Page 7 of To Seduce a Stranger

“I was traveling with my employer,” she said. “I am a lady’s maid.”

“Oh?”

What fueled his skepticism he could not say. Her dowdy clothes, perhaps, which were far from the quality or style in which fashion-conscious lady’s maids usually dressed. Or her voice, which even as he contemplated his reaction, shot through him with a throaty, “Oui.”

The “lady” she served might be anyone, he told himself, tamping down his suspicion. Miss Blake could hardly be blamed for taking employment with some parsimonious social climber who hoped to bolster her status with a real French maid.

“And you were somehow separated?”

“As we were returning to London from Bath,” she explained, “I informed her ladyship I wished to be released from her service. When she resumed her journey a short while ago, she did so without me.”

“What?” At his exclamation, several heads in their vicinity turned. No maid in her right mind would have quit under these circumstances, to be turned loose in the rain at some roadside inn. Which meant the situation had likely been reversed. He tried to imagine what might have possessed a lady of rank to dismiss her servant so abruptly, to abandon a young woman at the side of the road. Insolence? Theft? Or worse?

“Have you another situation lined up?” he asked, trying to make the question sound idly curious.

“No.” The word seemed to have been jarred loose by a violent tremor that passed through her body—whether cold or shock or anger, he could not be sure.

“Brandy,” he barked to the barmaid as she danced past on her way to deliver two more pints to the ousted bucks. When she returned with a single tumbler of amber liquid and set it down before him, he pushed it toward Charlotte. “Drink this.”

His offer was met with a sharp shake of her head. “No. Thank you.”

“Purely medicinal. It will help with the shivering.”

Although it must have cost her tremendous effort, her shoulders and hands and knees stopped shaking. “I assure you, I am f-fine.”

“Are you always this stubborn?”

As if to prove the extent of her self-control, she raised perfectly steady hands from her lap and rested them on the edge of the table. “If you must know, Mr. Cary, I haven’t any money to pay for it.”

No money? That only confirmed his suspicions. Just a moment past, his bones had ached with cold; now, his blood threatened to boil. Someone had meant to condemn a vulnerable young woman to the village poor house. Or the village whorehouse. Stretching out one finger, he scooted the glass closer to her. “My treat.”

Her lips twitched and her nostrils flared, but in the end she lifted the glass to her lips and carefully sipped its contents. “Merci,” she said as she returned it, three-quarters full, to the table. He had expected watery eyes or a choking cough. What he got was a wry sort of smile. “But you ought to know you have been cheated. No Frenchman would honor that beverage with the name of brandy.”

A laugh rumbled in his chest. “English palates have been stunted by the war, no doubt,” he said. “Nevertheless, it brought some color to your cheeks.”

He had meant it as a statement of fact, not a flirtation, but Charlotte’s gaze dropped to where her hands still rested on the table. “I should go.”

“Go where?”

“I do not know,” she said, pushing back as if she would stand. “It does not matter.”

“Let me help you. Take you where you wish to go. Or give you coach fare, at least.” The offer was past his lips before she could rise and walk away, before he could consider its wisdom.

At last she lifted her eyes to him, large in her still-pale face and such a deep brown he could not see where her pupils ended and her irises began. Separated from her only by the width of a small table, he could almost see his reflection in those dark eyes, but nothing of what she was thinking. She shook her head. “Why should you do such a thing? We are strangers. It would be most improper for me to travel with you or to accept your money.”

“I’ve been away from England for many years. Things have no doubt changed in my absence. But I was taught to believe it at least as improper for a gentleman to leave a lady stranded.”

“How can I be sure you are a gentleman?” Her lips quirked upward with the question as her gaze skimmed over him, cool but openly assessing.

A very good question indeed. The particular ways in which he had proved his character over the years would mean very little now he was back to England. “You cannot.”

His answer produced an unexpected nod of satisfaction. “How long have you been away?”

“Twenty-two years. Most of my life,” he explained at the slight widening of her eyes.

“Where?”

Was it his imagination, or did she hesitate over that simple question?