Christine Bell - A Valentine from Harlequin: Six Degrees of Romance

She met his gaze. His eyes, blue as his Adriatic Sea, smoldered with fire. As for his mouth…oh, a woman could weave a lifetime of dreams around that mouth! “Everything’s happening too quickly, Paolo,” she whimpered. “You’re asking for too much.”

“I’m asking you to take a leap of faith,” he said. “To join me on a journey that stands a very small chance of coming to nothing but is far more likely to lead to a future together. I won’t tell you I love you or that I want to marry you. Not yet. Not until I’m ready to say the words and you’re ready to hear them. But in the meantime I will court you, if you’ll let me, Charlotte. Is that so very much to ask?”

He pulled her closer, close enough that she could feel the hard, male angles of him pressed against her. Close enough that she could feel the beat of his heart beneath her hand. She knew a stirring in her blood, a sense of hovering on the brink of wonderful discovery.

“When you trust me enough, I will make love to you,” he went on, his voice a seductive whisper in her ear. The promise alone was enough to cause a spasm of delight to uncurl within her and leave her moist with anticipation. “I will hold you in my arms throughout the night and cherish every moment we share. I will respect and honor you. And if, after all that, you decide I’m not the man you want to spend the rest of your life with, I will let you go. The question is, has that moment arrived already?”

The answer came to her not in a rush or a flood, but with a slow, tingling warmth that seeped along her veins with quiet deliberation and the promise that the best was yet to come. “No,” she said. “I want to take that journey with you, Paolo. I believe in our tomorrow.” 

Charlotte winced as an inebriated party-goer stepped on her foot, but she kept moving determinedly toward the doors that led to the balcony. The Duncans would be delighted with their party; it was clearly the event of the season, and their daughter had been successfully launched into society.

Unfortunately, the noise, the heat, and the crowd combined with Charlotte’s pounding headache to make her want to escape for a breath of fresh air. Reaching the balcony doors, she opened them to find two people engaged in a passionate kiss.

“I’m sorry.” The words escaped her mouth before she realized it would have been better to make an exit without being noticed. The couple jumped apart.

Charlotte felt the blood drain from her face as she stared at her fiancé. “John! I thought you were dead!”

Two azure blue eyes flashed in a face so handsome it could take a woman’s breath away. “John is dead. I’m James.”

Charlotte breathed again. Of course this wasn’t John. John was dead, and by his own hand. This was his twin brother, who had gone off to fight with Wellington while John had stayed home. This was the brother who had stayed in Europe after her fiancé’s death, who had written that terrible, accusing letter that had arrived when she was still full of sorrow and remorse.

This was the brother who knew so little of her relationship with John, yet who derided her, and blamed her for something she had not foreseen. She would have prevented John’s death if she could have; she did not need to feel more guilt from someone who had not seen his brother in over five years.

And who was now the Duke of Broverhampton, heir to a vast estate and fortune, as well as the title.

As Charlotte fought to regain her composure, James’s gaze meandered over her simple silk gown, lingering for the briefest of moments on the embroidery around the neckline—or her breasts—before returning to her blushing cheeks.

Angered by his impertinent scrutiny, she quickly closed the doors behind her, shutting out the music heralding the start of a quadrille. She wanted no one to hear them, or come out to see what was going on. And she wanted to know what the long-absent James was doing on the Duncans’ balcony with her cousin, Dulcabella—besides the obvious.

* * *

Dulcie Duncan giggled and swayed, clearly the worse for the powerful punch full of rum, which was how their family had made their fortune, one large enough to overcome the stigma of having earned it in trade. The Duncan Distillery had even been granted a Royal Warrant to supply rum to the British Navy.

“I just came out for a breath of air and he grabbed me and kissed me,” Dulcie explained with a sodden grin. “I quite liked it.”

“Indeed?” Charlotte inquired as she regarded James, not troubling to hide her annoyance. “I daresay you did, for I have heard that the duke is quite accomplished in that, if nothing else.” She took hold of her cousin’s arm, intending to lead her inside. “Come along, Dulcie. I think you should bid good-night to your guests.”

“Running away, are we?” James calmly inquired in his deep, husky voice -- the thing that distinguished him most from John. Otherwise, both men had the same dark hair, chiseled cheekbones, and brilliant blue eyes.

Charlotte slowly wheeled around to face him. “I think if there is a person here who could be accused of running away, it would not be me, Your Grace.”

She watched as her words brought, for the briefest of moments, a look of what might have been remorse to those bright blue eyes. Yet if the Duke of Broverhampton felt anything deep in his cold heart in response to her accusation—one she had been waiting years to make—it was quickly gone, replaced by the cool tranquility he had always possessed, even in his youth. John had been all fire and light and music; James had been dark and silent and cold as snow in January.

Her cousin feebly yanked her arm out of Charlotte’s grasp, the action making her totter like a pile of teacups. “I want to schtay right here!” Dulcie protested as she grabbed on to James’s black waistcoat.

“I think you should retire, cousin,” Charlotte said with a tone of firm command.

Dulcie pouted and stamped her slippered foot. “I don’t want to.”

“Dulcie, I really think you ought—”

“Well I don’t!” Stamp!

Out of the corner of her eye, Charlotte saw James’s lips jerk up into a smug grin, as if he was enjoying this show of defiance from the usually docile Dulcie.

“Dulcabella, you should go before the ladies begin to gossip about the time you have been out here and with whom. Unless you want your season ruined before it is well under way, I suggest you go back into the ballroom, and preferably to bed. You have had too much punch.”

Charlotte’s words finally seemed to penetrate Dulcie’s drink-befuddled brain. She swallowed hard, then lurched back into the ballroom.

Charlotte was about to follow her when James barred her way. He reached back and closed the balcony doors. “Let me pass,” she ordered.

He shook his head and stepped closer. “I have waited a long time to have a moment’s word with you.”

She inched away from him, until her back was against the wall and the ivy covering it. The foliage wasn’t the only reason the flesh there tickled, as James came closer until his body was mere inches from hers.

Summoning her courage, Charlotte squared her shoulders. She would not let James’s predatory attitude frighten her. “If the wait was troublesome, perhaps you should have returned to England sooner. There was nothing to prevent you, especially when you inherited your title and the family fortune.”

“A fortune you did not get your greedy hands on, after all.”

Charlotte gasped. “I was not marrying your brother for his wealth!”

James’s face betrayed his skepticism. “No?”

“Certainly not!”

He sidled closer, trapping her between the wall and his broad-shouldered body like a doe run to ground between a cliff and a pack of dogs. “Then why did you agree to marry him?” he asked in a husky whisper.

“Because…because I loved him!” She put her palms on James’s chest and shoved, but it was like trying to budge a boulder.

He caught her hands in his powerful grasp. “Love?” he scoffed. “What do you know of love but this?” he demanded as he hauled her close and captured her mouth with his. 

She had thought James cold? She had thought him lacking in passion? As James’s lips moved over Charlotte’s with firm and fiery purpose, she realized how wrong she had been

How very, very wrong…

Which did not give him leave to kiss her, or her to enjoy it.

Before she could shove him away, the balcony doors burst open. “Charlotte!” Uncle Malcolm cried as he stepped outside. “What are you doing?”

While she stared, equally horrified, at her uncle and the well-dressed people crowding behind him, James moved away. He faced her uncle and quite calmly adjusted the cuffs of his waistcoat. “We were kissing.”

Uncle Malcolm’s jowls quivered with an indignation that matched Charlotte’s, now that the initial shock of discovery had passed. “Then, sir, you have not behaved like a gentleman!”

“Indeed, he has not,” Charlotte seconded, preparing to march past James, her uncle, and through the avidly curious onlookers. She could hear the scandalized whispers that would follow in her wake. Her reputation was already sullied by her fiancé’s death, for surely the love of a good woman should have saved him from such despair. Therefore, the reasoning went, there must be some flaw in her. And now, to be found kissing her late fiancé’s brother—!

James’s hand held her back and looked into her eyes, his gaze searching. “I have never claimed to be a gentleman.”

“How could you, since you are not? Now let me go!”

He did not loosen his grasp as he once again faced her uncle, whose cheeks were getting progressively more flushed. “Gentleman or not, I am quite prepared to do the honorable thing, Mr. Duncan, and marry your niece.”

Charlotte stared at James. She couldn’t marry him! She hated him! And she had done nothing wrong here to cause her to be imprisoned in a marriage. “I would rather die!”

“Like John?”

His words pierced her heart like the thrust of a rapier. “How…how dare you!” she whispered as tears of anger and dismay leaped into her eyes.

“I dare because you as good as held the gun that killed him when you broke his heart.”

“I?” she gasped, incredulous. “I broke his heart?”

“Your Grace, Charlotte,” Uncle Malcolm said, obviously attempting to control his temper, “this is hardly the time or place for such accusations. I suggest you retire, Charlotte. As for you, Your Grace, you will please leave my house. You may call upon me at my offices tomorrow morning, where we shall discuss what is to be done. Now, Your Grace, I give you good night.”

James, the Duke of Broverhampton, smiled and inclined his head, then strode through the crowd which parted for him as they might a pauper who had intruded into their midst.

* * *

Sitting in his barouche outside the offices of the Duncan Distillery, makers of Fine Rum and purveyors to the Royal Navy by the appointment of His Majesty, King George III, James wondered—and not for the first time—what the devil he was doing here. He should order his driver to take him home. Or to his club. Or even the closest tavern. Anything but beard old Malcolm Duncan in his den and explain that he did not wish to marry Charlotte. The offer had been made in the heat of the moment.

And what heat. What unexpected, overwhelming heat. Charlotte clearly possessed the ability to drive a man to passionate ecstasy, if that was how she kissed when she supposedly did not want to be kissed.

Or maybe she had. Could it be that despite her apparent animosity, she was setting her sights on the man who now had the wealth she craved? He mustn’t forget that she was a greedy, grasping creature who had broken his brother’s heart and destroyed his spirit when John had realized she was only marrying him for his title and money. That knowledge, and his shame at being duped, had driven John to take his life.

If he married her as he had impulsively suggested because of some last, lingering vestige of chivalry called forth by the vulgar fascination on the faces of the guests last night, he might be playing right into her soft, yet avaricious, hands.