In the Arms of the Heiress (A LADIES UNLACED NOVEL)

by Maggie Robinson

  Charles might not value his life, but he had no desire to end it in a ditch on the road to Rosemont, and he was grateful to sink into a somewhat tattered first-class compartment of the Chatham Line. The railroad company had the reputation of being a somewhat shaky enterprise, but at least its trains always arrived on time.

  In Charles’s case, he was not sure that was altogether a good thing. He’d gotten ahold of that magazine from Mrs. Evensong yesterday after tea, had seen photographs of Rosemont’s turrets and vast expanse of lawn running down to the sea. Charlie Cooper was going to be very much out of place.

  He’d had hopes that he’d be left to himself on the train with the ladies in an adjacent compartment, but that was not to be. The maid Kathleen made a great show of taking out a book so as not to participate in the conversation between “husband” and “wife.” Charles shut his eyes at the blur of gray sky and bare trees beyond the window, but he couldn’t shut his ears. Louisa Stratton was chattering incessantly as she was wont to do.

  “Chattin’ Stratton,” he mumbled.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Are you never silent? You’re giving me the devil of a headache.”

  “I suppose I’m a bit nervous about going home,” Louisa said, surprising him. “I haven’t seen my family in over a year. And it’s absolutely essential you understand the role you are to play. I thought we just might brush up on the details we discussed with Mrs. Evensong.”

  “Rembrandt. Louvre. You were the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen.”

  Her golden brows knit. “I’m sure I never told you to say that.”

  “It’s my own invention. You want Max to be your devoted dog, don’t you?”

  “Not at all! I would never want a man who could be led around on a leash. Maximillian is much too much of a man to allow me to dominate.”

  Charles flashed back to his mental image of a near-naked Louisa, her creamy flesh encased by a rigid corset. Bound. Helpless. Perhaps with a gag over those lovely ever-mobile lips. He shifted in discomfort on the seat. What the hell was she doing to him?

  “Fine. Then we will discount your looks. Did I marry you for your money?” Charles was sure this girl had been hotly pursued for her face and figure—the fortune was just a bonus.

  “Maximillian has his own independent income. A substantial one.”

  “How did I earn it?”

  Her tongue poked into the corner of her lush lips before she spoke. “You didn’t. You inherited it.”

  “Just like you, then.”

  “Surely you know women are limited in their choices of profession,” she said. “And in so many things. You men control the world, and a bloody mess you’ve made of it.”

  Louisa Stratton didn’t know the half of it. “I cannot disagree. So, my income is enormous, because I’ve invested wisely and am a genius with numbers.”

  “Are you?”

  “I was always good at maths. I could be, if I had any money to play around with. But I don’t. You saw where I lived, Miss Stratton.”

  Louisa gave a delicate shudder. “Maximillian was raised in wealth in the French countryside.”

  “Some château or other, I believe you said.”

  “Château Lachapelle. It was once a monastery, and the Dark Monk is reputed to haunt the corridors.”

  Charles laughed. What a fantastic imagination the idiot heiress had. “You have been reading too much fiction. I don’t believe in ghosts.”

  “Very well. You don’t have to mention the monk if you don’t want to. I just thought it added a soupçon of interest to your childhood. Your parents were English expatriates who ran away from arranged marriages. Very romantic.”

  A load of rubbish in Charles’s opinion. “There’s the tiniest glitch, Miss Stratton.”

  “You must remember to call me Louisa! We’ve been married happily for months now.”

  “I don’t speak French well, Louisa. I took it at school and pretty much left it there as well.”

  She waved a gloved hand. “Oh, that won’t matter. We’ll just say your parents were eccentric and preferred to converse in their native tongue. You were tutored at the château. No one in my family will quiz you—they loathe the French as all good English people do. A few days in Paris to shop is one thing, but my aunt Grace never permitted me to go abroad even for that.”

  “Poor little rich girl.”

  Louisa’s cheeks turned pink. “You may think you know all about me, Mr. Cooper—”

  “Max,” he reminded her. “We’re so happily married.”

  “—but you don’t, Maximillian. I’m not saying I’ve had a horrible life—I know I’ve had advantages some can only dream about. But it was not a bed of roses at Rosemont.”

  Charles laughed again. “Quite the turn of phrase, dear wife.”

  Her blush deepened, but she soldiered on. “You collect art, and the château is filled with wonderful things.”

  “Like the Dark Monk and my eccentric parents?”

  “I’m quite sure I said they were dead, too—didn’t I, Kathleen?”

  The maid did not look up from her book. “As doornails. So your aunt wouldn’t write to them.”

  “Just so. While you are an esthete, you are also an athlete.”

  “You rowed her on the Seine on a moonlit night, Mr. Norwich,” Kathleen said, turning a page.

  More rubbish. Where did girls get such ideas? From unrealistic romances like Kathleen was reading, no doubt. Charles had never rowed anything or anyone in his life—now if she had him bowling a cricket match or playing rugby, he was her man.

  “And what is the story behind my deformity? An oar in the eye?” He had suffered damage to his left eye when a shell exploded rather too near him. Once he’d come to, the doctors told him his vision might improve with time, but Charles saw no evidence of it so far.

  “I don’t suppose you fence.”

  “I do not.” He could hack his way through underbrush well enough, but the army had given up its swords for the deadly precision of automatic weaponry. Maxim machine guns were all the rage on the veldt.

  Louisa was thinking, her pink tongue curled into the corner of her lips again. Charles had noted the habit and was hoping that tongue might be persuaded to do something else. “Do you box?”

  He’d scrapped with his brothers growing up, and had held his own at school. “Yes, although I’m not one for the Queensberry rules.”

  “Well then. You received an unlucky blow in the ring. That’s when you broke your nose, too.”

  Charles kept his hand from touching the bridge of his nose, flattened courtesy of his brother Tom for some childhood infraction he couldn’t recall. “Won’t your aunt think I’m a savage?”

  “Oh, no. Her son Hugh fancies himself quite a pugilist. He made a name for himself at Oxford. But if he challenges you, you must decline. I have a horror of the sport.” Louisa wrinkled her nose. “You gave up all that violence for me when we married.”

  “No fighting. What else is forbidden?” Charles wished he was taking notes. He had a feeling the list was going to be a long one.

  “You may not smoke. You don’t smoke, do you?”

  “Filthy habit.”

  “I’m so glad you agree. I understand it’s very difficult to give up once one’s begun. No drinking to excess, but I believe Mrs. Evensong covered that with you already. You must keep your wits about you at all times. My family is . . . difficult, and though they may test a saint’s sobriety, it is vital you don’t let them send you over the edge.”

  What had Mrs. Evensong told Louisa? Not too much, he hoped. He’d enjoyed his pint in the past, but no more so than any other bloke. It wasn’t until he’d come home from the war that he’d let his demons loose and tried to drink himself into welcome oblivion.

  “You are to ignore Cousin Isobel if she seems a b
it too . . . friendly. Isobel still thinks there’s a chance for her to make a good match and will pump you about your bachelor friends. Make up something amusing but vague. She and Mama came to England from New York to marry titled gentlemen, though neither one succeeded.”

  “That’s why you are not Lady Louisa.”

  “Correct. Mama fell in love with Papa, and that was that. Of course, he had a fortune and didn’t need hers, so my American grandparents were somewhat mollified.”

  “Are they still alive?”

  Louisa shook her head. “They died when I was fourteen—a boating accident, like my parents. My relatives are very unlucky on water. I’m almost afraid to take a bath.”

  Dear God. The thought of Louisa Stratton wet and naked in a porcelain tub was almost too much to contemplate. Charles took a deep breath.

  “So, no fighting, drinking, smoking, and no flirting with Cousin Isobel. Have I got it all right?”

  “It’s a start. We’ll have to be nimble as we go—the sands are always shifting at Rosemont.”

  “Well, it is on the coast.”

  “Why, Captain Cooper! I believe you’ve made a joke.”

  So he had. A faint ray of sunshine seemed to be piercing his gloom. How could he fail to appreciate the improvement in his circumstances? Once the month was over, he’d have a substantial nest egg for his brothers and a harmless adventure with a very pretty girl to remember while he spent eternity in hell.

  The train meandered through chocolate-box villages and gentle hills, Louisa talking all the way. Charles was getting used to her nervous energy. She seemed to have an opinion on everything and was not shy about expressing it. Poor Maximillian Norwich would never have a moment’s peace.

  The real Maximillian would have strategies to quiet his voluble wife. He might give her a smoldering look across a room, inveigle a way to get her alone and kiss her until she was witless. Finger that intriguing mole at the corner of her mouth that her pink tongue always touched when she was thinking. Capture one of her demonstrative hands and place his lips on her palm. Nip a jeweled earlobe, breathe the scent of crushed violets from her long white neck.

  “Captain Cooper—Maximillian—have you heard a word I’ve said?”

  “Of course. I shall endeavor to do everything you say.” That was easy enough, wasn’t it? He had nothing better to do. But he had a nagging feeling he’d missed something important.

  “Now, tell me about your family. I’ve told you all about mine.”

  Had she? He couldn’t very well tell her he’d stopped paying attention some miles back.

  “There’s not much to say.”

  “Come now, don’t be shy. Just because you were not brought up in a château doesn’t mean I shall judge you.”

  Charles could not picture ermine-coated Louisa Stratton in the humble kitchen that served as sitting room and occasional bedroom to his family. “My parents are dead. They both were employed by Alexander’s Pottery Works. My brothers and their wives work there now.”

  “Oh. Pottery?”

  “I don’t expect Alexander dishes are on your dining table at Rosemont. George Alexander produces unembellished, practical items, from teapots to chamber pots. For the lower classes. Just like me.”

  He caught Kathleen’s brief flare of triumph across the seat.

  “I—I thought you went to Harrow,” Louisa said doubtfully.

  “And so I did. George sponsored me—took me right off the line and paid for my education.” Tom and Fred had resented Charles’s elevation. Ah yes. His nose—he remembered now.

  “I have nieces and nephews, but I’m not close to my family anymore. I probably couldn’t tell you all their names if you put a gun to my temple. I was away a long while.”

  “I see.”

  “I hope you do, Miss Stratton. I may not turn out to be the right man for your job. Maximillian and I don’t have much in common—I’m bound to put my foot wrong somewhere. I’ve not visited too many châteaux or museums.”

  Try none.

  There was her tongue peeking out again. He waited for her to tell him to get off at the next station. The silence lengthened—in fact, this was the longest time in their brief acquaintance that Louisa was not talking his ear off.

  “You were an officer.”

  “I rose on merit. And have a chest full of medals, for what they’re worth.”

  Not much.

  Louisa sighed. “Well, I’m sure you’ll try your best. Everyone swears by Mrs. Evensong, so she must have confidence in you. She simply raved about you, you know. I confess I did wonder why you were agreeable to do this. I was looking for an actor. Someone with experience. You don’t strike me as one who will stick to the script.”

  “A little improvisation might come in handy. I’ll try not to disappoint you.”

  “Fingers crossed then.” Louisa gave him a bright smile. “We get off in three more stops. I expect Robertson will be there to meet us.”

  Kathleen dropped her book to the floor. Charles bent to pick it up and handed it back to her, but not before reading the green and gold cover. A CHECKED LOVE AFFAIR. Spare me.

  “Thank you, Mr. Norwich.”

  “Think nothing of it. Who is Robertson?”

  “Our chauffeur, though I think he doesn’t get to drive the Daimler very often. Aunt Grace hates it. But all that will change now that I’m back home.”

  Charles didn’t trust her gleeful smile. “What is your fascination with automobiles, Louisa?”

  “I don’t know, really. I do so love the wind in my face.”

  “And the bugs and dust,” Kathleen added. “You’d best let Robertson do the driving, Miss Louisa. I hear he’s thought of putting in his notice. No man likes to feel useless.”

  “You hear? Did a little bird tell you, Kathleen? So that explains all the mysterious letters you received from Rosemont. I swear, you got more mail than I did, even with Aunt Grace hounding me at every turn.” Louisa turned to him and winked.

  The redheaded maid put her book in her carpetbag and snapped the clasp with finality. “As far as I know, it’s not against the law to write letters.”

  “And if it was, you’d do it anyway. Do you drive, Cap—Maximillian?”

  “I have not had the opportunity.” He’d been perfectly satisfied with horses all his life, and his cavalry career confirmed his expertise.

  “I’ll teach you then.”

  Kathleen snorted and looked out the window.

  “It will be fun!” Louisa insisted. “There’s nothing like the freedom of the open road.”

  Charles would reserve his opinion on that. There had been a time when he’d sought freedom—from George Alexander’s well-meaning mentorship and his family’s resentment. He’d turned down the chance to go to university for the army, and he now wondered if his quest for independence had not backfired rather spectacularly.

  Everyone knew war was hell, but Charles had not expected to plummet so deep into the devil’s environs.

  Louisa concentrated on teasing Kathleen about her chauffeur for the rest of the journey. The train rolled into one more charming station after the other until it got to Stratton Halt. A flock of seagulls that had been perched on the red tile roof of the tiny whitewashed building squawked and circled away as the train pulled in.

  As soon as Charles stepped onto the platform, the scent of salt water enveloped his senses. He’d not been a good sailor during any of his transports, so there was no danger of following in Louisa’s relatives’ footsteps. In any event, it was coming on winter, not ideal for testing the waters.

  But he’d always appreciated the sea, its vastness and power. He would be seeing it safely behind glass soon. Rosemont was set atop a white cliff overlooking its own shingle, according to The English Illustrated Magazine. Louisa may have had her reasons to run away from home, but it hadn’t
been for lack of a view.

  A couple of men and a horse-drawn wagon were waiting to collect their luggage, and a young man in livery, presumably Robertson, stood near a dark green Daimler. If Kathleen was expecting a kiss from her sweetheart, she must have been disappointed. Apart from a tip of his cap to the ladies, he was all that was proper, helping the men with the trunks in efficient silence before he got back behind the wheel.

  It was not an effusive welcome for any of them, and Charles felt a prickle of unease. Even Chattin’ Stratton seemed subdued. What exactly had he got himself into?

  Chapter

  6

  Louisa had wished for flags and flowers and a little crowd at the train station. She’d read of such welcomes when heiresses arrived from their honeymoons, but Aunt Grace would not condone such frivolity. Just as well, really. If she ever came back from a real honeymoon, that greeting would be special.

  “Good God.”

  They had finally turned into the drive, Robertson driving far more slowly than Louisa ever would. She tried to see Rosemont with Captain Cooper’s eyes. Eye. She’d have to be careful regarding his injury. It was just like her to ask a person in a wheelchair if they’d like to go for a walk in the garden—she meant to be kind, but her foolish tongue constantly tripped her up.

  To her two eyes, the house looked as tall and forbidding as it ever did. It was built in 1856 by her grandfather, George Stratton, a banker who had delusions of grandeur more suited to a peer of the realm. Of brick construction, it was an odd mix of Gothic and classical, with pitched roofs and turrets and too many windows to wash. Snarling gargoyles perched on every peak and pediment. When she was a little girl, she had named them all.

  “Home sweet home,” she said lightly.

  “It looks like a prison. Or an asylum.”

  “There are plenty of inmates within who would argue they are as honest and sane as you and I.” And they would be lying, Louisa thought. “It looks nicer in the summer when the roses climb over the façade. Rosemont, you see. We are missing the mountain, but my grandfather was very fond of his roses. The aspect is lovely, don’t you think? But it was still a lonely place to live in.”