by Ashley March
Matthews left the room, and Joanna returned to her position on the lounge.
Charlotte glanced over her shoulder, then at Joanna. “It’s strange, isn’t it, that you’ve returned to Norrey Hill, instead of staying at Lord Grey’s estate?”
“Norrey Hill is my home. The Grey mansion never was. And besides, my husband’s heir didn’t want me there.” Joanna leaned forward. “But I have a feeling you didn’t decide to visit just to find a messenger, or to discuss my current domicile.”
“No.” This was where things became a bit tricky. Charlotte still hadn’t quite figured out what she should or should not reveal. “I would trust there is no grudge between us, Joanna.”
Only a slight flicker in her eyes showed any hint of interest. It was true; if ever there had been a perfect woman for Philip, it was Joanna.
“Of course not. How can I hold you at fault for anything, when it was Ethan and Philip who took advantage of us both?”
Charlotte took a deep breath and then, without fully knowing she was going to do it, blurted, “Philip has agreed to a divorce.”
Joanna blinked. That was the only sign she gave of being surprised. Yes, she was perfect for him.
“And he wants to marry you instead,” Charlotte added.
She laughed. Finally, an emotion. “Is that why he was flirting so outrageously with me this morning?”
Charlotte gave a terse nod, a brief jerk of her head. The reminder of Philip fawning over Joanna’s hand made her temples throb with renewed anger.
“If Ethan is the last man on earth I would consider marrying, Philip is surely the second to last. Good heavens. Why would he even consider such a thing, after Ethan and I nearly eloped?”
“It seems he’s decided you would make the perfect duchess.” Perfect, perfect, perfect. Philip thought he was perfect, thought Joanna was near perfect. All of this, of course, pointed to the very annoying and obvious fact that he found Charlotte severely lacking.
She knew this. She’d always known he looked down on her. What made no sense, however, was why she should care at any point in time what his opinion of her was.
She was being irrational. Philip had promised her a divorce if she would help him win Joanna, and now she was jealous?
Impossible.
She just . . .
She simply . . .
Charlotte cast about in desperation for a reasonable explanation for her strange thoughts, entirely ignoring Joanna as she continued to babble on about why she could never possibly allow Philip to court her.
She only wanted to prove he was wrong about her. That was it. To make him see that Joanna, with all of her near-Puritan clothes and stiff behavior, was in no way better than Charlotte.
Just because Joanna was the daughter of an earl and a widowed marchioness, and Charlotte was the daughter of the local squire—well, it meant nothing.
Nothing at all.
Joanna likely had many flaws. Scads of them.
Charlotte scanned her from the top of her head to the hem of her skirts.
“Charlotte.”
True, it appeared she did conceal them rather well, but she was certain they were there.
“Charlotte.”
“Hmm?” She jerked her gaze back up to Joanna’s face and frowned. Not even a freckle in sight.
“You must convince him to pursue someone else. Anyone else. I am not interested in marrying again, and especially not him.”
“Don’t worry. You won’t have to marry him. You shall simply have to pretend over the next few months that you are growing to like him a little bit more. But most importantly, I need you to let me know if his intentions toward you seem genuine.”
“In what manner?”
“Does he try to kiss you? Seduce you? Write you poems?” Charlotte frowned again. “Why are you laughing?”
“Poems? Seduction? I can no more imagine Philip rhyming two words together than I expect him to climb up to my window and declare his undying love.”
“But it is possible. You saw how he flirted with you today.”
Joanna gave her a considering look, then nodded slowly. “I did indeed.”
“Then you must keep me informed if he continues doing so. And as I said before, you should pretend to like him. I do not trust he will keep his word to divorce me if he doesn’t think he can win you over.”
Joanna stared at her for a long time before finally sighing. “You must admit, this all seems rather ridiculous.”
“I know. But he is giving me a chance to be free. I know you understand—you ran off with Ethan just so you wouldn’t have to marry him.”
“Ethan is the one who—”
Charlotte waved her hand. “Yes, yes, but do not tell me you weren’t relieved.”
A tiny smile lifted the corner of Joanna’s lips. “Very well. I was. Immensely.”
Charlotte reached forward and placed her hand over Joanna’s. “Then help me. Please.”
“It could be quite amusing to see Philip make a fool of himself.”
“Highly entertaining. It shall be like watching a trained monkey perform. Only this time, we will be the trainers.”
Joanna grinned. “I’ve always wanted a pet monkey.”
The wind was picking up. It had blown her bonnet off so many times that Charlotte had finally given it up for lost. The gale whipped her hair every which way now, untangling tendrils from her careful coiffure, flinging them across her mouth, her cheeks, her eyes.
She had to cup her hands around her face to see the roof of Sheffield House, the home where she was no longer welcome.
Charlotte had left Joanna well over an hour ago. She’d raced her mount against the wind, leaving Gilpin the groom trailing behind as she made her way toward the narrow edge of Rutherford property where Sheffield House was just visible over the wide swath of forest and thicket below.
There had been a time when it had seemed Charlotte had three homes: Sheffield House, Ruthven Manor, and Norrey Hill.
The properties were so close to one another that it took little more than half an hour to ride from Sheffield House across Rutherford lands to reach Norrey Hill. A little over an hour and a half on foot. Two hours walking backward. Fifty-six minutes if one skipped the entire way.
It was strange, now, how none of the houses seemed familiar. Even though Joanna was still as kind as she’d ever been, Charlotte had been acutely aware of her position as guest instead of confidante. She couldn’t see Ruthven Manor as anything more than a prison, with Philip as the warden.
And Sheffield House—
Well, she’d stood here for a good twenty minutes, and all she could think was that this must be how the street children felt when they passed the wealthy houses in Mayfair. As if a home and a loving family were foreign luxuries only the rich could possess.
She missed her parents and her brothers. Nicholas, Roland, and Arthur . . . but Ethan most of all. He had been the oldest, the one furthest from her in age, yet he’d been her closest friend. Her protector. Her enthusiastic scapegoat, always willing to take the blame when their adventures turned into mishaps.
Until he had been disowned. And then he had deserted her.
Charlotte had told Philip she wanted to visit her family. Yet, as she looked down at Sheffield House, she knew she wouldn’t be able to. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have waited twenty minutes in an attempt to gather her courage.
She couldn’t face her father’s scorn, her mother’s disappointment.
They would have heard the rumors, even this far from London. They would know everyone thought her to be the modern harlot of Babylon.
And while Philip was right—she had changed in the past three years—she knew her parents wouldn’t consider the change to be for the better.
“Your Grace? Perhaps we should return now.”
Gilpin’s voice swirled around her, the wind catching the consonants and tangling them into a muffled rumble of sound.
Charlotte gave a jerk of her head—just enough of
a nod to acknowledge she heard him—and vaulted into the saddle.
The clouds wrestled in the sky, great big black monsters, their bodies rippling like waves over the landscape.
If they were fortunate, they might be able to beat the storm back to Ruthven Manor.
As they trotted away from where Sheffield and Rutherford lands collided, Charlotte glanced over her shoulder at the house she left behind.
She’d been wrong to hope things had changed, that it would appear any more welcoming than it had when she’d last seen it.
No matter how many times she looked back, she knew Sheffield House would never be her home again.
Chapter 7
“No, Your Grace.You must leave your fingers loose.” Mr. Lesser plucked her fingers away from the harp strings and shook her hand. “Loose!”
Charlotte’s teeth clacked together from the force of the movement, but she dared not draw her hand away from his grasp. The last time she had attempted to do so, he’d threatened to walk out the door and never return.
She’d lost count of the number of times Mr. Lesser had reprimanded her for pulling at the harp instead of gently strumming the strings. It had to be well over twenty by now. And each time he took her hand in his, his voice became a little more strident, his cheeks a little more red.
And somehow, even though she’d never seen him run his fingers over his head, his light brown hair had managed to rearrange itself into frazzled, wild tufts sticking out from ear to ear.
“Do you feel”—Mr. Lesser gave her hand another fierce shake—“the looseness? Are your fingers”—he bent until they were face-to-face, his spectacles skewed at a dangerous angle on the tip of his nose—“relaxed?”
Charlotte bit her tongue and nodded. She wouldn’t tell him she couldn’t feel her hand or, for that matter, much of her arm anymore. If she opened her mouth, she feared she would burst out laughing at the image of the perfect madman he presented.
She did not want to offend Mr. Lesser’s sensitive, artistic spirit any further. She wanted to play the harp, and, God help the man, he had been hired to teach her.
With one final shake, Mr. Lesser moved her hand to hover over the harp strings. His breath rushed out in a harsh sigh, as if he were fortifying himself to face another nerve-wrenching battle.
Charlotte thought she heard him murmur a supplication to the heavens before he released her hand and said, “Again.”
She curved her fingers ever so slightly, making sure to only lightly rest them against the strings instead of pushing at them as she’d been inclined to do earlier.
“Dear Lord, please,” Mr. Lesser whispered above her shoulder.
Then, as she’d seen him do a dozen or more times already that morning, Charlotte moved her hand from one end of the harp to the other, allowing the strings to ripple in a vibrant melody beneath her fingertips.
“Yes,” Mr. Lesser breathed. “Did you feel the difference? Again.”
Charlotte’s heart thumped hard against her rib cage as she reached forward. She hadn’t felt the difference, not really. To her, her fingers were just as stiff as before. But if Mr. Lesser approved, who was she to think otherwise?
Drawing a quiet breath, she strummed her fingers along the strings once again, trying to mimic her previous performance.
And once again, Mr. Lesser whispered his approval. “Yes, yes. Continue.”
One, two, three, four times in succession, Charlotte played it perfectly, her confidence and pleasure building with each quiet murmur from Mr. Lesser. Soon, she began to believe she could feel the difference in the way she moved. Perhaps it was because her wrist was a little more slack, her motions a little more fluid. Or maybe it was because her shoulder had relaxed after all the shaking, and was no longer hunched up around her ear.
“One more time, and then we shall move on from this simple exercise to plucking individual notes.”
Charlotte nodded.At last. It had taken forever, but she had finally succeeded. They would continue the lesson, and Mr. Lesser would return from London next week as scheduled. He would not leave her to be alone with her stiff, tense fingers and a lonely, unplucked harp.
She stretched her arm and set her fingers over the first string. Then, with slow reverence, she drew her arm toward her. Closing her eyes, she listened to the chorus of notes, trying to pick out the Cs from the Ds and the rest of the harp-sized alphabet.
Then, a third of the way through, she faltered. Her fingers plunked over the strings, and her eyes flew open as her index finger actually sailed through the space between the strings to peek at her from the other side.
“What?” Mr. Lesser’s voice came from somewhere behind her. “What happened?”
Charlotte whirled around on her small seat and searched the music room. Her gaze lingered on the open doorway, her heart pumping in rapid, staccato beats.
She’d thought—
Charlotte shook her head.
She’d been certain Philip had entered the room. How else could she explain the sudden prickle of her skin, heating her every nerve as if someone had lit a fire in the hearth?
Shrugging, she turned around. Perhaps he’d simply walked past.
Mr. Lesser immediately picked up her hand and held it close to his face, examining it. “Your fingers are no longer loose,” he said accusingly.
“I’m sorry.”
Disappointment made the narrow angles of his face even harsher, and he dropped her hand to straighten his spectacles. “I do not think you are yet ready to move on, Your Grace. You must perfect this exercise before you can begin the next. One more time, or a hundred if it must be. Again, again!”
Charlotte nodded and willed herself to relax. But that odd feeling, the one that alerted her of Philip’s nearness, would not disappear.
Drawing a deep breath, she threw a glance over her shoulder, hoping to catch him as he spied on her, but no one was there.
“Your Grace?” Mr. Lesser asked.
Charlotte slipped a small smile to Mr. Lesser and lifted her arm.
“Your fingers,” he warned.
Before he could reach for her, she shook her own hand. For the thousandth time.
“Very good,” he said. “Once more. Begin.”
No other duke would lurk in shadows. Philip was certain of this.
Yet he couldn’t help himself, hiding in the corridor outside the music room, listening to Charlotte attempt to play the harp. A shudder racked his body as she drew out another wretched, painful sound from the instrument.
She was horrible.
Completely, absolutely, utterly horrible. And somehow, it made him love her all the more.
Every few seconds, her fingers would come to a startling halt, the last plucked string vibrating forlornly with its dull echo.
Still, he couldn’t bring himself to walk away. It would be another half an hour until her harp lesson ended and his husband lessons were scheduled to begin, but Philip could think of nothing he’d rather do than stand outside this doorway.
It was fortunate he had remembered their discussion of her wanting a harp long ago. Sadly, it was one of the few distinct memories he had of her when she was younger. He clearly recalled the way her face lit up, her mouth curving with wistfulness as she spoke of seeing a woman play a harp and thinking she was one of God’s angels come to earth. He’d forgotten that day until recently, when he’d begun plotting ways to woo her again. The harp was one of his more brilliant ideas.
Very well. It had been his only brilliant idea. In comparison, the nausea-inducing poem of epic proportions he’d written in three days had been an utter catastrophe. Thankfully it hadn’t taken nearly as long to burn. Now if only he could think of another thousand gifts to erase the innumerable ways he had hurt her . . .
Charlotte suddenly appeared around the edge of the door frame. “Aha! I knew you were spying on me.”
She was so beautiful. God must have been having a very, very good day when he created her. Philip just stared for a long mome
nt, until he could catch his breath. “I was doing no such thing.”
Charlotte crossed her arms over her chest and tapped her foot.
“I was—”
“Spying on me,” she repeated firmly.
“—merely ensuring you were behaving yourself,” he finished.
Charlotte narrowed her eyes. “I doubt Joanna would appreciate a husband who constantly monitors her behavior.”
Philip bit back a grin. So this was how she wished to play the game. He cleared his throat and gestured grandly to the music room entrance behind her. “No doubt you are correct, my dear. Do proceed, and I shall return in half an hour to begin our other lessons.” He paused, lifting an eyebrow. “Or do you suppose Lady Grey would take pleasure in having her husband watch her continue her music lessons?”
Charlotte glanced over her shoulder, supposedly at the waiting figure of Mr. Lesser. When she turned back, a frown tilted the corners of her mouth downward. “I don’t think Joanna has music lessons.”
Philip took her elbow and gently tugged her inside. “Well, if I were her husband, I would give her anything she wanted. And I think she might like to learn to play the harp as well, do you not?”
“Well, I suppose she might—”
“And she would want to have her husband’s support.”
They came to a standstill a few feet from Mr. Lesser, who tactfully looked away as he pretended to study the various bits of bric-a-brac around the room. Charlotte pulled her arm out of his grasp. “Nonsense. I do not need your support—”
Philip wagged a disapproving finger in front of her face. “Ah, ah. You are thinking of yourself. I know you do not need me. But I am thinking of Lady Grey. If she is to consider marrying me, if I am to be the perfect husband, I must begin now. I must act as I should in the future.” He flicked a hand toward Mr. Lesser. “Go. Pretend you are Lady Grey and I am ...” He paused, then grinned. “Well, I am a much better version of myself.”
Charlotte gave him a withering glare. “No more than three months.”
Philip inclined his head. “Only three months.”
She wrinkled her nose. “Bloody hell. It sounds like such a long time. Why not two?”