His Mistress by Morning (10 page)

“Me?” Charlotte couldn’t imagine why he would want her to name his horse. “Seems a rather important task to just ask anyone to do it.”

“You, madame,” he said softly, “are not just anyone.”

Then she looked up at the light in his eyes and understood. He was seducing her. Not with jewels, or poetry, or flowers, but with this beast of a horse of his, with a magnetic power that she had to imagine would eventually overcome any woman.

“What would you call him?” he prompted, his other hand coming to close down over her fingers.

A shiver ran down her spine as she looked at the horse, felt Rockhurst’s caress, one meant to tempt and tame. She pulled her hand free, her gaze going to Sebastian’s.

He stood across from them, watching her intently. She couldn’t imagine what he was thinking, but all she wanted was for him to be at her side. To fly across this sudden chasm between them and claim her.

Lottie would know what to do,
she thought. And then so did she. She smiled at him. Just simply smiled her invitation.
Fly to me, Sebastian.

And then she looked again at the unruly, unpredictable horse between them and knew the perfect name.

“Boreas,” she said, turning her gaze up at Rockhurst, setting her features so there wasn’t anything there that would give the man the slightest suggestion of her favor. “I think you should call this horse Boreas.”

“After the North wind,” Sebastian said, striding around to reclaim her.

It was all she could do not to sigh in relief to have him back beside her.

“Boreas,” Rockhurst repeated. “’Tis a perfect name for him.”

Charlotte stepped closer to the newly christened horse and stretched out her hand to stroke the animal’s dark neck, caressing his thick mane, the silken coat beneath it.

“I wouldn’t do that, mum,” the trainer called out in his lilting voice from where he was busy consulting with Merrick. “He’s as likely to take your fingers off as he is to lose today.”

“No one has any faith in you, do they, Boreas?” she whispered, ignoring the Irishman and moving closer. “Forget them. I think you are a fine beastie. I haven’t the least idea why, but I think you are going to win. And quite handily.”

She stepped back and smiled.

“What say you, Mrs. Townsend?” Merrick asked, sidling up alongside her. “A beauty, isn’t he? Just gives you that feeling.”

Charlotte met the man’s earnest gaze and nodded, for she knew exactly what he meant.

This horse was going to win.

“So what say you, mum? Your usual bet?”

Her usual bet? Who would have thought that being Sebastian’s mistress would be so complicated?

“You are giving Merrick just the edge he wants,” Sebastian whispered into her ear.

“What do you mean?”

“You know exactly what I mean. He wants your endorsement on this animal so as to deceive all those devotees of yours who are convinced you have the gift when it comes to picking horses.”

“Do you think I have a gift?” Charlotte asked, doing her best to ignore her pounding heart, the enticing sound of cheers rising as Boreas streaked across the finish line.

“You have something,” he admitted. “But this horse, Lottie, he’s as likely to throw his rider as he is to run in the wrong direction.”

“I suppose so,” she whispered back. “But I see him winning.”

Sebastian laughed. “You always do and are quite vexed when they don’t.”

“But I do,” she insisted. “I know Boreas will win today.”

He took a step back from her and studied her. “You really think he will win.”

She nodded.

Looking back over at the horse, Sebastian’s face was a mask of concentration. And then it was as if a candle ignited in his features. “By gads, I think you’re right.”

Charlotte’s spine tingled again. “Yes, Merrick, my usual bet.”

“And add the same sum under my name,” Sebastian told him.

This took everyone around them aback.

Rockhurst stepped forward and said quietly, “I say, Trent, can you afford that? I won’t have you go into dun territory for my sake.”

Instead of being embarrassed about having his financial woes being aired so publicly, Sebastian shrugged off his friend’s concerns. “If Mrs. Townsend says this horse is going to win, that’s enough for me.”

Merrick didn’t seem to care either, for he was busy filling out tickets. “A fine day, it is,” he said, after hastily finishing and dashing off to gather more bets before the race.

“He’ll drive the odds down, now that he has your endorsement on the race,” Rockhurst said.

“We’ll just need to fix that,” Sebastian said to his friend.

“How’s that?”

“We tell everyone that Mrs. Townsend was excessively drunk last night and isn’t in her right mind this morning.”

Rockhurst bellowed with laughter, while Charlotte tried to close her gaping mouth.

“Lord Trent!” she protested. “That is terrible. I wasn’t—” Oh, heavens, it was hard to protest such a statement when she hadn’t the least notion what Lottie had been doing the night before. Instead, she tried a different tack. “What will people think of me?”

“That you are as utterly delightful as always, my dear,” he said, kissing her forehead. Then he nodded at Rockhurst, “You take that half of the crowd, and we’ll take the other.”

“If you think I am going to be any part of this deception—” Charlotte started to say.

“Demmit!” Rockhurst’s curse cut off her protest. “Here comes that prosy Battersby. We’ve no choice now but to be quick about it.”

Charlotte glanced down the meadow at the fellow fast approaching them.

“I do say, is that you, Trent? Rockhurst?” called out the tall, angular dandy.

Rockhurst didn’t even bother to make a decent bow or take his leave but rather cut into the crowds and disappeared in the blink of an eye, Rowan loping happily at his heels.

As for Sebastian, he barely wasted another second, catching her by the hand and tugging her in the opposite direction. Her hat went akimbo and she clung to it as she found her feet flying beneath her skirts to keep up with the viscount.

“That was close,” he said as they wheeled around the corner of a tent at a fast clip. He tugged her into his arms and held her close, peering around the corner to gauge their success.

“Why ever are we fleeing poor Battersby as if he were a French brigand?” she asked, still trying to right her bonnet.

“Rather face a raft of Frogs than run into Battersby right now.” Sebastian glanced around and noticed the vendor behind them selling baskets of food. “Hungry?”

Charlotte nodded. It had been hours since her breakfast of strawberries.

“A basket,” he told the man, pulling out the coins and laying them down on the counter before he turned back to her. “Now all we need to do is steer clear of Battersby.”

“You still haven’t told me what he has done,” she
reminded him, her gaze wandering over toward the man filling the basket.

As Sebastian scanned the crowd around them, he explained, “Battersby won the last remaining shares in the
Agatha Skye,
the ones that have been floating about Town for months.” As he spoke, his fingers reached out to twine around a stray strand of her hair.

She found it unsettling that he continued to touch her so intimately. As if such circumstances were normal between them.

But they are,
a voice whispered in her ear.
That and more
.

Shivering, she did her best to listen to what he was saying and ignore the way her lips quivered slightly as if awaiting another stolen kiss, her body tensed in delicious anticipation, in places she’d never realized could be so…opinionated.

Sebastian didn’t seem to notice her awkwardness. His hand came to rest at her waist.

“Are they worth anything?” she managed to ask, despite the way her breasts grew heavy, her nipples puckered scandalously, as they had this morning when he’d been…

Naked. Atop her. His hands roaming…

Steady, Charlotte,
she told herself.
Don’t think of such things!

Oh, but it was so terribly hard not to now that she knew…knew what it was like to wake up with a man.

So she did her best to focus on the conversation at hand. “These shares must be worth something.”

Sebastian snorted. “No more than the paper on which they’re written, I’d say. Battersby won them last week—hadn’t been in town long enough to hear they’re worthless,
thought he was gaining a stake in a fortune.” His hips pressed forward, pinning her to the tent pole, and Charlotte swore she could feel every inch of him.

Even
those
inches.

“Where is the ship, this
Agatha Skye
?” she stammered, trying to forget what he’d looked like so gloriously naked striding about her bedroom. So strong and lean. Muscled and moving with such magnetic grace.

She hadn’t been able not to look then, any more than she was able to forget now.

He shrugged. “It’s months overdue. The poor blighters are most likely at the bottom of the sea.” Sebastian gazed down at her, and for a moment he just looked at her, as if he couldn’t get enough of her, as if he were imagining her without her clothes, just as she had been thinking the same of him.

Charlotte tried to breathe, tried to blot out such thoughts, but goodness, how could she when he held her so, when he looked at her as if he could devour her right here and now?

A pair of fellows came up to the booth and began ordering from the man behind the table. When one of them sent a leering glance in Charlotte’s direction, Sebastian rose up to his full height and sent them both a menacing glare, using his body to block their lascivious gazes.

“Yer basket, milord,” the vendor called out, hurrying to avoid a conflict in front of his stall.

“Thank you, my good man,” Sebastian told him, reaching for the laden basket with one hand and catching hers with the other, pulling her away from the pair.

Charlotte tugged her pelisse on tighter with her free hand and wished yet again that her gown was a little more modest. Sebastian led her along with a determined
stride, past numerous booths and tables where games of chance were drawing as many participants as the races beyond.

“Too bad those shares aren’t worth something,” he continued saying as they passed a large roulette wheel. The man running it called out in greeting to her, but Sebastian didn’t give her a chance to stop. “Would have filled some lucky bastard’s coffers if she’d managed to make it to port—her sister ship, the
Mary Iona,
made Loxley a tidy sum. But I doubt anyone is going to see a farthing out of the
Agatha
—she was last seen floundering around the Cape, and there hasn’t been word of her since.”

“How terrible,” she said, glancing back at the spinning wheel, wondering what it would be like to bet on such a contraption.

“Terrible for all of us,” he quipped. “Now we have to spend the next few weeks avoiding Battersby, overly persistent fellow that he is, until he finds some unlikely dolt to dupe into buying them.” He stopped for a moment and glanced around them.

From another roulette wheel came a small cheer. “Look, mates. ’Tis Mrs. Townsend! Come on over, love, and bring us some good luck, will you?”

Charlotte turned in their direction even before she could stop herself. The admiration in their voices and the “click, click, click,” of the wheel drew her in their direction.

“Lottie!” came Sebastian’s warning.

“But I—” Why, she’d never felt anything like it in her life.

“You promised,” he said. “Besides, I think I can offer you something a little more diverting.”

Right now the urge to try her luck at roulette seemed quite diverting.

“What would you say to a little bit of privacy?”

“I suppose—” she said without even thinking, her gaze locked on the bouncing ball.

When he started pulling her along so that she had no choice but to trot behind him, she thought again about her answer.

Privacy?

He didn’t mean…

Charlotte cursed her imprudent lips…for responding so quickly to his request…and for ever so slightly, oh-so-hopefully, wishing that privacy meant another kiss.

“You look as tempting as Eve with that apple in your hand,” Sebastian teased.

Charlotte paused, suddenly feeling every bit as seductive as the Lottie-in-the-portrait. Though she’d been about to take a bite from the fruit, instead she stretched out her hand, offering him a bite.

His fingers, warm and strong, curled around hers, and when his teeth bit into the fruit, the sweet juice ran down into her palm.

Pulling the apple from her grasp, he brought her hand to his mouth and slowly and seductively kissed her fingers, her palm, taking up every bit of the apple. And then some.

Charlotte tried to breathe as his lips ignited her flesh, sent shivers of delight down her limbs.

“So very tempting,” he murmured as he kissed the back of her hand and then gave her back her apple.

Let him take another bite,
whispered a wicked little voice.

She shivered and didn’t dare. Why, they were seated in plain view of what seemed like half the
ton,
for Lord Saunderton’s great meadow had continued to fill through the afternoon with spectators as the time for the infamous race drew closer.

Given the very daring light in his eyes, she suspected that Sebastian was quite willing to suggest something untoward right out here…with the cool grass beneath her, the sunshine warming their bare flesh…

Despite the way her body thrummed to life, alive and trembling from his kiss, she pulled back, taking a nervous bite from the apple. “I do so love the country,” she said, as a way to change the subject.

Sebastian laughed. “’Tis a fair distance from your milliner,” he teased, nodding toward her bonnet.

“I daresay I could survive the deprivation,” she shot back.

“I don’t know about that,” he said. Then glancing over at her, he asked, “Do you really like it out here?”

“Yes,” she enthused. What wasn’t there to love? “The air is so clean, and I do so love the grass.” She wiggled her toes to prove her point.