Joy V. Sheridan writes

Charity Amour

CHAPTER SIX

All but oblivious of her own danger, Charity leapt from the obsolete milestone she had been resting against in the park and grabbed the errant child away from the path of the oncoming horseman and his mount. Too late: The rider, intent, it seemed, only on his own exercise - and at distemper with the sombre greyness of this wet summer's day - had not the time to gain control of his nag. Charity was dealt a blow to her left thigh, which rendered her senseless with pain. The child, a boy of about four years of age, was whimpering on one side of the rutted, muddy track. A nursemaid came to claim the runaway, taking him forcefully by the hand, shaking her head and screaming abuse at the child. Which merely served to send the said child into deeper paroxysms of fear and tears. Without a backward glance to where Charity lay prone, half on and half off the teeming dampness and mud of the ground, she regained her perambulations and was soon lost behind a clump of trees. 

The rider, however, dismounted, all thoughts of his own problems rudely shaken from him. With tentative steps he drew closer and stared down at Charity’s prostrate and unconscious form. The cloak had been thrown back and he noted the swell of her magnificent breasts compared to the too-tiny slenderness of the rest of her body. He bent on one knee and looked into her dormant face, which was pale and pinched. The scarlet wig had come somewhat adrift from its placement upon her own hair and a shimmering wisp of pale corn-gold hair made a tracing, like a halo, over her still brow. 

The man considered that he had never seen a lovelier face: yet, she seemed, somehow, oddly familiar. Careful lest he soil his fine clothes, for he was a well-dressed gentleman, he moved behind the girl and, putting his hands underneath her armpits, dragged her clear of the track. He looked about him, but the unwelcoming drizzle was even then beginning to turn into a steady downpour. Not the kind of day which most folks would choose for exercise or horsemanship. The parkland was all but deserted - or so it seemed, if one glanced idly about the empty vistas - save for the pair of them. 

He placed cool fingers upon her cheek. He could feel a slight throb in her neck. She was alive, then, but here his practised eye ran over the soiled and thin garments. ’Twould not have made an awful difference had she expired. For the poor never missed the poor. He expelled a small amount of breath and turned towards his mount; searching about in the saddlebag, he located what he was looking for. He withdrew the hip flask, and, uncorking it, he bent again and forced the unconscious girl’s lips slightly apart. Dark and unflinching was his own demeanor as he pressed the flask to her lips, his handsome face unsmiling, set into a granite composition of expression, the obvious costliness of his berry-black locks sweeping away from the band of his tricorn hat.

Charity spluttered and began to moan lowly.

“W...h...a....t....what ...is...happening?  ... Papa, dearest Papa,....is that you?” 

She made to sit up, the rain now beating hard upon both figures: she was trying to will away the clouds of scarlet and lavender and umber which were clouding her vision. With an abrupt movement, caused by the delirium of her state, she began to flay about, her arms working like shovels as she beat off imaginary persecutors. Had not her rescuer - who, albeit, was the cause of her present distressful state - not tightened his hold about her, she would have unwittingly slapped him hard across the face. 

“Whooa, take a care. Madam!” 

The man’s voice carried the undeniable seal of noble pedigree and this acted as a powerful draught, succeeding to bring her more fully to her senses, where the spirits she had imbibed had failed. 

“Where am I?” “Sitting upon the sodden earth of an embankment, Madam, being succoured for your noble effort of rescue, in which, I might add, you succeeded.” 

Charity focused her eyes so that she might see more clearly who her Good Samaritan was. It was not a face she knew, yet a slight tremor moved her shoulder,s and the gentleman, noticing the shaking, began to talk soothingly again. 

“Madam: I know not who you are nor what you do on such a miserable day as this, taking your air in a public parkland, but methinks, in consideration of the hurt which you have acquired, that a warm bed and good nursing would be much more the order of the day.” 

Charity made to rise to her feet and the man, aware of her motivation, helped her, so that she stood, albeit, unsteadily, before him. He appeared to tower over her diminutive form. Still dazed by what had happened to her and in obvious pain from the blow the horse had landed on her, Charity all but fell against the man’s broad chest. Still dizzy, she threw back her head and drew herself away from his body, with such relish and fear that the badly fixed wig flew like a sodden red flame from her head, leaving her own ashgold hair to seem like an aura of light about her head. 

As though realising that she had de-wigged herself and might appear fit game for any custodian of the law (for Charity felt sure that she was by this time a most wanted and heinous villain), she made to break free from the man’s hold. He, for his part, was dazzled into dumbness by the flagrant loveliness that her locks bespoke, coupled with the face, which was beautiful beyond words in its vulnerable, yet seductive, innocence. He drew her closer towards him. He tilted her chin towards his own face, forcing her to be still. Eyes as fiery as ebony coals looked into a pair of blue eyes which Goddess Venus herself might have coveted, for they had the self-same shading as wild bluebells at their pinnacle of glory. A puzzled look seemed to cross the granite features, a black, arched eyebrow slightly raised, gave her unknown mentor a slightly Byronic, if not demonic, cast. She, for her part, stared with half a mind to fix where she had seen his not unfamiliar features before this time. “But.. .surely.. .Madam...” “Not Madam. Miss. I am Miss Charity Cottrell." 

“Oh, please, do forgive me, Miss Cottrell, Miss Charity Cottrell! A very pretty name and one not easily forgotten when coupled with your breathtaking loveliness.” 

“I thank you sir,” A thought, unwelcome and fearful, had crossed her mind, “But I trust that it is not a name you have heard spoken of?”

“No. No, why should it be?” 

Charity’s voice was low, she wanted to turn her face away from this handsome and alluring stranger’s, but she found only the full span of his lean, strong hands cupping her face closer; as one might tilt the head of a lovely flower towards one.

“I thank you sir, for your exceeding kindness so far.” 

She tried with rapidity to think upon where she might have seen the gentleman’s features before. Then, almost of a same mind, they both said:

“Did you, some months ago, journey from the Richmond direction?” 

That was it! This gentleman, now so earnestly holding Charity as rescued damsel, and perhaps prisoner to Amour’s enticements, could be no other than that young blade who had been so kind to her when she had been feeling sick in the post-chaise. By the heavens, though, how he had changed. He seemed to have aged half a decade in less than six months. Worry lines bridged the elegant and masterful curve of his nose, which was aquiline and flared at the nostrils; a few wrinkles seemed to have tarnished slightly the clear lustre of his broad brow. Yes, there was even evidence of silver in the sideburns upon his face.

Charity did not think she, for her part, could have served a particularly delectable sight, for direst calamity had seen her robbed of the little money she had possessed once she had been forced to flee from Chelsea and the old Jewish gentleman’s house. Not only that, but her new gowns had been stolen and most of her other effects. All bar the clothes she stood up in and the flame-coloured wig. She had been forced to beg for sustenance where’er she could. ’Twas surely a miracle that her most precious possession, her maidenhead, remained so far unbreached. Was here come, now, the taker of her last - and most valuable - possession? 

“Times look as though they have not treated you well, my sweet.” “No, Sir.” 

Still Charity tried to wriggle away from the stranger’s tight embrace. The rain was falling fast and thick, steadily and chilly drenching them both. The bruising which she had sustained from the horse's inadvertent onslaught was beginning to gnaw into her unbearably. 

“I beg you, Kind Sir, to please let us at least find some shelter, for if you persist in us talking out in the open air any longer, I feel we shall both die our deaths of cold. Arrggh.” 

“How thoughtless of me! My dear girl, let me put you onto my horse and I shall have you conveyed to your home and your wound attended to, as promptly as I can!” 

"My... home....?" 

He caught the downcast and despairing note in the girl’s voice. With no further comment, he conducted her to his horse. He considered that the girl was in as bad a shape as he had at first surmised. She had no home, obviously had nowhere to live, no money: did she have kin? He doubted that, for she was reduced to little more than a beggar-woman. And had she kin, would they have welcomed with open arms one so undeniably down on her luck? He doubted that! 

“Do not fear, Miss Charity Cottrell. If you have no home to go to, perhaps you will accept the hospitality of my own home for the time being. You do not mind sojourning at the house of Lord Seyton Clover?” “Sir, I know no lords!”

She was on the horse now, as was her rescuer, her back resting against his broad torso. 

“You do now, my lovely, for you ride with the very same. At your service,” he whispered into her ear, “I am Lord Seyton Clover: yes, he who has offered you refuge and who acts as your back rest.” 

There was an ironic smile twisting at the crinkled corners of Lord Seyton Clover’s still energetically-youthful eyes. Charity, succumbing to fatigue, hunger, fear and pain, had sunk into a semi-conscious state once more, which was not without its compensations, for she could feel the all-embracing heat coming from her escort’s body. At length she realised she was being gently lifted down from her perch on the horse; her mind was in a state of ebb and flow; she could not quite dispense, however, with the notion that her virginity would be no more come the morrow. 

She made faint attempts to voice her fear and discontent, and again, as though possessing rare and unusual powers of perception, Lord Seyton Clover hushed her with: “Do not worry your pretty head. No harm shall come to you at my home, Miss Charity Cottrell, no harm whatsoever.” 

He carried Charity, now moaning lowly and weeping, for the pain was more than she could bear, plus the discomfiture of her sodden apparel and an empty stomach which had seen no more than a stale bread roll in the last forty-eight hours, which stomach was now rumbling ominously loudly. His Lordship carried her through the servants’ entrance and then through the deserted and gigantic mansion, until he had located a chamber suitable to hold such a hothouse flower as he had discovered, lying, he felt, neglected by that treasure house of Destiny: all but lost to the gutter. 

The room was one his mother used on her infrequent visits to London, when she deigned, that is, to visit her only child and her heir to fabulous wealth – which admittedly belonged to a maternal relation once certain things had been settled irrevocably. The chamber was - by the standards of the little-used house - all aired and clean. He wondered where Jenkins, the butler, was, but then recalled he had given the man the day off to visit a sick relative. Drat! As for the rest of the servants, those that stayed for any length of time that is (for he was a somewhat difficult employer being reclusive one minute and wildly gregarious and sociable the next), why, they had all taken the opportunity of Me Lordship’s riding to sit beside the fire (a liberty considering the season!), which had been kindled in the kitchen below stairs. 

He laid Charity with delicate, tender arms, onto the coverlet, not caring that her soiled clothing and muddied shoes would mark the counterpane. He ought, by rights, to send someone to fetch a physician immediately, so that the doctor might examine more acutely the injured girl. Good God! He knew not what was possessing him that he should have taken such pains over a pauper girl. Ah, but then, he considered how angelically lovely she was and with the promise of a true courtesan in her swelling bosoms. He clenched his fists together in frustration. Not that he could be villain enough to sample her enticements! 

He removed himself suddenly from the bedside, firm resolve set upon his features, his black brows knitted together. He expelled any amorous thoughts from his mind, for the time being, and left the room. He bounded down the marble staircase, each leap springing with the frustration he would not admit he possessed. Where in the hell’s teeth was Beavis, the good-for-nothing lackey! He should take a horse-whip to all his minions. He felt the first tremors of one of his nearly-uncontrollable rages coming over him. He froze the anger away and began yelling for his manservant. 

He yelled even louder, his voice echoing around the high walls and the far-distanced ceilings. He kicked at a velvet stool, sent it flying, then down he stormed into the servants’ area below stairs.

Meanwhile, Beavis, below stairs, upon hearing his master’s angry bellowing, made a hurried and fumbling attempt to straighten both his breeches and his wig. He had been enjoying a few minutes dallying with Sarah, one of the newest recruits to the serving staff. He shuddered to think what might be troubling His Lordship this day. Beavis all but ran from the smoky depths of the dried meats cellar, turning to blow a kiss towards the wench, who sat, dumbfounded, with her legs splayed apart and her blouse falling open over a pair of thrusting young breasts. 

“Tonight,” he hissed, “Tonight. Your room.” He was still fastening his breeches when he ran into His Lordship.“