“Well, it is such a very fine day, Miss.”
James have been unable to force down anything more substantial than tea at breakfast and, now that he was approaching Hawthorn Manor, he hoped that his stomach would not rumble and roll as he tried to speak sensibly to Charlotte.
He had received Ruth Clarkin’s brief letter the evening before and it had suddenly given him hope that perhaps things really would work out for the best. If nothing else, Miss Clarkin was a very clever young woman with an art for careful planning.
“Your Grace,
As promised, I am writing to you with details of an idea which I think might work. I have just discovered that the mistress of this house, Mrs. Gwendolen Dearborn, is to be away from home for a good deal of tomorrow. She is due to leave after breakfast and is not set to return until the early evening.
Forgive me for presuming to present you with a plan, Sir, but I think it might be best if you arrived early. It would give Miss Cunningham the rest of the day to come to terms with her emotions before her aunt returns in the evening and, as such, I believe it would be a little fairer.
There is only one road out from here, and if you wait upon that road it will be very obvious when Mrs. Dearborn leaves. Perhaps if you wait ten minutes and then approach the house, I shall be able to wait for you by the front door and let you in without any of the other servants being aware of it. Perhaps better still if you came on foot, Your Grace.
But I shall leave the final decision to you and, should you choose in the end to say nothing to my mistress of what you told me yesterday, please know that I shall never breathe a word of it.
Sincerely,
Miss Ruth Clarkin.”
James could see no reason to deviate from Ruth Clarkin’s plan at all. It was simple and really very good, especially if he could be given admittance to Hawthorn Manor without anybody else knowing it.
In the end, that is exactly what happened. James waited precisely ten minutes after seeing Gwendolen Dearborn being spirited away in her small carriage before he tethered his horse once again on the very edge of the estate and made his way through the gardens on foot.
Ruth was waiting for him by the door, her bright blue eyes peeking out from the tiny crack she had it open. She peered quickly over her shoulder before silently opening the door and ushering him in, leading him this way and that until he finally arrived outside a partially open door.
Ruth knocked on the door and James heard Charlotte callout from within.
“Come in.” She said gaily.
“Miss, I have a visitor for you.”
“I did not hear anybody at the door.” Charlotte said curiously.
“No, Miss. Nobody else knows that he is here.” Ruth said and opened the door wider so that Charlotte might see the Duke of Sanford standing behind her.
“Ruth? What is this?” Charlotte said and looked upset.
“Miss Cunningham forgive me for this is the only time I have ever deceived you, the only time I have ever kept anything back from you, but I knew I must.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The Duke of Sanford has something to tell you, something very serious. I fear it is something that will upset you greatly and yet I am certain that you must hear it.”
“You want me to hear something that would hurt me?” Charlotte said and began to look betrayed.
“Please, Miss,” Ruth saidand tears streamed down her face causing Charlotte to rise to her feet and embrace her maid. “Please, you must hear him out. Even if you are so angry with me that you dismiss me from your service, I truly believe that your future happiness rests upon knowing the truth.”
“Very well, but you must not cry, Ruth. And you must never, ever speak of me dismissing you for there is nothing on this earth would make do that.”
“Then I shall leave the two of you, Miss. I shall wait for you in your chamber.” Ruth said and turned to leave, looking up at James with tear-filled eyes as she made her way out.
“What have you said to Ruth that you have upset her so?” Charlotte said thunderously the moment Ruth was out of earshot.
“If you would sit down again, Charlotte, I will tell you.”
“How could you upset her?” Charlotte went on angrily, but he knew that she was just playing for time.
James knew that Charlotte had an idea that something very big was coming and she was too afraid to look at it.
In the end, he could not blame her.
“I would not have upset her for the world, in the same way that I would never have upset you had I any other choice.”
“Well, you are here now, and I suppose you are determined to tell me.” Charlotte tried to look and sound unconcerned and, to the untrained eye, she would have succeeded.
But James knew her, he could see beyond the self-sufficiency and into the tender heart which lay underneath and it gave him such pain to know of the further hurt he was about to cause.
“The truth of the matter is that I really did turn away from you all those years ago to protect you, Charlotte.” James began, thinking it as good a place as any. In the end, he wanted to put some distance between himself and the moment at which he would change Charlotte’s world forever. “And it really was my father’s interference at the root of it all. I see you are not convinced, and never would be, and so now I am bound to tell you everything my father did to ensure that you and I were kept apart.”
“By all means.”
“Charlotte, my father was very determined that we would not marry and so he sent his attorney, a dreadful man called Charles Holt, to discover whatever he could about your own family. And I am afraid to say that he did unearth something that meant I could not be with you.”
“Why, what had I done that was so dreadful? Nothing, that is what. I can tell you that I have never done anything in my life that would make me unfit to be anyone’s wife, Duke or not.” Charlotte’s spat angrily.
“It is nothing like that, Charlotte. And it was not for my own protection that I turned away from you. You should know the truth that it broke my heart.” James could hear the rasping emotion in his own voice. “It broke my heart because I loved you. I love you now, I never stopped loving you. I have lived with this every day and wish that we could simply have found a way through our differences without all of this.”
“Without all of what?” Charlotte’s cheeks were turning pink and her eyes were filling with fearful tears.
“Without telling you the truth that I sought to protect you from in the first place. But at least now I can tell it to you and know that you are still safe. For you see, my father had threatened to spread the information he had unearthed far and wide and to have you and your father gravely embarrassed by it.”
“Please just tell me what it is.” Charlotte said with sudden vehemence. “Do not keep prevaricating and just say it.” Once again, she seemed angry with him, but he knew it truly was just fear.
If only he did not have to hurt her so, and yet he had come too far now to go back.
“Then I shall tell you straight out, Charlotte. And I shall beg you not to blame Ruth because she did not know any of it. She is as much a victim of it as you are.”
“A victim of what?”
“Charlotte, Ruth Clarkin is your half-sister. She is the child of your father.” James listened to a voice that he did not even recognize as his own.
He sounded suddenly so businesslike as if he could not tell her with the emotions that he himself felt, but rather he had to remove himself from it for just a moment.
He watched in silence as her expression changed from incredulous to angry to confused.
“What are you saying?” She said, and he knew that the accusatory tone was not really meant for him.
“I am so sorry, Charlotte, but the Clarkin family in Hollerton gave up all their secrets for a purse full of coins from my father’s attorney. And that is how my father was able to keep me away from you for the rest of his life. And I knew that he would ma
ke that information known, that he would do it out of spite. And so, in the end, I had to choose to turn away from you. Not into the arms of another, not because I was playing some game that I thought I had won with a kiss, but because I loved you so much I could not bear to see you and your father so cruelly exposed.”
“And now? What of now?” She said, and he knew that she was in shock, that she was wishing he would simply swallow down the words he had spoken as if they had never existed.
“I have the greatest of respect for your father and I am very fond of Ruth Clarkin. I would not easily hurt either one of them, but you would not hear me, Charlotte. You would not allow me to tell you how much I love you because you did not believe that I ever did. But I cannot imagine the rest of my life without you, especially after these three long years, and I have to do something to make you see my love, to know it.”
“I do not know what to… I mean I cannot…” Charlotte rose to her feet and made to leave the room before turning back again.
She seemed entirely at sea and all James could do was stand and look at her, waiting for her to decide what she did next. Finally, tears coursed down her face and he knew he was bearing witness to a range of emotions, none of which he could entirely identify.
And, in the end, with nobody else to go, Charlotte raced towards him, her head hitting his chest with full force as she silently demanded to be held.
James wrapped his arms around her shoulders and held her as she wept tears of anguish and confusion. He buried his face in her thick, fragrant red hair closed his eyes, relishing the feel of her in his arms and knowing that he had, in that moment, been the cause of such great pain.
If only his father had never been such a determined, spiteful man. None of this might have happened, everything might have lain dormant forevermore.
He held her until her weeping subsided and her breathing began to return to normal. They stood locked in their embrace for several minutes before Charlotte finally extricated herself.
“I think you should go now.” She said, rubbing furiously at her face with her hands in the attempt to dry her tears.
“I do not like to leave you in this state, Charlotte.”
“Well, I do not want you here. I want to be left alone.” She said and sounded suddenly so exhausted that he knew he must accede to her request.
“Then I shall not leave without first telling you how much I love you, Charlotte, because I do. I love you with all my heart, and I always will. Whatever you decide, even if you choose never to set eyes on me again, I shall always, always love you.”
When she would not look at him, James knew the time had come to leave and he turned slowly to make his way out of Hawthorn Manor.
Chapter 31
When Charlotte explained to Gwendolyn that she would have to leave the following morning, her aunt was kindness personified. It was clear that Charlotte was greatly upset, and Gwendolyn did not press her for any of the details, likely thinking that it had much to do with the Duke of Sandford.
Well, in the end, Charlotte supposed that it did. But that was not the thing which upset her so greatly and she knew it. She had to speak to her father, she had to know if it was all true.
“I really am very sorry to be leaving you so soon, Aunt Gwendolyn.” Charlotte had said while she tried not to dissolve into tears once again.
“I can see that something has upset you and as much as I would like to try to solve it, my dear, I can also see that your mind is made up. Sometimes when one is in the grip of a great upset, only the closest of family will do and I understand entirely why you would want to be at home with your father.”
Charlotte had smiled warmly and promised to return to her aunt at some point in the future. And as far as her father was concerned, for all her haste to return home, to have it out with him, she was truly afraid to set eyes on him for fear of discovering that she no longer loved the only parent she had ever truly known.
The carriage ride back had begun in silence and Charlotte could see that Ruth’s eyes were as puffy as her own for lack of sleep and a torrent of tears that had been shed.
“Ruth are you managing alright?” Charlotte said, and Ruth shifted in her seat to turn to look at her.
“Yes, I am managing Miss.” Ruth said quietly. “And I really am very sorry.”
“You have nothing to be sorry about. In all of this, you have been done the greatest wrong. When I think of how you have looked after me, helping me into gowns, seeing that my hair is immaculate before I go out to enjoy myself, I can hardly think straight.”
“But can you not see that I have always enjoyed that, Miss?” Ruth said, and Charlotte could hear the emotion. “That is when we have been closest, is it not? That is when we have laughed and talked and shared our little secrets. I would not have missed any of it for the world.”
“We should have been able to do that as sisters, not as mistress and maid.” Charlotte said and finally her tears fell again. “Can you forgive me?” She said miserably.
“Goodness me, and I have sat in silence all this time for fear that you could not forgive me.” Ruth said and laughed.
It was not as fulsome as her laugh ordinarily was, but it was enough to return Charlotte to her old self just a little; it was enough to give her a few moments respite from her shock and numbness.
“But what for?”
“For encouraging the Duke to speak to you.”
“I must admit that I am so lostat the moment, I hardly know if, given the choice, I would have gladly lived without the knowledge. But then I think of you, my dear, and I cannot bear it. However much this has hurt me, discovering that you are my sister is the brightest of corners.” Both women were dabbing furiously at their faces with crisp white handkerchiefs and sniffing non-stop.
“There is a part of me that thinks that I have always known it, Miss.” Ruth said shyly.
“Perhaps there is a part of me that has always known it too. After all, I have never been in want of a sister since you arrived at Thurlow Manor.” Charlotte reached out and took Ruth’s hand, squeezing it hard. “And perhaps now that we are coming to terms with it between ourselves, you might finally call me Charlotte and notMiss.”
“Goodness, that shall seem very strange indeed, Miss. Charlotte.”
“But a very pleasant sort of strange, my dear.”
“What are going to say to your father?” Ruth said, bringing Charlotte back to the reality of her sudden flight back to the east.
“In all truth, I have no idea.”
“Perhaps that is the best way, in the end. If you have not planned what to say, then at least you can speak from the heart.”
“Although I fear that my heart might speak angrily.”
“In the circumstances, I am sure that your father will understand.”
“Our father, Ruth.”
“Yes.” Ruth said and nodded and Charlotte realized just how much that young woman had to come to terms with.
If she herself had to navigate the choppy seas of her father’s infidelity, Ruth had to question her own origins. Charlotte knew, of course, that Ruth was not particularly close to the Clarkin family, but what a great upheaval to discover at the age of one-and-twenty that you are not who you thought you were.
In the end, Charlotte hardly knew which thing she was the angriest about.
“Well now, this a surprise.” Lucas Cunningham said as he wandered out through the front door of Thurlow Manor and helped Charlotte and Ruth down from the carriage. “Please tell me you have not fallen out with dear Gwendolyn.”
“No, Papa. No, I have not fallen out with Gwendolyn. She is a very fine woman and I would never imagine a reason for falling out with her. But then I suppose we never truly know people, do we?” Charlotte ended her sentence somewhat aggressively.
“Well, I think you should leave the unpacking for now,” Lucas said with some concern when it looked as if his daughter might unstrap and carry her trunk herself. “Ruth, perhaps you would have a word
with the driver and ask him to take all the luggage inside?” He said, and Ruth nodded.
Charlotte knew that she would not be able to hold onto her discovery for very much longer and, fearing that she might let it all out there in front of the Manor house itself, she began to make her way inside to the drawing room in the hope that her father would follow her.
He did, of course, realizing immediately that there was something wrong with her.
Following her into the drawing room, Lord Cunningham closed the door behind them. He stood and watched as Charlotte took off her bonnet and undid her cloak, laying both of them carelessly on an armchair before sitting down squarely on top of them.
A Damsel for the Daring Duke Page 25
