Page 35 of To Tame the Wild Rake
The footman went only as far as a doorway a dozen yards down the passage, opened it, and spoke to someone inside. Another footman shot out of the door and hurried away into the gloom of the barely lit passage.
Charlotte’s footman returned, and took up his post again, this time standing to strict attention. “He will be here shortly, my lady.”
Richards was a few minutes, though it seemed much longer. She saw his candle approaching from a distance long before she could see his face, and stepped forward to meet him. His eyes widened when Charlotte pushed back the hood of her cloak enough that he recognised her. He bowed, his butler face back in place. “Good evening, my lady. I’ll escort her ladyship, Mullins.”
Charlotte resettled her hood so her face was in shadow before turning back to the footman. “Thank you, Mullins.”
“This way, my lady,” Richards said. Charlotte knew the way, but she didn’t argue, following Richards and his light down the long passage, and up the central staircase of the wing to the next floor. This late in the evening, few servants were about, though they occasionally passed another in the light cast by their own candle, working over a task or hurrying on an errand. Charlotte kept her hood up, and averted her face whenever they passed someone.
They reached the door to the heir’s private apartment, and Richards let her into the sitting room where Charlotte had waited for Aldridge the night Tony was taken.
“I will tell his lordship you are here, my lady,” he said, ushering her through and lighting several candles from his own. He took a flint and tinder from the mantel and lit the kindling that had been laid ready. Once the fire was burning, he exited by the door to the passage, leaving her alone in the room.
Charlotte was too restless to sit. It was a nicely appointed room, decorated sedately in shades of green with brown leather upholstery on the sofa and chairs contrasting in texture and colour with the rich velvet drapes and the cream panelling with its gilded accents. Quite a different furnishing style to the garish scarlet and gold boudoir on the other side of the internal door.
What was taking so long? Was he saying farewell to his lady of the night? If he was with someone else… She shuddered. Perhaps she should just go home.
She put her ear to the door to the bedchamber. Nothing. Not a sound. Carefully, quietly, she opened the door just a crack. Still no sound, and no light, either. Perhaps he was out? Jessica had been sure he was in this evening. “He told Aunt Eleanor that, if I was staying home, he would take a night off himself, and spend it with a good book,” she had said.
Perhaps he was downstairs in his library. Or even back in the family wing on the other side of the building, in the library there.
She pushed the door wide open and, when nothing broke the silence on the other side, fetched a candle to explore. When she’d been here last time, she’d been unable to take her eyes off of Aldridge. She blushed every time she remembered his state of undress, and the picture he had made popped up in her mind far more often than she would admit even to Sarah. Indeed, the peculiar excitement the memories invoked had a great deal to do with why she was here.
In the most shocking room she had ever seen. It wasn’t just the bold colours, all heat and challenge. The ceiling over the biggest bed she had ever seen was mirrored!Whoever heard of such a thing?Her face warmed still further at the thought of being watched, of watching while engaged in intimacy. She should be outraged at the mere idea, not intrigued. Not feeling damp and soft below while her nipples hardened and ached.
And then there was the art work on the walls: lascivious images painted or drawn with great skill, most of them showing coupling—or even tripling, if there was such a word. Charlotte held up her candle to see each one, leaning close to study details. The portrait over the bed startled her for a different reason. At first sight, the person portrayed was dressed almost decently in the styles of the last century, except that the blue fabric of her dress was transparent, so her breasts could be seen. Even so, it was demure compared to the other pictures.
What shocked at first sight was the face—Charlotte recognised it instantly as Lady Overton, wife of Aldridge’s best friend, Baron Overton. But a moment later she remembered hearing—it had been shortly after her father died, and they were in mourning, but someone had written to her with the news—that Lady Overton was scandalously like the Rose of Frampton, Aldridge’s mistress, who had died tragically after being thrown by a horse.
This, then, must be the Rose, for whom Aldridge had worn a black armband for a year. Some said he had never got over her, and here she was, in portrait form, above the head of Aldridge’s bed, into which he brought other women.I will never understand men.Charlotte leaned onto the bed to better illuminate the portrait. “She was very beautiful.”
“She was.” Aldridge’s voice made her jump, and she jerked around, then gasped as candle wax splashed onto the bed.
“Oh! I have spilt wax on the covers. I am so sorry.”
“I did not intend to startle you,” Aldridge said, the words apologetic though the tone was more reserved. He was leaning against the door, his arms folded, elegant as ever in an evening coat and perfectly tied cravat. He wore pantaloons, however, rather than breeches, and his feet were encased in embroidered slippers.
“Will you step through here, Lady Charlotte, and tell me how I may be of service to you?” he said. “Do not worry about the bedspread. I am sure it can be cleaned.”
He gestured to the door she had entered by, and she led the way. She did not believe she had ever blushed as much in her life as she had this evening. “I am so embarrassed,” she told Aldridge as he closed the door between them and the bedchamber. “I was curious, but I should not have gone where I had not been invited.”
That won her his real smile; the one that lit his eyes. “The saying about curiosity and cats comes to mind, Cherry, except that you are safe in my wicked lair.” He spread his hands. “Did I not give you an open invitation when I said you could call on me at any time? What may I do for you, Cherry? Is there trouble? Ask me for anything in my power.”
She blurted her answer. “You.”
17
Until that single word, Aldridge had been holding onto his reason by the slimmest of threads. Seeing the woman he yearned for propelled him into a state of frustrated lust; even thinking about her had that effect. But when he found her in his playroom, examining his collection of framed erotica with open curiosity, he needed to step back into the passage, and take several deep breaths under cover of sending Richards away.
Which might have been a mistake, since it left the two of them alone.Be a gentleman, he instructed himself, sternly. At least he could trust himself not to frighten her, as he would if he touched her in even the most innocent of the ways that poured through his fevered mind. And, since she would not initiate anything, poor darling, they were both safe, and so Aldridge told her.
But then he asked what she wanted of him and her answer set him reeling.You? What does she mean, ‘you’? As a husband? As a donor for one of her charities? As an escort on a damned-fool errand?He took a deep breath, blinking slowly, as the most riotous part of him put its own interpretation on the single syllable and signalled its approval.
A gentleman, he reminded himself.
“For what, exactly?” he asked, pleased that he sounded calm.Or do I sound reluctant?“Anything you wish, of course, Cherry.”
She nibbled at her upper lip, frowning. “I am not sure how to say it, Anthony.”
