***
No sooner had the women entered the drawing room than Josefine and Henrietta took Charlotte by each arm and towed her to the corner of the room.
“Well?” Josie asked.
“Well, what?” She wasn’t normally so defensive about her friends’ questions, but Charlotte herself didn’t quite know what was going on and had no idea what to tell them.
“What is happening between you and Lord Harrow?” Hen asked. “The two of you haven’t taken your eyes off each other all night. It made me quite heated, I must say.” Hen snapped open her fan and waved it dramatically.
“Nothing is happening.” But even to Charlotte, her words sounded unconvincing. Her friends didn’t believe it either. Their suspicious stares kept her pinned.
“Fine. We kissed. That was all.” It certainly hadn’t been all. But truly, how did one explain the things that John had done to her the night before? It was not the girls’ usual titillating tidbits, nor even their most scandalous gossip. It was…Well…
She looked at her friends, both happily married. Did they know such things happened? Had they kept it a secret from her? Was this behavior commonplace?
She bent her head close and whispered, “Have your husbands ever, well, kissed you anywhere other than your lips? Farther down. There.”
Her friends exchanged glances. “Occasionally,” Josie said.
“Regularly,” Hen added. “But certainly not before we were married. What have you been up to, Lottie?”
Charlotte’s cheeks heated.
Josie snorted. “I think we know very well what she’s been up to. But ‘when’ is the question. What opportunity has Lord Harrow had to kiss you down there?”
Charlotte couldn’t answer. If she told her friends about the gaming rooms, she would have to tell them about William.
Luckily, Hen was less interested in the logistics. “Did you enjoy it?”
“Ohyes.” Enjoyment was an understatement. Now that she knew such activities existed, she wanted to enjoy them again, and again, and again.
Josie frowned. “So, wait, does this mean that he’s broken things off with Lady Luella?”
Ugh.Charlotte had gone the entire day without her nemesis appearing once in her thoughts. The gambling had gone so well the night before, Luella no longer felt necessary. Charlotte and John could continue in this fashion as long as it took to raise the money they needed.
“Not yet, but he will. He no longer requires her dowry and is free to follow his heart.”
The girls exchanged another glance. “And his heartisleading in your direction, isn’t it? Because, Lottie, you know, men are quite capable of kissing down there andmorewithout it engaging their heart in the slightest. They’re very different creatures.”
Her friend’s words might be cautionary, but they didn’t make a dent in the wall of hope she had built.
She and John were a perfect pair. Where she was weak, he was strong. What he lacked, she had in abundance. She didn’t know what the depths of his feelings were, but she knew they weren’t nothing, and her own feelings were growing with each day.
At that moment, the men entered the drawing room. Her eyes went straight to him, her heart thumping wildly and erratically at the way he searched her out, at the flash of relief and satisfaction on his face when he found her, at the way heat pooled between her legs as he caught her gaze.
A hot flush crept up her neck and she spun back to face her friends.
“Charlotte,” Hen hissed. “Could you be any more obvious?”
“I can’t help blushing.”
“You can help looking at him like he’s your next meal.”
“I am not,” she muttered. The hairs on the back of her neck stood, and the red flush she’d felt earlier sprinted across the rest of her body. “Lord Harrow,” she said, knowing he was there before she even turned around.
He stood just a touch too close to be proper. Not close enough to court scandal, but close enough for her to feel the pull between them. Close enough for her body to tighten as her sex shivered at the memory of the cliff he’d brought her to the night before.
Charlotte had never swooned in her life, but if they didn’t get close to fresh air immediately, she might well.
