Share a nap with me anyway. Sherbourne kept that sentiment to himself, for he didn’t know what he’d be asking of her. Simple affection? A quiet respite from his worries? Rest?
“Another time, then. I’m sure you’ll want to confer with Cook regarding tomorrow night’s menu.”
Charlotte slipped her arms around his waist. The butler had found someplace else to be, and thus Sherbourne had a private moment with his wife. She simply hugged him, and before he could reciprocate the embrace, she was bustling off in the direction of her personal parlor.
*
“I am growing to dislike Quinton, Earl of Brantford,” Charlotte said. “How does a man develop a head cold when he has not stirred from Haverford Castle for three days?”
His lordship had waited until early afternoon to send along a note postponing the tour of the works, and Charlotte had dispatched Morgan straightaway to inform Sherbourne at the colliery.
The weather was beautiful, of course—mild, sunny, not much of a breeze. Gulls strutted around on the terrace, while Sherbourne’s expression across the small table beneath the maples put Charlotte in mind of sea cliffs.
Stoic and endlessly beset by the tides.
“You received this an hour past?” Sherbourne asked, studying the note she’d had taken to the colliery.
“Not even that. Will you eat something if I order you luncheon?”
Sherbourne had been gone since dawn and had come stalking across the garden’s carpet of fallen leaves only five minutes ago. His hair was windblown, but he’d taken care with his wardrobe, even to wearing a gold cravat pin tipped with a small emerald.
One didn’t wear jewels during the day, but on Sherbourne the effect was a dash of daring amid casual elegance.
“Brantford is toying with me,” Sherbourne said, gazing off toward the colliery. “He’s rapping me on the nose with his newspaper, as if I’m a naughty puppy who piddled on the carpet.”
Like the younger sons and lordlings, who’d broken a young boy’s nose, ankle, and arm for sport?
“I suspect he is simply enjoying ducal hospitality for as long as he can. Haverford was notably reclusive until this summer’s house party. Brantford wants bragging rights, wants to be able to say that he was the first guest Their Graces of Haverford welcomed after their nuptials. He doubtless hopes that Haverford will take him shooting, and if he attends services, he will delight in sitting in the ducal pew.”
Sherbourne set the note aside. “They’re like that, the titled snobs. They play those inane games. Haverford will kill me.” This last was said with a slight smile.
“Haverford is the one who accepted the earl’s request for hospitality,” Charlotte replied. “He doubtless did so with the duchess’s blessing.” Also without consulting Sherbourne, upon whom the earl had come to spy.
Sherbourne’s smile was gone, and he was again studying the lane that wound across the fields to the works. “I should get back to the colliery. I thought I’d bring you some calculations to review, but I left them amid Mr. Jones’s mess when I got your note.”
Charlotte hadn’t wanted to pester him for those figures. “As it happens, I am not interested in calculations at present.”
That got his attention. “Are you well, Charlotte?”
“I am well. A midday respite with my husband would put me in the very pink.” Her ears had doubtless turned pink at that wifely boldness.
Some carfuffle among the seagulls sent them all winging upward, leaving Charlotte and her husband the only living creatures in the garden.
“As it happens, Mrs. Sherbourne, I’ve been short of sleep myself lately.”
Sherbourne came to bed with Charlotte most evenings, but then he disappeared until all hours before snatching some rest before dawn. Truly, the Earl of Brantford had much to answer for.
“Give me a minute to have word with the housekeeper,” Charlotte said, “and I’ll join you in the bedroom shortly.”
The staff graciously accepted the news that the company dinner was postponed, despite preparations having been under way for hours. Charlotte let none of her own frustration show, though she didn’t much care whether she made a good impression on his lordship or not.
Sherbourne cared, and thus Charlotte would do her utmost to be a charming hostess.
She let herself into the bedroom, expecting to find her husband at the table, poring over one of his endless reports or estimates. Sherbourne was face down on the mattress, naked and snoring gently, one foot hanging over the edge of the bed.
He looked at once utterly immovable and vulnerable. A solid, sizeable male, and a fallen warrior.
“I love you,” Charlotte said softly. “I know not how or when this sentiment arose, but I love you, and the Earl of Brantford will have to deal with that if he thinks to strut about your colliery and treat you with anything less than respect.”
She sat on the bed to remove her boots, while Sherbourne slept on undisturbed.
*
Conflicting impressions too hazy to qualify as thoughts woke Sherbourne. The first had become as familiar as his own heartbeat: He must away to the colliery. Jones might have a drinking problem—something bedeviled the old man—the masons were squabbling with the yeomanry provided by Radnor and Haverford, and for reasons that Sherbourne’s tired brain refused to enumerate, a sense of dread made these problems pressing.
Something else was pressing. Charlotte was tucked against Sherbourne’s side, her hand drifting along his chest and belly. Her touch was slow and sweet, and she tempted his attention away from anything having to do with the dratted mine. She was exploring him, even while she might have been trying to let him rest.
Sherbourne kept his eyes closed until Charlotte’s expedition ventured south of his waist. He was more than half aroused, which state of affairs provoked her to cupping his stones and running a single finger around the tip of his cock.
“My wife has grown bold.”
She sleeved him with her grip. “I have always been bold in some regards. The wife part is new. I was nobody’s wife before.”
Sherbourne had been nobody’s husband, nobody’s family, even. He’d been a disliked neighbor, a resented creditor, a ridiculed classmate. Long ago, he’d been a disappointing son.
What did Charlotte see in him, besides wealth that was growing more imperiled by the day?
“I am your husband and you are my wife until death do us part.” Charlotte was stuck with him, regardless of the fate of the mine, the bank, the infernal lending library scheme—regardless of anything.
“I like being your wife,” Charlotte said, giving him a gentle squeeze. “You don’t bore me. I hope you like being my husband.”
She’d carefully not asked him a question. Sherbourne turned on his side, the better to answer her without words.
He kissed her on the mouth, then wrapped his hand around hers and showed her how to tease him. Charlotte delighted in knowledge. She would have puzzled this out on her own eventually, but Sherbourne wanted to give her something—a gesture of trust, perhaps?
“You respond to this,” she said, taking another slow, thorough tour of his stones.
“I enjoy it.” A vast understatement. Sherbourne’s worries and woes were falling away, his plans and estimates drifting into oblivion as his mind focused on one plea: Don’t stop.
Charlotte took his hand and placed it over her breast.
Her bare breast. Sherbourne matched her tempo, which had accelerated from a dreamy largo to a maddeningly placid andante. Surely he was losing his reason if the long-ago maunderings of his piano teacher were surfacing?
“I want you inside me,” Charlotte said, arching into his hand. “Does that make me wanton?”
His slid his hand up to cup her cheek, and of course, her cheek was hot against his palm. She’d closed the bed curtains, but there was light enough to see that she, too, had offered him a gesture of trust.