The Rake of Hollowhurst Castle (17 page)

Charles was relieved to see a wicked smile crack through Roxanne's too-correct façade and reveal the woman he liked. Yes, the woman he liked so much. He raised one eyebrow at her in question, doing what Charles Afforde never did and seeking reassurance that perhaps he wasn't so hard to look upon, after all. She'd changed him, his passionate, headstrong bride, and he'd been more than ready to change after all, hadn't he?

‘Yet one wonders what the gentlemen would think if we ladies went about flaunting our nether limbs as blatantly as they do?' Roxanne speculated mischievously, apparently not needing any more answer than the green glint he was sure must now be visible in his eyes.

How very satisfying that she only had to suggest such a fashion to have Charles looking as if he'd rather lock her in a cupboard than let any other man see her thus, Roxanne decided with a rather feline smile. The idea of another man seeing her dressed so made her shudder, but that was neither here nor there. Charles was jealous at the idea of other men leering at her legs and anything else on display in such a scandalous form of dress, and that was more than good enough for her.

There was no reason for him to know it, she decided vengefully, for in general he was altogether too sure of her fascination with him. He might own her body and
soul in the eyes of the law, but there had to be some compensation for that state of wifely slavery, or there'd be no more wives willing to tumble into matrimony at the drop of the right man's handkerchief. No, she was his wife, and that counted. She raised her chin and met his eyes with pride and just a hint of desire in her own. If she ever managed to look on him with anything less, it would mean she was either very ill indeed, or more probably dead, but he didn't have to know that.

‘Come and meet my sister and her husband, my dear Lady Afforde, if your husband can spare you, of course?' Mrs Longborough interrupted with an indulgent smile for what she imagined were a pair of true lovers.

‘Oh, I'm quite sure he can,' Roxanne muttered darkly and went off to pretend to be delighted to meet Mr and Mrs Risborne, when she really wanted to have a furious, purging argument with her husband, largely because he was as handsomely self-sufficient as ever.

 

It went on in the same way for yet another week, this half-happy, half-terrifying state where Roxanne felt suspended between joy and the threat of something dangerous underneath the fragile surface of their marriage. Meanwhile, Christmas was almost on them, and she'd never felt less full of joyful anticipation of Christ's birth. Guilty at her lack of appropriate feeling for a season she'd always loved, she refused the carriage when Mereson offered it upon seeing her bundled up in a warm cloak, thick gloves and her stoutest boots against the gloomy cold of a day that threatened anything the elements might think up in their worst moods.

‘No, a walk will do me good, and I only intend to
visit Mrs Lavender and her ladyship, Mereson. I dare say I'll be back before anyone misses me.'

‘Sir Charles won't like it, Miss Roxanne; it looks as if it might snow.'

‘I'm quite capable of walking little more than a mile, even if it were blowing a gale and snowing a blizzard, Mereson, and I'll thank you and my husband to remember it,' she snapped, giving up on getting in the mood for the season as she swept out of the house and strode toward Mulberry House as if her life depended on getting there at top speed.

 

‘I'm so glad to see you, Roxanne,' Stella said gamely when her stormy-looking visitor strode into the room and dared her to comment on her flushed cheeks and generally ruffled state.

‘I thought I might as well come and see what her ladyship wanted to discuss so urgently.'

‘I don't think it was urgent, which is just as well considering Great-Aunt Augusta's dashed off to Westmeade to see Caro Besford. Caro and Rob finally have a son at last, Roxanne, isn't it wonderful?'

‘Yes, indeed,' Roxanne agreed, but it didn't need her friend's over-cheerful smile and too bright eyes to tell her that accompanying her great-aunt would have been painful for Stella, now that she would never be a mother after losing the husband she obviously still loved very deeply. ‘I'm so very glad.'

‘So am I, truly, Roxanne, so please don't think I envy them. I do, of course, but not enough to begrudge them a moment of their joy. Apparently Caro sailed through her labour this time, and Rob's having trouble persuad
ing her to rest, so I'll go tomorrow and spread our visits out.'

‘I'll go the next day if it'll help, and Charles can escort me. If he's to be the child's godfather, he might as well start as he means to go on.'

‘Famous, although if Great-Aunt Augusta doesn't set out early this afternoon she'll be staying there, for Simkins informs me it's sure to snow by nightfall.'

‘So Mereson insists as well, and I suppose two butlers can't be wrong,' Roxanne answered, eyeing the heavy clouds.

‘Anyway, I'm glad to be spared a walk to the Castle with your letter.'

‘Oh, what letter's that?'

‘Now where did I put it? Sorry, Roxanne, but my mother sent me one of her epistles this morning and I forget where I put the rest now.'

‘Never mind,' Roxanne murmured, trying not to look as impatient as she felt, for nothing about her current state of unrest was Stella's fault.

‘Ah, here it is. It looks as if it had quite a journey to get this far and I can only suppose it got lost somehow between here and the Castle since Simkins found it in with a box of ornaments in the lumber room nobody thought to unpack until today. I dare say it was slipped in there as you all left the Castle and someone forgot all about it in the excitement, for one or two of the maids are silly enough to forget their own names at times. Anyway, I thought you'd want to have it as soon as possible now it's finally found.'

‘Thank you,' Roxanne managed as she recognised her brother's impatient scrawl on its best behaviour long
enough to inscribe her former direction. ‘It's from my brother and I'd dearly like to read it.'

‘Considering he's your only brother and thousands of miles away, I'd be surprised if you didn't. Hurry home first, though, before this fabled snow can make it hard work for you, or Charles comes looking for you.'

‘You're a good friend, Stella,' Roxanne told her sincerely, giving her a fierce hug before she turned face about and marched out again.

T
here was no chance of waiting until she was home to read Davy's much-delayed letter, and it wasn't even raining yet, let alone snowing, so perhaps the combined wisdom of Mereson and Simkins would be proved wrong for once. Undoing the seal with only just enough patience to make sure she didn't tear the paper, Roxanne hungrily read her brother's letter as she walked. It began with news that wasn't really news any more. He was married and delighted with his bride, who seemed to combine such beauty, charm and wit as to make her an almost impossible paragon, except Davy was obviously fathoms deep in love with his Philomena.

Luckily Roxanne allowed for that and was glad her brother had found such happiness. At the time she'd been hurt he'd sell Hollowhurst without consulting her, but it had brought Charles back into her life, so how could she wish it any other way? Except to have Davy and his wife living in the next county instead of half
a world away, of course. Her steps slowed as she read her brother's account of the sale of his estates and his marriage.

It sounded as if Charles had been in New England much longer than she'd thought. Long enough for lawyers and bankers to exchange all that was needed to be exchanged, in fact. Six whole months, and he'd never told her much about even a week of it. Fool that she was, she hadn't taken in the fact that the sale of such a large estate must be a long and complex business, even between friends. Her heartbeat stalled, then raced as something about that sale struck her as out of kilter, a warning that came not a moment too soon when she deciphered the next few lines.

Now she halted at the side of the road and stared at Davy's letter as he told a truth that leeched away her every last hope of happiness. ‘Don't hate me for selling my birthright, Roxie,' her brother pleaded as she read his words again and wished fervently her eyes had deceived her the first time.

‘There's no man on earth I'd sell Hollowhurst to other than Charles Afforde. You ought to be heiress to everything in England that only held me back, yet I couldn't sign it over to you. Joanna and Maria would have been hurt and furious, and you
are
a woman, after all. Charles will be a better master there than I could ever be, but that wasn't the reason I relented and sold it to him.'

Roxanne gasped and turned ferocious eyes to the leaden skies, blinking furiously as she refused to cry but was tempted to scream and curse and rend her clothes because there was such pain raging inside her, desperate for an outlet. Instead, she forced herself to read on.

‘I sold Hollowhurst to Charles Afforde because I
knew you wanted him more than any other man on earth. You're four and twenty now, Roxie, so please consider his offer sensibly and don't dismiss it out of hand. I made it a condition of sale that he propose marriage to you within three months of taking possession, so I know he'll do it soon. Don't spurn the chance of a happy marriage with him just because we arranged it between us. When he comes to know you, he'll love you, my dear sister, and it need be no more complicated than that.

‘Forgive me, little sister, and wish me happy? Charles is the only man you ever showed any interest in marrying, so please do so, love, or I'll be haunted by regret for the rest of our lives.'

Forgive
him—her wretched, conniving, managing, wrong-headed fool of a brother? How could she ever forgive him? Or Charles Afforde—her snakelike, worm of a husband, the man who'd promised to love and cherish her for the rest of his days, probably with his fingers firmly crossed behind his back? Oh, no, she'd never forgive either of them!

 

Charles finally appeared an hour later, looking so cold and weary that a concerned wife would have offered him hot punch and waited until he'd warmed himself with a bath in front of his dressing-room fire before she confronted him with his sins. Except that now nothing was as it had been just this morning. Her whole marriage was a fiction, so she'd no intention of playing the part he and Davy had scripted for her any longer. Seeing that she made no move to offer comfort or accept the kiss he might have placed on her wifely cheek with the least encouragement, he stood back and
eyed her with that look of satirical interrogation she'd so recently found irresistible.

Refusing to look at him directly, Roxanne silently handed him her brother's letter and watched him register just what it revealed. Pain should be doubling her up, desolation robbing the colour out of her life, but just now she was too numb to hurt, too dazed to see anything as he bent his head but the dark gold hair that curled despite everything he could do to stop it, the sailor's lines about eyes more used to watching vast horizons than one perfectly discernible woman. Letting herself see him again, but feeling as if there was an invisible wall between them that might never be breached, she noted that the startling blue of his eyes looked as unique as ever, and she knew perfectly well that under his neatly masculine tailoring there was a magnificently masculine body.

Yes, Charles Afforde looked much the same as he always did, so why was her whole life tumbling round her as all she knew became untrue? Not a wild fiction, not even that. Just a small lie he'd allowed her to believe, probably out of kindness. A small but so important a lie, the one that had allowed her hopes and dreams instead of arrangements. The one that made a distortion of everything she'd ever wanted from this man.

‘It's not what you think,' he told her gruffly, as if, just because he said so, Davy's words were unimportant.

‘It's exactly what I think,' she assured him coldly, and that chill seemed to bite into her very bones now. ‘At least David has enough honour left to tell me the truth.'

‘You doubt my honour, madam?' he demanded as
if she'd accused him of the most heinous crime in the calendar.

‘Oh, no, for it led you to cozen a superannuated old maid into thinking you wed her for the joy of it, didn't it? How could I doubt the
honour
behind such a noble action, Sir Charles?'

‘Be damned to that,' he swore, running the hand not holding her brother's letter like a scroll of that precious honour through his hair and wreaking even more havoc with his fashionable Brutus haircut. ‘Do you think I make love to you night after night because it's my
duty,
woman? You must be out of your wits if you think I've made it my pleasure and yours to seduce you in and out of our marriage bed, just because we're wed and making do with one another.'

‘I suppose finding you can enjoy rather than endure bedding me must have been a pleasant surprise when you wed me to order.'

‘Then you suppose wrongly.'

‘Ah, you found it unpleasant, then? What a fine actor the London stage lost in you when you were born in a lady's chamber and not an actress's.'

‘If I wanted to wed for convenience, there were heiresses enough, and land and fine houses to go with them. There was no need for me to wed a sharp-tongued virago to gain what I could buy easily enough.'

‘Then why the devil
did
you marry me?' she burst out with the question she'd managed to keep inside for so long.

‘Because I wanted to, because I wanted
you,
' he rasped, as if it cost him dearly to admit even that much.

Not because he secretly loves you then, Roxanne,
she acknowledged with a wince of pain he seemed to see, for he held out a hand as if appealing to her not to probe this wound any deeper.

‘Because of my childish infatuation with you?' she asked relentlessly.

‘No, not that, it was never about that. I wanted you from the moment I set eyes on you again, and you certainly weren't suffering from hero worship then. In fact, I began to wonder if I'd ever persuade you to marry me. But make no mistake, Roxanne, I wanted you mercilessly the instant you appeared out of the shadows that dusky night and, God help me, I still do.'

‘My turn to be flattered,' she returned, cold to her very toes with the conviction that all she'd ever been to him was a warm body in his bed, wife or no.

‘There's clearly no reasoning with you now; we'll discuss this once you're rational again.'

‘No, we won't!' she shouted furiously as he refused to even take this terrible misery tearing at her seriously. ‘I won't be soothed and petted into resuming the role of besotted wife and mistress to you, Sir Charles. Take yourself back to London where your dubious talents will be appreciated, and while you're at it, please take a woman into your keeping who
knows
she's only there to serve your more animal needs, for I want no more of them.'

At that, she turned to march out of the room and slam the door behind her, but he was too quick for her. Before she could head for the door, he grabbed her by the waist and spun her round to face him. Never before had she seen him so furious, his eyes hard and merciless as they bored down into hers, as if he could see into her soul and didn't like anything there.

‘Do you not, Roxanne?' he snarled as if he'd been well beyond the end of his civilised tether even before she provoked him to dangerous fury. ‘Now I beg to differ, Lady Afforde. I'd wager Hollowhurst Castle and all its lands and demesnes that you adore fulfilling my needs, especially the “more animal” ones. In fact, you'll cry out for them until you're hoarse before you leave this room.'

‘I'd rather die.'

‘No doubt,' he grated and seemed to find that silly little lie the last goad to lose hold on whatever restraint had held him back every other time they'd made love.

No, not love, she reminded herself sadly, even as his mouth ground down on hers in a savage demand and his powerful body pinned her against the oak-panelled wall with little consideration for her slighter frame and relative inexperience. They'd never made love and they weren't about to now, but lust, oh, yes, now
that
they were good at.

His hands were everywhere and she wondered ludicrously if he'd suddenly grown an extra pair, then she took in the way her ridiculous, disobedient body was writhing against the smooth old oak to assist his plundering and might have despaired if she wasn't beyond it. She heard the fine wool of her morning gown rip like rotten gauze under his impatience, listened to a curse that should have made her blush to her very ears when he encountered the petticoats she wore against the winter chill. If only she'd donned a sensible spencer instead of the voluminous shawl that was to have kept her warm, she might have had time to come to her right senses while he tore through that, but the fine Kashmir wool
just slipped away and he reached his first target before she had time to even shiver at the loss of its warmth.

His large hands cupped her breasts emphatically, nothing coaxing or worshipping about his touch today. There was just lust, stark and searing hot in his examining eyes as he observed them rising high and rounded in his kneading, assessing hands. They shamed her by peaking and thrusting towards the rough seduction he'd threatened to strip her of her dignity with, or did they? Perhaps not, because by responding to him so eagerly, so blindly, wasn't she seducing herself and reducing his threats to humiliate her?

Perhaps, she answered herself, then decided she didn't care, as he concluded that part of her had been seared by whatever white-hot passion drove him long enough. Holding her against the now body-warmed panelling by her hips, he knelt at her feet, eyes lancing into hers with a terse demand she stay where she was. He positioned her carefully, as if watching her in thrall to this wild seduction pleased him nearly as much as the prospect of taking everything she had to offer, and perhaps a little more.

He used his thumbs to urge her legs apart, to reveal the heat and scent of a thoroughly roused woman with exploring hands as he drew them mercilessly upwards. Then, shockingly, he bent his head and licked and suckled and thrust his tongue into her most intimate centre until she forgot herself enough to let out a small, gasping scream that she muffled behind a hand that shook, but for the life of her she couldn't find the strength to reach down and push him away. He looked up with triumph and possession and need openly revealed in his wolfish
smile and went back to demolishing every barrier, even a few she hadn't known she had.

He used a wicked, exploring finger to test her arousal once more, then followed it with too much knowledge of exactly where she needed pressure and where tantalising would do better. His mouth on her once more, he must have felt her shiver on the very edge of losing control. Again he lifted his head away and this time had the effrontery to raise one eyebrow at her as if they were engaged in trivial small talk.

It took a mighty effort, but she bit her lip and refused to plead as he'd promised she would. He grinned as if happy to push her even further and this time his tongue was less persuasive and more demanding and she no longer shivered lightly, but began to shake with racking shudders as she held back from the agonisingly wondrous edge of bliss with such an effort she wondered she was still conscious. Then one last butt of his golden head against the dark curls at the very centre of her and she screamed, she actually screamed with the power of her climax and a small part of her heard the pleas he'd promised she'd cry out leave her lips and despaired, even as the rest of her was racked with such pleasure that she couldn't have cared less about those betraying demands if she tried.

Maybe afterwards she'd have felt humiliated and terribly lonely, if he hadn't surged to his feet and joined with her as if driven by a lot more than revenge, just as a last powerful spasm of pleasure nearly rocked her off her feet. He forgot himself, just as she'd done, and took his wife in a heated, driven rush of need against the wall of her boudoir, in broad daylight. He forgot he was a gentleman, forgot he was anything but a man driven
half-mad with wanting her any way he could get her. Amazingly, wild shudders of completion rocked through her irresistibly again, just as he gave a great wrenching cry and drove into her with deep, powerful surges of extreme pleasure, and his thrusts took them both to the peak of satisfaction and beyond.