Outside, the two footmen looked at each other in wild surmise. They hadn’t heard anything—any words, no matter how muted—for a long time. What was going on in the Chinese Salon? Cecil thought he knew. He smiled widely and thought about Marie. He had tried to talk her into doing it in one of the public rooms in the house. Lord knows, they’d been in every linen closet. But she had always said no.

“Those rooms are formal and dangerous,” she had insisted. “Why, we’d be put out without a shilling if we did anything so outrageous!”

Cecil had it all worked out. Sunday mornings the family was at church, and so were the servants. He simply had to wait until he was on rotation to stay in the house, or switch with one of the other footmen, and she could plead a headache.

“No,” she had kept saying. But now he’d tell her that her very own mistress had done the same. Cecil stood quietly at his post, waiting for someone to emerge from the Chinese Salon, an optimistic glow in his eyes.

Chapter 12

Chapter 12

Charlotte opened her eyes some twenty minutes later. Her headache was gone and she had a delicious sense of warmth. Even her irritability had vanished. I’m drunk, she thought, feeling her head reel slightly as she sat up. Alex was sleeping soundly. At least he didn’t sleep with his mouth open. At that moment he opened his eyes and stared at her wordlessly. A glimmer of a smile lit her eyes. Still without saying anything he pulled her over against his side.

“Sleeping together,” Alex finally said in a tone of mock disgust. “Just like two old men on a bench in the sun.”

“Would you like some tea?” Charlotte smiled. “Just to keep you awake, of course.”

Alex hated the stuff. “Lapdog brew. Just the thing for an old gaffer like myself.”

“Would you prefer sherry? Or something stronger? I suspect,” Charlotte said primly, “that Keating’s special drink has made me tipsy, and so I shall drink some tea to ameliorate the situation.” She walked to the door and pushed it open. Cecil’s face fell when he saw her. She looked perfectly groomed and composed. The young lady had not been doing anything untoward in that room. He trotted off to bring a tea tray.

Charlotte turned around. Alex was comfortably sprawled on a hideous Chinese settee chosen by her mother at the height of the rage for things Oriental. The arms were sleeping lions, their eyes picked out in red lacquer. But Alex … he was beautiful, Charlotte thought with an inner sigh. He was wearing an exquisitely cut coat of dove gray, which contrasted ruthlessly with the untamed masculinity breathing through his muscled thighs. Her resolution was weakening.

Alex raised his heavy-lidded eyes and said abruptly, “We need to talk.” Charlotte nodded and sat down next to him.