Chapter 20
That night there was a half-moon and just enough light out on the Lion Terrace to make out the four proud statues, lying with crossed paws, that gave the terrace its name.
Charlotte and Darlington stood at the top of the stone staircase, breath hushed and eyes alert, looking out over the garden together.
“There!” cried Charlotte. “I saw one.”
Quick as a wink she was down the steps and poking into the hedgerow.
“Oh, dash it, where did it—there!” Her hand darted in and grabbed a brown beetle with a segmented body that curled in on itself, like a wiggling scimitar. “I’ve got her.”
“Well done,” Darlington said. He always spoke so slowly, as if each word was a stone dropped into a pond and he had to wait for the ripples to disappear before offering up the next. “I don’t know many women who would catch glowworms with me.”
“How strange. I know plenty.” Charlotte was conscious of a faint impatience as she tipped the glowworm—which, of course, wasn’t a worm at all but a beetle with an abdomen that lit up—gently into a glass jar she’d nabbed from the kitchen.
Why did so many men think it was a compliment to disparage the rest of her sex?
She could name dozens of women who’d be happy to spend a night out catching glowworms, including her mother, the dowager, Lady Skeffington, and all the Marby girls.
Well, except for Helena, who’d toss lye on the natural world and give it a good scrub if she could.
In fact, once when Charlotte and the Marby girls were younger, Lady Margot had organized an evening of catching glowworms, giving them each a jar to fill and making a circle on the lawn with them so they could pretend they were surrounded by fairy lights.
It had been magic, of course, and not only because Gran and Lady Margot weren’t fighting for once.
They had even agreed that the girls mustn’t keep the glowworms for long, insisting that insects were nature’s gardeners and must be treated with respect.
“Well, come on.” Charlotte tried to shake off her impatience and the rather lowering realization that whatever she had hinted to Warrick, she was less enamored of Darlington by the day.
She was certainly trying, but should she have to try this hard?
“Let’s catch a few more and then we can sketch.
They don’t do well if you keep them in a jar for too long. ”
They ransacked the shrubbery and found three more glowworms, and Darlington carried the jar carefully back up the stairs to the terrace, where the footmen had put out a table for them flanked by two candelabra, with sketchbooks, charcoals, candles, and a tinderbox laid at the ready.
Darlington struck the flint and lit the first candle, and its light flickered moodily over the hollows of his cheeks and his deep-set eye sockets, leaving him looking half dead but starkly masculine.
As Charlotte pulled up her chair, she was conscious of the night around her—the stars winking overhead and the midnight song of the sedge warblers and frogs down by the river, which glimmered darkly in the distance like a streak of tarnished silver.
The air tasted different, too, cooler, damper, and sweeter, as if the earth held its breath all day only to let it all out with a hushed sigh at night.
Just Darlington and her, alone together.
Charlotte frowned. I really ought to be swooning.
She snapped her sketchbook open and began to draw, losing herself in the rasp of her charcoal over the paper as she traced out the lines of the glowworms, their fat little bellies and spindly legs.
Glowworms wouldn’t sell well enough to work for a silk voile pattern—so few were adventurous enough to attempt an insect dress—but she could imagine a wickedly dark green velvet with glowworms stitched at the bottom, like a woodland at night. Might it work as a cloak or—
“There.” Darlington’s voice was rich with satisfaction. “I’ve got it.”
He pushed his sketchbook over so they could compare, his lines heavy and geometric, while she used a lighter hand to try to catch the eerie quality of the light.
“What do you think?” he prompted, nudging his sketchbook closer.
“I’d kill for an aigrette like that. Would you make it en tremblant? Would each segment of the body move, or—I know!—just the glowy bits?”
“The abdomen, and also perhaps the antennae.”
Her brain fizzed and sparked as she studied his sketches of the setting, and she sat back with a gratified sigh, determined to get her hands on a goldsmith’s hammer as soon as possible.
Oh, how she’d love to bash metal!
“It’s going to be a staggering piece, my lord. Will you use topaz?”
“No. Yellow diamonds.”
“It’s tricky to get the color right, isn’t it?” Charlotte frowned again. “I was wondering about a glowworm velvet, but finding the right dye for the embroidery threads would give me fits. The bright colors, you see, are much more difficult to—”
“Come here. I have something for you.” Darlington’s eyes bored into hers.
Oh. Yes, of course.
Enough about glowworms, it was time for a kiss.
Although Charlotte noticed that Darlington had cut her off when she started talking about her interests, which didn’t put her in the most romantic frame of mind. And I have something for you seemed an odd thing to say about kissing, as if he were offering himself as a gift.
Still, Charlotte was curious enough, and the moonlight helped, and she certainly grew quite warm at the thought of him teaching her how to solder a ring.
I ought to at least give him a chance.
Darlington stood and extended a hand, and she waited for something to spark in her belly. His mouth wasn’t his best feature—it was rather thin and sulky, now that she got a close look at it—but she was willing to swoon for his cheekbones.
Darlington’s hand snaked out around her waist and he jerked her forward, causing her head to whip back.
“Oh!” she said, startled.
“It’s all right. I’ve got you.”
“I can see that!” Charlotte put her hand on his chest, partly to show him she was ready and partly to slow him down. She smiled politely and Darlington placed his mouth on hers.
His lips were firm and cool, the stars sighed down at them, and the otherworldly glow from the glass jar lit them up as Darlington kissed her slowly. Could she imagine a lifetime like this, hunting insects at night and sketching, his jewelry and her silk mill, making all sorts of things together?
Perhaps it could work, if he taught her how to use a forge—
Darlington broke the kiss. “Lady Charlotte, I… That was…”
He moved to kiss her again, but she stepped back on instinct. “We’ve had a lovely night, my lord. Shall we leave it at that?”
His dark eyes glowed as he stared down at her. “There’s a piece I’m working on that you inspired. May I share it with you?”
“Of course. What is—”
“Patience.” He put two fingers over her lips and smiled down at her. “What a tremendous artist’s wife you’ll make.”
Charlotte could only stare, and for a moment she shrank.
An artist’s wife?
Warrick’s low voice rumbled through her.
You’re the artist, of course. Not the muse.
Anger roared to life inside her, hotter by far than his kiss.
Good God, was Darlington stupid? He still had his fingers on her mouth, shushing her like a child.
Didn’t he realize how dangerously close his fingers were to her teeth?
“Speechless, I see,” said Darlington. “Assemble the guests at teatime tomorrow and I’ll present the piece you inspired and the rest of my ideas in the Long Hall.”
Charlotte pushed his hand away. “I’m not speechless and I’m not—”
Darlington took her chin in his hand and shook it back and forth. “Gather them tomorrow at teatime, my little glowworm. I promise it will be worth the wait.”
Charlotte jerked her chin free.
“Tomorrow at teatime,” she agreed sweetly.
She planned to make it memorable indeed.