To talk to her

“I told you I knew who you were Miss Charlotte.” Randy said with an easy grin. He tried not to move quickly unsure if she’d feel threatened enough to scream. She sat up on her bed pulling the duvet up modestly covering her nightgown.

“What do you want?” Charlotte asked in a hushed tone. Had he changed his mind? Was he here to take from her on her own bed what he had refused three days prior? Somehow the thought of him forcing her in her room - on her own bed - was even more disturbingly erotic than anything that might have happened in the old forests or his secret lair. She should call for help. Scream now before he silenced her with a gag. She should scream, but instead she was silent waiting to see what this strange outlaw was going to do.

“What I want, you can’t give me.” His voice was filled with sadness, he had said something similar when she first took her, but knowing who he was and his sister's story gave the weariness in his voice more meaning.

“I’m sorry about Mary.” Charlotte told him and no sooner had the words left her mouth than she realized her mistake. She just told him that she knew who he was. With his back to the window, Charlotte still could not see his face. Was he angry? She waited breathlessly for several breaths before he spoke again.

“I expected to see your father’s men at Rainbow Falls.” Randy said as he stepped into the room and sat at the chair next to her desk, his large frame dwarfing the chair fashioned for a woman's body. “Or maybe a troop of the King’s Foot blundering through the forest.” Now that the moonlight lit his face she could see more of him. He didn’t look angry, but he did look dangerous. There was something in the way he stared at her that made her feel nervous and tingly all over. Did he somehow guess she was planning to inform the young Lieutenant about his true identity and where he could be found?

“I didn’t tell anyone, at least not yet.” She added the qualifier at the end to salve her conscience, “I didn’t want your mother to have to lose her son.”

“How very noble of you Milady.” The sarcasm in his voice was impossible to miss. The man was unbelievable!

“How dare you!” Charlotte exclaimed angrily. “YOU **** me. YOU assaulted me, you dragged me off into the woods and it was YOU that kissed me in a most improper way.” In her passion she let the blanket slip from her hands revealing the modest nightgown that she had been sleeping in. “And then you laughed at me and sent me away.” Her hands clenched into little fists on her lap. “And now you invade my most private domain…” Charlotte suddenly realized she had dropped her covers and pulled them up to her neck once again “…and you mock me again this time in my own budoir.”

“I yield Lady Marlton.” Randy slipped off the chair and knelt on the floor raising his hands in mock surrender. “I thank you for not sending the Red Coats to my comfortable lair. Most of all," By now his voice was intense with no hint of mockery. "I thank you as well for not betraying Black Brand’s identity – for my mother’s sake.”

There was something beguiling in Randy Fuller's rich baritone and steady gaze. Here he was in her room, kneeling just out of reach on the floor by her bed. Charlotte didn’t know what to say, her plan to bargain with Lt. Easton now seemed embarrassingly petty and manipulative. What was it about this man that always put her on the defensive?

“Is that why you take this liberty?” She asked the handsome outlaw. “To thank me for not doing my duty?” Something in the way he was looking at her made her wonder. “Or did you expect something else from me?” She was trembling under her covers, but Charlotte couldn’t be sure if it was in anticipation or fear.