Damn, the woman even blushed prettily.
She sat across from Charlotte.
Without breaking eye contact with her, Lady Hareden said lazily to her companion, “Walter, do come sit with us. Stop lurking.”
Walter complied with a toothy grin and sat directly next to Charlotte, who only glanced at him. She tried her best not to show she was uncomfortable with a strange man being so close to her, because it was fairly obvious that Walter, if that was even his true name, did so to intimidate. There was plenty of room next to Lady Hareden, or at the foot of the table, and no true gentleman would have claimed a seat so close to a woman with whom he was not acquainted.
“I was only pointing you out because you are a pretty thing,” said Walter. “I thought perhaps you may be open to… well.” He broke off, and shook his head. “Then I find you’re already known to Mrs. Rattray.”
“She would not want to watch, Walter,” said Lady Hareden. “And she does not need the money. She has Jeremy’s. Don’t waste yours on her.”
Watch? thought Charlotte blankly.
“So, this is the secretary. She’s off limits, then? What a pity,” said Walter.
Oh. They meant watch them.
They had to, if Walter’s look of intrigue and Lady Hareden’s amusement at Charlotte’s evident surprise were any indication. Charlotte had heard of such things—she’d had an older brother, after all—and did not necessarily have an opinion on them one way or another if all parties were consenting. She’d simply never thought about it.
But she did take issue with Lady Hareden.
Finding her voice, she said, “I would only watch if I did not disdain one of the parties in question.” She didn’t know quite what she was saying because she was so indignant, and didn’t really think she would be a voyeur under any circumstances. But that didn’t matter. She spoke out of anger and a compelling desire to see the duchess lose her temper in a room where she was not mistress of the house.
Precisely because she would not be able to lose it. Much.
“My, she is sprightly,” said Walter. “I can see why Hareden likes her. Lovely and sprightly.”
“I beg your pardon, sir,” said Charlotte. She was smiling so tightly that her face hurt. “I don’t know you and should not speak so freely before a stranger of quality. My parents often lectured me on my quick tongue.”
Walter guffawed. “Is it quick in every way, or just this one?”
Insulted, Charlotte fired back, “Perhaps not so quick as Lady Hareden’s.”
Lady Hareden’s surprise ebbed into a sneer. “Very sprightly. Tell me, have you enjoyed sleeping with my husband?”
Charlotte took a deep breath in through her nose. The gravity of the situation came back to her, slowly. You are going to lose your position. “We are not intimate.”
But Charlotte wanted them to be, God forgive her.
“Why not?”
Blinking, Charlotte stared at her. This woman was a puzzle. “What do you mean, ‘Why not?’”
“He is an attractive man. He is a duke. He’d give you trinkets. An allowance, probably. He loves giving gifts. He is not cruel. What woman wouldn’t take the chance?”
At a loss for anything sensible to say, Charlotte said, “Why don’t you sleep with him, then?”
For the first time in Charlotte’s experience, Lady Hareden gave an indication that she was something other than shrewish. Sadness crossed her face, then it was replaced with the usual arrogance. “I don’t have to explain myself to you.”
“Yet I must explain myself to you? How ridiculous,” said Charlotte. She keenly enjoyed the way Lady Hareden’s lips pressed so tightly together, out of annoyance, she supposed, that they went almost white for a second.
“I am your better,” said the duchess. She did not speak above a whisper, but there was fury in the words.
“Ah, but here you are, Mrs. Emily Rattray,” Charlotte reminded her. She kept her voice down. Though she did not like Lady Hareden, she had no wish to see her humiliated. She had no inkling why and could only credit her parents for raising her well. Perhaps it also had something to do with that little flash of sadness that had been on the other woman’s face. So quick she might have imagined it. “I must confess that it is good to speak to you, woman to woman. I have not taken your husband to bed, Mrs. Rattray, because some of us know how to respect marriage vows, even if they were taken by another. You, apparently, are not hindered by notions of honor or boundaries.”
Lady Hareden was not as daring as Charlotte surmised, for she started at the use of her alias and seemed to consider whether goading Charlotte any further was worth the trouble. Walter sat back in his seat, content to let the two women battle things out, possibly realizing that Lady Hareden was too stubborn to appreciate any interference.
Or maybe, he just liked to watch.
“You have the measure of me,” said Lady Hareden at last. “And I would thank you not to intimate her existence to anyone else.”
“I don’t know who I would tell.”
It was a lie, but there was no call to be rude just because Walter was leering and Lady Hareden was—well, actually, knowing her reputation among the staff, servants, and the dowager duchess, this was almost civil behavior.
“We both know that isn’t quite the case,” said Lady Hareden. She locked eyes with Charlotte.
Charlotte frowned. What was Lady Hareden afraid the duke would do? Regardless, I’m not a snitch. It went against her character to tell Lord Hareden, now, since she knew Lady Hareden seemed troubled by the idea.
Part of her still wanted to, and badly, at that. But she wouldn’t. She gave Lady Hareden a tight nod. No matter how much she didn’t like it, she shouldn’t get involved. The duke’s business, as she kept reminding herself, was his own.
“Then, let me be blunt,” said Charlotte, “I won’t. Though it goes against everything instinct tells me.”
The briefest bit of doubt shone in Lady Hareden’s eyes, but it was quickly supplanted by hauteur. Charlotte expected no less.
“I hope you don’t expect me to say thank you, Miss.”
Graceful was at the bottom of a list of adjectives she would choose to describe Lady Hareden. She wondered how the woman comported herself among social equals or friends, and hoped it was better than she did with someone she perceived as inferior.
“No, Mrs. Rattray,” said Charlotte. “I don’t expect that from you, at all.”
“Good.”
Seeming to find the thought of a further exchange between Lady Hareden and Charlotte dull because there had been no real fireworks for him to see, Walter cast the duchess a heated glance.
He said, “We’ve a room upstairs, do we not?”
“Of course,” said Lady Hareden. She looked to Charlotte as though daring her to vocally take issue.
Charlotte met her eyes without flinching. Hidden by the worn, but polished, tabletop, her hands were clenched in her lap so tightly that her fingers hurt. “Your paramour, Mrs. Rattray, is most appallingly boorish. I am surprised that you have allowed someone like him to share your bed.”
Walter, apparently undaunted, only raised his eyebrows and tittered after she spoke. Charlotte supposed, idly, that he was almost handsome in a sunburned, coarse manner.
He had nothing on Lord Hareden.
But then, there was no accounting for taste, as Aunt Edith often said.
Anyway, Charlotte was devoutly trying not to think that she was looking at the true father of Lady Hareden’s child. It was difficult: Walter had the red hair, and while the light was not good enough to entirely see his eye color, they were not any shade of blue.
“Good day, Miss Masbeck,” said Lady Hareden in an undertone.
She and Walter swept away from Charlotte’s table as abruptly as they’d come to it. Her mind positively reeling, she waited until they disappeared entirely to take her leave.
She had not gone to see her prospective landlady and spent the rest of the day wandering a
bout the village. She meant to return to the manor but was so overtaken by restlessness that it took her half an age to get herself back to the path. Too many thoughts were meandering in her head, and none of them were good.
Now, back in the red bedroom, she contemplated what her and Lady Hareden’s exchange actually meant. Did the duchess actually want Charlotte to tell the duke? No, that couldn’t be. She was sure that she was reading too far into things, but the tense moments kept replaying in her mind. Charlotte might have expected the duchess’ blasé attitude toward her bedding the duke, perhaps, but not the sadness contained within the same conversation.
It just went to show that people were never all you saw of them, mused Charlotte. She could not like Lady Hareden, but she would be among the first to admit that nearly everyone had secrets that could hurt them. Perhaps women did most of all. Even a duchess.
Suddenly, it came to her. That was it. It wasn’t necessarily the secret itself.
Lady Hareden liked the freedom of being Mrs. Rattray. It seemed absurd to Charlotte, who was only an ordinary person and always had been, but that was all she could conclude. Perhaps Lady Hareden worried that if the duke found out she was using an alias, he would feel she might come to harm and he’d try to exercise more control over her whereabouts. But then, that was a naive line of reasoning.
The duke probably would be more offended that his wife was cavorting, and not predominately worried for her safety. Meanwhile, Lady Hareden most likely did not want to lose any chances to be with her lovers. Or with Walter, if he’s the main one.
Charlotte sighed, staring at the wall helplessly as she sat on the bed. “I never expected any of this,” she mumbled to the empty room. She could not quite understand how she’d come to be thinking of a duchess’ lovers so often, yet here she was.
It was far more pleasant to dwell on the question, Have you enjoyed sleeping with my husband? Lady Hareden was brazen for asking it, but then, Charlotte had to be at least a little wicked to contemplate what it might be like to sleep with the duke.
Which, between bouts of trying to untangle the meaning of life at Rosethorpe, she did. She might not be a virgin, but her first experience with a man had been brutal and humiliating. It hardly counted as anything pleasant or sensual. To make up for it, she found books that could curl her mother’s hair, and read them. She had plenty on which to draw in her imagination.
The trouble only rested in thinking about what she couldn’t have.
*
It was very late, indeed, when she found that, despite trying, she would probably not fall asleep. Resigned, donning a wrapper and her slippers, she made for the library, carefully navigating the dark corridors. Surely she could find something that would at least send her off into a doze.
She entered the vast room, which she could just navigate in the low, bluish light coming from between the curtains, and went to the fireplace to light a candle for herself.
A man’s voice stopped her as she reached for the candlestick. “Miss Masbeck, are you given to bouts of sleeplessness, too?”
For an instant, she was terrified. She didn’t recognize the voice at first and thought an intruder had managed to break in, which she would have admitted was unlikely to happen without a ruckus if she weren’t so startled. And how would a burglar know my name?
Then, as her heart settled back into a more normal rhythm, she took a breath and realized to whom she should be speaking. “My lord,” she said, wishing most assiduously that it wasn’t the younger Hareden, even though it was.
“That’s right.”
She turned from the fireplace to see Lord Paul Hareden laying on one of the settees in front of it. She spied his outline, anyway, could just make it out in the light they were afforded.
“You gave me quite a fight.”
“My apologies. I couldn’t decide what was better—speaking out or staying silent.”
Charlotte lit a candle once her hands stopped shaking. “I suppose I do appreciate knowing someone was here.” She arranged her wrapper so that the delicate pink cloth entirely covered her night rail, which was thin and would leave little to the imagination on its own. “I have had trouble sleeping since coming here.”
That wasn’t quite true. She hadn’t really slept very well for months.
“I sympathize. I have not slept well since I was a boy,” he said, and there was a flash of gleaming teeth in the candlelight. He was smiling. It was very much like his brother’s smile and she gulped. “I am always thinking about too much, I’d wager.”
“My mind is at fault for keeping me awake, too,” she said cautiously. The more he spoke, the easier it was to calm down. She did not know much about him at all, but if his family was anything to go by, he was a decent sort. Still, she didn’t want to be discovered alone in a library with a strange man who was clad only in his nightclothes, even if that strange man was her employer’s brother. Maybe especially if he was her employer’s brother.
“Always the way of it. May I suggest the law texts?” He tilted his head from where he lay, indicating a batch of shelves to her left.
“I actually find the law too interesting,” she said, shifting impatiently from foot to foot, just a little.
“Well…”
“And infuriating, when it deals with women,” she added.
His grin grew bigger. “Too right. History is toward the back? Helps me, in any event.”
“History wouldn’t put me to sleep, either.”
He chuckled warmly. “I can see why you make a good secretary for him.”
“I don’t deal with either history or the law directly,” she said. “Well, not to make decisions. I’m no barrister. No duke. I just like the subjects.” Helplessly, she gestured a bit with the candlestick. “Is there anything… on, oh, I don’t know… animal husbandry?”
If it didn’t subside, his abrupt eruption of guffaws was going to wake the whole house. “I’m sorry,” he said, after she glared. He attempted to quiet himself. “Animal husbandry?”
“I know nothing about it and I’m sure it would just send me right off.”
“Not if the book has pictures.”
Caught between indignation and amusement, she shrugged. “Maybe. But I had an older brother.”
“Had?”
“Yes, had.”
“What happened to him, if I may ask?”
Charlotte sighed. “He took very ill three winters ago. Well, we all did, but in the end, Ethan did not recover.”
“I am sorry for it. I cannot imagine losing my brother to anything.”
And yet, he probably had when the duke went abroad. Charlotte nodded. “I miss him terribly, but he would not want me sitting around and moping over him, so I do not.” She smiled. “He was very, well, open. About his trysts. So I never needed to think about animals…” She paused as he lifted both his eyebrows, as though to say, Go on, then, what about animals? It was another very Hareden expression. “Never mind.”
“I shall forget you mentioned it. May he rest in peace.”
Grumbling, she asked, “Thank you. What about fairy tales?”
“Oh, those will be in the nursery, I expect. Probably moved them there when the baby was born.”
Charlotte had never had a younger brother or a younger sibling at all, but she imagined that she was conversing like she had one. It was remarkably easy. “Fine—what about a sleeping draught? Have you any of those? I’m sure there’s one in the house, somewhere.”
She didn’t really mean it, and she was teasing, but as soon as the words left her mouth, the duke’s brother started to look at her with an appraising glint in his eyes.
“What do you mean?”
“Just what I say. Lots of families keep medicines for sleeping.”
Then she remembered how, not long ago at all, she’d seen the effects of such a medicine on the duke. Well, too much of such a medicine. And he claimed he only used it casually, but who was really to know but him?
“This one tries
not to.”
She sighed and put the candlestick down on the little table next to the settee, then took the chair opposite both. “I…”
“Yes, Miss Masbeck?”
“I only say this because he didn’t stop me from entering his office, or shout at me, or… he didn’t send me away, you see.”
“Jeremy, you mean?”
The use of the duke’s given name didn’t seem so odd when she considered that it was his little brother speaking, and her general impression of Lord Paul Hareden gave her the idea that he was less interested in the rules, as such. Even if he was well aware of them.
“Yes. We were supposed to meet in his office because he was to tell me whether or not I was going to stay on. Obviously, I did. I’m here now. But I think, I believe, anyway…”
“Nothing you can say will shock me. I have seen him at his worst when it comes to that stuff. Go on, please.”
“He’d been there for some time before—maybe even all night. There was a nearly empty bottle of laudanum in the room and he was speaking very queerly.”
After taking a moment, he said, “It’s been a while since he has done that.”
“He said he wasn’t addicted.”
“He never really was.”
“Isn’t that what everyone says?”
He smiled, though his eyes were still a little more somber than they had been only moments ago. “Yes, often, they do. But once we weaned him off… he had to be on it for the pain, you see, so he became rather dependent before coming home… he assured me he wouldn’t go back to it.”
This did not quite square with what Lord Hareden had told her, but she would not argue the point. Besides, his brother was no fool—under the affable and foppish exterior, Charlotte was sure that this man was not gullible in the slightest.
Asking something she hardly dared to, she said, “What of his mind?”
“Pardon?”
“The pain, yes, I can’t even imagine the physical toll of…” Charlotte swallowed, and shook her head. “Anything and everything he went through. But would you say his mind suffered?”
Duke of Disgrace (Dukes of Destiny Book 3) Page 15
