Page 11 of To Seduce a Stranger

She did not start as he had expected. Perhaps she had not really been dozing, although when she spoke, her voice was husky as if with sleep. “Nous sommes où?”

“Ravenswood Manor,” he said. “Principle seat of the Earl of Beckley.”

“An earl?” The title brought her to full alertness. He knew he was not imagining the alarm in her voice. She had reason to be wary of the aristocracy, certainly, given her treatment at its hands, but surely the lady she had served would not waste her time with further retaliation. Was it the woman’s husband she feared, then? From whom was she trying to hide?

“It does not look as if he is in residence.”

“No.” Brambles had been allowed to crisscross the path, and the front gardens were in shambles. When he dismounted, no one answered his shout toward the stable block, and as his eyes passed over the front of the house, he saw a broken window high above. Total neglect. And not of recent date. “It does not look as if anyone is in residence.”

He looped the horse’s reins around a piece of crumbling statuary, some lesser Greek god missing one ear and his nose, then reached up to lift Charlotte down. As he trotted up the steps—two at a time, despite their depth—and pounded his fist against the front door, he could feel her hesitating, lingering beside the horse, as if she expected to have to make an escape.

Defeated by silence in answer to his knock, he was about to turn and join her when he caught a sound from inside the house. Shuffling footsteps across a stone floor, followed by the scraping sound of the bolt being drawn. The heavy paneled door swung inward, and in the darkness of the cavernous entry hall stood a man of indeterminate age, clutching a tallow candle, heedless of its oily drips.

“Here at last, are ye?”

It was not the greeting he had expected. “Where is Jewkes?” Edward demanded, resurrecting the butler’s name from some corner of his memory.

“Don’t know nobody by that name,” the man said. Jewkes was almost certainly gone, of course. Everything would have changed in twenty years. But the former butler’s replacement looked—and smelled—more like a shepherd. “Who’re you?” The man raised the candle higher, looking sharply into Edward’s face.

Edward nearly choked on his reply. “Cary,” he said at last. Would the name reveal enough? Too much? But only the dimmest light of familiarity flickered in the man’s gaze. “Is the family abed?”

“Dunno.”

“Are they here, man?”

“Naw,” he said, and spat. “His lordship went t’ Lon’on years ago. Ain’t none from t’ family lived here since.” With that, he turned and walked back into the house, and as he did not slam the door behind him, Edward followed, forgetting for a moment that he was not alone.

The pattering sound of Charlotte’s feet trying to catch up caught him by surprise. “But you seemed to be expecting us?” she asked.

The man paused but did not turn as he replied. “’Spected them trunks b’longed to somebody.” Resuming his shuffle, he led them past broken furniture moldering in disarray and priceless portraits rotting beneath swags of cobweb. Bile stung the back of Edward’s throat.

“So, my things have arrived?” he asked, forcing a note of calm into his voice.

A laugh wheezed from the man’s lips, almost extinguishing the candle. “Aye. All of ’em.”

Eventually, they came to what had once been the servants’ quarters, and the man opened the door to the butler’s room, where a sagging rope bed and a rag-covered chair passed for coziness. In a spacious manor full of once-elegant furnishings, what would have possessed a vagrant to take up residence in this meager chamber? But the pile of empty bottles discarded in one corner answered Edward’s unspoken question. Proximity to the wine cellar had been the lure of this particular room.

“You are the, ah—the, er—?”

Charlotte’s soft voice was a raft of tranquility in the noisy sea of chaos rushing through Edward’s brain, and he grasped for it like a drowning man. “Caretaker?” he supplied, uncertain whether she fumbled for an English word she did not know, or merely a word, any word, to describe the man’s role in the rubble of what had once been Edward’s family home.

“I guess you can call me that, if you like. I’m what’s left. Samuel Garrick, by name. Used to be second stable boy. When there was horses.” Nonchalantly, he took his pipe from his waistcoat and lit it with his candle, producing a cloud of even more noxious smoke, if such a thing were possible. “You fixin’ t’ stay, Mr. Cary?”

Words simply would not come. How in God’s name had his father let this happen? When Edward had run away, he had told himself he was saving his mother’s life. But he had always let himself believe he could return to Ravenswood one day.

This time, Charlotte came to his aid. “Mr. Cary has just returned from the West Indies. The earl is expecting him to serve as steward of this property.”

Garrick shrugged. “Don’ know nothin’ ’bout that.” His dark eyes glimmered with interest as they looked Charlotte up and down. “An’ who’re you?” Even disheveled and travel-weary and surrounded by squalor, she was striking, and Edward supposed the man could be forgiven his inquisitiveness.

But the answer to his question was not an easy one.

Although Edward could never have imagined what he would find when he got here, he had allowed his anxiety over returning to Ravenswood to cloud his judgment where Charlotte Blake was concerned. People who ran roadside inns were not the only ones who asked inconvenient questions. Of course a young woman traveling alone with a man would excite speculation. He had meant merely to help a mistreated lady’s maid. Instead he might have ruined her. What plausible explanation for their peculiar arrangement could he offer? If she did not look quite so exotic, he supposed she might pass for his sister . . .

“I,” Charlotte began, unperturbed, tugging loose the fingers of one glove, “am Miss—”

The candlelight struck gold on her fourth finger and sent forth a dazzling gleam. A gold band. A wedding ring. Too much to hope that it had not caught Garrick’s eye.

“Mrs. Cary,” Edward spoke over her. “My wife.”