Who was he to presume to tell her which way happiness lay?
“I wish you luck,” he said at last, extending his hand. Markham hesitated at first, then shook it vigorously. When Edward turned and walked away, he could guess that Markham would soon set off in search of Mari. He hoped the man was not destined to be disappointed.
In some ways, Charlotte reminded him of Mari. Slow to trust. Something of an enigma. As if whatever had happened in her past had given her reason to be chary and aloof and sometimes even afraid. Had some man—her husband—harmed her?
If so, and if she had placed herself under Edward’s protection because of it, then the universe had a wicked sense of humor. He had brought her here with a promise of help and safety; now, he doubted his ability to provide such things to anyone. Whom had he ever really managed to protect?
Last night, she had given no sign that she wanted his touch, his kiss. And he certainly had not stopped to ask. Afterward, he had told himself that if she had not, she could have—almost certainly should have—slapped him across the face. But what if she felt she dared not?
She feared something that lay beyond Ravenswood’s borders, that much he knew. What might she be willing to endure, what price would she be willing to pay, if it meant she did not have to leave?
Guilt oozed and bubbled in his gut like boiling sugarcane mash: thick and slow and dangerously hot.
He had set out for the field to work off his anger toward a man who called himself the Earl of Beckley. But what if the real danger came from the late earl’s true son? Perhaps they would all be better off if Ravenswood were left in a stranger’s hands.
Chapter 13
When rain began to spatter the window, Charlotte stretched an arm through the casement to close it, dampening her sleeve in the process, raising gooseflesh beneath.
“What about that fire, Garrick?”
As if in answer to her question, a bristly broom shot down the chimney and clattered onto the hearth, bringing with it a cloud of soot and the remains of a bird’s nest or two, streaking Garrick’s face with black and leaving him sputtering. Sykes, the earl’s coachman, had agreed to be the one to ascend to the roof, and until that moment, Garrick had been quietly guffawing at his willingness to take the less desirable task.
“Right on it, missus,” he said when he had scrubbed his face with his handkerchief, which only made matters worse.
Of course, the room was large, and damp even before the rain had begun, so it was going to take some time to warm it, even though the fireplace was nearly as big as the one in the kitchen. Charlotte, who had been dusting and polishing, paused to frown sharply at the mess surrounding Garrick. With a shiver, she retreated into the dressing room, where the earl’s trunks sat, and knelt to unpack them instead.
His clothes—as smooth and sensual and sinfully rich as he—ought not to have come as a surprise. In London, they must have drawn the eye of every woman he passed, perhaps even the touch of a few of them. Here, however, they felt not just out of place, but somehow almost an affront, for every fiber that had gone into their making felt as if it had been thoughtlessly ripped from Ravenswood, leaving holes and tatters.
Despite being tempted to abandon the task—she was not, after all, the earl’s servant—she slid her fingers into the garments and began to put them where they belonged: hanging coats and waistcoats, stacking folded breeches on the shelves, tucking rolled cravats into a shallow drawer. Small wonder Sykes had struggled under the trunks’ weight. They contained more clothes than a man would need for a six months’ stay, although she doubted a young man would be content to pass anywhere near that much time in the country. The scent of sandalwood competed with camphor and made her head ache.
At last reaching the bottom, she bent to close the lid and realized the trunk was not quite empty. What her fingertips had felt, what she had imagined to be the bottom of the trunk, was in fact a large case of some sort, a portfolio tied shut in several places with frayed silk ribbon. Should she leave it there? She wanted to do nothing that might be misunderstood, felt no curiosity about his private papers.
Curious or not, however, she was not to be spared from discovering what the case held. Deciding at last to lay it on a shelf so that the empty trunks could be stored away, she lifted the heavy, leather-covered boards, one hand over the hinged side, the other between two ties on the side opposite. She failed to notice that the single tie at the bottom of the portfolio—or perhaps the top—had come undone, either during its travels or through the carelessness of her own fingers as she had scooped up the clothing lying atop it. A sheaf of heavy, deckle-edged paper slid out and scattered across the floor at her feet.
There were dozens of pictures, some rough sketches, some carefully finished to the last detail, most of women. The artist’s skill was undeniable. In one, the woman’s blushing cheeks looked as if they might be hot to the touch. In another, the tears welling from troubled green eyes threatened to spill off the page.
Although beautifully executed, the pictures made her uncomfortable, though she could not quite put her finger on why. The expressions of the subjects—sorrow, embarrassment, fear—were human emotions. Mon Dieu! Had she not felt them often enough herself?
Perhaps that was the reason for the disquiet she felt. Because it was evident that the artist intended for the images to draw the viewer’s eye. And she could not be at ease with the notion of using one person’s obvious distress for another’s pleasure. Who was the artist? Some friend of the earl, perhaps?
The chill that passed through her had nothing to do with the cold, damp room. She would never want to meet such a man, with a gift for making art of others’ suffering.
“Tell me, what do you think?” The earl’s voice.
Charlotte jumped and hastily stuffed the sketches into the case, although there was no hiding what she had seen. “I don’t—that is, I am no judge of art, my lord,” she managed to say as she turned, smoothing a hand over her hair, feeling her own cheeks flame like those in one of the pictures.
“Come, now,” he said, filling the doorframe so that there was no way past. She took some comfort from the fact that Garrick and Sykes were merely in the next room. “You must have had some reaction.”
Had he expected her to find the pictures?
“They are . . . the artist clearly has a gift.” A gift for what, she would not venture to say. “Is he known to you?”
“Intimately.” She could by no means call the curl of his lip a smile. As he looked her up and down again, he took a step closer. “Your husband is a fortunate man.”
Surely he did not intend to flirt with her? The very notion almost forced a giggle past her lips. But it really was no laughing matter. Men like him, possessed of wealth and power, had no occasion for anything as subtle as flirtation. In her experience, they simply took what they wanted. An accident of birth became a ready excuse for base behavior.
“The estate is fortunate to have him here, my lord.” The prim answer brought a spark of amusement to his eyes, making her wish she had not spoken quite so hastily. “If I may be so bold. He is determined to see Ravenswood restored to its former glory.”
“Restored? Does he have some familiarity with the estate’s history, then? Was he ever here before?”
“No,” she said quickly, before recalling Edward’s inexplicable knowledge of the house. “That is, I do not know.”
“If he had, one presumes he would have told his wife.” Surely she had imagined the sardonic note in his voice, the almost imperceptible stress he had laid on the final word.
She gestured toward the doorway. “If you would be so good as to excuse me, my lord. I’ll just see that Garrick and Sykes have finished their tasks, and the room will be yours.”
He grinned. “I do believe it’s already mine, is it not, Mrs. Cary? And as those fine fellows had already done with their work, I sent them on their way when I came in.”
Panic tingled through every limb. As frantic and unthinking as
that poor bird in the sitting room, she dashed toward the door, though it meant coming closer to him. His sandalwood cologne filled her nostrils. Did he intend to hold her, keep her here against her will? And if so, would anyone hear her struggle to get free?
To her surprise, he made no move to stay her. “Duty calls, I suppose?” Turning slightly to the side, he let her pass. Only the hem of her skirt brushed against him, but she felt it nonetheless, the way a cat’s whiskers might sense a narrow escape.
* * *
“Still raining, is it?”
Standing just inside the doorway of the Great Room, Edward felt Jack’s dark, hooded eyes look him up and down, pausing at the boots caked in an aromatic layer of mud that was not solely dirt.
“This late spring has given us a chance to plant another field of barley. I was helping Mr. Markham, Ravenswood’s chief tenant, to see the crop in the ground when the storm started.” He was trying hard not to envision trenches washing through the freshly plowed ground and sweeping away seed they could not afford to lose.
The young man lazily swirled the wine in his glass but did not drink it, instead resting the foot of the goblet against his knee. “I could wish you had consulted with me before making such an expenditure, Mr. Cary. That money might have been needed elsewhere.”
“I used my own money to pay for it.”
Surprise sketched across the other man’s face. “Well, the planting will be for the best in the long run, I don’t doubt,” Jack acknowledged, sitting more upright. “But it doesn’t change the fact that things are deuced uncomfortable in the here and now.”
Edward withdrew a sheaf of papers and a small rectangular book from inside his coat and tossed them on the table between them. “As you requested, I have brought you what accounts I have been able to make of the rents, the expenditures.” He had been tempted at first to refuse, but he knew of no better way to prove to this man that there was nothing for him at Ravenswood.
Jack glanced at the pile. “I don’t suppose there’s anything in them I’ll wish to see?”
When Edward did not answer, the younger man polished off the contents of his glass with an expression half smile, half grimace, then stood and began to pace the room. “The rumors about the state of m’ father’s finances were not promising. I look to you for some good news, Mr. Cary.”
Edward shook his head. “I have none to give, I’m afraid. Things here are as they seem. Decades of neglect can hardly be expected to produce a profitable estate.”
Over the course of the day, he had pieced together what must have happened. More than twenty years ago, his father had left Ravenswood in a fit of pique. The estate was entailed—but that would not have prevented his father from mortgaging to the hilt. After his father’s death, it would have fallen into the hands of trustees, charged with maintaining it in the unlikely event of Edward’s return. But those trustees must have taken one look at how things stood and washed their hands of the whole mess—clearing the way for an imposter like Jack to stake his claim.
“If I weren’t in a bit of a tight spot myself, you see,” Jack said, “it wouldn’t matter so much.”
Edward could not keep his jaw from setting stiffly, though he knew this man who called himself an earl would not think it his steward’s place to scowl at him.
Jack returned to the table to tip the bottle toward his glass once more. Only a few blood-red drops tricked out. Tugging at his cravat, as if the mere mention of his debts had left him parched, he strode toward the bell pull, apparently having forgotten both that it was broken, and that there were no servants to answer it, if it were not. “Do you know, I begin to think there’s something to this notion of our being related.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. I fancy there’s something familiar about you. Your eyes perhaps. They remind me of m’ father’s.”
Fighting the impulse to cut his gaze away, Edward held the other man’s scrutiny for a long moment. The color of his eyes had never been the point of resemblance to his father that concerned him.
Would something as simple, as common, as a pair of blue eyes be the undoing of his masquerade here?
Or could it be a piece of the proof he needed?
He ought to have told everyone who he was from the start. Including Charlotte. Instead, he had jumped into this morass without thinking of how he was to get out of it. If he put an end to the charade and claimed his true identity now, it would sound like the kind of tale his supposed wife was prone to telling.
Perhaps he never would get things set straight. Doomed to be a steward on the estate that was meant to be his. Believed to be married to a mysterious marble statue who would never be his to touch.
And perhaps he deserved no better.
Impatient, the pretender threw himself onto the sofa to wait. “There’s one thing I need you to understand, Mr. Cary. I don’t fancy a stay in debtor’s prison. Coming here was my last hope. So you’ll just have to find some way to make Ravenswood pay,” he said, twirling the stem of his empty glass between his fingers. “If you can’t, I’ll be forced to remove you from your post.”
* * *
Late in the afternoon, Mr. Markham had burst into the kitchen with the news that Peg had been injured when one of the pigs she was charged with feeding decided the girl looked more appetizing than the slops she carried. There was no medical man in the village, not even an apothecary. Immediately, Mari had snatched up that little wooden box of hers and offered to help.
Now, several hours later, Mari still had not returned, and Charlotte stood at the sink cleaning up the half-charred, half-underdone remains of the dinner she had prepared for Garrick and Sykes, which they had valiantly pushed about their plates for a quarter of an hour before deciding to return to the stables for the night. Well, she had never claimed to be a cook.
The quiet of the kitchen was broken by something clanging harshly behind her. A little scream of surprise caught in her throat. She jerked around just in time to see one of the bells on the board that hung near the door clatter to rest. For a moment, she watched it, waiting to see if it would ring again. It drooped, still and silent.
Just as she allowed herself to breathe a sigh of relief, it jangled again. Squaring her shoulders and wiping damp palms down her skirt, she set off down the corridor to see what the earl wanted, uncertain even to which room the bell was connected.
The dining room was empty, the gallery dark. She glanced up the wide staircase, reluctant to enter his bedchamber again. Then she saw a thin seam of light around the heavy, curved door of the Great Room. She knocked, then pushed it open without waiting for a reply.
The earl was stretched along a sofa, the foot of an empty wine glass resting on his chest. As she entered, he greeted her with a lazy smile and rose. “See, the bell does work, Cary.”
Her eyes darted to Edward, who stood closer to the window, cloaked in shadow.
When he stepped forward, she was shocked by the state of his clothes. How long had he been out in the rain? If she had not sent Garrick to return his other coat, she might have offered it to him now. She longed, even so, to go to him and slip the wet coat from his shoulders. She was believed to be his wife, after all. It would be only proper.
But after last night she no longer wanted the proper things where Edward was concerned.
“I confess I was not expecting you to answer my summons, ma’am,” the earl said, stepping closer and drawing her attention back to him. He was studying her expression carefully, his gaze moving between her and Edward with obvious interest.
“You’ve met, then.” Edward’s voice was sharp with disapproval.
“Your wife was so kind as to see to things in my bedchamber this afternoon,” he explained to Edward.
Surely her eyes were playing tricks on her. Surely she had imagined the way Edward’s brow furrowed at the other man’s words.
“Do you know, Mrs. Cary, that your husband and I are related? Cousins, or some such thing.” The earl tilted his head in the lig
ht, offering himself for her inspection. “Do you not fancy a family resemblance?”
The two men’s features, their coloring, their... demeanor were all too dissimilar. Charlotte dropped her gaze to the carpet and shook her head—or tried.
“You will excuse us.” Edward’s firm voice managed to penetrate over the clatter of her pulse and the rattle of the windows. “The weather seems to be growing worse. You must allow me to return my wife to the comfort of our own fireside.”
The earl snapped his gaze to Edward. “I understood from Mrs. Cary that the steward’s cottage is almost uninhabitable.”
“Was,” Edward corrected mildly. “As I said earlier, I’ve made some improvements.”
Resentment radiated from Lord Beckley’s posture. Too pampered, too used to having his own way to know how to respond to Edward’s self-assurance.
After a long moment had passed, Edward held out his arm. “Come, Charlotte.” With obvious reluctance, the earl bowed his head to excuse them.
“Good evening, my lord.” Charlotte made her curtsy and laid her fingertips on Edward’s damp sleeve. The forearm beneath was every bit as hard as it had been the last time she had touched him there, the morning she had suspected he was about to knock Garrick down.
“Wait.” Beckley’s sharp command made her stumble at the threshold, forcing Edward to yield as well. “Take these things away with you,” he said, waving a hand at the table before him. “I don’t care where you find the money. Just see that you find it.”
“Sir.” Feeling the sharp edge in Edward’s voice, she readily released his arm so that he could gather the papers the earl had indicated. Lord Beckley, too, looked perturbed—and not only by his steward’s tone. The man must be having money troubles. No doubt it was what had brought him to Ravenswood. She could not say she was surprised. It was how these young noblemen lived, from debt to debt. Was not Roderick forever begging Aunt Penhurst for something to supplement his allowance? Had not George told her that Robert had been much the same?
Well, from what she had seen and what Edward had said, Lord Beckley was bound to be disappointed.
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