The natural order of things. Spiteful dukes and mean-spirited baronesses on top. The Charlottes of the world on the bottom.
“Such a ploy will only humiliate the family and tarnish your father’s memory,” she said, lifting her chin and striding from the room. No matter Robert’s accusations, she was a duchess. At the doorway, she paused. “I will pray that time tempers your grief enough to make you see it for the foolishness it is.”
He stepped within arm’s length and fixed her with a narrow-eyed glare. A chill scuttled down her spine. She might have thought he meant her harm—if she could imagine him dirtying his hands with the effort. Should she call a footman? Or the butler? Would they dare to act against the Duke of Langerton if she did?
In the end, however, he waited only long enough to force her into betraying her own nervousness. She giggled. And when she attempted to stifle the sound, a satisfied smile curved his lips, and he slammed the library door in her face.
Then, and only then, did she allow herself to run—down the corridor, up the stairs, and to her bedchamber.
“Was it as bad as you’d feared, ma’am?” asked her maid, Jane, from the dressing room.
“Worse.” Charlotte paced to the window and looked down on the garden. Just two weeks ago she had sat beside her husband on that very bench and admired the spring blooms. Now, they had already begun to fade.
“Never say His Grace left you with nothing?”
“If only he had, Jane, I might be better off. Instead he left me so much that his son grows vindictive. He means to forestall my claim to any inheritance by contesting the will . . . by contesting the validity of my marriage . . .” Without conscious thought, her eyes darted to the perfectly made tester bed in the center of the room.
The sight of it catapulted her back to her wedding night, when her new husband had stood beside her on the threshold to this room, patted her hand, and told her she had no cause to feel apprehensive. I will not disturb your rest, Lottie dear, he had told her. And he had not—not that night, nor any other.
She had not exactly been saddened by the discovery he did not intend to share her bed. Certainly nothing her aunt had told her had given her cause to look forward to what happened between husband and wife. And the late duke had been an old man, hardly the stuff of any girl’s fantasy. Not that she ever permitted herself those sorts of fantasies.
Still, she had felt a pang of something—something for which she had no word, either in French or English—when he had brushed her knuckles with dry lips and wished her good night before retiring to his separate chambers. She had always been so very lonely, especially at night, when the house grew still but her mind did not.
She had let herself imagine that, perhaps, married life would be different.
Entering from the dressing room on silent feet, Jane must have caught the direction of Charlotte’s gaze for she said only “Oh,” in a quiet, knowing way.
Jane knew how things had stood between her mistress and her husband, of course. Such matters could hardly be kept from one’s personal servants. How many others suspected the truth? Could Robert somehow use it as evidence against her? The late duke’s mind had been perfectly sound, but all in her marriage had not been as it should have.
“They won’t do you as they did poor Lady Cleaves, will they?” Jane asked.
With fingertips suddenly turned to claws, Charlotte gripped the windowsill for support. She had forgotten all about the Cleaves affair, although it had been on everyone’s tongue just over a year ago. Lord Cleaves had accused his wife of infidelity and announced his intention of suing for a divorce. Lady Cleaves had countered with a petition for an annulment on the grounds of her husband’s impotence, claiming their four-year marriage had never been consummated. Detailed accounts of the proceedings had been published in the papers and laughed over in none-too-hushed tones. Aunt Penhurst, for one, had enjoyed snickering over the stories of Lord Cleaves’s failed attempts to demonstrate his capacity in front of the officers of the court. Meanwhile, Lady Cleaves had been forced to undergo physical examination by two midwives to prove she was . . . What had been the legal term bandied about? Ah, yes: virgo intacta. Then, Charlotte had not been quite sure what it meant.
Now, however, she knew all too well.
Heat swept up from Charlotte’s chest, crossed her cheeks, and settled in the tips of her ears, leaving her fingers cold.
The world could laugh at her if it chose. She was half French, the daughter of a loose woman. She was used to derision, used to suspicion. She had never cared a jot for the world’s good opinion, and she knew she had done nothing to earn its censure.
But she could not bear to think of anyone laughing at a man who had been so very, very kind.
As she stared down into the greenery, her eyes unfocused, a movement on the edge of the garden caught her attention. Someone in dark, nondescript clothes, those of neither a servant nor a gentleman, stood almost hidden by the stone pillar at the corner of the fence. Perfectly positioned to see both the house and the mews. A thief? But it was broad daylight.
“There’s a man,” she began, turning away from the window and gesturing behind her.
Jane nodded eagerly and came forward. “Now, that’s the ticket, ma’am. A man. There must be some chap you took a fancy to, once upon a time. Someone you’d like to . . . That is, you might be a widow, but you’re still just a bride at heart, and a bride has a right to look forward to—well, you know what I mean. No one would have to be any the wiser.”
Charlotte’s jaw had grown slack as understanding dawned, so that it was an effort to muster a sound. “Jane!” She giggled nervously once more—drat it all. Dropping her gaze to the carpet, she said, in what she hoped was a scolding tone, “Surely you aren’t suggesting that I—that I indulge in—?”
“Me? Why, ’twas you who mentioned a man,” said Jane, leaping to her own defense.
“Yes. A man. Standing just outside the garden gate.” Charlotte nodded toward the window, still unable to raise her eyes. “I wonder what business he could have there?”
Jane hurried across the room to take a peek, then shook her head. “Not a soul about, ma’am. He must’ve moved on.”
Charlotte looked again, but Crescent Lane was empty, just as Jane had said. She scoured every cranny she could see from the window before pushing away and turning back into the room. What foolishness. Robert’s threat had made her jittery, that was all. She had nothing to fear from some poor fellow out for an afternoon stroll. Probably just the kitchen maid’s new beau.
“We are going to London, Jane,” she announced, straightening her shoulders. Duchesses did not slouch. To say nothing of giggle.
“Ma’am?” Jane spun away from the window and looked her up and down. “Now?”
“Now.”
Fortunately, her trunk was ready. She had come to her marriage with only a few dresses, and those had been replaced too soon by a new wardrobe—of somber black crape, rather than the lavish spring gowns her husband had urged her to buy. The old dresses had already been packed away.
Into a valise Jane placed a few necessaries and a black gown almost identical to the one Charlotte was wearing. A second valise was soon filled with a similar set of items for Jane, all that would be needed for a night—or perhaps two, given the rapidly lowering sky—on the road.
To the first bag Charlotte added one final item: a battered volume of French poetry that had belonged to her mother. That connection alone would have been enough to make it precious to her, of course, but of greater practical interest were the banknotes now tucked inside. Interleaving the book’s thin pages was everything that remained of the pin money she had been granted on her wedding day. Six weeks ago it had seemed an exorbitant sum. Now, however, if Langerton had his way, it might be all that stood between her and an ignominious return to Aunt Penhurst.
If she would even be willing to take Charlotte back.
When the footman arrived to carry down the trunk, Charlotte placed he
r bonnet on her head, lowered its lacy black veil over her face, and strode from the house. Jane followed, a valise in each hand.
By the time the driver stopped to change horses at a coaching inn east of Chippenham, the fine morning had indeed turned to rain. The inn yard was a slurry of mud, as travelers either hurried to depart before the weather got worse, or lingered in hopes of improvement. Charlotte and Jane picked their way to the door of the inn and were shown to a private parlor to wait.
From the window, Charlotte watched as people darted among the carriages, their faces hidden beneath umbrellas or the brims of hats, the brighter hues of servants’ livery contrasting sharply with dull-colored, sensible travel garments. Everyone eager to get to the place they belonged.
All except Charlotte, who had never really belonged anywhere.
Under the eaves of the stable, one man stood apart, not hurrying to get out of the weather but looking up at the windows of the inn. A man in a dark, nondescript coat. Despite the distance between them and the blur of raindrops against the window, she felt certain it was the same man she had seen outside the garden that morning.
And he was watching her watch him. Her heart battering against her breastbone, she forced her suddenly frozen fingers to release the curtain. It swung back into place, leaving only a square of muslin where the reflection of her face had been.
An awful suspicion began to form in her mind. Had her stepson ordered her watched?
She shivered now as she had not allowed herself to shiver when his cold eyes had skimmed over her in the library. Robert would stop at nothing to piece together a suit that might keep her from inheriting. Whatever information this stranger could gather might easily be twisted into evidence of her bad character, proof that she was not the sort of woman a duke would choose to wed. At least, not if the duke in question were in his right mind.
No. Impossible. Robert was not the sort to go about hiring spies. Aunt Penhurst had been right. She must stop letting her imagination run away with her.
But what if it wasn’t her imagination?
Her anxious gaze settled on Jane, pouring tea at a table nearer the hearth, clad in one of the better dresses Charlotte had given up for mourning. Jane was so similar in size and shape to Charlotte, the spotted cambric had required almost no alteration.
“I’ll be glad to get back to London, Your Grace,” Jane said. As Charlotte took the steaming cup she offered, the spoon rattled in the saucer. “Gracious, ma’am! You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.”
“No.” Charlotte clamped the silver against the china with her thumb. “Not a ghost.” She felt certain her vision had been all too real. “Have you a sweetheart in town, Jane?”
“No, ma’am.” The girl reinforced the denial with a vigorous shake of her head, but a blush pinked the apples of her cheeks. “Not to say so.”
“Family, then?”
A nod this time. “My sister. Married to a butcher in Clerkenwell.”
It is not as if I am sending the girl into the abyss, Charlotte tried to reassure herself. Jane was eager to return home. Charlotte, on the other hand, had no real home to which she could return.
She stood and studied their paired reflection in the mirror above the mantelpiece. Jane was prettier than she, with her plump cheeks and upturned nose. The veil would hide those features, though, and the coif of nearly black hair behind might have been Charlotte’s, but for its tendency to curl.
“Jane, I wish you to change dresses with me.”
Dark brows shot up her forehead. “Ma’am?”
“I want you to go on to London, alone. We shall switch clothing before we return to the carriage, so anyone who saw us enter may think I am you, and you are I. Before the carriage leaves, I shall slip out and away.”
Jane’s eyes grew wider still. “Why on earth would you do such a thing, Your Grace?”
“Because I wish—” The answer was easy enough, really. Nothing more nor less than she had always wished. Charlotte had often been lonely. But she had never been left alone. Widowhood, for all its sorrows, had held out the promise of independence to her. Langerton, and whatever mischief he planned, threatened to take even that away. A challenge to the will, scandalous aspersions heaped upon her, a watcher at every window? She would be little better than a fish in a bowl. “I wish some time out of the public eye. To—to grieve. And I hope in that time, the new duke will come to his senses.”
“But where will you go?”
“I don’t know.” North—a little cottage in the Lake District, perhaps? Or south, back to France? The possibilities were limited only by the number of banknotes she had stashed away. “But even if I did, I would not tell you.” When Jane looked offended, she explained, “So if anyone asks, you may say honestly that you haven’t any idea where I’ve gone.”
Jane shrugged and began to unpin her dress. “If you wish it, ma’am,” she said in a tone that quite clearly communicated her suspicion that Charlotte had gone round the bend.
When the innkeeper announced their carriage was ready, two women departed exactly as they had come: one all in black, drawing surreptitious glances of sympathy even as her own expression remained hidden behind her dark veil; and another, a servant, equally invisible to the eyes of the other travelers, carrying two small bags.
Once inside the carriage, Charlotte strained her ears to hear over the patter of rain on its roof, waiting for the sounds of the postilion mounting, the rattle of the whip in its socket. Then she gave Jane’s hand a squeeze, picked up her valise, and slipped out the door opposite just as the carriage rumbled into motion, intending to disappear into the anonymous bustle of the inn yard.
At almost the same moment, two other carriages started away, a lone rider arrived, and all was in chaos, but one sweeping glance revealed no sign of the man in the dark clothes. He must have fallen for their deception and followed the coach. Now she needed only to board the next stage, wherever it was bound. Any direction, that is, but the one in which the Duchess of Langerton was believed to be traveling.
With fumbling fingers, she tugged the hood of Jane’s cloak more securely into place, then reached into her bag for the book, for her money. Nothing but fabric met her touch. She dug deeper, up to her elbow in the satchel’s meager contents, before opening it wider and forcing herself to look, to confront the truth her fingertips had already revealed. No book. No black crape. Just her second and third best dresses and Jane’s underthings.
In her haste to escape the coach, she had picked up the wrong valise.
Even as she groped frantically for her reticule, she remembered slipping it around Jane’s wrist to complete the costume. She had nothing with which to complete her journey to a new life. No money for coach fare, not even a coin for dinner at the inn.
Growing wetter and colder by the moment, she stumbled blindly back in the direction of shelter. There would still be a way to go on, there must be a way, if she took just a moment to think—
She saw the valise fly up and heard the side-seam of her dress rip almost before she felt the hand on her arm jerk her to safety. A mail coach thundered through the place where she had been standing a moment before, spraying her with mud and the driver’s curses as it passed.
“Look sharp!” someone shouted from his place at the rear of the coach, and just as quickly as it had come, the danger was past.
“Are you harmed?”
A man’s voice, low and close—accompanied by the realization that the wall against which she had been thrown was actually a man’s chest, that the pounding in her ears was his heart hammering beneath her cheek.
Although her knees shook with the exertion, she forced herself upright and away from his support, determined not to draw more attention her way. “No,” she said.
Or at least, that was what she had meant to say. But the word curved in her throat and left her lips as “Non.”
In these days of revolution and war, most people seemed to be alarmed, even repelled by her French heritage, but on a
t least one memorable occasion, it had been an excuse for unwelcome familiarity. Would the strong hand still cupping her elbow drop away or grip her harder?
The stranger did neither. “Vous êtes française,” he merely said. You are French. It was not a question.
Something about his accent disoriented her. He did not speak French like an Englishman—at least, not like an English gentleman, one who had been tutored in the language from childhood, had spent time in Paris on the Grand Tour, and thought himself a fine fellow when he dropped a romantic phrase or two in some unsuspecting girl’s ear.
Still less did he sound like a Frenchman, though.
She mustered the strength to take another step backward, to free herself from his touch, to look at him while she formulated a reply.
If she had imagined his voice unsettling, she was totally unprepared for his eyes, which were the soft, welcoming blue of a summer sky, startling in a deeply tanned face. He must have lost his hat during the rescue, for rain dripped from dark curls plastered to his forehead, and ran in rivulets down his cheekbones and along his strong jaw.
His clothes offered no more enlightenment as to his status than had his voice: plain, well-tailored, but not elegant—even aside from being spattered with mud. No one would mistake him for a man of fashion. A merchant, perhaps. That might explain his having a few French words at his disposal. But he was as broad-shouldered and brown as a farmer.
Zut alors! Had she grown as snobbish as Robert? What bearing did the cut of the man’s coat have on the fact that he had snatched her from almost certain death beneath the hooves of those horses? Even less did it matter how blue his eyes or how broad his shoulders. Although those shoulders, and the strong arms beneath them, certainly had played their part. And as for his eyes . . .
To Seduce a Stranger Page 2