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

That caused the duke to raise an inquisitive brow. “Then he is a finer actor than I gave him credit for, for he certainly conducts himself as if he does.”

“He wants you to fall in love with Dulcie, and he thinks the threat of legal action, which compels you to appear to be engaged to me, and which therefore requires you to call here, is an excellent way to throw the two of you together.”

For a moment, James looked incredulous, then his lip curled in a sneer. “He does, does he?”

“Now that you know that, you can drop this pretense of an engagement between us. I’m sure once he understands you cannot be bullied, he will reconsider suing you.”

“My reason for continuing to call here has little to do with any man’s ability to bully me, and more to do with my enjoyment of your discomfort that this engagement causes you—some small recompense for the pain you caused my brother.”

Annoyed that he persisted in blaming her for his brother’s death, she jumped to her feet, her hands balling into fists at her side. “How many times must I tell you I did nothing to cause him pain? I was as shocked as anyone when he killed himself, and I have spent hours and hours thinking over all that I said and did in the days before, wondering if there was something I could have done to prevent it, but I saw no signs that he was so despondent. I thought he was happy we were to be married.”

“Then you, madam, are either the most coldhearted, calculating woman…or the most accomplished liar…I have ever met.” James rose and reached into his jacket pocket, pulling out an old, creased piece of paper. “Read John’s own words, and find yourself condemned as a scheming fortune hunter who never loved him. Hear from John himself how that discovery humiliated and destroyed him until he could not bear to live.”

He thrust the paper at her. “You may keep this. I will never forget what he says in this letter if I live a hundred years. And to think that once I—”

He fell silent, then turned on his heel and marched from the room. 

A few minutes later, Charlotte dashed into the street. She could see the carriage with the ducal crest rounding the corner and took off after it like a Bow Street Runner pursuing a thief, John’s plaintive letter clutched in her hand.

Mercifully, the carriage had to wait to let another, even finer, vehicle pass before turning into the next street. Regardless of the startled coachman, or anyone else who could observe her, Charlotte ran up to the carriage and pounded on the door. “James, you must let me explain!”

The window of the carriage came down with a crash, and James’s angry face appeared. “If you have read the letter, there is nothing to explain.”

“Yes, there is,” she insisted, “and I shall scream if you don’t let me in!”

For a moment it looked as if James was going to refuse, but then he said, “Stand out of the way.” He opened the door and kicked out the folding steps for her to climb inside.

“You’ll catch your death running about London without a wrap,” he noted as she scrambled onto the seat opposite him in a decidedly unladylike fashion.

“I don’t care.”

After closing the door, James knocked on the roof of the carriage. “Drive on, Charles,” he ordered, and the carriage lurched into motion. “Well, Charlotte, this will certainly set the tongues to wagging, even more than our embrace. Is that your intention?”

“I had no idea John had found my diary. He should not have read it.”

James frowned. “Oh, so my brother’s curiosity excuses your behavior?”

“He read my private thoughts, which he had no right to do. Even so, I would have explained if he had asked me.”

“What possible explanation could there be but the obvious. John was very clear about what he found in your diary—your obvious passion for another man, your desire to be with him, your dismay that you could not. Surely you cannot fault him for believing you did not love him, the man you had pledged to marry? What else was he, or any wealthy, titled man of reason to think but that you were marrying him for those things, and not himself?”

“That’s not it.” Now that the time had come to tell the whole truth, Charlotte hardly knew where to begin. Or if she should even try. And yet she could not forget what he had implied only moments ago, something that had made her heart race even as she read John’s letter. If she did not tell James everything now, she might regret it for the rest of her lonely life.

“The diary John found was not a recent one. I haven’t kept one for three years, well before I became engaged to your brother. I did love another man then, passionately. But nothing came of it. I thought he didn’t care for me, for he never paid me much attention. When he went away, I thought that was the end of it. I believed it was the end of it, and still believing it, conceived an affection for John. I did care for him, truly, and it breaks my heart anew to realize that he died because he didn’t believe that.”

“Maybe your passion for this unknown lover was not as dead as you claimed,” James replied. “The diary alone would not have been enough to cause John such despair. There must have been something else.”

“You have been away a long time, James. John was not the lad you left when he took his life. He was jealous of any man who glanced at me, and nothing I said seemed to alleviate his fears. He would rage at me, and for no reason. Any little thing would set him off. Even if he had never found the diary, he might have despaired of my love enough to end his life anyway.”

“Then you no longer love this man you wrote about?”

“I thought I did not,” she said, her gaze searching his face. “I thought he did not love me.”

Willing himself to feel nothing—not envy as he had felt for John when he had announced his engagement, or remorse for keeping his feelings buried for so long—James turned to stare out the window. “I’ll order Charles to return you to your uncle’s house. Our engagement is officially over, and I’ll leave you alone. You are free, Charlotte.”

“Oh, James,” she cried, moving to sit beside him and taking his face between her chilly palms as the letter fluttered to the floor. “It was you I wrote about in the diary. After you went away, I thought I could forget you and what I felt for you, that I could love John, that we could be happy. I was devastated when he died. You must believe me, James.” Her hands dropped limply to her lap. “But now I see that you are right, too. I did deceive him.” She raised her stricken eyes to look at him. “Yet I didn’t know it, because I was deceiving myself, too. I didn’t realize that I agreed to marry John because he was so much like you.”

Finally, she had confessed—but it was not at all what he had expected. Nor was she the only one guilty of keeping secrets that had led to such disastrous consequences.

Full of remorse for all that he had done and not done, James grabbed her hands and clasped them between his. “I do believe you, Charlotte, and I’m so sorry for how I’ve misjudged and mistreated you. I’ve loved you for years, but I was too shy to say so. You always seemed so bold, so confident, I thought you would laugh at me. And then when I realized how John felt about you, I was sure I didn’t stand a chance, so I went away. If I had stayed home and made my feelings known, how different things might have been! John would still be alive and we could have been married.”

“While we cannot bring John back, we are engaged now,” she reminded him.

By God, she was right. They were engaged. They could be married. There would be scandal and gossip and rumors, but he didn’t care. All he cared about was Charlotte as he pulled her close and kissed her. All the passion and desire and yearning he had been trying to hide and destroy for years burst free. She returned his kiss with the same heated passion, the same fierce desire, the same anxious yearning.

“Poor uncle!” she murmured a few moments later, arching her neck as James’s lips slid slowly lower. “He will be so disappointed.”

“Right now, I don’t give a damn about the man.”

“And if it hadn’t been for dear Dulcie…”

James drew back, a slight frown darkening his face. “I must say, Miss Duncan, I am not pleased that you can ignore my kisses.”

“I’m not ignoring them,” she said, putting her finger between his cravat and his shirt as she gave him a devilish smile. “I’m enjoying them very much. I’m just feeling rather sorry for Dulcie.”

He watched her proceed to pull off his cravat. “If it will make you feel better, there’s a fine young gentleman I know I can invite to the wedding and make sure your cousin meets. I think they would make a lovely couple.”

“That does make me feel better,” Charlotte whispered as she gathered a fistful of his shirt and pulled him to her. “Now let me see if you can ignore my kisses.”

He didn’t even try. Indeed, they would have made love then and there if the coach had not tottered to a halt.

“If you come into my house now with your gown in such a state, it will cause a great scandal, Charlotte,” he panted, his words grave, but his eyes dancing with joy as they moved apart.

Charlotte laughed merrily, and not a little breathlessly. “You are in a state of dishabille yourself, Your Grace,” she said as she threw open the carriage door and caution to the wind. “And I don’t care if all the world knows we are in love.” 

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!”

The lead crystal glass of non-alcoholic champagne, with which she’d been about to toast the New Year, fell from her numb fingers when she saw him. It dropped right over the balcony railing without a sound. “I thought you were dead,” Charlotte whispered again.

He turned slightly, dragging his hungry gaze from the woman in his arms, the woman he’d been kissing, to stare at Charlotte. She heard the glass shatter on the sidewalk far below. His eyes were so familiar—the parenthetic frown lines right between the brows—that it caused her to ache down deep in her belly.

“Pardon me?” he said. “Do I know you?”

Blinking, she realized what that frown was trying to tell her. “Johnny, it’s me. It’s Charlotte.”

“I thought you told me your name was Michael,” the blonde in his arms snapped.

“It is.” His arms fell away from the far more attractive woman, and he stepped closer to Charlotte, narrowing his eyes on her. “I’m sorry,” he told her. “You must have me mixed up with someone else. My name is Michael Drummond.”

Why was he doing this? Pretending not to know her, calling himself by some other name.

She took a step backward as he moved closer, shaking her head in disbelief as she stepped from the shadows of the balcony into the pool of light that spilled from the party going on inside.

When she did, he froze, his gaze skimming down her body. She saw him flinch, saw the way his eyes widened only slightly, before he painted his face again with that blank disinterested stare.

“Oh, this is just great!” the blonde said, because she could see her clearly for the first time now as well. She downed her champagne in one gulp and stomped between them and through the French doors back inside to the party.

Johnny stood there staring, facing her.

“I haven’t seen you since May first. The day we were supposed to get married,” Charlotte said. She hated her voice for shaking the way it was. “I suppose that’s long enough that you might forget a woman who obviously meant so little to you. But how did you manage to forget your own name?”