A Rogue of Her Own

by Grace Burrowes

  Charlotte took off across the snowy road, flung open the heavy church door, and charged up the steps leading to the belfry, knowing—knowing, knowing—that she’d never get to Heulwen in time to prevent a tragedy.

  Another tragedy.

  * * *

  Sherbourne was exhausted, cold, upset with his wife, and reeling from too many verbal blows: Charlotte claimed she did not care about his money, but what had he to offer her other than money?

  She regarded his pride as problematic? What was to sustain him if not pride?

  She loved him?

  Her other imprecations had pained him, but that salvo had stunned him nearly witless, and she’d tossed it off as a commonplace. I love you—please take me to the posting inn.

  Now she’d disappeared into the church and more blows fell on Sherbourne’s heart.

  Heulwen was up in that steeple and outweighed Charlotte by a good four stone. If the maid was suffering a nervous affliction, she could toss Charlotte from the belfry before Charlotte understood the danger.

  Charlotte was terrified of heights, and the steeple was the tallest structure in the village.

  She loved him, she was the woman he’d raise his children with, and nothing could be allowed—

  Sherbourne’s feet started moving without him making a decision to pursue Charlotte into the church. Why would a woman eat orange peels, for God’s sake? Why would she fall asleep halfway through a sermon that was neither boring nor lengthy? Why would she call on the Caerdenwal household—home of the chubbiest infant Sherbourne had laid eyes on—and neglect to socialize with any other neighbors?

  The stairway wound around inside the bell tower, and Charlotte’s steps retreated high above.

  “Charlotte! Stop!”

  Even if she’d heard him, she’d never obey a direct command. “Charlotte, please wait for me.”

  Silence, and Sherbourne forced himself to slow down. If Heulwen was upset, Sherbourne barging into the situation like a maddened bull would do nothing to aid matters.

  If Heulwen harmed Charlotte, he would not answer for the consequences. He crept up the last two dozen steps, leaned against the wall, and—despite every instinct he possessed—waited in silence, while Charlotte, all on her own, faced yet another demon.

  * * *

  Heulwen stood silhouetted against the frigid, whitening landscape. She was a pillar of despair, but thank God and bright red cloaks, she was yet safe. The belfry was like a balcony open on three sides, with bell ropes running through a sizeable square opening in the floor.

  “Come away from there,” Charlotte said, trying for her best imitation of an impatient Aunt Esther. “You’ll catch your death in this bitter wind, and then I will be without my eyes and ears among the household staff.”

  Heulwen remained on the far side of the belfry, the snow dusting her cloak with white. “It’s no good, ma’am. You don’t spy on the help, and they all know what’s afoot with me already.”

  Her voice was dead, her gaze flat.

  “Who will lace me up, then? My husband abandons me at the crack of doom for the charms of his dratted mine and comes home too tired to do more than fall into his bath, clutching yet another treatise or budget.”

  This complaint, though honest, merited only a sad ghost of a smile. “You and the master rub along well enough, missus. He should not have allowed you to come up here.”

  Charlotte stalked around the thick ropes hanging down the middle of the belfry. “Heulwen, Mr. Sherbourne knows better than to approach me with allowing or permitting on his mind. He no more allows me to join you admiring the view here than I allow him to hare off for his mine each morning. You aren’t even wearing a scarf.”

  And the poor woman had been crying. Tears had tracked down her pale, freckled cheeks. She flicked a sidelong glance at Charlotte, and the well of hopelessness in the maid’s eyes was bottomless.

  “This is about Hector Morgan, isn’t it?”

  “Not anymore. He says he can’t marry me or he’ll lose his post, and then we’ll both be out of work. The whole valley will know why, and he’ll be as disgraced as I am.”

  The groom’s reasoning was lamentably sound. Employees in domestic service were not to marry. Their entire allegiance was to be their employers, and their wages weren’t adequate to support children in any case.

  “That is sheer balderdash,” Charlotte said. “The man is never as disgraced as the woman, he never risks his life as a consequence of his folly, and he never spends the rest of his days paying for his pleasures. Did Hector promise you marriage?”

  “No.” Heulwen swiped bare fingers across her cheek. “He said what we did couldn’t get a babe, because he didn’t…I should not have conceived.”

  “He withdrew,” Charlotte spat. “Thought himself a great saint for yielding the last inch of pleasure, without bothering to learn that his sacrifice was likely in vain.”

  “Oh, ma’am, you must not say such things.” A flicker of the old Heulwen showed in her mortification, so Charlotte took two steps closer.

  “If we’re not to be honest here and now, Heulwen, then what place has honesty in any of our dealings? The child is not to blame for your impetuousness or Hector’s stupidity.”

  “There can’t be a child,” Heulwen said. “I tried the teas and tisanes, I tried not eating. I thought if I fell down the steps, maybe, but I couldn’t make myself…”

  Her gaze dropped to the dark, wet cobbles of the churchyard forty feet below.

  “I had a friend,” Charlotte said. “She was ruined by a fine lord and didn’t survive the birth by more than a few weeks. I will not let you die for something as stupid as shame, Heulwen. My family is rife with children who arrived but a few months after the vows, and my uncle is a duke.”

  Heulwen’s consternation was genuine. “Them as has money can marry and do as they please. I haven’t any money, and Hector has only his wages.”

  Charlotte ventured another step closer. “Children cannot eat money. Money does not comfort them when they have nightmares. Money doesn’t stay up until dawn singing lullabies to a colicky baby. Money won’t explain to a small boy how to tie his shoes or apologize for a harsh word.

  “Money is not love,” she went on, “money is not joy, money is surely not happiness or a kind heart or a keen mind. London is awash in money and yet beggars abound as well. Money is not the problem, Heulwen. I have money, and you are welcome to it, but if you dash your brains out in a foolish moment, my money is useless.”

  Charlotte was nearly shouting but she dared take only one more step, and still Heulwen was beyond her reach.

  “I can’t take your money,” Heulwen said, gaze swinging back out to the frozen landscape. “I should not have done what I did.”

  She was a large woman. If she so much as leaned out over the railing, Charlotte would be unable to stop her fall.

  “Are you to die for your mistake? Is that what Hector wants?”

  “No, of course not. He wants me to go to a place in Cardiff for women like me and let them have the baby. He has some funds—not a lot, but enough that they might let me stay there when the time comes.”

  “Then your baby will die,” Charlotte said, for that’s exactly what happened at such institutions all too often, “because you haven’t enough coin to raise the child.”

  Heulwen’s tears ran in silent torrents. “I can’t give up my baby, and I can’t keep my baby. I don’t know what else to do.”

  Her fingers went to the frogs of her cloak—no sense getting blood on a fine wool garment?—and Charlotte moved, tackling Heulwen headlong and pushing her away from the railing.

  Heulwen had both height and size on Charlotte, and refused to budge. She got an elbow to Charlotte’s ribs, and a grip on the railing, and all the breath left Charlotte’s lungs.

  “You cannot die, Heulwen. You cannot die—”

  Another elbow, this time clipping Charlotte on the chin. Heulwen’s cloak was coming loose, and Charlotte was losing h
er grip on the maid. A glimpse of the slick, deadly cobbles far below closed a vise around Charlotte’s lungs.

  “Let go, Missus. Let go, please, just let me go.”

  Never. Charlotte forced air into her lungs, forced herself to find another handful of Heulwen’s clothing to clutch, forced herself to remain upright. Simple physics weighed against Charlotte, but determination tipped the scales back to an even fight.

  Almost. Charlotte was determined, she was strong, and she was fast, but she was also cold, tired, and not accustomed to physical combat.

  Heulwen had a big, worn, wet boot up on the rail when a pair of strong arms plucked her away.

  “You heard your mistress,” Sherbourne said. “She asked you to step back, and you will step back.”

  Heulwen struggled, but she was no match for Lucas Sherbourne intent on a goal. He simply held on, arms lashed about the maid, until she ceased thrashing and hung limply against him.

  “Thank you,” Charlotte panted. “I would have lost her.”

  “Miss MacPherson!” Sherbourne bellowed.

  The vicar’s daughter appeared, no bonnet, no gloves, snow melting in her hair. “I’m here. Heulwen, you will come with me to the manse and have a cup of hot tea.”

  Heulwen’s weeping was audible now, sniffly, broken-hearted crying that would eventually stop. The ache in Charlotte’s heart felt eternal by comparison—without beginning or end, like the bleak, leaden sky.

  With Sherbourne’s arm across her shoulders, Heulwen shuffled to the door of the belfry and let Miss MacPherson take her by the hand. They left, their footsteps and Heulwen’s crying fading into the bowels of the church.

  “You came,” Charlotte said. “You came. Thank God, you came and you brought help. I need a handkerchief, and I left my reticule…” She had no idea where her reticule was or how she’d remain standing one more second. The village and even the countryside stretched out far below, and weakness assailed Charlotte, but not because she was too high above solid ground.

  She flew across the belfry into her husband’s arms. “You came. She nearly pitched us both over, nearly…but you came.”

  She burrowed into Sherbourne’s embrace, and mashed her face against the soft wool of his coat, and let the tears flow.

  * * *

  “I can walk,” Charlotte said, as Sherbourne carried her up the front steps to their home. “I’m not an invalid.”

  “You are my wife,” he replied as a surprised Crandall opened the door. “Carrying you on occasion is my privilege.” Still he did not set her on her feet—could not—but continued straight to the library, doubtless leaving a trail of snow and mud on the carpets.

  He’d finally carried his bride across the threshold of their home, and that…that helped.

  “Lucas, it was a bad moment, and—” Charlotte fell silent long enough to lift the door latch.

  “It was an awful moment,” he said, kicking the door closed behind them, “one I’ll relive in my nightmares until I’m so old I can’t recall my own name.”

  Sherbourne set her on the sofa, cloak and all. Thank God that Charlotte had given orders the library fire was to be kept roaring at all times, for the room was relatively warm. Sherbourne went no farther from Charlotte’s side than the distance to the sideboard, where he poured her a tot of brandy.

  “Drink this,” he said, setting the glass down so he could unfasten her cloak. He untied her bonnet ribbons next, and put the damned hat on the floor before the fire. Her boot laces were the worse for being wet, and when he finally had her footwear off, he wanted to toss the damned things across the room.

  He set them around the end of the sofa, where the fire’s heat would do little damage.

  “You don’t have to drink the brandy,” Sherbourne said, “but I need to do something for you to calm my nerves, so you will please at least pretend to take a sip.”

  Charlotte held the glass beneath her slightly red nose. “I’m well, Lucas. I came to no harm, and Heulwen came to no harm, thanks to you.”

  He settled on the hassock before her, drew her feet into his lap, and searched beneath her skirts for a garter.

  “You were nearly pitched to your death by a maid grown hysterical over a situation that developed under my very nose. All I could do was stand outside that belfry and listen, pray, curse, and hope.”

  He’d also heard Charlotte’s speech about money—and love.

  He gathered Charlotte’s feet and bent over them. He’d nearly lost her, nearly lost everything that mattered. Inside, he was shaking, but as long as he could touch his wife, the shaking did not overpower him.

  “Drink this,” Charlotte said, holding the brandy out to him. “The quality is excellent, but at the moment, it might not agree with me.”

  Did she know she was breeding? Suspect? Something in between? Had he been wrong?

  Sherbourne took the brandy, downed half of it, and set it aside. “I’ve realized something.”

  “I’ve realized a few things too. You first.”

  If she’d realized their marriage was over and that the rest of her life should be spent under her papa’s roof rather than in a household where maids developed fatal passions for stable lads and titled scoundrels got rich off the labor of others, Sherbourne would…

  Convince her otherwise.

  “Brantford is a disgrace of the first water,” Sherbourne said. “The mother of his child—the mother of his child—came to him for aid and he all but tossed her from the steeple. Tomcats don’t prey on their own young, wolves, snakes…I know of no creature under all of heaven that would behave thus.”

  “Brantford did, Lucas. Many men do, and some women aren’t much better. This matters to me.”

  “You matter to me.”

  She brushed her fingers through his hair. “What of our offspring, whom Brantford would see tossed into penury? You exaggerated for the sake of argument, but your point is valid: Brantford can ruin you.”

  This too had come clear for Sherbourne as he’d listened to his wife trying to reason with a hysterical young woman, as he’d recalled that Charlotte was terrified of heights and had scaled the highest building in the village in hopes of rescuing a flighty maid, as he’d raced to the vicarage next door and shouted for help.

  “Brantford can ruin my reputation as a businessman, which reputation is overstated at best. He cannot ruin me. I can ruin your respect for me, by choosing what’s expedient over what’s right. Only you can ruin me.”

  Charlotte scooted closer, emerging from her cloak to climb into Sherbourne’s lap. “You say the most gallant, romantic things.” She twined her arms about his neck, and the panic that had been building inside Sherbourne for weeks subsided minutely.

  He shifted, so he and Charlotte were in her favorite corner of the sofa. She pulled the quilt off the back of the couch and arranged it around them.

  “I cannot ruin you,” Charlotte said. “That was my great insight. I don’t want to ruin you, I don’t want to be right at the cost of your regard for me or your self-respect. You should be able to trust that one person—at least one person—will not betray you. We might argue and feud, but we must not ever fear that we’ll betray each other.”

  “You did not want to betray the memory of your friend.”

  “Or the poor little wretch who has Brantford for a father.”

  They remained cuddled on the sofa, and though nothing was resolved, Sherbourne’s anxiety ebbed yet more, enough that he could focus on Charlotte’s words: Brantford had a child, and that child deserved his father’s support.

  A question threaded through Sherbourne’s jumbled thoughts: Radnor had clearly been the apple of his parents’ eyes, Haverford a treasured ducal heir. Sherbourne’s upbringing had been challenging, but he’d been fed, clothed, housed, and given a name in which he could take pride.

  What was life like for that small boy in godforsaken Brecknockshire? What name had his mother given him, and what had he been told about his antecedents?

  “W
hat shall we do about Heulwen and Hector?” Charlotte asked. “They have been foolish, but half my family has indulged in the same foolishness without benefit of matrimony. Heulwen says those with money can be foolish, and yet, her child will have no money.”

  “I’m thinking,” Sherbourne said, which was a lie. He was wallowing in the pleasure of holding his wife, in the scent of gardenia, and in a blossoming of hope, despite the snow coming down outside.

  Charlotte twiddled the damp hair at his nape. “We forgot to pick up the post, Mr. Sherbourne.”

  “Hang the post. Very likely it will hold another scold from Brantford, threatening dire consequences unless I double his money by Easter.”

  Charlotte’s fingers went still. “He threatens you?”

  “Politely, but yes. He claims I haven’t given him an opportunity to earn a decent sum in a reasonable time, you see. He has instead lent his cachet to a dodgy venture, placed his faith in a man who’d do well to respect his betters when they give him an opportunity to improve his situation.”

  “You can’t call him out,” Charlotte said, grabbing Sherbourne by the ears. “There’s a code about these things. He’s titled and you’re not, and that means you cannot blow him to bits.”

  Sherbourne kissed her nose. “Would ridding the world of Brantford be a disservice? Would the boy be any worse off with no father than he is with Brantford for a father?”

  “You have the same look in your eye that you did when you came upon Neederby trying to intimidate me into accepting his proposal. You are vexed.”

  Exceedingly. “I am determined. I must pay a call on Haverford, and then I’d like to prepare for a confrontation with Brantford. I should be back by tomorrow evening, the next morning at the latest.”

  Charlotte rose from his lap, bringing the quilt with her, like a queen in an ermine cape. “Haverford Castle is not an hour’s journey, even in this weather. What are you about?”

  Cold air assailed Sherbourne from all sides. “Brantford has tarried in Wales and threatened to pay another call on us, biding with Radnor if he must. He’s intent on revising the terms of the contract so I’m beggared and he’s enriched. We can renegotiate that document, but I’d rather my next encounter with him be on my terms and not his.”