Page 53 of To Seduce a Stranger

“Will the current earl honor his commitment?”

Edward mustered something he hoped might pass for a smile. “The current earl has many decisions to make.”

“But he must keep you on. Ravenswood needs you,” she insisted, leaning toward him. Her dark eyes flickered over his face. “The late earl was your father, wasn’t he?” she said, the words coming slowly as she pieced the story together. “And your mother was . . . some innocent girl from the village, I suppose.” She paused, and he thought for a moment about seizing that momentary silence, correcting her, setting her straight. But she was not as far wrong as she might have been, and as before, he gave in to the temptation of her gift for spinning tales. “We are two of a kind, you and I. My mother, too, was not my father’s wife.”

Ought he to be shocked by the revelation—or rather, the confirmation of his suspicions? Mostly, he found himself imagining the ways in which her illegitimacy must have shaped her childhood, must have affected the woman she had become.

“I suppose you favored him—and she could not bear the resemblance, the reminder of what he had done,” Charlotte suggested, drawing surely from her own history. The French uncle, disapproving of his sister’s choices. The English aunt, resentful of her very existence. “So you were sent away. But he promised you the post of steward on his estate if you survived to return.”

Slowly and deliberately, Edward returned his cup and saucer to the tray and raised his eyes to her face. “And here I am.”

A quick shake of her head. “Here we are.” Her gaze flitted around the small room before returning to him. “Why did you bring me to the Rookery?”

Shifting uncomfortably on the hard floor, he drew one knee almost to his chest. “Because I suspect our new arrival is something of a libertine. And I promised you that you would be safe in Gloucestershire.”

With a faraway look, she nodded. “That’s why you sent Mari away as well. But you and I, at least, are believed to be married. She cannot stay with Mr. Markham all night.”

“I imagine they’ll make do.” At her quick frown of uncertainty, he explained. “They have formed an . . . attachment.”

“Oh. That is . . .”

. . . scandalous? . . . shocking?

“. . . sudden.”

A part of him had hoped Charlotte would be swayed by the romance of it—enough to throw caution to the wind herself. He brushed at the mud speckling his breeches. “It’s been known to happen.”

“Yes. It has. But I thought . . .” A pause. “I have often wondered . . . if you and she ever . . . ?”

“No.”

She flinched a little at the abruptness of his reply, although he had tried to keep his voice soft. A gentler response, at least, than Markham had earned earlier, to his similar question.

How to explain something that lies so far outside Charlotte’s experience? “If Markham asks her to go out walking, to kiss him, to marry him, even, and she says yes—or no—he will have the comfort of knowing she speaks her own mind. Her own heart. But for all the years I have known her, she was a slave. Not my slave, but a slave nonetheless. Even if I had wanted some sort of relationship with her . . .” He paused, seeking the right words. “If I had asked, she might have said yes. But I would always have feared that, circumstanced as she was, she might have felt she dared not say no. I would not want a woman who could not freely choose.”

Charlotte listened, wide-eyed. He almost envied her ignorance of what went on in places like Antigua. But perhaps it was not all bad to have learned what he had learned. Perhaps it was true that the meaning of freedom became more evident in a world of slavery.

“Some men seem to,” she said at last.

And he realized that she understood much more than he realized.

He had spoken firmly of Mari’s right to choose, but what of Charlotte’s?

“What do you want, Charlotte?” He pushed the question past lips that were suddenly dry, despite the tea he had drunk.

Moments ticked past as she considered her answer. “All my life, people have behaved as if it was only a matter of time until I showed myself my mother’s daughter. Until I took up with some man and—” In place of words, she lifted one shoulder. The blanket slid down once more. “I grew up determined to prove them wrong. Then people said my English blood had made me cold, and I prayed they were right.” There was no mistaking the note of defiance in her voice, the note of pride.

“You were married, though?”

“Oh, yes. I was married.” The little laugh that bubbled up was nothing short of bitter.

The sound chilled his blood. “Was your husband a cruel man?”

“Just the opposite,” she insisted, stretching out one hand from beneath the blanket to reassure him, though in the end, she did not reach far enough to touch him. Her ring winked in the firelight. “He was kind to a fault. He married me to protect me with his name, to banish those cruel whispers once and for all. But he was an old man. We never—that is, he could not . . .” Her voice fell.

“Ah.” Privately, he had to wonder if the man’s eyesight had been failing as well as his heart. Good God. One glimpse of Charlotte’s bare shoulder was enough to raise him from the dead.

“I told him I did not mind. I never wanted, never allowed myself to want that,” she corrected. “Yet . . .”