Page 16 of To Seduce a Stranger

“She did.”

“So what will you do here?”

“Work, I suppose,” she answered after a slight hesitation. “Won’t someone have me as a cook, or a housekeeper?”

“Is that what you want to do?”

A pause. “I don’t know. But it’s something to have a choice.”

“It is. And while you are weighing your options, you might better have stayed with Miss—Mrs. Corrvan. She has two households to manage. To say nothing of how she’s wearing herself to a shadow working to raise support for abolition,” he added in a mutter. “She needs assistance.”

“And you do not? Mrs. Corrvan is leaving for Yorkshire within the week. But she felt certain I might be of some use here—”

“Mrs. Corrvan may go to the devil.” He spoke across Mari, and the harsh rejoinder nearly forced a gasp from Charlotte’s lips. “She’s meddling in things she doesn’t understand. Look around.” One arm swept outward, a slash of white against the overgrown greenery at the back of the house. “If I’m to succeed at Ravenswood, I’ll have to find a way to bring this place back from the brink of destruction. All my concern must be for the farms, and the tenants upon them—if any remain.” A moment of silence followed, as if he required a moment to collect himself. “Bad as the state of the manor may be,” he added more quietly, “its care is far from a priority. A housekeeper is far from a necessity.”

“What of Mrs. Cary?” was Mari’s next question.

“Mrs.—? Good God. You needn’t pretend—”

“It was you, I believe, who began the game of make-believe,” Mari observed. A smug smile tugged at the corner of Charlotte’s mouth. “Who is she?”

“I—I don’t really know,” he admitted. “She appeared to be in some danger, so I—”

“Stepped in to save her. Oh, Mr. Edward. When will you learn you can’t save everyone?”

Her gentle question was rewarded with a bitter sound that hardly deserved the name of laughter. “I have known that since I was nine years old, Mari. If only I had learned the lesson just a little sooner, everything might have turned out differently.”

Nine years old. That must have been when he had gone, or been sent, to the West Indies. What a harsh awakening for a child. But if Mari was right—and Charlotte’s own experience confirmed it—Edward still felt a responsibility to take care of others.

“What’s done is done,” Mari told him. “Now, what do you mean to do with her?”

“If she’s an opportunist, she’ll soon see there’s nothing for her here and be on her way.”

Charlotte could not help but bristle at that description of her. An opportunist, indeed. Just what sort of opportunity was she meant to be seeking from a man whose clothing and mode of travel and current situation revealed his lack of fortune as surely as hers had? Did he imagine himself possessed of charms that would entice a woman to attach herself to him, regardless of every appearance against him?

Her indignation almost caused her to miss Mari’s quiet reply.

“If she leaves, or you send her off, how long before everyone in the neighborhood has heard some rumor about your wife who ran away? Or whom you abandoned?”

“Village gossip.”

His easy dismissal did not sway Mari. “Gossip that could ruin you. It will cost you the trust of the people you hope to help.”

“You may be right,” he agreed after a moment. His voice sank with the reluctant admission, forcing Charlotte to creep closer along the wall, that she might hear the rest of what he said. “And there’s always the possibility her fears are genuine. She may have good reason for fleeing to this remote spot.”

“Perhaps,” Mari conceded. “But how will you decide which is the truth?”

“I don’t know.” A pause. “What do you suggest?”

Yesterday’s rain had left the gentle slope at the side of the house slick with mud—a fact that Charlotte had been willing to ignore until her feet began to slip. It might have been the way the shade had thinned the grass in this particular spot. It might have been the way she was leaning forward trying to overhear her fate. Whatever the cause, as she put more weight onto her left foot, it slid from beneath her. She threw out her hands, swallowed a shriek as both the rough stone wall and the untamed shrubbery eluded her grasp, then skidded and stumbled the rest of the way down the hill, the speed of her descent aided by a thick coating of fallen leaves that must have been rotting there since last autumn.

She landed on her derriere at Edward’s feet.

Noir, who had once more been rubbing against Mari’s ankles, hissed and arched his back, his tail erect and fluffed to three times its usual size. Mari’s eyes went wide and her lips parted in surprise, though no further sound escaped them.

Only on Edward’s face did shock war with some other emotion. She strongly suspected him of fighting a smile.

His brown hair lay in tousled waves, not quite so dark now that it was dry. But in the morning light his eyes shone bluer yet, if such a thing were possible. They were fixed squarely on her face as he bent over her, and to her undying shame she giggled like a schoolgirl.