“You’ve done excellently, Mrs. Cordelon, and I’ve one last idea to try.”
CHAPTER 32
It was later than Wolfgangliked when the landau trundled out of Maidstone. The trip home was also less chaperoned than he intended, because when he’d finally pried Charlotte away from the third floor, where he’d found her half-buried under a pile of velvet samples and thread, he’d discovered that Ivy was also reluctant to go. The young maid said so many long, mournful goodbyes to her mother that Charlotte had laughed and thrown up her hands. “Ivy, you’d better remain behind for a few days,” she’d suggested, and Ivy had scampered off faster than a young lieutenant let out on leave.
Which left him alone with Charlotte.
Sitting across from her in a closed carriage, with fifteen miles of open road ahead of them.
He swallowed.Only God can save me now.
“Tell me, do you have any competent chaperones?” Wolfgang muttered as the landau rumbled out of town.
“Not if I can help it.” She peeked over at him, and what she saw made her smile go wicked. “Why? Do I need one? Don’t you trust yourself to be alone with me?”
“You’re safe as a nun.”
“Really? What a relief. Because I seem to remember that when we were in the forest together, you pushed me up against a tree and—”
“An error, Lady Charlotte. One I will not repeat.”
“You already did,” she muttered, half under her breath, and Wolfgang gritted his teeth. What thehellhad happened in his bedchamber?
Charlotte slowly untied the riot of ribbons beneath her chin and removed her hat.
“My goodness, it’s warm in here! Do you think it could be my bonnet, Your Grace?” She let her head fall back against the squabs, exposing the pale length of her neck. “I suddenly feel as if I’m wearing too much.”
Wolfgang shifted in his seat.
It’s just a neck! It’s just a bloody bonnet! She didn’t want you to come with her and now she’s punishing you.
“What a day! I confess, I’m exhausted.” Charlotte lifted her hands above her head in a long, slow stretch that pushed her breasts forward until they threatened to pop the buttons of her spencer.
Wolfgang’s fists clenched and he turned his head to stare doggedly out the window.
God, she had glorious breasts. In fact, all of her was glorious, especially with the late-afternoon sun pouring gold over her profile and causing the tips of her curls to catch fire. It would be the work of seconds to haul her onto his lap, relieve those poor straining buttons of their duty, and have a hand down her bodice to trace her creamy curves and coax her nipple to a pert little point, ready for the heat of his tongue.
Were her nipples stained blackberry, like her wretched mouth? Or would they glisten a softer, sweeter pink when he licked them?
For Christ’s sake, you won’t be able to leave the house if you go mad every time a woman removes her bonnet.
But she wasn’t any woman.
She was Charlotte.
All she had to do was hiccup and he stripped her naked in his mind.
Wolfgang shifted in his seat. His head was pounding hard enough from the day and he didn’t need any other body parts throbbing.
Damn it, how was he meant to understand thatCharlottewas running a silk mill? And something niggled him about it.…
“Lady Charlotte, did I see you have only women working for you? They’re widows, aren’t they?”
Her half smile disappeared and her eyes narrowed to slits, like a cat about to swipe. “You went around interrogating my weavers?”
“Interrogating? No, but I did talk to them. Imagine how surprised I was to learn that Mrs. Cordelon had strict instructions to find her weavers from among the women in Spitalfields whose husbands didn’t come home from the war.”
“Yes, well, someone had to think of the women. You men go off to fight, and rush around with all your great affairs of state, and you seem to believe it’s got nothing to do with the rest of us. But when you break things,we’rethe ones who pick up the pieces.” She turned her attention to the passing landscape.
