignited a fire within her.
She wrapped her hands into the sodden folds of his shirt and pulled him closer. She opened her lips and touched her tongue to his, seeking out the depths of him. She knew what she was doing this time. It was her turn to explore, her tongue flicking against his.
He groaned, wrapped a hand around her buttocks, and pulled her against him. Through the layers of fabric between them—his breeches, her dress, both sodden—she could feel the hard press of his cock. Her sex stirred and her hips pressed into him, wanting to get closer.
He groaned. “Charlotte.” His words sounded like a prayer.
She didn’t want talking. She wanted to continue tasting him, but he pulled away. “No,” she whispered, wrapping one hand in his hair.
He put a gentle hand on her shoulder, putting distance between them. Rivulets of water ran down his hairline. His fine shirt had turned transparent with the wet and clung to his chest.
“Let’s not stop,” she said, trying to step toward him, her hands gripping his forearms, but he held her fast, a frustrating twelve inches from him.
He drew in a ragged breath. “Charlotte, make me the happiest man alive.”