“Perhaps she deserves a little fright,” was the cold rejoinder.
“Stop!” wailed Charlotte.
“Yates,” commanded Rowan, “ease around behind me and take my lady out. Then give us room.”
Yates did as he was bidden and Charlotte in her nervousness dropped both teacup and saucer. The small crash on the floor went unnoticed by both men, who were now slowly circling each other.
She was already out in the hall when she heard the swords clash. She would have run back but that Yates held on to her, swearing under his breath. Inside the drawing room there was no conversation whatever—just the clash of steel on steel, the crash of chairs and tables being overturned, ornaments broken, the hard breathing of the participants, and an occasional light thump as one or the other leapt over some fallen object.
Those minutes spent in the hall with Yates were some of the longest in Charlotte’s life.
It was quickly over.
“Yates,” came Rowan’s quiet voice. “Send someone to clean up this mess.” He came out wiping blood from his blade on a kerchief.
“Oh, you haven’t. . . you haven’t...” Charlotte’s voice quavered.
“No, I haven’t killed him,” said Rowan savagely. “But only because he pulled you from beneath a falling sign.
Patch him up, Yates, and then find a sedan chair and pack him home to his lodgings/’
‘What . . . what was in the cup?” whispered Charlotte. “Poison?”
Her husband gave her a scathing look as he shot his sword back into its scabbard. “The same sleeping draft he gave you earlier, probably. He’d watched and seen us leave and he was going to render you senseless while he searched the house.”
“But why?”
Rowan ran a hand through his dark hair. “D’you not know the manner of man you have been entertaining?” he demanded, exasperated. “Francis Tremont is a well-known agent of the First Lord’s enemies. He was using you to get access to this house, to learn about my movements. Good God, have I married a fool?”
Charlotte was too taken aback to answer. A moment later Rowan had slammed out—doubtless to meet the man who had come to the door earlier, and with whom he and Yates had left.
She felt she should go in and help Yates, but she was too unsteady on her feet. It had all crashed in on her, how it had really been. Of course Francis Tremont had looked familiar; he must have gone by the house many times—stalking her. And he had been able to save her life that day because he had been following her. The falling sign was just a piece of luck that had enabled him to strike up an acquaintance. Now she remembered his casual questions about Rowan—how pointed they now seemed. And he had tried to get upstairs—he had wanted to be shown the Maypole’s room! A chill went through her that she had actually considered trying to show it to him! Oh, he had seemed so nice, so plausible, so friendly.
Now she saw why Rowan never brought people home with him, why he did not introduce her to people who would promptly come to call. He needed a hole to hide in, a place to catch his breath between his dangerous missions. This house on Grosvenor Square wasn’t a home in the ordinary sense—it was a lair.
And that was something she had not fully understood.
Drained, she trudged upstairs and threw herself down upon the bed. After a while she got up and sought out the baby, held the child to her for a long time before giving her back to the young nurse to be fed. She wandered back into her bedchamber and sat there while darkness fell. A chambermaid knocked. Charlotte refused food. She had to think out her life, how it was going to be.
She could see there would be other days like this. She would make mistakes; the world was full of pitfalls for her. And Rowan, versed and hardened in his way of life, would not understand. He would never understand. She saw it all ahead of her, the silent households, the loneliness, the wondering, whenever Rowan went out, if he would ever return. . . . She was not the woman for this kind of life. The moon was up but Charlotte’s head was sunk in her hands and hot tears spilled down over her young face.
“What, crying over Francis Tremont?” came Rowan’s harsh voice.
In the bright moonlight Charlotte spun around. She had not heard the door open—and where had he learned to walk soft as a cat?
“No,” she gasped. “I was crying for myself, for us, for this life we have to lead. ’’
“It is this life that brings us that gown you are wearing. ” He had crossed over to her and now stood ruthlessly above her, studying her pale face that glistened with tears in the moonlight. “It is this life that brings us servants and a fine house and the freedom to travel. Do you think that blasted fellow you ran away with could have given you a coach and six?”
“1 don’t want a coach and six, ” said Charlotte bitterly. “I just want an ordinary life.”
“With perhaps a silver spoon thrown in? Is that why you are sitting here mooning? Doubtless you’d have preferred some younger son like Tremont who may one day come into a barony if the dice fall right. ”
“No, I—”
His dark face was very near to hers. “You had your chance. Why didn’t you take Pimmerston!"?”
“Oh, damn you!” wailed Charlotte. “Why didn’t you keep Katherine? You’d have got on with her better!”
She could hear his teeth grate. “You came near to oversetting us this day. There were papers in my room that would have ...” He seized her by the shoulders. “Look at me when I’m talking to you!”
“I don’t want to look at you! I’m afraid of what I see!” With an oath he spun her about. “Perhaps you’d prefer Tremont!” he ground out, and flung her across the bed.
A moment later he lay atop her.
“No!” cried Charlotte. “The doctor said—”
“Be damned to all doctors,” he said thickly. “I’ve been away a long time—I deserve a homecoming.” And he buried his face in the soft column of her throat.
She felt the roughness of his beard scratch her skin, for Rowan had a dark jawline and he had not shaved since morning.
“No!” she cried. “I won’t.” And with all her strength she began to fight him, clawing at his face, struggling, turning her head sharply away, trying to kick at him.
Her resistance seemed to madden Rowan. His hand cracked across her face, momentarily stunning her while he wrestled with his trousers.
Charlotte tried to scuttle away from him across the bed. “It’s too soon, Rowan!” she wailed.
But he did not seem to hear. He was lost in lust for her, greedy for her body, deaf to her entreaties. He made no effort to arouse her—he thrust direct. Charlotte still struggled feebly, but it was no use, he would have his way with her this night whatever she said or did. His hard masculine body was savoring her sweetness—but vengefully, it seemed to her, without love. When she gasped in pain at the roughness of his handling, he seemed not to care. He was oblivious to the shudders that racked her body, for she was too proud to cry out. Indeed he seemed to take joy in hurting her, and after one last explosion of pain that left her weak, he surged away from her without a word and she heard the door to his room slam.
Charlotte lay sobbing upon the bed, too tired and mauled even to struggle up to see to the baby.
Morning brought a new shock.
Rowan appeared at her door. He looked hollow-eyed, forbidding.
“Get up,” he commanded. “You are going north. To Aldershot Grange. You will barely have time for breakfast. ”
Charlotte sat up. There were dark circles of pain under her eyes, but her manner was defiant. “I will do no such thing!”
“If necessary I will drag you from that bed and send you north in your nightrail!” The words grated. “Now, rise and prepare for your journey.”
“The baby is too young to travel. She—”
“Will stay here. The wet nurse can take care of her, and Cook has agreed to help. ”
Charlotte stared at him speechless. She leapt from the bed and tried to dart around him and run from the
room. Rowan blocked her way.
“I have learned that I have to leave London again,” he said menacingly. “And I will not leave you here to consort with such as Francis Tremont.
“Oh, but, Rowan—”
“The baby and I will join you in June—or July at the latest. Now dress!” He flung her away from him.
And so on a sparkling April day Charlotte found herself careening north in a locked coach from which she could not escape. She had tried to scream as she was bundled unceremoniously into it, and Rowan had clapped a hand over her mouth and promptly bound and gagged her. He had pulled down the leathern flaps over the coach windows and she heard him tell Yates that her bonds and gag were to be removed once they were well out of London and on the open road.
“My lady will be sensible then,” he said warningly, turning to look at Charlotte.
Unable to speak, Charlotte had glared at him from the coach’s dim interior, and struggled with her bonds.
Yates had laughed.
22
Aldershot Grange, Summer 1734
Aldershot Grange seemed much the same. Charlotte looked around her at the big gray stone house with its steep roof slates mirrored in the silvery Derwent Water and had the eerie feeling that she had never been away. Livesay was still there, and Cook—and Wend came running out when she saw who it was leaning out of the dark coach and waving.
They greeted her with tears of joy.
“We thought you’d never come back," Wend confided, cocking her head and adding, “You look awful."
“I m sure I do, Wend," Charlotte sighed. She’d scarcely slept on the journey north, jolted and bruised and grieving for her child back in London and for all that would never be. Yates had kept up a grueling pace, and now he came down from the driver’s seat, leering at Wend, who took a step backward away from him.
“This is Yates," Charlotte told them harshly. “He’s my husband’s manservant and he doubles as butler in our London house. But he won’t be replacing you, Livesay. I’ll see to that," she added with a vengeful look at Yates.
They had never heard her speak thus to an underling, and troubled looks were exchanged.
But Yates was not staying. He left the following morning. Charlotte was heartily glad. She hoped never to see the taciturn giant again.
Other things had changed around the Derwent Water: Lord Pimmerston was dead—the gallant's disease had not got him after all, he had succumbed to a stroke. His nephew who had inherited his lands and his title never came to Castle Stroud at all, Wend told her. The caretaker’s joints were too old and creaky to allow him to care for the place properly. Once, passing by, Wend had seen bats flying out of a broken upstairs window.
Charlotte thought that was a shame, because Castle Stroud was the loveliest house she had ever seen.
Wend's family were all gone now. Her father and the younger children had been swept away by fever in the spring and her sister had shown up suddenly from nowhere and taken Wend's mother away to live with her in Lincolnshire, where she had married a draper.
Charlotte never quite forgave Rowan for sending her north in the manner he did, and when in June she realized reluctantly that she was pregnant again, she told herself fiercely that if she survived she would always consider this new baby the child of rape.
Rowan came north in July and brought with him Cassandra and a new wet nurse, who seemed to adore the baby. Charlotte gathered the child in her arms but gave Rowan a level look and turned away. She had thought long and hard these past months—and had liked nothing she saw in her future.
It was a stormy beginning to their life in the north of England.
Rowan had missed her. He had at last come to terms with her youth and inexperience and was eager to make amends.
“I was hard on you, Charlotte,” he admitted when at last they were alone in the big square bedroom where she had spent so much of her youth.
“Yes. You were.”
“But I will make it up to you.”
“How?” she asked woodenly. “I am pregnant again, Rowan. A souvenir of our parting. ”
He was taken aback, and for once a guilty flush spread over his hard features. “I did not think that one night—”
“Oh, did you not? My mother told me that babies were easiest conceived right after birth and that it was a time to be careful. But did you care? No!”
“It is too late to say that I am sorry,” he said gravely. “But at least I can make a better home for you and Cassandra. ”
Cassandra—Tom’s child. Charlotte realized suddenly on what perilously thin ice she skated. If Rowan were to turn against Cassandra. . . .
“Yes, she said, turning away. “I am very tired, Rowan, she cast over her shoulder. “I had not recovered my strength before you sent me hurtling north. And now this new life within me needs all I can give it. I must rest. I will see you at dinner.”
Frowning, he let her go. But in the days that followed, he proved that he meant what he said. He hired workmen, he made repairs, he had Aldershot Grange painted and refurbished until even Livesay looked dazed at the change in the place. He bought Livesay new livery, and a trim indigo costume with a white apron and white cap for Wend, whom he now styled as lady’s maid to Charlotte. Wend was ecstatic.
“Me in these new clothes—and you in silks and satins!” she marveled. “It’s a wonderful change, isn’t it?”
Charlotte smiled at Wend and kept her own counsel. She’d have traded her silks and satins for homespun any day, could she just have turned back the clock.
Summer slipped into autumn and Rowan disappeared again, going she knew not where. Back to London, she told everyone. Back to the house on Grosvenor Square, where Yates lorded it over Cook and the chambermaids. . . . And another Yuletide was celebrated at Aldershot Grange, celebrated quietly, for Charlotte was expected to give birth before Twelfth Night. She did. On the last day of December it began to snow, and with the first flakes Charlotte’s labor pains began. At first it was as if the pain walked round her, testing her—and then, as the snow outside deepened, the pain came in whirling gusts like the wind that shrieked down the chimney. A great gale from the cold North Atlantic tore through the Lake Country, snapping off tree limbs, blowing off roof tiles in a torrent of white. And in the big square bed in Aldershot Grange where Charlotte fought for her life, the all-consuming pain blotted everything out until her world became one long unending scream.
“She’s going,” muttered the sweating doctor. “I can’t bring it. And she’s weakening.”
“Here, let me.” With surprising strength, Wend pushed him aside. “Charlotte.” She gripped Charlotte’s hands in her own, and her anxious voice penetrated through the red sea of pain that roiled in Charlotte’s head. “Take strength from me,” whispered Wend. “I’ve got plenty.
And somehow Charlotte did seem to take strength from Wend. The doctor later said it was a miracle. He had been sure her failing strength would never be enough to bring forth the baby. But it was.
So Baby Phoebe, named for Charlotte’s grandmother, was born on the first day of January.
“I don’t think you’ll ever be able to bear another child,” the doctor told Charlotte as she lay back weakly with her eyes closed, pale and soaked with perspiration from her endeavors. “Nor should you,” he added sternly.
Nobody had to tell Charlotte that Death had brushed her with its dark wings. She was grateful to live to face the new day—and to clasp her new daughter in her arms. A daughter as dark as Cassandra was fair.
Rowan came home on a freezing February day. He never wrote, so it was always a surprise to see him. This time Charlotte could greet him with a child who was truly his.
“She has your coloring,” she said. “I think she looks like you.”
“God help her then!” He grinned. But he picked up the baby and studied her approvingly, and when he gave her back to Charlotte, his dark eyes glowed.
He had brought her a gift, a beautiful red-embroidered white shawl ca
refully folded up in his saddlebag.
“Would you like to go back to London with me?” he asked.
Charlotte thought about that gloomy silent house on Grosvenor square. “Not yet,” she hedged. “The doctor feels I am still too frail.”
So Rowan went back alone.
In the years that followed, Charlotte ventured down to London only twice—and both occasions ended in disaster.
The first time, as they were leaving a music hall, that famous womanizer Lord Kentridge, more than a little drunk, had detached himself from a noisy group and swayed to a stop before Charlotte. Entranced by her beauty, he turned to Rowan and hiccuped. “You’re Keynes, aren’t you? Heard your wife was smashing—and she is!”
Rowan had promptly seized the opportunity to strike up an acquaintance with Kentridge, and he and Charlotte had accompanied the reeling peer home to his house in George Street, where he told them he was “batching it” while his wife sojourned in Bath.
Rowan evinced an interest in his lordship’s library and told Charlotte in an undertone to maneuver Kentridge to the music room and keep him occupied.
Flustered and confused by this strange request, Charlotte nonetheless endeavored to do so. She succeeded far too well.
Rowan came back—from searching Kentridge’s desk for some papers that interested Walpole—to find that Kentridge had a burning-cheeked Charlotte backed up against the spinet and was trying to pull her bodice down by main strength. Rowan, who had not found the papers and was in a bad mood, wrenched Kentridge off so roughly that his lordship’s handsome mauve silk coat split clean down the back. Indeed Rowan thrust Kentridge away from Charlotte with a force that sent his amorous lordship careening through the music room’s open French windows into the thorny arms of a rosebush in the garden outside. His lordship, sobered by his fall and all too keenly aware of Rowan’s reputation for swordsmanship, had prudently fought his way free of the thorns, dusted himself off, and returned without a word to put on another coat.
Back at Grosvenor Square, the incident had put Rowan into a black rage.
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