“Maybe,” Charlotte allowed reluctantly. “Still… he normally survives on Lord Dunstan’s scraps, yet here he is without him, staying at the most expensive hotel.”
Cecily’s eyes widened. “You think he received the ransom and is living off it?”
“Or stole it from the thieves and is living off it. Either way, he did not return it to Lord Dunstan.”
“But you’re guessing,” Cecily said. “As we’ve already agreed people guess, quite wrongly, about you and me.”
Charlotte, afraid all she had done was make Cornell more appealing in Cecily’s eyes, said no more on the subject but prepared for the ball with some foreboding.
*
Alvan, appalled that he had assaulted Charlotte not once but twice during her overnight stay at the hall, sank at first into an even deeper agony of despair, the memory of his behavior spiraling round and round his mind with all the rest of the blackness, until one simple fact stood out in both incidents.
She hadn’t treated it as assault. He had seized her, kissed her, manhandled her, because he had imagined she was not real but a figment of his fevered dreams. But on neither occasion had she resisted.
In fact, her lips had parted sweetly, her body had melted into his arms, responded with passion to his every touch. Just as in their reckless pursuit of the thieves. She hadn’t been afraid or insulted. Only his knowledge that his behavior had been ungentlemanly in the extreme had made him assume otherwise.
You shouldn’t leave it, Cecily had told him in connection with his rejected proposal to Charlotte. I may be wrong, but I don’t think you need to hide anything from her.
Charlotte had seen him at his worst, and she had let him kiss her. Perhaps Cecily was right and it had not been any lack of feeling that had caused Charlotte to reject him. If only he had told her the truth, that he loved her, that he sensed the beginnings of intense, infinite happiness with her, that he would die to create for her one moment of joy…
By God, he had a mountain to climb, to haul himself out of this black pit and try. For her sake as well as his. Whether Cecily was right or wrong, he would follow her advice. He would not leave it, not if it took the rest of his life to win her.
Throwing off the blanket—he had again wakened in the library with the sour taste of stale brandy in his mouth—he sprang to his feet and strode out into the passage, yelling for Hanson.
A couple of days of hard work and exercise, decent food and no alcohol, and he would begin to feel more normal again. Now that he had something to live for, and someone to win.
*
Returning from a long, bracing walk through the familiar fen, he found a letter from Lord Overton, dated a few days before from Brighton, where his lordship was staying with Thomasina and little Eliza.
He stared at his valet, frowning. “Why am I bothered about Brighton?”
“Because Lord Dunstan is there, your grace?”
Alvan nodded. “That will be it… no, it isn’t. Dunstan went to Brighton without Cornell. Where is Cornell?”
At least he had had the forethought to have Cornell watched discreetly by his agents, for he did not trust the man or his vindictiveness. For if Dunstan had cast him off due to Alvan’s warnings, he would bear a serious grudge.
Wordlessly, Hanson pushed two unopened letters toward him.
Alvan swore as he broke the wafer of the first and read. “Damn the man,” he said intensely. “He’s in Blackhaven.”
*
The assembly room dance in Blackhaven was a monthly event which had come into being for the large number of visitors staying in the town since the discovery of its miracle water. It was also attended by the local gentry and, on this occasion, by the castle family, too.
The dowager Countess of Braithwaite, escorted by her only son, the earl, had graciously brought her two young daughters to the dance. “Serena is not yet out,” she informed Lady Barnaby, “but it seems sensible to give her a taste before I take her to London with Frances for the rest of the season. I am very glad to meet you here. I shall send you cards of invitation to our spring ball next week.”
“How very condescending,” Lady Barnaby seethed when the countess had graciously passed on to some other fortunate acquaintance. “I’m sure she forgets that you and I, Cecily, are the daughters of dukes!”
“Still, we should go,” Cecily said. “I like Braithwaite. And Frances.”
Inevitably, Lady Cecily was besieged with requests to dance, which at least meant Cornell could not monopolize her.
Since the night of the theatre, Charlotte had begun to enjoy dressing for social outings. And the fun of it made her feel less ordinary. In another of Thomasina’s evening gowns, this one of diaphanous amber muslin, artfully trimmed and altered, Charlotte did not feel at all out of place at the assembly rooms. On the other hand, she still expected to spend most of the evening against the wall with Lady Barnaby, as she did with her mother at most parties.
But to her surprise, she, too, danced nearly all the time. She could only suppose that the men concerned were trying to get closer to Cecily, although they were certainly not rude enough to give any indication of this. In fact, for the most part, they were enjoyable company and seemed to find her so.
This recalled the night of the Laceys’ party when she danced with the duke, and was then, to her surprise, besieged with other partners, some of whom had generally ignored her in the past. People were fickle. But there was no denying that it was more fun to dance than to watch other people.
Even when Frank Cornell asked her to dance, she fought her instinctive discomfort by discussing his capture and imprisonment by the thieves in Sussex.
“It must have been terrifying,” she said sincerely.
“I did fear for my life.”
“Did you know the innkeeper and his family pursued them to try and rescue you?”
His eyes narrowed. “I heard you aided Alvan to chase them from the manor.”
“You don’t sound very pleased,” she observed.
“I would be more grateful had it not put my life at risk.”
“They were going to kill you anyway,” Charlotte said brutally. “I understand that was their nature. Having served your purpose, you were no further use to them. So in fact, our pursuit and their chaotic flight helped give you your chance to escape.”
Cornell smiled unpleasantly. “Is that what his grace of Alvan says?”
“No,” she said amiably. “It’s what I said. I thought you would be pleased that Lord Dunstan got your ransom back.”
For a fraction of a second, an ugly look marred his patiently smiling expression. She knew what she had already guessed was right. That although nearly all the stolen property, including purses and jewelry, had been retrieved from the thieves, Dunstan’s purse had not. She suspected Dunstan knew why, since he was in Brighton and his one-time friend at the opposite end of the country in Blackhaven. More to the point, Cornell saw that she knew.
“You are a very busy girl for a nobody,” he said unpleasantly.
It was meant to be intimidating and it did indeed cause a nasty twist in her stomach. But she held his gaze as they turned and came back together for the final bow. “We nobodies always are,” she said, and inclining her head, walked away toward Lady Barnaby without waiting for his escort.
However, when she sat down beside the lady, she discovered Cornell bowing to Lady Barnaby, and then to Cecily, with whom he went off with the waltz. His face was so smooth and contented by then that Charlotte only knew she had rattled him because he cast her a smile of triumph over his shoulder.
But there was no time to speak to Cecily’s aunt as she wished, for her own hand was solicited for the waltz and she was obliged to stand up once more.
She had almost forgotten that this was the only the second time in her life that she had waltzed. But the simple steps came naturally back to her, and although her partner did not seem either as graceful or as firm in his guidance as the duke, she managed to follow hi
m without difficulty. Her partner was a handsome man who had brought his sick sister to Blackhaven in the hope of a cure for her. He seemed kind by nature and his conversation was interesting. Charlotte liked him, but she felt none of that tingling awareness, that delicious warmth she had known in Alvan’s arms. But she had always known those feelings hadn’t been caused by the dance. It had always been the duke.
And he had told her to go, with an unmistakable hatred she had done nothing to earn. She could not help feeling indignant at such unjust treatment, considering his own behavior. But mostly, it just hurt.
As she tried to banish him from her thoughts and concentrate on her current, pleasant companion instead, she happened to catch sight of another face that she recognized.
Lady Gordyn, Alvan’s first love who had been used by Dunstan for vengeance. She was dancing with an army officer and smiling, but although she looked rather less drawn than she had in Sussex, there was something tragic in the lady’s beauty, something one could not quite describe as faded, because she was far too attractive.
Alvan was a man of deep loyalties and, beneath the cultured façade of his coolness, of powerful feelings, too. Was it Lady Gordyn he had imagined her to be when he had seized her in his melancholy or fever or whatever his family called it? Was it his first, unrequited love he had dreamed of when she had wakened him on the library sofa?
It made no real difference to Charlotte. But as the dance ended, and by chance, she and Lady Gordyn came face to face, neither of them greeted the other. As though by mutual, tacit agreement, they merely bowed distantly and went their separate ways.
“Is that not Lady Gordyn?” Charlotte said disingenuously to Cecily, when they had returned to Lady Barnaby. “Is she here for her health?”
“For her husband’s, so I hear. That is Sir George Gordyn beside her now.”
A rather frail looking man sat by her side, one who seemed old before his time, no doubt through pain or illness.
Perhaps Alvan will forgive her when the husband dies, and then they can marry and he will be happy at last.
She tried to be pleased for him, even if it meant willing a stranger to an early death, but all she accomplished was to churn her feelings up all over again.
*
The following afternoon, Blackhaven’s main hotel hosted a musical recital. Charlotte was eager to attend and Cecily happily accompanied her, persuading Lady Barnaby to come, too, with the hope that the music would be sweet enough to lull her to sleep.
“Nothing short of bagpipes or military drums will keep me from my afternoon nap,” Lady Barnaby pronounced and indeed she closed her eyes almost as soon as they were seated.
The young Earl of Braithwaite arrived shortly afterward, escorting his sisters. A few army officers in bright red coats added dash to the audience. The gentleman she had waltzed with bowed to her as though pleased to see her. And then Cornell walked in. She could have ignored him had he not made a point of bowing directly to Lady Cecily. He even sat in the empty chair at the end of their row, and Cecily smiled at him. Fresh unease niggled at Charlotte.
The first half of the recital consisted of a lady harpist, who played a variety of beautiful pieces Charlotte had never heard before, and moreover, did it so beautifully that Charlotte was swept away and forgot everything else. Surreptitiously, she raised her gloved hand and wiped the escaped tear from the corner of her eye before it trickled down her cheek. As she did so, something made her glance to the side, and there, leaning one shoulder against the wall with his gaze fixed on her face, stood the Duke of Alvan.
Chapter Sixteen
Time seemed to stand still. He didn’t look away, and she could not. Nor could she breathe. And then the music stopped and applause erupted around her. The world flooded back, and she dragged her gaze back to the harpist, while excited speculation surged within her. How was he and why had he come?
He looked very much like the duke she had first met, tall and elegantly dressed, his hair well cut and his face closely shaven. She could barely match him in her mind with the barbaric, bearded, half-dressed creature who had kissed her at the hall. Or pressed his wildly aroused body into hers…
Heat swept over her. She fanned herself in an effort to hide the rising color. And then beside her, Cecily cried joyfully through the applause, “Look, Aunt, it’s Alvan!”
Fortunately, this was the beginning of the short interval when tea and other refreshments were served. So, Cecily’s eager surge toward her brother was in keeping with the movements of everyone else, even Lady Barnaby although she sighed when Cecily all but tugged her to her feet.
He had told her to go. He had looked at her with loathing and told her to go. Whoever he had imagined her to be when he had embraced her, it was not Charlotte he had wanted. She strongly suspected it was Lady Gordyn, whom he must know was in Blackhaven. Why else would he have come? Had the prospect of meeting her lifted him out of his melancholia?
Although it wasn’t really in her nature, she tried to take a leaf out of Alvan’s own book, and remain cool and distant. She hung back as he kissed his aunt’s hand and cheek, and then his sister’s. Cecily darted aside to reveal Charlotte, much like a conjuror triumphantly pulling a rabbit from his hat.
Charlotte’s heart gave two hard, rapid beats and then seemed to stop. Surely, she was imagining the turbulence behind the cool grey eyes. Or perhaps he was simply ashamed of his behavior at Mooreton Hall.
“Miss Charlotte,” he said, holding out his hand in clear expectation. “A pleasure to see you again.”
Without causing a scene, she could hardly refuse, so she gave him her hand and slid it free again almost before he had finished bowing over it.
“You’re looking well, Alvan,” his aunt said approvingly.
He released Charlotte’s gaze, and her breath came out in a rush as he turned instead to Lady Barnaby. “Thank you, I feel much better. I apologize for being such a poor host last week.”
“What brings you to Blackhaven?” Cecily demanded.
“I thought I’d try the wretched waters,” he replied. To Charlotte, it was clearly a rehearsed answer, thrown out much too flippantly to be true.
“And what do you think?” Lady Barnaby asked seriously.
“I don’t know yet. I have only just arrived.”
“Ah, did they tell you at the house we were here?” Lady Barnaby asked.
“No, I have rooms here at the hotel. I only followed the music from curiosity, and there you all were. What did you think of the harpist?”
“Divine,” Cecily said promptly. “I wish I had practiced my own lessons more! There is a pianist still to come who is prophesied to be the next rage in London.”
The duke’s presence caused an increasing stir as he was recognized and his identity swept around the hall. Alvan appeared supremely indifferent to the attention, if he even noticed. Charlotte supposed he was used to it and merely shut it out.
She hung back a little as they took tea and were greeted by acquaintances desperate for an introduction to the duke. Only in the chaos of setting down tea cups and returning to the seats for the second part of the recital, did she come face to face with Alvan with any degree of privacy.
“How are you?” he asked.
“Well,” she managed. “Lady… Barnaby and Lady Cecily have been most kind.” She was already moving away from him with something approaching panic, when she remembered what he needed to know, and hastily turned back. “Mr. Cornell is here.”
“I know.”
“Oh.” Slightly deflated, she would have retreated once more, had his gaze not clung to hers with something close to a challenge which she was at a loss to account for. “I think he does not mean you well. I’m sure he’s spending the ransom money and he suspects you and I know it.”
“Is that all you have to say to me?” All but interrupting her, his words were abrupt and quiet.
She blinked. You should never have come here! Just go! Go! “Yes,” she said quietly and walked away t
o her seat beside Cecily.
*
Alvan loved that she was so moved by music. As was he. The gifted harpist helped lift him up, banishing the last tendrils of blackness that hovered still around his mind. Just seeing her made him happy. Moreover, there was something very right in her being with Cecily. How the two had met and become friends, he had no idea. It might have been chance, although it was more likely to have been his sister’s curiosity. She would have discovered he meant to offer for Thomasina and somehow worked out that it was Charlotte who obsessed him.
Charlotte’s distant manner did not cast him down for the tumult in her eyes when she had discovered him watching her from the wall told him all he needed to know. She did care for him, and he had hurt her, several times over. By not offering his love with his hand at Audley Park, and by his awfulness to her at the hall, assaulting her and then shouting at her to go as if it had been her fault. He did not mistake the ground he had to make up, but if she cared… he was sure she did.
Bidden to dinner at the house his aunt had taken in Shore Street that evening, he presented himself a few minutes before seven, and instead of waiting in the drawing room where he was led by an awed servant, he wandered off to explore, in the hope of running across Charlotte on her own.
He was rewarded as he stuck his head in the door of a pleasant dining room and discovered her walking around the table as though looking for missing cutlery or glasses, or anything not quite perfectly laid out.
She wore the gown that had adorned Thomasina at the Laceys’ party in Sussex, presumably altered to fit her. Somewhere it angered him that she never had anything new, even when travelling with his aunt and sister who were notable figures of fashion in the ton. People would imagine she was some kind of companion. And he doubted she cared.
“Do you organize my formidable aunt, too?” he asked lightly.
She jumped visibly, her gaze flying to him. Color began to seep up her slender neck to her face. But still, she lifted her chin. “I help if I can. I don’t like to have nothing to do.”
The Unmarriageable Collection (Books 1–3) Page 16