A Rogue of Her Own (Windham Brides #4)(48)

She crawled over his leg, her breast brushing his thigh, then curled against his chest on her side. “You say the most outlandish things.”

Sherbourne put his lips near her ear. “You’re interested in that bit about the riding crop, aren’t you?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, and I don’t see the point of binding you.” She flicked her tongue over his nipple. “The licking has possibilities. You taste like lavender.”

Rather than let her tangle him up with more words, Sherbourne cupped her chin and kissed her while he used his free hand to caress her breast. Her weight pressed against his erect cock, a sensation he tried to ignore.

By stealth, degrees, and determination, he eventually got Charlotte positioned where he wanted her—sprawled with her back against his chest, arching into his touch as he pleasured her breasts.

“You like this?”

She closed her hands around his, asking for more pressure. “I haven’t made up my mind.”

“Then I must try harder.” He trailed his fingers lower, until he was stroking through her curls. “Relax, Charlotte. We’re getting to the interesting part.”

“This has all been very—gracious everlasting powers.”

He’d found the seat of her pleasure, and possibly a way to have the last word at least some of the time. Charlotte squirmed, she wiggled, she sighed, she spread her legs over his, and reached behind her to grab Sherbourne’s hair.

He found a rhythm and a pressure that she could follow, and when Charlotte’s hips were urging him faster, he resisted. Pleasure delayed was pleasure intensified.

“Mr. Sherbourne.…”

“Lucas.”

Silence for a few moments, while she probably fashioned an argument, and he added more pressure without speeding up.

“Mister…oh, ye gods, Lucas. Lucas, Lucas, Lucas.…”

Sherbourne cupped her breast and drove a finger into her slick heat, giving her some part of him to seize around. Her pleasure was intense and protracted, while Sherbourne’s was vicarious and bound in frustration.

When he withdrew his hand, Charlotte curled sideways on his chest, her sigh fanning across his heart. His cock throbbed, his balls ached, his back wasn’t exactly comfortable and the room was gradually cooling.

“Charlotte?”

She nuzzled him. “Hmm.”

He tucked the covers up over her shoulders, cradling her close. Sherbourne cast around for the right words, the right question.

Charlotte had given him her trust in a way that mattered, and he wanted to tell her…something. When she’d recovered, he’d make sweet, slow love with her, and ease her the last distance down the path to marital intimacy. They’d fall asleep entwined and in the morning, share smug smiles over their tea and toast.

For the rest of their lives.

Tenderness pushed arousal aside an inch or two. “Charlotte? Did you find it…pleasant?”

Her breathing was regular, and she was a warm bundle of wife against his chest. Sherbourne waited for her answer—doubtless something honest, original, and accurate—but still Charlotte remained silent.

“Charlotte? Mrs. Sherbourne?”

Sherbourne fell asleep, waiting for his wife to wake up and answer a question that mattered to him far more than he’d thought it would. When he did awake, weak sun was filtering through the curtains, he was spooned around his wife, and some fiend was rapping incessantly on the door.

“Sir, you must wake up,” Turnbull shouted.

Sherbourne forced himself to awareness, because Turnbull never shouted.

“Sir, you must wake up. There’s been an accident at the mine.”

*



The colliery looked the same from a distance. Only as the landau wheeled closer could Charlotte make out men digging at a huge heap of hillside that had come slouching over the retaining wall. The wall was no more, buried under tons of mud.

The neat rectangles of twine that had marked out the longest row of houses had been obliterated as well, while the rest of the site remained unchanged.

The sun chose now to shine so brightly as to hurt Charlotte’s eyes, though the breeze was cold. That chill reinforced a sense that she should not have come, should not have intruded into matters she knew so little about.

“Pull up next to the large white tent,” Charlotte said. “The one all the shouting is coming from.”

In the privacy of their domiciles, Windhams occasionally raised their voices, though Charlotte did not deal well with being shouted out. Sherbourne had left the house within ten minutes of waking, Turnbull at his side, while Charlotte had stood about in her husband’s dressing gown and worried. An hour later, somebody had sent a note: No fatalities, extensive damage.

Charlotte thought she recognized Sherbourne’s handwriting, but the only time she’d seen it previously had been when he’d signed documents following the wedding ceremony.

An hour more of pacing and fretting, and Charlotte had made up her mind to cease dithering and do something.

“Heulwen, you and Morgan see to the food.”

One of the tent flaps had been tied back. Inside, Mr. Jones was marching about and waving his hands, while Sherbourne stood with one shoulder against the central tent pole. He wore no cravat, no top hat, and his boots were caked with mud.

“Hillsides do as they damned well please,” Jones said. “We build walls and God laughs. If I’m tempted to skimp on materials, I’ll skimp on the materials for the damned palaces you want to build for your workers, not on the simplest wall ever to be overcome by mud.”