Page 36 of To Seduce a Stranger

When he caught her at it, she nestled the base of the glass securely between two folds in the blanket and said, “I was once knocked into the Serpentine by a swan.”

“It’s a sort of a lake, in London,” Markham explained to Mari, so that she might join in the merriment. “In one of those parks where nobs can fancy themselves in the country.”

Esoteric knowledge for a West Country farmer. Edward wondered how he had come by it.

As he chuckled with the rest, Edward studied Charlotte’s self-deprecating smile. Then her dark eyes lost some of their twinkle, and she suddenly strangled her quiet laughter with her hand, cupping it over her mouth.

Why had she told the story if the memory pained her so?

“I hope that experience hasn’t given you a lasting fear of the water,” he said, rising. “Come. That pond has been beckoning for the last half hour.”

Warily, she accepted his outstretched hand and came to her feet. “Surely you do not mean to swim?”

“I’d like nothing better. But I’ll content myself with wading. Join us?” he asked the others.

Mari shook her head almost primly. Markham stretched out lazily in the grass beside her. “Too much trouble.”

“Suit yourselves.” Edward shed his boots and stockings and tried not to watch while Charlotte did the same.

But it was impossible not to catch a glimpse of her pale feet and delicate ankles as she raised her skirts to mid-calf and stepped gingerly into the pebbly shallows. “Oooh. It’s cold!”

Undaunted, Edward walked farther out, until the water lapped at the knee-bands of his breeches. “It’s wonderful,” he corrected. “Come deeper.”

“I couldn’t possibly. My dress will get soaked,” she protested. But she took two wobbly steps in his direction, all the same.

He glanced toward the shore to see if the others were watching. But Mari was turned toward Markham, speaking animatedly, while the man nodded as he listened, eyes only for her.

Turning back to Charlotte, he asked, “Was it true, the story about the swan?”

Her skirts slipped from her hands and splashed into the water. Silvery minnows darted through the clear water, seeking cover.

“No,” she confessed. “Not exactly.”

“Then why did you tell it?”

“I . . .” Her shoulders crept higher but did not fall, a sort of half shrug turned into a cower. “I do not know if I can explain.”

“Try.” The monosyllable was sharper than he had intended.

“When Mr. Markham told the story about the lamb, it made me remember . . .” She twisted back and forth, dragging her skirts across the surface of the pond. “Did you ever hear a story so often in your childhood that you believed it must have really happened?”

“I suppose.” Perhaps, when he had been very small. Certainly not the age Charlotte said she had been when she came to England.

“Sometimes, I begin a story, thinking it really happened. And then I recall the truth.”

It was a shocking confession. An inability to differentiate fact from fiction was the first step toward the madhouse. Or prison. “What really happened?” he asked.

“Nothing so . . . amusing, I’m afraid.”

He stepped toward her, close enough that her hems swirling through the water swept across his bare feet. “Were you often required to be amusing?” The thought was somehow chilling, like Scheherazade forced to spin her thousand-and-one tales to keep her head.

“Sometimes.”

“By your husband?”

“Oh, no. In—in France, I used to tell stories to entertain my younger cousins, to keep them from pestering their father. I tried to do as much when I first came to England, but my aunt said she would not tolerate such childish nonsense.”

He thought he knew the type. Of greater interest, however, was the unlooked-for revelation about her family. “So you have English cousins as well?”