screwed up her face. Her words yesterday indicated she was not amenable to lovemaking that incorporated food. He’d soon convert her to his way of thinking. The thought of licking honey from her—
“It’s my turn to set some ground rules,” she said, her voice brittle.
Bay set the bottle down. No point in popping the cork if she was in a mood. He could scarcely believe that this was the same woman whose every velvet inch had given him such recent satisfaction.
“I have agreed to your suggestions thus far, repugnant as they are. I also agree to wait here until Deborah returns, or until we hear from her so I can tell her you have kidnapped me.”
“I believe the term ‘kidnap’ is incorrect. That usually involves abduction from one’s home and the use of force. I found you in my bed, in my home, Charlie. Perhaps I should add trespassing to your other infractions. I have not used force. If anything, you have forced me. To hold me down like that while you had your wicked way—why, I couldn’t escape without doing myself some bodily harm.” He watched the beginnings of her rosy bloom. He counted the seconds until she was full vermillion.
“Nevertheless. I am here against my will. I’ll honor my sister’s covenant with you as she seems to have taken your property—accidentally, I’m sure—and I don’t wish to go to jail in her place. But you cannot visit me whenever it strikes your fancy. We must work some sort of schedule for—for sexual activities. Every sixth Sunday of the month, say. That way I can mentally prepare myself.” She shuddered as if his touch was anathema to her, which he knew it was most assuredly not from her cries of “Oh, God yes, fuck me!” earlier. “And I don’t want to take meals with you. I don’t want to take meals on you. If we are ever in the position to be dining together, we shall be sitting downstairs in the dining room, I at one end of the table and you at the other.”
Bay stifled his grin, which would only inflame her further. She was adorable in her umbrage. He could play along for a bit. “Every sixth Sunday? Are you certain you can wait that long?” He tapped a finger on his chin. “And surely there can be no more than five Sundays in any given month. It’s meant to be a day of rest, too. Our activities this afternoon were not precisely restful, Charlie. I declare you wore me right out.”
“Every Saturday then.”
“Every night of the week. Including Sunday. And possibly some afternoons when I’m not otherwise engaged.”
She turned white for a change. “Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Evenings only.”
“Every weeknight. I’ll give you weekends off if you behave yourself.” He’d have to eat red meat and swill beef tea all Saturday and Sunday to restore his prowess for Monday. Charlotte Fallon was a tigress.
She looked as if she wanted to say more, a lot more. Instead she nodded curtly. “Very well. I am not hungry. Or thirsty. Kindly tell Mrs. Kelly.”
Well, the pendulum had swung and the tigress was now a cranky cat with fleas. Bay couldn’t bother to cajole her back to bed. Perhaps she was suffering from a bizarre brain manifestation that enabled her to turn from scorching hot to frigid, blushing red to icy pale, courtesan to spinster. There was a possibility he’d been unfair to challenge her with such suggestive suggestions and she was regretting her complicity. Too bad.
“I’ll see you tomorrow evening, then. I’ll just dress and eat downstairs if you don’t mind. I wouldn’t want to disappoint Mrs. Kelly since she’s gone to the trouble of cooking us dinner. It doesn’t do to annoy a woman with access to sharp knives.”
Chapter 4
The nerve of him! He was still downstairs, smoking a cigar in the house instead of the garden if her nose was any judge. What had gotten into her? Well, besides him with his absolutely enormous member and his skillful tongue and fingers. Charlotte had never in her life behaved in such a fashion, wasn’t aware that there was such a fashion in which to behave. She’d blocked out Deb’s ‘helpful hints’ over the years, swearing never to lie with another man again after Robert. Two days on Jane Street and she was a confirmed slut. There must be something in the air.
She was so hungry she regretted turning away dinner. The house was small enough for her to smell it too, and each clink of cutlery and Bay’s groans of pleasure and lipsmacking had driven her over the edge. He had been so audible deliberately, she was sure, making her suffer for her prideful refusal to share a meal with him. When oh when would he leave so she could raid the kitchen?
He was a fiend. An archfiend. A malevolent incubus dressed as a benign baronet, infecting society with lust and sin. Infecting her, anyway. She had spent the last ten years driving lust and sin right away with the biggest stick she could find. It helped that her heart had been shriveled. And that Robert was lost to her forever.
Charlotte hung her robe up in the armoire and lifted her nightgown from the shelf. She glanced at her satchel in the corner. She supposed she ought to unpack whatever she had crammed into it before she caught the London stage. When she was frantic to rescue Deborah. Ha. Who was going to come to rescue her? To get her out from under the thumb and every other inch of Sir Michael Xavier Bayard?
Charlotte put her few belongings in Deb’s drawers. No, not Deb’s. Deb had ceded her role as mistress quite permanently, and somehow Charlotte had been persuaded to assume it, with a fervor that she found incomprehensible and embarrassing. She loathed the man who called himself Bay, as if he were a tropical turquoise body of water or a chestnut horse or the howl of a demented dog. He had no hesitation to punish her for her sister’s transgressions—if one thought that hours of sublime sensual pleasure was punishment.
Charlotte put an ear to the bedroom door and listened for any movement. A pleasant lingering of cheroot smoke drifted into her nostrils, but the house was dark and silent save for the steady ticking of the clocks. The timepiece in the cherub’s stomach at her bedside told her it was gone on eleven. He must have left while she availed herself of the discreetly screened commode chair in the dressing room. Tiptoeing down the carpeted stairs holding a candle, she stopped at the painting of a half-clad virgin fleeing from a roué who bore no little resemblance to the picture’s owner. She had seen that smile over her not long ago.
And then it hit her. Deb had teasingly spoken about making off with Bayard’s paintings. Said they were valuable. Lord knows, there were enough of them all through the downstairs rooms. There were breasts and bottoms and nipples and nooks on every wall, some near to life-size. But the artwork on the stairs was a manageable size, as was the one hanging directly below it. Charlotte could take them down herself, cut the canvas from their frames, and sell them. All she needed was enough money to hide out for a few weeks. Not to Little Hyssop, but a completely foreign destination where she knew no one and no one knew her.
The pitfalls of her almost-midnight madness were immediately apparent. She would actually be stealing this time, and she could, she supposed, hang if she was caught. Bay didn’t seem to be the type of man who forgave and forgot—look at what he was putting her through with Deborah’s folly. If she suddenly appeared in some out-of-the-way country village, she might as well take out an advertisement in a newspaper. Strangers were always the gleeful target of gossip; she would not go unremarked. It had taken her years to worm her way into Little Hyssop’s good graces, and she didn’t have the patience now for the subterfuge. But the most troublesome aspect was if Deb contacted her—or even, miracle of miracles, returned the bloody necklace—she wouldn’t know it. She might be on the run for the next six months.
The candle wavered as she heaved a sigh. She would think better on a full stomach. But when she reached the top of the steps that led down to the kitchen, she nearly
