“You what?” Dare couldn’t believe that even Charlotte, outspoken and uninhibited as she was, would suggest such a thing. A moment of honesty had him amending the thought to a disbelief that she would plan his ravishment in someone else’s home, certainly not anywhere they could be easily…he sucked in his breath at the horrible realization that she had set a very clever snare for him, and he, a man who had prided himself daily on avoiding just such entrapment, had blindly walked right into her clutches.

“You needn’t worry, I shall take care of everything. You won’t have to lift a finger,” Charlotte promised.

He stared at her, dumbfounded. Having removed the black-and-gold velvet doublet, she was spinning in a frustrated circle as she attempted to reach behind herself to untie the tapes holding a large pillow bound over a linen shirt. “Pooh! I can’t reach the dratted thing. If you could just unbind me, my lord, I will be happy to begin the proceedings. I don’t imagine we have much time, and although my experience with ravishing gentlemen is limited, I assume it will take more than a minute or two.”

Dare stared in continued disbelief, his emotions tangled and confused as anger and outrage battled with a very unwelcome desire to laugh. He should leave that exact moment. He should walk out of the room and leave Charlotte to whatever horribly convoluted plan she had hatched in that Gordian knot of a mind. He should turn his back on her and never see her again, never again feel the velvet brush of her voice, never experience the brilliant, brief surge of joy that swelled within him when he caught sight of her, and certainly he should never, ever hold her in his arms again.

It just was not sane.

“So be it. I’m mad,” Dare growled to himself as he leaned against the door and crossed his arms over his chest, watching as Charlotte muttered and swore as she attempted to wriggle out of the pillow. He clamped down firmly on the wave of desire that swept through him at the sight of such unintentionally seductive movements, damning his eyes and his lust equally. No one would ever believe he could be aroused by a large, hairy, long-dead king, but with each wiggle of her rounded hips his desire, amongst other things, swelled. “This ravishment you’re planning—do I assume it has something to do with your proposal of marriage a few days ago?”

Charlotte triumphantly kicked herself free of the pillow, turning upon him a look of innocence so profound it would make an angel feel impure. Dare wasn’t fooled for a moment.

“Marriage? Proposal? Oh, that silliness! Good heavens, my lord, I’d forgotten all about that,” she replied with what he knew were dimples beneath the beard. “No, this is totally unrelated.”

“Ah. Would you mind, purely to satisfy my curiosity, informing me what exactly is the goal of your intended ravishment of my person?”

She paused for a moment in the act of unbuttoning her breeches. “You want to know why I wish to ravish you?”