A Rogue of Her Own (Windham Brides #4)(9)

But the aloneness…In less than a year, all three of Charlotte’s sisters had married well, and to men who lived very far from London, Kent, or Hampshire. The Moreland townhouse, always spacious, was now a maze of empty rooms and silent reproaches.

“You’ll be much more alone if you’re ruined,” Sherbourne said. “You’ll be packed off to some distant cottage, the only people to visit you will be other outcast women, some of them so poor they’ll impose on your hospitality for months. You won’t like it.”

Well, no. To be smothered by family was unbearable, but to be abandoned by them…

“I’m prepared to endure a kiss or two in the interests of broadening my options. Vauxhall should serve for a location, which means—”

Sherbourne moved so he stood immediately before Charlotte. “Shall I kiss you?”

Though he’d asked permission—to kiss her—the question was far from polite. The whole discussion was outlandish, for that matter, and Sherbourne’s tone was pugnacious rather than flirtatious.

“Why?”

“You think some dashing cavalier can buss your cheek and earn you a holiday in Kent for the next six months. Room to breathe and rest from the blows this year has dealt you. A buss to the cheek won’t cause any stir whatsoever. Your family will brush it aside, the witnesses will recall it as a harmless indiscretion on your part, a daring presumption from the gentleman.”

He was right, drat him clear back to Wales. “I must do something, Mr. Sherbourne. The present course is unsupportable.”

“Kiss me.”

Charlotte never, ever complied with orders given by men, but she occasionally compromised. In this case, she closed her eyes, raised her chin, and wondered if truly her reason hadn’t already departed.

“You kiss me,” she said.

Sherbourne obeyed her.

*



I must learn to discuss the weather.

On the heels of that thought, Sherbourne had another: Charlotte Windham could teach him to prattle on about the weather more proficiently than any titled dandy had ever discussed anything.

She looked bravely resigned. Her face upturned, lips closed, shoulders square.

Sherbourne started there, rubbing his thumbs over her shoulders, learning the contour and muscle of them.

“Relax, Charlotte. This is a kiss, not a tribute to your posture board.”

She opened those magnificent blue eyes. “Then be about the kissing, please, and dispense with the lectures.”

Sherbourne kissed her cheek and slid his hands into her hair. “A kiss is generally a mutual undertaking. You might consider putting your hands on my person.”

Her hair was soft, thick, and at her nape, warm. She smelled of orange blossoms with a hint of lavender.

“There’s rather a lot of you,” she replied. “One hardly knows where one’s hands might best be deployed.”

Deployed, in the manner of infantry or weapons. “Surprise me.”

Surprise him, she did. She put her right hand over his solar plexus, the softest possible blow, and eased her fingertips upward, tracing the embroidery of his waistcoat. Her left arm went around his waist, getting a good, firm hold.

As her hand meandered over his chest, Sherbourne touched his lips to hers. She neither startled nor drew back, so he repeated the gesture, brushing gently at her mouth.

Charlotte reciprocated, like a fencer answering a beat with a rebeat. Sherbourne drew her closer, or she drew him closer. She might have been smiling against his mouth.

The kiss gradually became intimate, wandering past playful, to curious, then bold—the lady tasted him first—to thoughtful, then on to daring. By the time Charlotte had sunk her fingers into Sherbourne’s hair and given it a stout twist, he was growing aroused.

He stepped back, keeping his arms looped around Charlotte’s shoulders. “That’s a taste of torrid, a mere sample. A lovely sample, I might add.”

“You torrid very well, Mr. Sherbourne. May I prevail on you to ruin me?”

Charlotte felt wonderful in his arms, real and lovely. She neither put on the amorous airs of a courtesan or a trolling widow, nor endured his overtures with the long-suffering distaste of a woman eyeing his fortune despite his lack of a title. He’d kissed a few of both and had thought those were his only options.

“I would rather not ruin you,” he said, stepping back. “I am far more interested in marrying you.”

The softness faded from Charlotte’s eyes, and Sherbourne was sorry to see it disappear. He’d put it there, with his kisses, and now—with his honest proposal of marriage—he’d chased it away.

“If you’re jesting, Mr. Sherbourne, your humor is in poor taste.”

“I’m entirely in earnest. Look at the facts logically, and you’ll see that marriage to me offers you much more than being ruined would.”

He expected her to laugh. Charlotte was as blue-blooded as he was common, and she’d been turning down proposals for years. His reconnaissance mission had gone badly awry—wonderfully, badly awry—and proper society set a lot of store by courting protocols.

Which did not include torrid kisses during an initial call.

“Shall we sit?” Charlotte said. “Not that my knees are weak, of course, but the tea will grow cold.”

Sherbourne’s knees were weak.