She and Aunt Helene would be ruined for life. The family’s reputation would be tarnished irreparably, and they would become paupers.
As though echoing Charlene’s bleakest of thoughts, Helene asked, “What are we going to do?”
Charlene thought about it for a moment. The only thing that could save Father, she knew, was for a member of the peerage to vouch for him. The only person she could think of who could help with that was Lord Eric Cumberland.
That made a certain amount of sense, actually. He had told Charlene once, ten years ago now, that if ever she needed anything, he would help her out.
The two hadn’t exactly stayed in contact. Eric sent her at least a letter or two each year, but Charlene knew better than to respond to them.
Nor had they ever dared to meet again in person. He was of a much different circle than she was.
He didn’t go by the title of Duke, at least not in the letters that he sent her, but Charlene knew that Eric’s father had died recently and that he had taken on all of his father’s responsibilities. Eric had a dukedom to look after; he couldn’t possibly have time to help her.
What else was there to try, though? And was it not a sign that he was there in London at the moment? He would probably be at this same ball that Matilda was hoping to attend while wearing the dress that Charlene had been contemplating when Aunt Helene first knocked on her door.
It was a desperate attempt, but it was the only one that Charlene could think of.
She clasped her Aunt Helene’s hands between her own. “I have an idea,” Charlene told her. “You’ll just have to trust me.”
Helene looked like she didn’t know if she really wanted that, but finally, at long last, the older woman nodded.
A few days later, Charlene was at the ball with Matilda and a few of the other eligible ladies of England and their escorts. She spotted Eric across the room. Now what to do?
She could hardly approach him in front of all of these people. It would undermine anything that Eric might try to do to help afterwards.
Finally, Charlene stepped to the side and conned one of the servants into carrying the young duke a message from her. Then, she headed to the library and waited nervously to see if he would come.
Lord Eric had promised to help her, once upon a time. He owed Charlene and her father a debt; the two of them had saved his life.
On the other hand, Eric was the son of a duke, and he had far more important things on his plate than helping a doctor and his daughter.
Besides, how serious had the boy been, when he promised his help at some point in the future? For all Charlene knew, he promised that sort of help to everyone.
Not only that, but even as the son of the duke, he had always had to be careful with the sorts of scandals he got involved with.
Charlene still couldn’t believe that he had been so bold as to kiss her, that morning that he was leaving Bath after she had helped to save his life. That was totally out of the bounds of modern society. He hadn’t seemed concerned about that, though, and he had never apologized.
Charlene hadn’t wanted him to apologize, truth to tell.
But now, as a duke himself, he had to be even more careful. Dr. Ellington had been accused of poisoning an eminent peer of the realm.
What if it hadn’t been Charlene’s father doing the poisoning but someone else with a political motive? Eric couldn’t get himself caught up in the middle of that. Surely he would renege on his offer for help?
Then again, Eric had been telling the truth when he said that he wished for the two of them to keep in touch. He had been the one to initiate their letter-sending, and even though Charlene hadn’t responded to any more than one of his letters, Eric had continued sending them, all these years.
Charlene knew everything about him, she felt. In his letters, he was open about his life and frank about his fears and shortcomings as a man and as a new duke. She could only wonder what he might know about her in return.
Charlene sighed. She knew that she might as well ask his help. There was nothing to lose by asking.
She rubbed her damp palms down her dress, glad that the one she was wearing was of a darker navy, so the marks wouldn’t show.
Charlene hoped that Eric would be here soon, before she was missed in the main ballroom. She truly hoped that he could help her on her quest to clear her father’s name.
Chapter 4
Lord Eric Cumberland, Duke of Havenport
Lord Eric Cumberland, now technically Duke of Havenport, laughed at the boast that Lord Dalton Montgomery had made and clapped a hand on his shoulder.
“Dalton, I’ve known you since Eton,” Eric reminded him. “Never have I known you to go home with more than one woman in a night. You’re lucky if you can find one serving-woman to go home with you!”
“He’s lucky if he can find a woman to dance with him,” Lord Percival Woolridge, another of Eric’s dearest friends, shot back.
Dalton snorted and took a sip of his wine. “Laugh it up, fellows,” he said haughtily. “Soon, I shall be engaged to Miss Francine Covington, and then you will both be – “
Eric interrupted him with a groan. “You know that I’m not interested in Miss Covington,” he reminded his friend.
Percy smirked at him. “That’s because, as we all know, your interests stray towards a different sort,” he said lewdly.
Before Eric could make some smart reply to him, there was a servant at his elbow. “My Lord Duke?” she asked shyly.
Eric stared at her, startled to hear her ask for him. She didn’t wait for a reply, though, leaning in and whispering, “Miss Charlene Ellington has asked you to meet her in the library. She says she has need of your assistance.” Then, she darted off, like she was afraid to be seen near him.
Eric couldn’t help staring after her, thinking back over what she had just said. Miss Charlene Ellington. He remembered the girl as though that rescue of hers had happened just yesterday. Those blue-green eyes, those talented fingers of hers.
She had sent him only one letter over the years, but he had done his very best to keep tabs on her. Discreetly, of course. He knew that she was still unmarried, and at her age, he had a feeling that she would remain that way.
Eric didn’t know why she had never returned his letters. He knew for a fact that she had received his, but she never returned with anything of her own. Now though, she wanted to meet in the library. Eric wondered what that could mean.
“Who is this, Miss Charlene Ellington?” Dalton asked, raising an eyebrow at the young duke. “Are you courting someone that we didn’t know about?”
He sounded so hurt that it startled a laugh out of Eric. “Of course not,” he assured his friends. “Do you remember that adder bite that I suffered when I was younger?”
“Your father was livid,” Percy agreed, nodding his head.
“Miss Ellington’s father was the doctor who cured me,” Eric said simply. “And Miss Ellington herself was the one who rescued me, when she came across me in the wood.”
“What do you think she wants?” Percy asked curiously. His eyes roved the room. “Which one is she? Can you point her out?”
Eric shook his head, having already scanned the room. “I don’t see her,” he told them. “She must have already snuck off to the library. I wonder what she wants…” He paused, thinking about it.
The timing was suspicious: his first tour through London since he became duke. Surely she wasn’t hoping that he would set her up with a husband!
As terrible as that sounded, she was twenty-five years old, and Eric couldn’t have one of his first acts as a duke be to set her up with one of his acquaintances.
Not least of which because he still could sometimes see her in his dreams, her eyes bright as Eric laid her down on the sheets and ran his hands across her smooth skin.
If she had to be engaged to someone else, then of course that was only logical. But Eric would never want to be part of helping her find some other man as a h
usband.
He hadn’t heard any other gossip about her or her family, though, that might point to her wanting to meet with him. He couldn’t help but wonder.
“Well, are you going to go to her?” Dalton demanded.
Eric sighed. “I probably should,” he admitted. “Once, I promised her that I would help her out, if she ever needed it. This could be that time, I suppose.”
“Go,” Percy sighed dramatically. “Clearly, you must.”
Eric scanned the crowd again, wondering if anyone would notice his absence. Not that he wanted to let that matter to him, but at the same time, Charlene was an unmarried woman.
If any were to notice that they had both snuck off, there was bound to be gossip. Eric wasn’t sure that he was ready to face gossip such as that.
He had generated enough of it on his own, since before and after his father’s passing, and he didn’t want to cause any trouble for either of them.
In his heart, though, Eric knew that he couldn’t ignore Charlene’s summons. He had given her his word that he would be there for her if she needed him.
Not only that, but Charlene had helped him once, in spite of the fact that she had gotten into trouble because of it. If there was anything that Eric could do to help her in return, he was bound by his word to do it.
“Excuse me, gentleman,” he said to Percy and Dalton. He slipped out of the ballroom and found his way to the library, taking his time so as not to appear too hell-bent on a mission.
Miss Charlene Ellington, he thought as he walked down the hall. What were the odds that she, of all people, would contact him like this? What was waiting for him at the library?
It wasn’t proper for the two of them to meet there, away from everyone. There had to be some sort of reason that she had suggested it. Some secret reason that she needed to meet him there, alone. He wondered what it was.
She couldn’t possibly be hoping that Eric could overlook her unmarried state and continue to meet her alone, could she? She couldn’t possibly be hoping that he would spoil her purity.
Eric remembered the shy but practical girl that he had met, who had once treated him for an adder bite as though she were a physician many years her senior.
No, he sincerely doubted that she was looking for some sort of sexual liaison with him. As much as there was a part of him that wished otherwise.
There had to be something else to do with her wanting to see him, some other secret, but Eric was at a loss for what it might be. He knew that she was here as a chaperone to a young woman or two.
Perhaps it was that, and she was trying to curry favor for them? Somehow, that seemed doubtful, though.
Eric finally decided that he wouldn’t know until he saw her, as he stood outside the library deliberating for a final moment. He looked left and right, up and down the hallway, but there was no one there to see him enter. He slipped inside.
For a moment, all thoughts that he’d had about what she might want went out of his head. All he could do was stare at the woman in front of him. Charlene.
Of course, he had seen her more than a few times over the years, but those times were always at a distance, across a crowded ballroom.
Or once, as she was riding out of Bath astride a horse, like the young hellion that she had once been. A proper woman would have been riding side-saddle, but Eric doubted Charlene cared much for propriety.
When that gossip had broken across the court, it had been all that he could do to keep from laughing at the shocked and scandalized whispers.
Charlene was beautiful, that was the thing. More beautiful that Eric could ever have believed. Those eyes of hers were still the same, glittering darkly in the dim lighting of the otherwise abandoned library.
Her pert nose turned up at the end, and her light brown hair had been drawn up into the latest fashion. Still, a curl or two escaped to frame her pale face, her porcelain skin.
She was dressed in a somewhat-outdated blue dress that hugged the curve of her waist and left her ample breasts nearly spilling over the top in a sensual but not scandalous way.
As Eric entered the room, she smiled sweetly at him, and it was all that he could do not to pull her into his arms and kiss her again, impulsively, as he once had when he was ten years younger.
It would be even more improper to go down that road now, he knew. But it took nearly all of his willpower to hold back.
“Charlene,” he said quietly.
She quirked a brow at the young duke. “Lord Cumberland,” she said. “Or shall I call you ‘duke’ now?” She got slowly, belatedly to her feet. “Am I meant to curtsy to you? I must confess that I don’t have any friends of your rank, and I’m not sure how the rules are when one does. Of course, I know all the rules, just not as they apply to…friends. Are we friends?”
She was babbling, and there was something about it that put Eric at ease. Perhaps it was the realization that she was at least as nervous as he was.
“No curtseys, and no titles,” he told her, taking a step closer. “After all, we’re in private now.”
Was he mistaken, or did a shiver run up her spine when he said that? Of course, Eric too was acutely aware of the fact that the two of them were alone there in the library.
He wondered if she’d ever been alone, in private, with another man. He knew that she likely had been. After all, she had been there alone with him, all those years ago, when he was injured and her father had gone to find the duke. Probably that happened a lot with her father’s patients.
Somehow, this felt different, though. Somehow, this felt charged.
“I’m sorry to do this,” Charlene said, staring down at her hands. “I just had to talk to you.”
“What’s going on?” Eric asked her, feeling irrationally worried on her behalf.
Charlene bit her lip, and Eric could tell that she didn’t quite know how to tell him whatever it was. He wanted to remind her of all those letters.
They weren’t strangers to one another. But of course, Charlene hadn’t sent many letters back to him. Only the one. Maybe he wasn’t a stranger to her, but she was a stranger to him. He didn’t know the first thing about what she needed.
Chapter 5
Miss Charlene Ellington
Even though Charlene had hoped that Eric would answer her summons, she realized when he strolled into the room that she hadn’t actually expected for him to show up.
She hadn’t expected him to tear himself away from the party, and she certainly hadn’t expected him to sneak away to meet her there in the library. What must he be thinking? What must he be thinking about her?
She hadn’t responded to any more than that first of all his letters, but he had to know the same things about her that everyone else did.
That she had never found herself a partner, that she had settled for being a chaperone to other young women, that at twenty-five she was barely hanging on to the place in society that her family had carefully bought for her.
He had to think that she was pitiable. But it wasn’t pity that she saw in his eyes when he walked in.
Charlene wondered if he knew about her father’s predicament. If he did, he was keeping his thoughts carefully hidden.
Finally, she decided to put it out there in the open. “My father has been arrested,” she said, with no preamble. “They say that he has poisoned an eminent nobleman and caused his untimely death.”
Eric raised an eyebrow at her. “Is this why you’ve called me here?” he asked. “You think that I am behind such a thing? I’m sure that I haven’t had any part in this, nor do I know who might have. This is the first that I’ve heard of this unfortunate situation.”
“Of course I didn’t think that you were involved!” Charlene said quickly, scandalized that he might suspect her of suggesting anything like that. “I merely need your help. Well, not ‘merely’. I’m aware of what a huge favour I am asking. I thought simply that perhaps you could help me talk to some people who might be considering my father’s case.�
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Talking to her father’s jurors would do nothing more than buy them time, but Charlene had to hope that it would be time enough to prove the doctor’s innocence.
There had to be some way to do that. The realm surely wouldn’t sit by and let an innocent man be sentenced to death. Where was the justice in that?
What she’d really like would be to ask Eric if he could help at all with proving Father’s innocence. But he was already showing signs of reticence at being summoned here like this.
A Wicked Scandal For The Bluestocking (Steamy Historical Regency) Page 3