To Seduce a Stranger

by Susanna Craig

  Apparently without observing him, Mari passed by and into the house. What incredible strength it had required for her to brave that Atlantic crossing once more. But her disability had never interfered with her getting where she wanted to go. For all the imprecations he had heaped on Tempest’s head for encouraging her to come here, he was glad Mari had made that choice. She was almost his only connection, now, to the world in which he had grown into a man, to the life that had been his for so long. It pleased him to see her enjoying the freedom he had always wanted for her, but which had never been his to give.

  Edward leaned his head backward and let himself float on the water, although the heaviness beneath his breastbone threatened to sink him like a stone.

  For many years, the gossips had insisted he was infatuated with Tempest Holderin. He had been her friend, her employee, her protector. He had loved her as a sister. And in other ways, too, if he was being honest with himself.

  Precisely because he cared for her, he had sworn to himself he would never act on his feelings—a promise he had broken exactly twice. Once, with a clumsy kiss that had made her laugh in his face. And once with an even clumsier proposal of marriage.

  His own interference had landed her in a dangerous situation, and the only protection he could think to offer her had been his name—dubious though such protection might be. He had written to her with a shaking hand, telling himself all the while that her upbringing in a vile, violent world had made her tough enough to withstand what he sometimes still feared he would become.

  He had reassured himself with the certainty she would say no.

  Which she had done in spectacular fashion: by sending as her reply to his offer the announcement that she had married another.

  It was just as well. Tempest was right where she wanted, where she needed to be—with a man who was undoubtedly a bit of a rogue, but who knew from experience the folly of trying to tame the sea.

  And he was where he needed to be, as well: at Ravenswood.

  When Tempest had finally been able to free the slaves at Harper’s Hill, she had set him free, too. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say she had set him adrift—although he might have continued in her employ indefinitely, he supposed; might have stayed in Antigua for the rest of his life.

  But once he had carried out her instructions regarding the plantation, he had realized that it was time for him to start a new chapter. Or, to be more precise, to pick up a very old book and see if he might begin again where he had left off many years ago. He had never expected it to be easy.

  He had failed, however, to understand the precise ways in which resuming his life here would be difficult. Perhaps impossible.

  Wanting Charlotte did not make things any easier.

  He had glimpsed enough cracks in her alabaster façade—the nervous giggle, the occasional broken-English phrase, the hints of her troubled past—to know that something hid inside that shell. But he ought never to expect to be the one to discover what. Ought never to dream of becoming a Pygmalion to that lovely marble sculpture, to feel her come to life in his arms.

  Like any work of art, she changed depending on the angle of the viewer. Even looking straight on, he could not be sure what he saw, who she was.

  But if he did not trust her, it was at least in part because he did not trust himself.

  He swam to the pond’s edge, then hoisted himself onto the bank and sat there dripping in the cool night air. He was in no position to demand anything from her. Still less could he offer anything to her. Confronting his father, getting his affairs in order, restoring this estate—those needed to be the sole focus of his attention. He could not let desire for Charlotte distract him from what he had come back to England to do.

  Gathering up his clothes and boots, he set off in the direction of the Rookery and another long, lonely night.

  Chapter 11

  At the first pink light of dawn, long before the hour for making calls, Charlotte set out for the little cottage in the woods to visit Tessie. No sense in pretending that sleep would come. A walk in the fresh air was her last, best hope for restoration.

  Over her arm she carried a basket filled with food. No doubt Mari would raise a disapproving brow when she woke and discovered her pantry had been raided. Or perhaps not, especially once Charlotte explained. At present, Mari seemed to have other things on her mind.

  Although Edward was likely far away by now, she gave the Rookery a wide berth, entering the woods on an unfamiliar path that seemed to point in the right direction. She fought her way along it until she was certain she was lost, then emerged at the edge of a field, where she could see Mr. Markham trudging to work in the distance. Following along the hedgerow, she made her way back to the clearing she sought. Smoke already rose from the cottage’s chimney, and Tessie’s strange, haunting song wove its notes among the cheerier melodies of the birds.

  “Tessie?” Charlotte wished she knew another name to call out.

  Noir was the first to offer a greeting, but Tessie soon followed, still wrapped in her dressing gown. “Is that you, Charlotte?”

  “I’m sorry for calling so early, ma’am.”

  “It’s quite all right. Come in. I was just about to pour some tea.”

  Ducking beneath the lintel, Charlotte entered the little stone hermitage, warmed this morning by a crackling fire. While Tessie busied herself with finding another cup and saucer, the tea kettle whistled merrily on the hob, competing like the birds with Tessie’s habitual tune. Once Tessie had filled the teapot, Charlotte lifted the tray and carried it to the small, battered table that divided the single room between bedchamber and kitchen.

  “How is your husband finding his work at Ravenswood?” Tessie tilted her head to fix Charlotte with her good eye.

  “Challenging, I believe. The estate has fallen into disrepair.”

  “I know. Lord Beckley has not done his duty by the people here.”

  “I wonder at the sort of man who would allow this to happen.” Charlotte poured tea into two cups, surprised by its strength. Tea was dear, and she had fully expected these leaves to have been washed more than once.

  “As well you should,” Tessie agreed, taking a cup from her hand. Only then did Charlotte recognize the pattern: the same as that on the broken fragments of china she had so recently swept from the floor of the dining room at Ravenswood. The dishes in Tessie’s possession were chipped and faded. Had she gone through the abandoned house, scavenging for the best of what remained?

  “Did you know him? Lord Beckley, I mean.”

  Tessie took a sip of tea, then returned her saucer to the table with a steady hand. “It’s not very likely, is it, that an old woman such as I, a vagrant, would have ever met an earl?”

  “No, I—I suppose not. I did not mean to be impertinent. It’s just that—well, I must confess I am curious about why you seem to be hiding here—”

  “Hiding?” Tessie drew herself upright, as much as her injuries would allow. “From what would I have to hide?”

  “Why, nothing, ma’am. I only thought . . .”

  “I prefer to think of myself as surviving.” Lifting a spoon, she gave her tea a brisk stir. The silver, though tarnished, looked as if it had been made to accompany the china. Charlotte wondered that she had not thought to sell it. “We none of us know what hand we will be dealt in life. We have only the choice of how we will play our cards.”

  “But what will you do if the rightful owner comes back to Ravenswood and finds you here?” Charlotte cried. Would Tessie be driven away? Sent to the workhouse?

  Tessie turned toward the light passing through a small square window, covered in oiled paper, not glass. “I have been waiting for that day.” Her voice was quiet, and Charlotte could see only the scarred, expressionless side of her face. Still, to Charlotte’s ear, she sounded almost . . . hopeful.

  “Perhaps it will never come,” Charlotte said, uncertain whether she was offering reassurance, or crushing a long-cherished dream.
/>   For a moment, she wondered if Tessie had even heard her speak. Then she returned her half-blind gaze to Charlotte’s face. “I begin to think you may be right.”

  Unable to choke down the last of her tea, Charlotte soon excused herself and returned to Ravenswood Manor, Noir at her feet. Although the visit had not exactly been a comfortable one, she was not sorry she had gone. Tessie was just what she had needed: living proof that people could make the best of bad situations.

  Charlotte had lain awake all night, reliving those moments in the ruined room, wondering if she had made the wrong decision to come here, to stay here, to hide.

  I am not hiding. I am surviving, Tessie had insisted.

  Charlotte recognized that independent spirit. Once, she had claimed to share it.

  There was safety in the seclusion she had found here. But if she truly intended to be free, she would have to nip her reckless desire for Edward Cary in the bud.

  She might have inherited her mother’s eyes, her hair, her nervous laugh. But she had not inherited her weakness where men were concerned. Yes, fire sparked in her blood every time Edward touched her. But fires died as long as no one put fuel to the flames.

  By the time he returned from London, she would make sure that spark had been doused.

  When she drew near the stables, she found them in an uproar. Garrick was scurrying to and fro, fetching water for strange horses. A man she had never seen was scraping flecks of foam from their sides, and an unfamiliar carriage, a hack by its looks, sat parked in the yard. In his separate stall, Samson watched everything with his ears pricked forward.

  “Has Mr. Cary not left?”

  Water sloshed onto Garrick’s boot and across the straw-strewn stable floor as he thumped a bucket before one of the horses. “Left? An’ where would he go?”

  “He told me yesterday he was leaving for London at first light.”

  The two men exchanged a glance—of commiseration, she decided. Grooms likely did not appreciate being the last to learn of travel plans.

  “Well, he’s here yet. Jus’ went into th’ manor,” he added with a jerk of his chin over his shoulder. “T’ meet with Lord Beckley.”

  * * *

  A few minutes later, and Edward would have missed him. He had been on the point of setting out for Marshfield, the village south of Little Norbury. The one from which he had left so many years ago. Through it passed a regular coaching route, and from there, he could make his way to London in little more than a day. Since he had elected not to leave with Dobbs when he’d had the chance, it was the best avenue of escape remaining to him.

  When Garrick knocked on the door of the Rookery and told him about the earl’s arrival, the better part of him had wanted to push past Garrick and race to the house.

  Instead, he calmly said, “Please tell his lordship I shall make my way up to the manor shortly.”

  His excuse for getting away had come to him.

  Forcing himself to wait—five minutes, fifteen, thirty—had not in the end made him feel more calm when he walked through the front door of Ravenswood Manor, which had been left standing open, no servants in sight. He stepped to the threshold of the Great Room, expecting to find his father within.

  Instead, a man—his own age, not his father’s—turned from inspecting the books on the shelf and stepped toward him without offering his hand. “You must be the steward.” His hair was dark, a shade darker even than Charlotte’s, and his olive complexion belonged more properly to some Mediterranean clime. In a few short strides he came to a stop before Edward and stood, as if waiting for something. When Edward did not bow, the man said, not a little impatiently, “I am Beckley.”

  No, no, no, thumped Edward’s heart, while a single word—how?—screamed in his brain. “I was expecting . . . someone else. An older man.”

  “M’ father, I suppose,” the other said in an affected aristocratic drawl. “He died in early February.”

  Numbness crawled along Edward’s limbs. Shock, not sadness. The stranger’s words joined the others pulsing through his body. Dead, dead, dead. Was it true? It certainly fit with Markham’s story about the change in the collection of rents.

  “Ah,” he managed to say. “And so you are . . . ? That is, I understood the heir to be—”

  “Missing? For many years, yes. In fact,” the man said, throwing himself easily onto the sofa in the center of the room, “I did not always realize I was he. When the late earl died, the story of his son’s disappearance so many years ago began to circulate again. Abducted as a boy, they said. Hidden away. The more I read, the more I began to realize the child they described had been me.”

  With the scream still echoing inside his skull, Edward struggled to make sense of the man’s words. He was a fraud, of course. Masquerading as . . . “Edward Cary.”

  The man tipped his head in acknowledgment. “Although the name is strange to me now. A child is a malleable thing, you know. Can be made to forget, or made to believe, almost anything. For the last twenty-two years, I’ve been called Jack.”

  “And did you—?” Edward stopped himself. He must proceed with caution. “You have assumed the title, then.”

  “Well . . .” Jack ran one hand through his overlong hair, disordering it. “Not exactly. I require more proof before I can make a claim. I thought perhaps if I came back to the place of my birth, I might find it.”

  “We were given no warning of your return, sir.”

  “No,” he said, rising to resume his restless inspection of the room. “It was a spur-of-the-moment decision. I knew m’ father left here a good many years ago, you see. I was not sure what I would find. It looks as if things have been left to rot.”

  “Conditions are less than ideal,” Edward conceded.

  “You’re a younger fellow than I expected, Mr.—”

  Edward hesitated. “Cary.”

  Jack’s head jerked upright, and he twisted about to fix him with a curious stare. “Are we related?”

  Meeting the man’s dark gaze, Edward lifted one shoulder. “Perhaps.” What was the best course of action? To continue his charade as steward until he could sort out what was going on? “This post was promised me by the late earl,” he found himself reassuring the stranger who claimed to be he. “You’ll find I have a great deal of experience with the management of property. I am recently returned from the West Indies, where for several years I had sole responsibility for a sizable estate.”

  “Ah.” As it had done with Charlotte, that revelation about his past seemed to convey far more than the mere facts of his situation. The man looked him up and down, a mixture of emotions on his face. Disdain, and a hint of uncertainty. “And are those skills . . . transferable?”

  “Some of them.”

  With one long-fingered hand, the man jerked the bell pull and waited. Nothing happened. Edward suspected the cord had long since been disconnected. Or had deteriorated into nothing. “The old place is rather thin on servants, it seems.”

  “There are no household servants. Only Garrick. A groom by training, although he has proved to be a fine man of all work.” Edward felt no guilt at the slight exaggeration of Garrick’s abilities.

  “You have been doing your own cooking, then?” Idly, Jack swiped his index finger along the edge of a nearby table. “And cleaning?”

  “I have a cook. She traveled with me from Antigua.”

  “A Negress?” Something more than mere curiosity edged his voice.

  “Mari is African, yes.”

  The statement earned him another speculative look. “An African cook. Well, I suppose your time in the islands gave you a certain appreciation for a . . . well-spiced dish.”

  The implication could not have been clearer. Edward locked his jaw. “As for the cleaning of this house,” he added when he had reined in his temper enough to keep it from his voice, “that was done under the direction of... my wife.”

  By rights, that lie ought to have been more difficult to tell. After last night, he ought
to be especially reluctant to repeat it. Yet it was growing increasingly natural to think of Charlotte as a part of his life. Until he had seen the results, he had not realized how her efforts at restoring Ravenswood Manor would affect him. It was as if she had known what he most needed. She had returned to him something he had begun to think was lost forever. His home.

  Some thanks he had given her.

  “You are a married man, eh? Better you than I.” Jack glanced around the cavernous room. “Well, well. Mrs. Cary has been quite industrious. I hope I shall have the opportunity to meet her, to thank her in person.”

  Something about those words slid uncomfortably along Edward’s spine and caused his shoulders to tighten.

  What would Charlotte do when she discovered this place was no longer a safe haven from the outside world? He had not forgotten her obvious worry that she might encounter someone here who could recognize her. And Jack’s demeanor gave the distinct impression she might have more to fear from him than discovery. Almost as if he truly were Edward’s father’s son.

  But then, Edward’s appalling behavior had already shown her the dangers Ravenswood posed.

  “Have you brought no servants of your own?”

  “I did not expect to find the estate in need of them—in need of everything, Mr. Cary.” His eyes darted to the corner of the room where a dark stain marred the ceiling and the plaster moldings had crumbled, a sign of needed repairs far beyond the scope of Charlotte’s broom.

  Edward could not argue. He knew too well what was lacking at Ravenswood. “I have already begun to make a few improvements.”

  “Hmm.” He turned away then and said, in a tone that was clearly intended to convey his dismissal, “I shall wish to discuss your plans later.”

  Edward bristled. It had been many years since he had been required to defend his management decisions—and then only to those who had true authority over him. He mustered a curt, “Yes, sir,” before spinning on his heel and leaving the room.

  It was not that he felt powerless in the face of a challenge to what was rightfully his. He knew what powerlessness felt like. But with another man claiming to be the heir, Edward would have to proceed carefully. Nothing good could come from an abrupt announcement that he was the true Earl of Beckley.