Wolfgang stared. Occasionally, when he and Lysander both had enough to drink, they acknowledged what it was like to watch the rest of the country declare the war over while they carried it like a stain. He’d never once considered that Charlotte, of all people, might feel the same way. Mightdosomething about it.
Yououghtto have considered it. She told you as much three years ago with her bayonet lace.
Charlotte whirled back to him. “Do you know what bothers me? You’re adukeand awar hero, as my grandmother’s so fond of telling me, but what does any of that matter, without action? You haven’t even taken your seat in the House of Lords yet, have you?” She shook her head. “All that power, and you can’t even bother to use it. Has it ever once occurred to you that perhapsyou’rethe frivolous one, and not I?”
She ought to have been an artilleryman, because her aim was dead accurate.
“I—” Wolfgang tried for words. “I don’t know what to—”
“Oh, never mind! You’d be astonished at how little interest I have in your opinions.”
He frowned, his head dry and barren, as if it were filled with sand. “Irespectyour silk mill. Why have you never mentioned it? It’s almost as if you try tohide—”
Her eyes flashed. “We’re not friends, you and I. Why should I tell you anything? You’ve made what you think of me clear, alwaysstaringat me, as if—”
He barked out a laugh, and even to his ears it sounded desperate. “I stare at you, damn it, because I can’t help myself.”
Her lips parted, perhaps in shock, or perhaps to say something that would ruin him.
Wolfgang didn’t know, and he was too far gone for it to matter anyway. Somehow he’d edged closer to her, their knees almost touching across the divide. “I warm each time you walk inside a room and wither when you leave it. Tell me you don’t feel the same.”
Her pupils were big and black and threatened to swallow the green of her eyes. He could feel her hiss of breath, half anger and half a helpless fight against the draw between them.
Wolfgang held her gaze and leaned in, but Charlotte didn’t back away.
“Damn it,” he growled. “Tell me not to kiss you.”
Wolfgang didn’t breathe as he waited for her answer, and she surprised him by slowly lifting her hand to his face, raising her lips to meet his. Her mouth was so warm and slick he wanted to drink it, the tip of her sweet little tongue, that pouty bottom lip that so often taunted him. Each lick and suck made his heart pound andhis blood run thick and heavy, until the whole world seemed to narrow into the shape of her mouth.
Fuck. Slow down, he thought, his head dazed and dizzy.
But she made a desperate sound and bit him, so of course he bit her back and crossed to her side of the carriage, lifting her onto his lap. Everything dissolved except for her heat and the thick, frustrating fabric of her spencer beneath his hands, and her curves, and all the little gasps that Charlotte—his fucking Charlotte—huffed against his mouth.
He wanted his hands everywhere—in her hair because he adored it, on the sinuous lines of her back so he could feel each time she shuddered, on her ass so he could cup her hard against his cock, on the ridiculous gold buttons of her spencer, which had mocked him long enough. She rocked in his lap and it felt like the best kind of agony, so he broke the kiss and murmured all his weaknesses into her neck, and her collarbones, and then unbuttoned the damned spencer and helped her shrug it off so they could torture each other with just the thin muslin of her dress between them.
Charlotte twisted, nearly as frantic as he was, and her eyes were glazed but full of challenge as he traced a finger along her neckline, her bodice just loose enough that he could dip his hand down, teasing them both.
Oh, Christ.Nowhe remembered what happened in his bedchamber.
Mine, growled a voice inside, loud enough to alarm him but not loud enough to wake him to any sense as his other hand tugged at the ties at the back of her dress until they went slack. He eased the dress slowly down over one shoulder, down over the swell of her breast, and at last to her pouting nipple.
Better than any fucking blackberry, he thought before he lowered his head and licked it. His mind blanked at the needy cry she gave, how soft she was, how the orange blossom scent of her skin made him want to throw his head back and yowl, how much he wanted to strip every single piece of clothing off both of them and position her over his hot, straining—
“Christ,” said Wolfgang, putting his forehead against her chest, closing his eyes and feeling his jaw work as he forced himself to remember who the hell he was and what he was about to do.
His heart beat frantically, but so did hers, and each thump of it felt like a hammer, knocking something loose that he’d been holding on to inside. Wolfgang didn’t know what it meant, but he knew that he felt changed.
For good.
Charlotte was confounding, maddening, the terror of his life. But she washis, God help him.
CHAPTER 33
The problem of clothing comingoff, Charlotte thought—once her pulse had finished rioting and her blood had stopped battering her brain—was how damned difficult it was to get it on again.
Gentlemen don’t have these problems, she thought darkly as she clutched her bodice to her chest and wriggled off Warrick’s lap, causing him to suck in his breath and mutter all sorts of interesting curses. Breeches both were convenient and looked fabulous on her legs, and yet was she allowed to wear them?
Of course not.
