“Charlotte, Christ, Charlotte. I fucking love you, Charlotte.”
Charlotte, Charlotte, Charlotte. Her name as his last rites.
When he crashed back onto the bed, she was boneless beneath him, so worked and exhausted that even her curls had gone limp. Wolfgang didn’t think his body was capable of movement, but that raised a grin. He rolled onto his back and pulled her with him, perfectly content for the first time in years.
“Wolfgang,” she whispered, running her fingers through the whorls of hair on his chest, “I think I’ve ruinedyou.”
He grunted. It was all he could manage.
Charlotte pushed herself up on an elbow. “I hope you know—Idowant to marry you, it’s only…” She paused and it sounded important, so he forced his eyes open. “This all started, if you remember, because of what Major Dumbarton did. He assaulted me, and now I’m told I have to marry. As if marrying you is a punishment! Dash it, as if Ideservea punishment for what he did. I know that’s how the world works, but the world is wrong, and I can’t stand that our marriage would be taken as a victory for everything I don’t believe in.” She peeped down at him. “I don’t suppose you’d rather run away with me and be notorious in Italy?”
Wolfgang sat up, an idea barreling toward him fully formed. “Why should we bow to the world? Instead, let’s change it.”
That’s right, Wolfie. John’s voice came to him for the first time in three long years, and it was strong and clear.It’s time to be a fucking duke.
Charlotte stared at him, but it wasn’t long before her busy mind got to work. Her lips curved slowly into a criminal grin, and Wolfgang gave a shout of laughter and pulled her back into his arms.
Charlotte at Her Utmost, and she was right there beside him.
CHAPTER 46
Charlotte wore her own silkto the first ball of the Season, hosted once again by Lord and Lady Marlowe. There was no time to design and weave a new pattern, but she worked with the dyers to come up with a silvery color, somewhere between moonlight and gunmetal, and paired it with an overlay of silver net. The Aveton-Wells Mill embroiderers stitched the puffed sleeves with silver thread, beads, and seed pearls, and the result was both sparkling and ferocious, a gown of armor.
“Charlotte of Arc,” Wolfgang said approvingly, when she showed him the sketch.
Charlotte and the dowager, in royal blue with the Ramsay sapphire-and-diamond aigrette pinned into her snowy white hair, stood on the steps of the Marlowe ballroom and paused for a long beat to make sure all eyes were on them before they swept down the stairs.
“This is risky, my darling,” whispered the dowager after they greeted the Marlowes.
“Yes, I know! I’m thoroughly overexcited already.” Charlotte’s nerves sparked and jumped as she surveyed the ballroom and saw so many staring back at her. Some, like Lysander and the Marby crew, were grinning, some whispered out the sides of their mouths, and even more glared daggers, because she and Wolfganghad spent the past few weeks making mischief together and it was reverberating throughout the ton.
Their plan revolved around scandal, but not the petty scandals of young women who showed too much ankle or unhappy wives who strayed. Instead, they made a list of what they deemedrealscandals—the people who used their weight and power to make others smaller—and wrote them what Wolfgang called encouraging letters and Charlotte called flat-out blackmail.
“We mustn’t forget Bishop Mayhew,” Charlotte had said on one of their last nights at Clare, tucked up against Wolfgang’s chest after the rest of the house had gone to bed. “He points his fingers at so many people for improper behavior, but I happen to know he owns a brothel down in Covent Garden. Perhaps I should embroider the brothel’s name on a handkerchief and send it to him?”
Wolfgang had kissed the tip of her nose. “Inspired.”
Once they cleared up Charlotte’s scandal, they intended for Charlotte to open another mill while Wolfgang took his seat in Parliament and went after the largest scandals of all, such as the neglect of returning soldiers, and the marriage laws that provided so little protection to women.
“I realize I miss a good fight,” Wolfgang had said, and kissed Charlotte on the little hollow between her collarbones. “Although I’m done fighting with you.”
Charlotte had let her fingers drift low on his abdomen. “Really? You seem to like fighting with me in bed.”
“Only because we both win.” He’d pulled her on top of him to demonstrate.
Charlotte dragged her thoughts away from the bedchamber and focused on the ballroom around her.
“Do you see the queen?” she whispered to Lady Alice as they took up their position at the edge of the dance floor.
“Yes, on the divan in the far corner. And, darling, look—Warrick’s arrived.”
Charlotte’s blood thrilled at the sight of Wolfgang at the top of the stairs, his shoulders wide enough to block the entrance, and his navy eyes fierce as he strode down the steps. A rockslide of a man coming forher.
“His jacket really is much too big,” Gran said, beside her. “Have you ordered a new wardrobe for him?”
“I thought I would, but decided against it.” Charlotte’s face went quite pink. “Oh God, Gran, don’t gloat, but I find I like him exactly as he is.”
Although she also quite liked the thought of him in his old regimentals. Perhaps she could convince him to try them on for her, and some night soon they could…
