The light was fading as they approached Audley Park, and Charlotte was dismayed to see the front of the house in darkness. Surely they were not now economizing with candles, too?
It was Jonathan, the first footman, who opened the door as the carriages drew up. Within, servants must have been scuttling about, lighting lamps and candles, while Jonathan let down the carriage steps.
“Thank you, Jonathan, I have brought guests to stay. Are my father and Miss Maybury at dinner?”
Jonathan blinked. “No, Miss, they’re still in Brighton and we had no notice of your coming.”
“No, it was a sudden decision. See that the bags are brought in, would you, Gerald?”
It was Lady Barnaby who quietly paid off the postilions, and then Charlotte led the way inside to the drawing room where a fire had just been lit. Excusing herself, she bolted to the kitchen to see what dinner could be put before her guests, and to rouse the servants to air guest bedchambers.
Before she could speak, Spring launched himself at her from his box in the kitchen corner where he had, Cook said, been pining since she’d left. Laughing and hugging him, Charlotte allowed him to lick her face for a second before dragging him down to chest level and making the arrangements she needed to.
Then, she returned to the drawing room, still holding Spring in her arms.
“I’m afraid he isn’t really a lap dog,” she apologized, holding on to him with difficulty, “but he thinks he is. He is utterly harmless, but wildly over-enthusiastic. Shall I let him go or take him away?”
“Oh, let him go,” Cecily said at once, clearly entertained by Charlotte’s antics to keep hold of him. Charlotte did, and he threw himself at Cecily, tongue lolling, before bouncing to Lady Barnaby’s lap and commencing a circuit that took him round all the chairs in the room, as well all the occupants.
“No wonder Alvan likes him,” Cecily laughed. “He is utterly insane!”
“He’ll calm down in a few minutes,” Charlotte said hopefully.
In the end, they enjoyed quite a pleasant evening, with a simple dinner and an hour relaxing in the drawing room with Spring on Charlotte’s lap. But they were all exhausted after their arduous journey and retired early to bed.
*
In the morning, after sleeping later than she meant to, Charlotte wrote to her father to say she had returned to Audley Park with Lady Barnaby and Lady Cecily, who would stay a few days.
Her guests were easy to please and happy to wander alone or accompanied in the gardens or the library, or to write letters or just read novels by the fire. So, Charlotte felt able to catch up on housekeeping matters such as the paying—and juggling—of bills and a few urgent matters that needed to be seen to on the estate. After which, she had just sat down in her chamber to write some letters, not least to her mother and Henrietta, when she was brought a hand-delivered letter of her own.
She did not recognize the handwriting, and she couldn’t prevent the surge of hope that it was from Alvan.
It wasn’t.
Dear Miss Maybury,
We all hope this note finds you in good health.
In light of your previous kindness and assistance in the late matter we struggled with for so long, I am emboldened to beg for your help once more. If it please you, would you be so good as to come to the Hart in secret this afternoon? If you can manage to be here by three o’clock that would allow matters to progress much more easily.
Yours most respectfully and in great hope,
J. Villin.
Charlotte read it through twice, frowning. It was a frankly bizarre letter to receive from an innkeeper, almost a summons. She rang for the maid again. “Who delivered this?”
“Just a boy, Miss. He wouldn’t stay, but ran off again, said he had to get home.”
“Do you know him?”
She frowned. “Not sure, Miss. He might have been one of Higgins’s boys.”
“Higgins who has the farm out toward Finsborough?”
“That’s him, Miss.”
“Thank you,” Charlotte said, folding the letter and tossing it aside as though it were of no account. Come in secret, it said. Well, considering all that had gone on at the inn, she was not about to be quite so foolish.
Sending word to the stables that she wanted the mare and a groom, she then changed into her old riding habit and scribbled a note to Cecily. She handed the note to Gerald. “Give this to Lady Cecily if I am not back by dinner time. I am just riding over to the Hart, but I don’t plan to be long.”
Chapter Twenty-One
There was no mist shrouding the Hart, but it held almost the same air of silence. No coming or going, no raucous laughter issuing from the taproom, or cheerful clank of pots from the kitchen. No one ran to meet them.
“Seems odd to me,” Jim the groom said suspiciously. Dismounting, he came to help Charlotte. “The door’s open, though. Shall I come in with you?”
She swallowed, lifting her chin for courage. “No. No, you take care of the horses, and then maybe come in and refresh yourself. I’m sure the innkeeper is inside.”
Still, it felt almost familiar entering by the open door, passing the empty table where Lily Villin had worked on her books.
“Hello?” she called. “Mr. Villin?”
Every nerve tingled. She sensed a new mystery here. Why would the innkeeper have asked her to come and then gone out? That he would “vanish” again in pursuit of anyone or anything at this precise moment seemed an exceedingly unlikely coincidence. Could this be something to do with Cornell? Looking for vengeance or even still pursuing Cecily? She couldn’t quite imagine it. Nor could she see the Villins falling for some ruse of his or being bribed. Although it was true she knew very little of them.
She stood very still in the entrance hall, listening, gazing around the closed doors to the taproom, the coffee room and the parlor, and moving on to the empty staircase. Somehow, she knew she was not alone in the house. A shiver ran up her spine, and yet she did not feel afraid. She felt… tricked.
The parlor door opened and a man stepped out. The innkeeper.
“Mr. Villin. I was just imagining you had deserted your house once more.”
“No, no, forgive me, Miss, I was just receiving instructions. Thank you for riding over. Please, come in.”
Behind him, she saw the smiling face of his wife. There was no reason not to go in, so she did, though she felt tension drawing tight inside her.
Lily Villin was in the room, too, dressed in her Sunday gown, as was her mother. A gentleman she did not know bowed to her from the fireplace. A second stood with his back to her, facing the window. The sun shone in directly, so that when he turned he seemed for an instant to be in silhouette. And then he moved and her stomach dived.
The Duke of Alvan bowed to her.
“It was you!” she accused. “You tricked me!”
“Of course I did not,” he said mildly. “Villin wrote to you as I requested.”
“Then pray tell me how I may be of assistance to Mr. Villin,” she said tartly.
Villin grinned. “Why, you can marry this turbulent, troublesome gentleman and keep him from my inn for the rest of the month.”
Bewildered, Charlotte gazed at the duke. “You have brought them into our confidence?” she asked dubiously. “But I have not yet seen my sister…”
Alvan came forward and took her hand in a firm, warm grip. “Allow me to introduce my friend, Mr. Whyte. The Reverend Mr. Gareth Whyte. We were at Oxford together. Whyte, Miss Charlotte Maybury.”
“How do you do, sir?” Charlotte said politely, freeing her hand from Alvan and offering it to the clergyman.
Mr. Whyte, a slightly vague looking young gentleman, smiled amiably and shook hands with her. “Very glad to make your acquaintance, very glad indeed.”
Charlotte’s gaze strayed back to Alvan. “The inn is deserted again. Is there another mystery?”
“Sort of,” Alvan said. “You took me by surprise, arriving so quickly… walk with m
e a moment and let me explain.”
Mr. Whyte bore an anxious little frown, but the Villins merely smiled as Alvan tucked her hand in his arm and led her through the open door and back out into the hall. Rather than closing the door, he drew her aside where they could not be seen from inside the room.
Charlotte gazed up at him, curious but trusting and his cool eyes softened so quickly that butterflies soared in her stomach.
“I’m afraid,” he said abruptly.
Her lips parted. “You? Afraid of what?”
“That you will be overcome with family duty again, or with some other obstacle to our marriage that comes from older loyalty than you can yet feel for me. I know your parents will not object. So, let us marry now, so that I have you safe, and then we can sort everything out together.”
Her eyes widened. The presence of Mr. Whyte made perfect sense now. He had even roped the Villins into his scheme.
His lips curved ruefully. “I wanted it to be another fun mystery for you, hopefully with happiness at the end of it.”
She took him by the arms, giving him a little shake. “Alvan—”
At that moment, someone rushed through the front door of the inn. Charlotte jumped back, releasing the duke’s arms and stared across the entrance hall to the young lady turning impatiently in the middle of the floor.
The woman opened her mouth to call for service when she caught sight of Charlotte.
“Tommie?” Charlotte said, baffled. Had the duke arranged this, too?
But Thomasina’s expression was one of horror. “Oh no! Charlie, what the devil are you doing here? How did you know?” She drew herself up to her full height and her best eldest sister expression. “I may as well tell you now that my mind is made up and you cannot stop me!”
“I probably could if I really wanted to,” Charlotte argued. “But I can’t think of a reason to stop you going home.”
“Going—” she repeated, clearly baffled, before her gaze fell at last on the duke and she emitted a little moan. “You! Oh, Charlie, how could you?”
Charlotte started toward her. “Oh, Tommie, I am so sorry, but you know your feelings for him—” She broke off as a gentleman entered the inn, and stiffened.
Lord Dunstan stood there, surveying the scene with outward calm, although it seemed to Charlotte he was wound very tightly like a coiled spring. Instinctively, she stepped in front of Alvan, whom he was surely here to hurt in some way, and held out one pleading hand to her sister. “Tommie, come here.”
But Alvan merely moved around her. Dunstan laughed, and Thomasina, looking unaccountably desperate, backed toward the viscount.
Charlotte frowned. Something was wrong here, something she wasn’t quite grasping.
“You can’t stop me,” Thomasina said again, a shade more desperately. “I will marry him.”
Irritated by such histrionics, Charlotte forgot her guilt. “I believe he has some say in the matter,” she retorted.
But, unaccountably, the duke’s shoulders began to shake in silent laughter.
It was Dunstan who spoke. “I assure you, I am perfectly willing, and indeed complicit in the whole scheme,” he drawled.
Charlotte took an impetuous step toward him. “But you can’t! Not Thomasina. I won’t let you marry her just to spite Alvan! She is worth so much more.”
“I agree,” Dunstan said quietly, though his face had darkened in a painful flush. His gaze locked with the duke’s. “You were right in what you said. Where you were concerned I had grown into a selfish, blinkered bounder. And I did court Thomasina just because you wanted to marry her. But it isn’t that now. You can’t have her, Alvan.”
Alvan searched his face for a long moment, then glanced at Thomasina who was clinging to Dunstan’s arm. His lip twitched. “Loath as I am to say such a thing, I… er… don’t want her. I believe we severed any connection before it was born. I assure you my plans are quite different. I’m not sure I would advise Gretna Green, however, if that is where you are headed.”
And suddenly Charlotte laughed aloud. “You mean you really love her now?” she demanded of Dunstan, who blushed even more deeply.
“Yes, I really love her now.”
“And you really love him,” she said, gazing at Thomasina in amazement. Although she couldn’t quite understand how a lady who had known Alvan could fall for Dunstan, the knowledge that Tommie had done so made her ecstatic. She grasped Thomasina’s hand. “I am so pleased for you, so grateful! But seriously, why are you running away?”
“Because Dunstan is not rich enough to please Papa,” Thomasina said impatiently. “You know this, Charlie. What I want to know is what you are doing here if you’re not chasing us.”
Heat and fun and reckless happiness swept through Charlotte. “I’m getting married,” she told her sister. “And I’m very glad you are here.”
Thomasina’s jaw dropped. “You? But who are you…? And why here?”
“Use your eyes, Tommie,” Dunstan said affectionately. “It was always Charlotte.”
Thomasina gazed from her blushing sister to the duke and back, astonishment fading slowly from her face. “I was jealous,” she remembered. “And I couldn’t quite work out why… it was you who made me think, Charlie, who opened my mind to what we were doing to Alvan and to me, and when I saw Dunstan again in Brighton I knew it was right. Only Papa will never countenance it.”
“You’re one-and-twenty, Tommie,” Charlotte observed. “Papa will have to… er… lump it. There is no need to flee to Scotland. Besides, if I marry Alvan, I’m sure he’ll be happy with a merely respectable match for you. After all, it is worlds more than he hoped for me. And there is still Henrietta.”
“Stop talking, my love,” Alvan suggested. “Whyte is waiting to marry us. I brought him specially. And the Villins are only willing to keep their regulars out for so long.”
It was undeniably sweet to hear my love directed at her from his lips. She paused a moment to smile at him. Then she took Thomasina’s hand. “Come, witness our wedding and then go back to Brighton, or at least write to Papa.”
“Is this really what you want?” Thomasina asked doubtfully.
“I’ll make a terrible, unfashionable, recluse of a duchess, but yes, it’s what I want.”
Thomasina stared at her, a mixture of curiosity and worry in her eyes. Lord knew what she read in Charlotte’s face, but her grip tightened suddenly and she dragged her a little away from both men.
“What have we done to you, Charlie?” Thomasina demanded intensely. “We neglected you, passed over you, buried you because… I don’t even remember why. Looking at you now, there was never a good reason unless it was that Henrie shouted louder and yet conformed more.” She swallowed. “But I let it happen. I-I hurt you, Charlie.”
“No, you didn’t,” Charlotte said gruffly.
“But I think I did,” Thomasina insisted, clearly troubled. “We all did and never noticed, just because you never complained. And here I am eloping because I finally worked out our mercenary plan was bad for me.”
“It was,” Charlotte assured her.
“And only you saw it.”
“I just wanted you to be happy,” Charlotte muttered.
Thomasina smiled ruefully. “And I never concerned myself with your happiness. You are my sister and I love you, but somewhere I stopped seeing you. I think we all must have, because looking at you now—” She broke off, flapping one hand toward the silent Alvan. “He saw, didn’t he? From the beginning. He saw you. Does he truly love you?”
“Yes,” Charlotte whispered.
Thomasina smiled tremulously. She threw her arms around Charlotte and convulsively, Charlotte hugged her back.
They parted, each surreptitiously wiping their eyes as they walked back toward the duke.
Thomasina swerved to take Dunstan’s arm. “We shall be glad to witness your wedding,” she announced.
But Dunstan drew back. “Go ahead, my dear. Alvan does not want me at his wedding.”
“Of course he does,” Charlotte said. “He hit Cornell for you.”
Dunstan blinked. “Did you?”
“It’s a long story.” Alvan offered Charlotte his arm. “Shall we?”
Charlotte smiled into his eyes, took his arm, and walked back into the parlor.
*
During the brief, simple ceremony, Charlotte wondered if she should be overwhelmed by the huge vows she was making before God and man. After all, her feelings for the duke had sprung out of nowhere, and she had barely known him two months. But everything she said seemed right and necessary, and although the words brought tears to her eyes, they were not born of anxiety but of a sudden excess of love.
Alvan had even bought a ring of gold and diamonds to place on her finger, and she realized afresh how well he had planned this in such a short space of time. He had gone to London, obtained the special license, bought her ring, collected his clerical friend, and posted down here to arrange the mysterious letter that would bring her to the inn.
“Um… we have to go back to Audley Park rather quickly,” she whispered to him when the ceremony was over. “I didn’t obey Villin’s instructions. I told everyone where I was going, and I even left a letter to be given to Cecily if I did not return by dinner time. She will raise the alarm only an hour or two from now.”
“No, she won’t,” Alvan said comfortably. “I knew you would not be foolish enough to come in total secrecy so I took the precaution of writing to them, too. They won’t expect us back before tomorrow. I’ve taken a room for us here, in case you feel like the adventure, but we can return to Audley Park if you prefer. Or go anywhere else you like.”
“But I have nothing with me!”
“I took the liberty of buying a few things for you. It is easy enough to buy more. We can go to London, if you wish, buy everything you want and go to the opera.”
She blinked, letting that sink in. “Do you know, that might be a great deal of fun,” she said, almost in surprise. She smiled, just a little shyly. “I believe I would like to stay here for tonight, though, in honor of our first meeting.” She glanced across at Thomasina and Dunstan. “I think we should send these two on to Audley Park and let Lady Barnaby play chaperone… oh.” Suddenly remembering, she said in dismay, “But will that be awkward for Cecily and Dunstan?”
The Deserted Heart: Unmarriageable Series (Unmarriagable Series Book 1) Page 22