The Rake of Hollowhurst Castle (18 page)

For a long, precious moment all was quiet in the room, as if the labour of their breathing and lingering shivers of an ecstasy neither could resist feeling would keep everything else at bay. Her breath sobbed between lips that felt as if they might never speak sense again. Maybe in a moment she'd have to think, but now she put her energy into just breathing as she revelled in the undeniable. She'd done just as he said she would and begged, but he'd proven he couldn't keep himself separate and cynical from her while she did so. Yes, maybe he'd won on a technicality, but it wasn't outright victory, and hope was running strong in her. Such a glorious, unarguable tide of it that she had trouble concealing it from the stubborn, infuriating wretch.

‘I beg your pardon,' he said stiffly when he finally seemed to notice he was still pinning her against the wall, the weight of his body still hard against and inside her softer one, and she wondered for a ridiculous moment if she bore the imprint of finely carved linen-fold panelling on her bottom.

‘Don't,' she protested as he began to ease away from her, hating the chill of reality that was threatening now all the heat and sensual clamour were fading, along with some of her certainty that he felt far more for her than he ever could for a convenient wife.

‘That was unforgivable,' he muttered as he pushed himself away and looked as if he was the one who'd just
lost their sensual battle instead of her. ‘I threw myself at you like a rutting bull, and I dare say I've hurt you.'

‘No, you didn't hurt me,' she comforted him, even while her mind reeled at what they'd done. She felt as if she'd just become his lover or his mistress as well as his wife, but, in that case, why did it seem so wonderful? ‘Nothing you did caused me pain.'

‘But I've caused you more than enough anguish since I came here, haven't I, Roxanne?' he asked bitterly, setting himself to rights as best he could while he eyed her state of dishabille as if he dared not come near enough to help her attempts at tidying herself in case they seduced each other all over again.

It really was quite flattering to be considered irresistible by a man who'd flirted outrageously with some of the most beautiful women in Europe and beyond. He'd flirted and perhaps more with them, but, she reminded herself rather smugly, he'd wed her and then he'd made love to her as if driven to seduce her into thrall to him. Not that there was any need, when she was about as resistant to his charms as most of her sex not otherwise enchanted.

‘My life has certainly changed since you came to Hollowhurst,' she admitted warily, ‘but who's to say change is a bad thing.'

‘I walked into your life, took your home and your occupation from you, and then manipulated your situation to suit my own convenience.'

‘Oh, dear, so you did,' she agreed, without feeling in the least bit sorry that he'd done just that all of a sudden. ‘Now whatever can I do to devise sufficient punishment for your perfidy, Sir Charles?'

‘The dungeons, d'you think?' he mused, catching her
lighter mood as if he couldn't resist it, despite the fierce argument that sparked their stormy loving, and his and Davy's diabolical plot.

‘Not nearly severe enough, considering they're now the wine cellars, and you'd probably enjoy yourself far too much down there. No, instead of so light a punishment, you're tasked to ride out to the very spot where we had our encounter on the beach that day and not to come back until you've sat out there in the cold and seriously considered the subject of marriages of convenience and how you truly feel about your wife.'

‘Now that really is severe,' he joked, but she could see in his eyes that he knew how serious a quest she'd set him.

‘I need you to carry it out, though, Charles, and not to come back until you've fought your demons,' she said lightly enough, but she let her eyes speak for her and hoped they were as steady as her conviction that love ran like a fierce undertow under their every word and action together since their wedding day and perhaps before. ‘As I waited so very long for you, the least you can do for me now is to give me honesty.'

‘I gave you that when I asked you to marry me,' he told her flatly, but this time she did what she'd just hoped he would and searched his gaze for a deeper truth.

Yes, it was there: a spark of doubt, a hint of uncertainty and the slightest suspicion of what looked like dread. For the latter she might well flay him with her sharp tongue now and again for the rest of their lives, but for the rest she made herself turn to look out of the window in case she weakened and just assured him her love would be enough for both of them.

‘It'll be black dark by five,' she warned as if he hadn't spoken.

‘I hate a nagging woman,' he muttered, but he impatiently ran his hands through his disordered hair and restored it to something close to normality for a man who'd just weathered a hurricane and stalked to the door, turning back to say, ‘I'll probably be out later than five, so don't send half the neighbourhood to find me and see what a fool marriage has made of me, will you, wife?'

‘Not if you wouldn't like it, dear,' she said in such a meek and mousy voice that he simply glared at her and frowned all the harder.

‘Vixen,' he bit out and marched through the door before slamming it behind him, as if he needed that small release of frustration.

‘Idiot,' she said fondly and set about the task of making herself fit to be seen again without letting her household guess what their master and mistress had been about.

She'd have to hide her ruined gown and smuggle it to the ragman herself next time he came. Time to worry about that when the time came, for now she'd have enough trouble convincing Tabby it was quite normal to change her attire halfway through the day, from the skin up, without the help of her maid, and she must bathe as best she could, too. Tabby might suspect what they'd been about for the last however long, but Roxanne refused to announce her enthralment to her husband if Charles was bull-headed enough to carry on insisting they shared a marriage of pure convenience.

Only half an hour ago she'd have turned on anyone who suggested her hope of a happy and fulfilled life at
her husband's side were recoverable and snarled out a bitter denial. Yet her husband had just taken her as if she were an equally wild lover he'd dreamt of for many long months at sea, and now they had all those accumulated weeks of desperate ardour to slake on each other's desperate bodies. He'd just treated her like his whore instead of his wife, and contrarily his uncontrolled need of her had given her back hope. If the risk paid off, these half-wonderful, half-terrible weeks since their marriage would end and their real marriage begin. Of course if it didn't, she'd be far worse off than before, and truly trapped inside an arranged marriage.

C
harles cursed all women and his wife in particular for at least the first mile of his solitary gallop to the beach. Then he added the other half of humanity to the mix when he thought of Davy Courland's ridiculous letter, and that occupied another two or three miles. At this rate he'd be in Rye or even Brighton by nightfall, and certainly not back at Hollowhurst where he wanted to be, but he checked Thor when they finally reached the shore, and he could spread a rug over the gelding's sweating sides and brood over dull, cloud-mirroring, grey-brown waves all the way to the horizon.

She'd been quite right to send him here to contemplate his sins, he decided grimly at last, not yet ready to forgive Roxanne for being Roxanne and not letting him hide behind the conventions and cowardly evasions any longer. The English Channel was as familiar and yet as resistant to any human influence as it always had been. Ever changing and at the same time unchangeable, and
as much beyond the orders and purposes of a mere captain or even a commodore as ever. And I'm still standing here, busily avoiding the conundrum my wife has set me, he decided with a wry grin at the unresponsive waves.

Of course he could just turn about and go home, admit he loved her without telling her the rest and perhaps save his marriage, because he knew very well now that he did love her. He'd discovered it when he read that damning, infernally interfering letter of Davy's and thought it made an end to everything. The end of their marriage, of seducing Roxanne to their mutual pleasure night after night for the rest of their lives. Of the family they might have…Oh, just of everything that suddenly mattered to him so vitally. So why not just admit it and nothing more and hope their lives would go back to normal, to the very pleasant everyday they'd established between them these last three weeks of marriage?

Because she deserved more, he concluded with a heavy sigh and wondered if telling his story would produce the same result if he went back to Hollowhurst and told her he didn't love her after all and probably never would. Ah well, that would be a huge lie now he'd found out he needed her with him to make every breath he took worth taking, so if the truth produced the same result as an untruth, why not hand her that lie and watch all her hopes and dreams vanish into nothing? Because she'd see through it, he decided grimly, categorising himself as a coward for knowing that if he thought he could get away with it, he would indeed lie to his lady, his lover, in the hope a falsehood might wriggle him off the hook he richly deserved to hang himself on.

And how the
devil
had he been idiot enough to let himself fall in love with her? He'd promised himself he'd
never do such a stupid thing after watching his friend Rob fall into the trap of loving a wife he'd sworn never to love or bed. Then, even with that stark example of husbandly lunacy in front of him,
he'd
wed Roxanne Courland and been ass enough to think he could emerge heart-whole from
his
marriage bed, even with her in it. Was any fool on earth as great a want-wit as Charles Afforde proved to be by thinking he could marry a woman like Roxanne and keep himself aloof?

Probably not, and so now he'd have to pay for his folly by confessing exactly what, and who, he really was. Little point putting it off, he thought gloomily. Testing his fate would be bad enough if he did it before all the reasons not to occurred to him; leave himself room to think, and he would probably ride off to one of the Cinque Ports after all and drink himself into a stupor just in case he could get away with being a coward again. Who'd have thought Charles Afforde, rake and cynic, would contemplate drinking himself into oblivion to escape telling his own wife what lay behind his bravado?

‘Come on then, old fellow,' he murmured to his fidgeting horse as he turned his back on the rapidly calming sea at last. ‘Let's get you back to your stable and arrange some comfort for you at least tonight.'

 

By the time he guided the weary beast back into the stable-yard it was pitch dark, and Charles could taste snow on the dying wind. As he rode, the whole of nature had seemed to fall silent around them in either awe or dread of what was to come. Now he thought about it, there had been a curiously yellow tinge to the leaden sky as it faded into dusk over the sea, but he'd been too
occupied with his own thoughts at the time to notice, when getting home safely to Roxanne was suddenly more important than anything else in the world. She would see to fetching in firewood and distributing food to the needy before it was too late, and Charles thanked his stars for the wonderful wife he'd gained undeservingly. If he got this right, he'd have a wife at his back any man must envy him for the rest of their lives: a wife of rare beauty combined with her extraordinary strength of character and a unique mind.

Not that he ought to leave out her incredible body, he decided, as he contemplated all the other benefits of having married Roxanne with a wolfish grin while he saw to his horse himself and sent the stable-lads back to their wood chopping and water carrying. No, the endless exhilaration of wanting his wife and being wanted passionately back for the rest of their joint lives couldn't be underestimated, and he promised himself that from now on he never would fail to thank God for her every day.

 

Roxanne was upstairs, doing her best to reassure the housekeeper that the Castle could now withstand a siege from the weather as stalwartly as it repelled enemies hundreds of years ago. Even so, she couldn't resist looking out of the window so she could peer helplessly into the snow-blinding darkness outside and worry about her husband. He'd survived battles and terrible storms at sea, for goodness' sake, so why was she struggling with this sudden terror that he'd take a tumble from his horse and lie unconscious and in acute danger under a suffocating blanket of falling snow until morning? Common sense informed her he was perfectly safe, but that didn't stop
her being furious with herself for sending him out into the early darkness of a December afternoon to consider his true feelings in the first place.

‘And then there's all the pensioners, your ladyship,' the housekeeper carried on fretting as Roxanne listened with only half an ear. ‘There wasn't time to fetch them all in from the more outlying cottages.'

‘Then we'll have to rely on their families and neighbours to take care of them,' she pointed out firmly, as if all her attention was on the subject. ‘It's just as well Sir Charles insisted on removing Mrs Bletter from her tumbledown old shack to one of the almshouses, is it not? She lived miles from anyone and would certainly be cold and comfortless if she'd stayed where she was.'

‘I hope nobody expects thanks for that mercy, my lady. A more cross-grained, awkward old biddy than Dame Bletter you'd go a long way to discover, if you were silly enough to want to in the first place.'

‘Yes, I dare say Sir Charles exerted all his famous charm to get her to move, but at least he put it to good use and we're spared worrying about her.'

‘Roxanne! Roxanne, where the devil are you?' the masculine voice she'd been waiting so anxiously to hear again bellowed from somewhere close by and she felt a silly snap of annoyance at him that might disguise her huge relief from the suddenly amused housekeeper.

‘As if you'd be doing anything other than setting the household in order at a time like this, Miss Roxanne,' Mrs Linstock said with an indulgent smile for the follies of gentlemen and her new employer in particular, who clearly hadn't been restricting his fabled charm to Dame Bletter.

‘Here!' she went to the door and called before he
roused the household, who were much better occupied with the tasks she'd set them.

‘Thank heaven—I thought I'd never find you.'

‘Then you didn't look very hard,' she told him repressively and went back into the housekeeper's room to ask if there was anything else left for them to worry about before asking Cook and her minions to prepare dinner.

‘Nothing at all, my lady, so I'll go down to the kitchens and ask her to do so now, shall I, your ladyship?' Mrs Linstock replied rather disobligingly, for Roxanne was suddenly very nervous indeed about what Charles had decided on what must have been a freezing cold beach and an unpleasant ride through the gathering gloom and the start of a snowstorm.

‘Yes, indeed,' she just had time to agree before her husband's patience ran out and he grabbed her hand to tow her gently towards his personal sitting room, so at least it wasn't the scene of her most recent demonstration that she found him irresistible.

‘Hadn't you better change and get warm, Charles?' she said hopefully.

‘No, I've more important things on my mind, although thank you for the fire in my rooms,' he observed as he finally tugged her in through the door and eyed the cosy intimacy of it. ‘It's just the place for a weary man to warm himself after a strenuous afternoon.'

‘I had a strenuous time of it as well, you know.'

‘I could see that, but I don't think you sent me off into the teeth of a blizzard to think about organising logs and bread for our pensioners.'

‘That's true,' she managed meekly, wondering if she'd known what she was doing when she suggested he go
and think about their lives together. He seemed to have concluded he needed to be a benevolent dictator and she didn't relish feeling like a rating under Commodore Afforde's command.

‘Come and enjoy it with me, Rosie,' he demanded, using their still-joined hands to tug her down on to the thick Persian rug in front of the fire and she plumped down beside him as if her legs had suddenly become boneless.

For a long, precious moment he just held her, one strong arm hugging her close as warmth seeped into them both from the mesmerising flames, and some of the strung tension drained out of her.

‘I want to tell you a story,' he began, and she wriggled restlessly. ‘Don't you want to hear it?' he asked rather severely.

‘That depends on the ending.'

‘You'll have to judge what that is for yourself,' he returned, and she could have sworn he sounded nervous, but since when had mighty Captain Afforde succumbed to nerves in any form?

‘Very well, you may continue.'

‘Thank you, my dear, gracious of you.'

‘Whatever you say,' she replied, stealing a look at his rather stern profile and fighting a strong desire to distract him by running an exploring finger over it and luring him into warming them both up very rapidly indeed. ‘Just get on with it, will you though, husband, for I want my dinner.'

‘Been busy, have you then, my Roxanne?' he said, the sultry memory of their vigorous loving in his half-closed eyelids and slow, sensuous smile.

‘Yes, someone had to prepare your household to be snowbound for Christmas.'

‘Our household,' he chided with a frown.

‘Yours, ours, whichever. Now, are you going to tell me this tale or not?'

‘Aye, I'd best before I lose my nerve for it,' he said with a suddenly very serious sigh and she nestled herself closer into his powerful shoulder and wriggled pleasurably.

‘Just tell me,' she encouraged with a contented smile that should tell the great idiot she'd never flinch away from a man she loved so deeply as she did him, whatever he had to say.

‘It all began one snowy Christmas,' he said very seriously and she had to control the leaping of her pulse and the ridiculous arousal of all her senses, for she knew perfectly well he meant that first Christmas they'd met, when she'd fallen headlong in love with him at first sight.

‘For me, too,' she breathed and risked a look at his face, both mellowed and shadowed in the firelight.

‘Perhaps, but this isn't half as pleasant a tale as yours, love.'

She'd have forgiven him everything and just contented herself with that one significant word if left to herself, but evidently he'd resolved to tell all and she must hear it, now she'd forced him to confront it, whatever ‘it' might be.

‘Anyway, I met a girl, not much more than a child really, and knew one day I'd come back and marry her. For all she thought herself grown up and insisted on staring at me with her heart in her stormy dark eyes, I decided she must be at least three years older before I
didn't have to be an arrant rogue for marrying her and carrying her off to sea with me. I confess I didn't leave Hollowhurst in love with you, Roxanne, or think I'd even let myself love you when the time was ripe and I could wed you. I was four and twenty and knew with all the supreme arrogance of youth and privilege, that by the time I was three years older I'd be a captain and considerably richer. Life's always lonely as captain of a great ship, however sociable he might be, and heaven forbid I be confined to a mere sloop.
I
would command a frigate, then a man o' war.'

‘Fair enough,' she interrupted, ‘that's exactly what you did.'

‘By good luck more than any outstanding talent.'

‘That's not what I heard.'

‘But you couldn't have listened with unbiased ears if someone paid you to, now could you, my passionate, partisan wife?'

‘Never about you, but it wasn't only me who thought you a hero and a superb commander of men, Charles. The news-sheets were full of your dashing exploits and quite determined you were to be the new Nelson.'

‘More fool them then. I knew enough of him before he was killed, for even a callow youth such as I was, to sense I was in the presence of genius. And I haven't the heart for battles not fought in a war, Roxanne, whatever small talents I might have. Once Boney was beat, all my famous fierceness and daredevilry went flying off my quarterdeck.'

‘Which is perfectly acceptable, considering you had a castle to buy and a new life to live with me,' she said with a smile and a happy wriggle as she slipped off her
shoes and flexed her toes so they could feel the fire's warmth properly and leant back against him.