Gavin watched Charlotte until she disappeared around a corner and vanished from sight. For a moment he considered following her, but he chased the idea away with a grimace. The girl was trouble, and trouble was one thing he could ill afford at the moment.
Trouble had been his constant companion in his youth. Possessing quick reflexes and a healthy thirst for violence, Gavin first made his name in the underground boxing rings that had once been so popular. He tore through the opposition with ease, and instead of wasting his winnings on women and drink – as so many others did – he invested it, foolishly at first, as a man with little education was likely to do, but he learned quickly from his mistakes and what started as a small fortune soon bloomed into a larger one.
Most men of his background and station would have been content with that, but not Gavin. He was a restless sort, never satisfied with what he owned, always wanting more, wanting bigger, wanting the best. He decided at the tender age of eight and ten, as he stood over his mother’s deathbed and watched her die the slow, painful death of blood poisoning from a cut on her leg that could have been treated correctly if only they had the money, that if he could not be a lord by birth the next best thing would be to live as one.
Now he made loans to men he despised on principle, men who could ill afford to make their financial woes public by going to a bank for fear of becoming a laughing stock amidst their peers.
Gavin’s interest rates were not kind, nor were his methods for getting what was owed to him, but still the nabobs flocked to him in droves, desperate to pay off their creditors without anyone being the wiser.
Stretching his arms above his head, Gavin yawned. The hour was late, and his patience for rubbing elbows and consorting with potential clients had grown thin.
He left the same way he came – through the back – and stared broodingly out the window of his carriage as it rolled briskly towards his city residence, an impressive four story mansion in need of a complete renovation he had picked up for a shilling and a song.
He should have been thinking of money and ledgers and business, but the memory of a startling pair of amber eyes kept intruding, as did the woman to whom they belonged.
Lady Charlotte Vanderley…
It was not a name he would soon be forgetting.
CHAPTER SIX
“Mother, if you make me go to his house for tea I shall scream.” Outwardly seething, Charlotte clenched her hands into fists and planted them high on her hips. She managed – just barely – not to kick something, but there was no stopping the rebellious toss of her head.
One week had passed since the Haversham Ball, and Charlotte was growing more and more desperate by the day. There seemed to be no solution in sight to breaking her engagement, especially since it had become public knowledge.
Now the duke was recovered from his cold and insisting on seeing her. Had been insisting for the past three days, in fact. Her excuses were running thin, and her mother was no longer taking ‘no’ for an answer.
“There is a slight chill in the air today. Put on this shawl and get in the carriage,” Bettina demanded in a tightly controlled voice as she held out a yellow silk gauze shawl embroidered with pink ribbon.
Charlotte eyed the shawl distastefully. “No.”
The corners of Bettina’s mouth turned white. Saying nothing, she took her daughter by the arm and all but dragged her to the front foyer. Tabitha, her eyes downcast and a fretful frown tugging at her lips, stepped to the side and held the door open.
“Stop it!” Charlotte cried, twisting to be free of her mother’s shoving hands. But Bettina was strong, and determined, and did not relent until Charlotte was in the carriage.
Truly desperate now, Charlotte clung to the open window and attempted to change tactics in one last second attempt to save herself from being alone with Crane.
“Come with me,” she coaxed, forcing a smile. “It is hardly proper for me to pay a visit to a man without a chaperone. People will talk. There will be gossip. Bad gossip.”
Bettina merely sniffed and tossed the shawl through the window. “Do not lecture me on propriety, Charlotte Amelia. The duke is your fiancée and you are calling on him for afternoon tea with servants present. If there is anything more proper than that I should like to know what it is. Now do try to calm yourself. This is for your own good, dear. It will benefit you immensely to know more about your husband before you marry.”
“I am not marrying him,” Charlotte bit out through clenched teeth.
It was, she thought wretchedly, rather like trying to climb over a stone wall that kept getting higher and higher with every step you took. No matter how fast you climbed, or how high you reached, the wall would always be faster and higher.
She saw Bettina wave out of the corner of her eye as the carriage pulled away. Her only response was to close the curtain window with a hard snap of her wrist, enclosing herself in darkness.
The Duke of Tarrow was a short, round man with the quivering jowls of a bulldog and the dark, squinty eyes of a toad. His skin was sickly pale, as though he rarely ventured out into the sun, and there was no mistaking the mop of white curls on his head for anything other than a wig.
His clothes were ill fitting; baggy in some places and grotesquely stretched in others. The blue overcoat he wore over his frothy white shirt was mocking in its brightness and did nothing to compliment his sallow complexion.
Charlotte was repulsed just by looking at him, and when she saw his pink tongue slide across his dry, cracking lips she felt bile rise in the back of her throat. It took all of the will power she possessed not to turn on her heel and flee out the front door. Clinging to the end of the curved banister to steady her trembling hands, she faced him head on, refusing to appear intimidated even though she was exactly that.
“Good afternoon, Lady Charlotte. It is a pleasure to see you again.” His voice was soft and oddly high pitched. To Charlotte’s ears it was nails on a chalkboard, and she struggled to disguise her grimace of disgust.
“Your Grace,” she said, dipping into a curtsy that was deliberately mocking in its brevity. She had no intention of meekly rolling over for this pitiful excuse of a man, her mother’s wishes for complete compliance be damned. Unfortunately, Crane did not seem to take note of her rudeness. If anything he seemed amused by it, if the sudden glint in his beady little eyes was any indication, and too late Charlotte recalled what Vera had told her in the tea shop so many days ago.
He liked breaking their spirits, he did. It was a game for ‘im. The more they resisted, the longer he drew it out, like a cat toyin’ with a mouse.
“Would you like to accompany me to the parlor?” Crane gestured towards a room past the grand staircase. Like the rest of the house the parlor was dark and gloomy, with heavy mahogany furniture and thick velvet curtains drawn tight across all the windows.
Every inch of Charlotte’s body protested against going further into the shadows and she shook her head so vehemently from side to side that a curl sprang loose from her tightly wound coiffure and bounced across her temple. “I wish to go outside.”
The duke’s thin eyebrows darted together. “Outside?” he said distastefully, speaking as though she had requested they go for a walk in a swamp. “Whatever for?”
“I… I fear I have not been feeling well,” Charlotte improvised hastily. “The fresh air would do wonders to clear my head. I would not want to end our visit prematurely, Your Grace.”
“No, no that would not do at all.” He rubbed one of his chins and frowned. “Your mother did not mention you were ill.”
Sensing his suspicion – he was not as stupid as he appeared – Charlotte plastered a false smile on her face and waved one hand flippantly through the air. “Oh, I did not want to bother her. You know how overprotective mothers can be.”
He studied for her several moments, his dark eyes missing nothing, before he finally nodded. “I will have the servants bring the refreshments outside.”
“You are ve
ry kind. Thank you for being so considerate, Your Grace.”
“Please,” he said, smiling to reveal a row of uneven teeth that were yellow and black with age and disease, “call me Stanley.”
Call this odious man by his given name? When hell froze over. “I could never be so forward… Your Grace.”
Their eyes met, and in that moment Charlotte knew she had made the grave error of underestimating her opponent. The duke was not just old and lecherous, he was highly intelligent as well, and cunning as a snake darting through the grass.
Unable to stop herself, she looked away first, and Crane’s oily chuckle of triumph grated against her skin like jagged glass.
Without further comment they moved outside to the back lawn and sat across from each other beneath the shade of an old mulberry tree. Plucking a fallen leaf from the small, circular table, Charlotte twirled it absently between her fingers while she discreetly studied her new surroundings.
Everything in sight was manicured with ruthless precision. Not a single blade of grass grew out of line. There were no flowers. Dark green hedges higher than her head formed a barrier around the lawn, preventing anyone from looking out or, she thought with a shudder, stopping anyone from looking in.
What monstrosities had happened here in this stale, stagnant place? How long had the duke’s wives suffered in silence before they died? A chill ran down Charlotte’s spine as she imagined them trapped like pretty birds in a cage, unable to break free. Allison, his first wife, had tried to escape. Tried and ended up with a broken neck. Did the same fate await her?
She jumped when she felt fingers close around her wrist, and with a visible shudder she tried to pull free of the duke’s hand but he held on, his fat, fleshy fingers clinging to her arm with surprising strength.
“You have very soft skin,” he murmured as he skimmed his thumb across her knuckles before his grip tightened, wringing a soft cry from Charlotte’s lips.
She had petted an iguana once. The lizard’s skin had been cold and dry, and even though its tongue had flicked in and out and its beady eyes had followed her every movement she felt as though she were touching a dead thing. Crane’s flesh reminded her of the same, and the bile she had managed to suppress earlier upon entering his house rose yet again. “Your Grace, I do not believe this is very proper—”
“We are engaged to be married. Surely a simple touch here” – his fingers began to inch their way up her arm – “or there would not hurt anyone.”
Charlotte stood up so fast her chair was knocked sideways. The momentum pulled the duke halfway across the table before he let her go, resulting in a row of angry red marks on her skin from his bruising fingers. “Do not touch me!” she said sharply, clutching her arm to her chest.
His cheeks suffusing with color, Crane heaved himself to his feat. “Impertinent wench,” he growled, his top lip curling. “You would do well to address me with respect.”
Charlotte’s tenuous hold on her temper snapped completely. “Why? You are an old, lecherous man and if you were the last person on earth I would not marry you. I will not marry you,” she declared, driving the heel of her boot into the soft ground for emphasis.
The sound of his quiet laughter set her teeth on edge, and she stared at him incredulously. “What is so amusing about that? Did you not hear what I said? I am not going to marry you. I refuse!” The moment the words were past her lips she felt as though a great weight had been lifted from her shoulders. There would be no wedding. There would be no marriage. She should have put her foot down – both literally and figuratively – weeks ago.
Still chuckling under his breath, Crane said, “You stupid, foolish girl. Did you think it would be as easy as that? Did you think once I had you I would let you go? No.” He shook his head slowly from side to side. “No, once gained I do not let my possessions slip through my fingers so easily. You are mine. You belong to me.”
Charlotte stiffened. “I belong to no one, least of all you!”
“Oh, but you do, and I have the betrothal contract that says exactly that, signed by your mother. I also own the deed to your town house in London, that pitiful excuse for an estate in Hampshire, and all the belongings they contain. Burn one contract, my sweet, and you burn the other along with it. We will be married at the end of the month and there is nothing you can do about it.”
“No,” Charlotte said, even as her insides turned to ice and all the blood drained from her face. “No, my mother would never do that to me.”
Crane smiled. “Desperate women will do desperate things, Lady Charlotte. You will learn that lesson soon enough. Here comes the tea. Do sit down, my dear. Unless you would rather go back inside?”
The last thing in the world Charlotte wanted to do was sit across from a man she despised with ever fiber of her being, but her carriage would not return to pick her up for another hour, and they both knew it. Faced with choosing the lesser of two evils – she would not, under any circumstances, go back inside that house – she sat in her chair and steadfastly ignored both the tea and the duke for the remainder of her visit.
“Mother, how COULD you?” Charlotte’s wail of despair echoed through the entire house. Throwing herself onto a velvet settee, she hugged her legs to her chest and glared accusingly at Bettina over the top of her knees. “Father provided well for us when he—”
“Your father provided us with nothing,” Bettina snapped. The uncharacteristic vehemence in her voice shocked Charlotte into silence. Her mother never lost her temper or raised her voice. Ever. “It was all I could do to keep a roof over our heads after he died. I had to sign the contracts. I had no choice. Do you think it has been easy, raising a daughter on my own?”
Deciding it would not be the wisest time to point out that a governess had, in fact, done most of the raising, Charlotte bit her lip and obediently shook her head from side to side.
She had not always been the easiest child; she knew that. She and her mother were simply too different to ever see eye to eye, which resulted in bickering over the silliest of things. Although, to be fair, being engaged against one’s wishes could hardly be considered a trivial matter. They were not arguing over what color dress she should wear. This was her life, her future, and Charlotte was done having others make decisions for her.
“I did the only thing I could do to ensure our survival,” Bettina raged on. “Anyone else would be grateful for what I have done, but not you!”
“Grateful?” Charlotte sputtered in disbelief, unable to hold her silence any longer. “I should be grateful you want to trap me in a loveless marriage with a man old enough to be my grandfather?”
“Love,” Bettina sneered. Her face contorted, and suddenly she did not look so elegant and graceful anymore. “I married your father for love, and look where it has gotten us. Heavens knows Crane is not young, but he is wealthy and generous. You will be taken care of for your entire life, Charlotte. You shall want for nothing.”
“If he is so wonderful, then you marry him!” Jumping up from the settee, she stalked past her mother, intent on barricading herself in her bedroom. Bettina reached out her hand to detain her, and in a fit of temper Charlotte slapped it away. The sound of flesh striking flesh echoed in the sudden silence, and Bettina’s mouth dropped open.
“You struck me!” she cried.
“I am sorry Mother, but I fear I have had enough of being manhandled for one day.” Without another word she walked out of the room, up the stairs, and collapsed on her bed after making sure to lock the door.
And then, only where no one could see or hear her, did she finally allow herself to cry.
CHAPTER SEVEN
As the date of the wedding drew closer and closer, Charlotte’s spirits plummeted lower and lower. She moved listlessly through the house, refusing any and all callers with the exception of Dianna. Her best friend made it a point to visit every day, plying Charlotte with pastries to get her to eat for her appetite had waned as well.
“You are wasting away to
nothing,” Dianna observed one afternoon while the two women enjoyed a stroll around the gardens behind Charlotte’s town house.
It was uncharacteristically warm for early May and they both had shed their hats and shawls in favor of soaking in some of the rarely seen sun.
Pausing to nudge at an emerging tulip with the toe of her shoe, Charlotte sighed. “Every time I try to eat I think of him” – she was refusing the say the duke’s name – “and I lose my appetite. The wedding is in eight days. How did it get here so fast?”
“I do not have the vaguest notion.” Dianna fluffed a hand through her newly shorn blond curls and frowned. “But there is still time. We will think of something. We will,” she insisted when Charlotte looked at her dubiously. “I am sure of it.”
Dianna was the only person Charlotte had confided in about the betrothal contract. Her friend had been suitably outraged on her behalf, but so far had been unable to come up with a single legitimate idea to free Charlotte from it.
When it came right down to it she could always refuse to go – even a duke could not get away with dragging his fiancée screaming down the church aisle – but then she would have to suffer the guilt of knowing she had cost her mother everything, not to mention finding a place to live and a means to support herself.
Stopping in front of a shyly blossoming cherry tree, she plucked one of the small pink buds and tucked it absently behind her ear. “I met someone,” she said slowly, staring off across low stone wall that divided the Vanderley’s small courtyard from their neighbor’s. “At the Haversham ball,” she clarified when Dianna looked at her blankly. “A man.”
She had been debating for quite some time whether to share her secret encounter with Gavin or not. Since their kiss he had lingered in the back of her mind, a painfully constant reminder of what she was giving up by becoming a duchess. Not Gavin specifically, of course, but it was what he represented that she would miss.
The Runaway Duchess Page 5
