Page 42 of To Seduce a Stranger

“As well you should,” Tessie agreed, taking a cup from her hand. Only then did Charlotte recognize the pattern: the same as that on the broken fragments of china she had so recently swept from the floor of the dining room at Ravenswood. The dishes in Tessie’s possession were chipped and faded. Had she gone through the abandoned house, scavenging for the best of what remained?

“Did you know him? Lord Beckley, I mean.”

Tessie took a sip of tea, then returned her saucer to the table with a steady hand. “It’s not very likely, is it, that an old woman such as I, a vagrant, would have ever met an earl?”

“No, I—I suppose not. I did not mean to be impertinent. It’s just that—well, I must confess I am curious about why you seem to be hiding here—”

“Hiding?” Tessie drew herself upright, as much as her injuries would allow. “From what would I have to hide?”

“Why, nothing, ma’am. I only thought . . .”

“I prefer to think of myself as surviving.” Lifting a spoon, she gave her tea a brisk stir. The silver, though tarnished, looked as if it had been made to accompany the china. Charlotte wondered that she had not thought to sell it. “We none of us know what hand we will be dealt in life. We have only the choice of how we will play our cards.”

“But what will you do if the rightful owner comes back to Ravenswood and finds you here?” Charlotte cried. Would Tessie be driven away? Sent to the workhouse?

Tessie turned toward the light passing through a small square window, covered in oiled paper, not glass. “I have been waiting for that day.” Her voice was quiet, and Charlotte could see only the scarred, expressionless side of her face. Still, to Charlotte’s ear, she sounded almost . . . hopeful.

“Perhaps it will never come,” Charlotte said, uncertain whether she was offering reassurance, or crushing a long-cherished dream.

For a moment, she wondered if Tessie had even heard her speak. Then she returned her half-blind gaze to Charlotte’s face. “I begin to think you may be right.”

Unable to choke down the last of her tea, Charlotte soon excused herself and returned to Ravenswood Manor, Noir at her feet. Although the visit had not exactly been a comfortable one, she was not sorry she had gone. Tessie was just what she had needed: living proof that people could make the best of bad situations.

Charlotte had lain awake all night, reliving those moments in the ruined room, wondering if she had made the wrong decision to come here, to stay here, to hide.

I am not hiding. I am surviving, Tessie had insisted.

Charlotte recognized that independent spirit. Once, she had claimed to share it.

There was safety in the seclusion she had found here. But if she truly intended to be free, she would have to nip her reckless desire for Edward Cary in the bud.

She might have inherited her mother’s eyes, her hair, her nervous laugh. But she had not inherited her weakness where men were concerned. Yes, fire sparked in her blood every time Edward touched her. But fires died as long as no one put fuel to the flames.

By the time he returned from London, she would make sure that spark had been doused.

When she drew near the stables, she found them in an uproar. Garrick was scurrying to and fro, fetching water for strange horses. A man she had never seen was scraping flecks of foam from their sides, and an unfamiliar carriage, a hack by its looks, sat parked in the yard. In his separate stall, Samson watched everything with his ears pricked forward.

“Has Mr. Cary not left?”

Water sloshed onto Garrick’s boot and across the straw-strewn stable floor as he thumped a bucket before one of the horses. “Left? An’ where would he go?”

“He told me yesterday he was leaving for London at first light.”

The two men exchanged a glance—of commiseration, she decided. Grooms likely did not appreciate being the last to learn of travel plans.

“Well, he’s here yet. Jus’ went into th’ manor,” he added with a jerk of his chin over his shoulder. “T’ meet with Lord Beckley.”

* * *

A few minutes later, and Edward would have missed him. He had been on the point of setting out for Marshfield, the village south of Little Norbury. The one from which he had left so many years ago. Through it passed a regular coaching route, and from there, he could make his way to London in little more than a day. Since he had elected not to leave with Dobbs when he’d had the chance, it was the best avenue of escape remaining to him.

When Garrick knocked on the door of the Rookery and told him about the earl’s arrival, the better part of him had wanted to push past Garrick and race to the house.

Instead, he calmly said, “Please tell his lordship I shall make my way up to the manor shortly.”

His excuse for getting away had come to him.

Forcing himself to wait—five minutes, fifteen, thirty—had not in the end made him feel more calm when he walked through the front door of Ravenswood Manor, which had been left standing open, no servants in sight. He stepped to the threshold of the Great Room, expecting to find his father within.