Page 12 of To Seduce a Stranger

Even as the word passed his lips, he feared it was the sort of promise on which a man might eventually be expected to make good. Except that she was already married. Good God.

With what sort of woman had he saddled himself when he made that rash offer of assistance? A lady’s maid? Perhaps. He half suspected, given her own account, that she was some English adventurer’s by-blow. For all he knew, a French spy to boot. Any and all of whom were the last sort of woman he needed or wanted.

Pale-faced and wide-eyed in response to Edward’s claim, Charlotte sank onto the chair behind her, then leapt up again when the pile of rags on its seat screeched and hissed.

“Mind the cat.” Garrick puffed lazily on his pipe, while the affronted feline stared unblinkingly at Charlotte for a long moment before beginning to lick its sleek black fur back into place. “So you was in the West Indies too?”

“Er—ah.” Edward began to fumble for an explanation, but Charlotte stepped smoothly into the gap, gathering her gloves in the palm of one hand and drawing back her shoulders like a damned duchess.

“No, Mr. Garrick,” she said. “I was companion to a widow, the widow who owned the property Mr. Cary managed in . . .”

For reasons he could never have explained, even to himself, Edward softly inserted, “Antigua.”

She bristled. “Of course I know that. Didn’t I write out the direction often enough? I was in charge of her correspondence,” she explained to Garrick. “One day, on a whim, I added a line of my own to the bottom of one of her missives to Mr. Cary. Some question about the weather, wasn’t it, my dear?”

Edward started. He had almost forgotten he was meant to be an actor in this little play. He should stop her.

Instead, he nodded. “Er, yes. I believe it was.”

“My”—she began, and then shook her head with a sly little smile cast in Edward’s direction—“our employer rarely looked at the letters herself, you see, Mr. Garrick. Mr. Cary and I began to correspond. When he returned to England, he paid a call on my mistress, and—”

“And that, as they say, was that,” Edward spoke over her, sensing that Garrick’s interest in the tale thankfully had begun to flag. “Happily ever after and whatnot,” he finished lamely.

Since Samson’s hooves had first stepped onto Ravenswood land, Edward’s head had been pounding. The state of the house had added nausea to his symptoms of panic. Now his palms were slick with sweat. What sort of person spun lies so effortlessly?

One who’d had a great deal of practice.

Garrick dragged smoke into his lungs and nodded. “Bit of a relief, that.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I was afeared you might say t’other one was yer missus.”

“What other one?” Charlotte asked, every inch the suspicious bride.

Around his pipe stem, Garrick gave Edward a toothless, knowing smile. “The fancy baggage what come with yer trunks and things.”

“Fancy . . . baggage? I don’t know what you—”

A terrible thought struck him. No. He had meant to leave every part of that life behind. She wouldn’t have. Couldn’t have.

But apparently, she had.

Edward made himself ask, “Where is she?”

“Right here, Mr. Edward.”

Mari Harper spoke from the doorway, her voice clear, her posture erect. Clad in a respectable blue gown of some plain stuff, she would have appeared unremarkable but for the brightly colored turban wound about her head. That, and the color of her skin of course, such a dark brown it almost disappeared into the blackness of the empty corridor behind.

“Mari!” Frustration sharpened his voice. “What in God’s name—?”

“You rode in the baggage cart all the way from London?” Charlotte cut across him, stepping to Mari’s side and putting an arm through hers to coax the other woman into the room.

No one could have guessed that Mari’s appearance—her very existence—must have come as quite a surprise to Charlotte. “I am almost glad I did not know,” she was saying, as if the two were old friends. “I would have been worried sick about you on these muddy roads. You are unharmed by the journey? It was an uncomfortable one, I’ve no doubt . . .”

“I am well.” Mari inclined her head in that regal way of hers. “Mrs. Cary.”

Torn between a sigh of relief and a cry of frustration, Edward could not trust himself to speak. So Mari had overheard Charlotte’s ridiculous story, had she? Of all the times for her to decide to play along. He had come back to England to reclaim his life. He had no intention of stepping into someone else’s trumped-up version of it.