Lady Charlotte's First Love

by Anna Bradley

“Jane is Colin’s younger sister. Their mother died years ago and their father passed away unexpectedly while Colin was in France. Now that Colin’s gone she’s alone, aside from an elderly aunt.”

  Cam seemed not to know what to say to this. “I see,” he managed after a long hesitation. “Is she—what’s she like?”

  Julian shrugged. “I’ve never met her.”

  There was a shocked silence, then Ellie said, “I don’t understand. You’re betrothed to a lady you’ve never met?”

  “I wrote to her, after Colin…” Julian cleared his throat. “It wasn’t proper, of course, but Colin made me promise I’d write to Jane if the worst should happen, and I couldn’t bear for her not to know how he spent his final days. In any case, we struck up a correspondence. She’s a kind, decent young lady, and I doubt she’d understand if I became entangled with a notorious marchioness.”

  Ellie gazed at him for a moment, her expression unreadable, then, “Does Miss Hibbert know you’re in London?”

  “Everyone in England knows I’m in London, thanks to the newspapers.”

  “Have you called on her since your return?”

  “No,” Julian admitted. He could see where this was going, and he didn’t like it.

  “Well, then. Write her and explain you have urgent family business to attend to, and you’ll come to her when it’s concluded.”

  Damnation. “But I don’t have urgent family business to attend to.”

  “This situation with Charlotte is urgent, Julian,” Ellie said. “We travel to Bellwood at the end of this week, with or without her.”

  Julian raised an eyebrow. “You can’t be as concerned for her welfare as you pretend, then, if you’ll leave her in London alone.”

  “We don’t want to leave her,” Cam said, “but we haven’t any choice.”

  “There’s always a choice.”

  “Not this time. Ellie’s increasing, Julian.”

  Julian fell silent for a moment as Cam’s words sunk in, and then he smiled. “I can’t think why I didn’t guess it. You’re glowing, Ellie, and Cam, you look smugger than I’ve ever seen you.”

  Ellie smiled. “The doctor confirmed it just this week. Sometime in mid-March, he says.”

  “Ah. Well, that explains why Cam’s wandering the house at midnight in that ridiculous banyan.”

  “I can’t sleep. Ellie is fatigued and I don’t like to keep her awake, but I also don’t wish to be denied my wife’s bed until March.”

  “Seven months is a long time to sleep alone.” Julian grinned. “And it will feel longer for us all if you plan to haunt the house in that banyan the entire time.”

  Cam looked worried. “But my sleeplessness will pass, won’t it?”

  “You’re not asking me, I hope. I can regale you with the usual bachelor’s tales—drink, wagering, brothels and the like—but ladies who are increasing? I haven’t the faintest idea there, cuz.”

  “Well, I don’t either, damn it.”

  Ellie laughed. “You will soon enough, and it’s no good grumbling about it, because I have the hardest bit by far.”

  “I won’t grumble to you, my love, but Julian is another matter. How fortunate that you should arrive home just in time to comfort me in my distress, Jules.”

  “I draw the line at sharing my bedchamber with you.”

  Cam grinned. “We’ll see.”

  Julian crossed to the sideboard and helped himself to more whiskey. “What does Amelia say?”

  Ellie smiled. “We just told her this evening, and she’s thrilled, of course. It’s a very grown up thing to become an aunt.”

  “She’s grown a great deal while I’ve been gone.” Julian couldn’t quite suppress a wistful sigh. “She’s almost a young lady now.”

  “Not to worry.” Cam gave him a reassuring grin. “There’s still a good bit of the little girl about her, for all that she’s nearly thirteen years old. There are some things a child never outgrows, thank God.”

  “And since we’re back on the subject of growing children…” Ellie began.

  “Yes. I fail to see what this”—Julian gestured vaguely at Ellie’s belly with his whiskey glass—“has to do with the marchioness.”

  “Ellie’s exhausted, Jules. The ordeal with Charlotte, the heat and grime of London—it’s unhealthy for her in her condition. I don’t want to leave Charlotte here alone, but Ellie and Amelia and my unborn child are my first concern. We need to leave the city before Ellie becomes truly ill.”

  Ellie reached forward and took Julian’s hand. “Lord Devon is a dangerous man, Julian. Certain of the ton even whisper he murdered his elder brother so he’d be first in line to inherit the fortune and title when his father died, and now he’s dangling after Charlotte. If the worst should happen, if Charlotte should be hurt, I’ll never forgive myself.”

  Julian opened his mouth to tell them for the third time he was sorry, he couldn’t help them, but then Ellie squeezed his hand, and he fell silent. If Charlotte should engage in further antics…

  What had that tall blonde lady said? There’s always tomorrow night.

  Oh, there would be further antics. Judging by the devilish gleam in the blonde’s eye, they’d come sooner rather than later, and now there was a murderous earl to consider.

  There was Ellie to consider.

  He owed her.

  Ellie loved Cam with all her heart—she’d loved him even when he’d tried to blackmail her into marriage. Even when his behavior toward her had been nothing less than barbarous, she’d loved him against reason, against logic, and against self-preservation. She’d saved him, and now…

  Julian owed Ellie a rescue.

  One sister.

  Christ. Maybe he was a bloody hero, after all. “What do you want me to do?”

  Cam rose to his feet to pace the room. “Persuade her to leave London. She’d be safe at Hadley House for the winter, or Bellwood, if she prefers it. We think she stays here for Devon. Get in his way. If you can make it difficult for him to get access to her—”

  “He’ll give up,” Ellie said. “Then she’ll have no reason to stay in London.”

  Christ. What an ungodly mess. A drama worthy of a cold, selfish marchioness. Or a cavalry captain, for it seemed the mess was about to be dumped in his lap, whether he liked it or not. “One week. That’s all. I’ll do what I can to see Lady Hadley is at Bellwood by the end of it.”

  Ellie clasped his hand tightly in both of hers. “Oh, thank you, Julian!”

  Cam stopped pacing. “How will you do it? I warn you, Julian, it won’t be easy—rather like chasing an extremely clever fox down every alleyway in London.” He gave Ellie a fond look. “The Sutherland women are wily.”

  But Charlotte wasn’t a Sutherland anymore. “I’ll think of something.”

  Ellie rose to her feet and kissed Julian on the cheek. “You’re a wonderful cousin, Julian.” She turned to Cam. “I think I can sleep again now.”

  “I’m going to stay up with Jules for a while.” Cam pressed his lips to her forehead. “Good night, love.”

  After the door closed on Ellie, Cam and Julian returned to their chairs and stared into the fire until Cam roused himself. “What’s the truth about your heroics on the battlefield, Jules?”

  Julian gave a bitter laugh. “Let’s just say the truth doesn’t make for a pretty headline, and leave it at that.”

  Cam considered this, then shook his head. “Even the most exaggerated story contains a thread of truth.”

  “Not this one. There was nothing so grand in it. Any other man would have done the same thing I did.”

  “Perhaps, but it wasn’t any other man. It was you.”

  “Oh, yes, it was me.” Julian downed his whiskey, but the bitterness still burned his throat. “And while I was running about the battlefield that day, dozens of men were slaugh
tered in my place. But London doesn’t seem to care much about who was left behind.”

  “Who was left behind?” Cam’s voice was quiet.

  Julian shrugged, but his fingers tightened around his whiskey glass. “It doesn’t make any difference now, does it? One rotting corpse looks much like another.”

  “It sounds as if it makes a great deal of difference to you.” Cam placed his own glass on the table with a careful click. “But as tragic as those deaths are, you aren’t responsible for them. You couldn’t save them all, Julian.”

  Not all. One. I should have saved one.

  But he wouldn’t tell the rest of that story tonight. It was hardly a bedtime story. He rose and set his glass on the sideboard. “I’m for bed.”

  “Jules?”

  Julian was halfway out the door, but he turned back. “Cuz?”

  Cam cleared his throat. “I’m damned glad you’re home at last. I can’t tell you…” His voice grew thick, and he trailed off into silence.

  “I’m damned glad to be home.” God knew he owed a debt of gratitude to whatever higher power had kept him alive this past year. He shuddered to think how many times he wouldn’t have wagered a farthing on his own life. “I don’t care for the idea of my corpse rotting away on some battlefield.”

  Cam flinched. “No. But here you are, not a whiff of rot about you, and it’s as if you’d never left.”

  Julian stiffened. Is that what Cam thought? That he was the same man he’d ever been?

  He gazed at his cousin. Cam’s legs were stretched out before him, his feet close to the fire as he sipped at his whiskey. He and Cam had sat in these same chairs in front of this same fireplace more times than Julian could count, and yet the moment felt strangely foreign to him, as if he’d slipped through a tear in time, or as if he were watching the scene unfold from a great distance.

  No matter how much he wanted it to be the same as it always was, he hadn’t been home more than a day before he felt like he’d stolen this life from the man he used to be—the man who should have it. The old Julian would never have grabbed a woman the way he had that dark- haired doxy, and he’d never have treated Charlotte like a whore, no matter how angry he was. This man he’d become—he had a dark, ugly thing living inside him, and there was no telling when it would get loose, or what it would do when it did.

  It never could be the same as it had before, because he could never be the same.

  But he couldn’t explain it to Cam. He wouldn’t even know where to begin. “Yes. It’s just as if I never left. Good night, cuz.”

  He left Cam to finish his whiskey alone, mounted the stairs to his old bedchamber, and fell across the bed, too exhausted to remove his clothes.

  God, I’m tired. So tired.

  As his eyes began to close an image crept into his mind of long, dark strands of hair against the white skin of a woman’s back, but then the picture dissolved and he fell deeper into the darkness that lured him with lies, with promises of a peace that never came. He struggled against it before he let it take him, but then he stopped fighting and collapsed into it, because there was nothing else he could do….

  Bodies, the twist and tangle and heave of them. Missing hands, fingers. Pieces of men half buried in gluts of blood and mud. He tries to make sense of the pieces, but no one can make sense of them because there are too many hands, an impossible number of them, and so many arms without hands, and hands without fingers, but if he can only put them together again, the fingers with the hands and the hands with the arms and the arms with the torsos… If he can fit all the pieces back together like a puzzle, the bodies will be whole again, but there are too many and there’s too much mud and too much blood and he can’t find all the hands or all the fingers dear God, there aren’t enough fingers—

  Julian jerked awake with a gasp and shot straight up in the bed, icy sweat pouring down his back. Jesus. He ran a trembling hand down his face. Had he screamed? He must have. He always did. The scream was what tore him from the dream. For all the good it did, he screamed at the end.

  Colin’s watch. Julian clawed at the bedclothes around him in a sudden panic. Where—?

  His fingers closed over the hard metal, still in his waistcoat pocket; then he fell back against the pillow until numbness stole over him. He lay there with his eyes open for what was left of the night, the watch clutched in his palm.

  Chapter Five

  “I’m going to ask you once again, Sarah, and I’ll have the truth this time, if you please. Are you a spy?”

  Charlotte kicked her legs out in front of her, slumped back against the plush carriage seat, and waited for her vulgar pose to hurl Sarah from her icy silence headlong into the blistering scold that hovered on the tip of her tongue.

  The scold was inevitable, so they may as well get it over with.

  She didn’t need to wait long. Disapproval rose from Sarah like thick clouds of smoke from a conflagration. “If I’m a spy, I’m not going to tell you so, am I? What kind of spy admits she’s a spy, my lady?”

  “That sounds like a confession.”

  “It’s nothing of the sort.” Sarah gave a haughty sniff. “I haven’t anything to confess.”

  “Ah, now I know you’re lying. Everyone, dear old thing, has something to confess. We all have at least one secret sin.”

  Sarah pressed her lips so tightly together they became indistinguishable from the rest of her face. “Sins now, is it? There’s some as has a great deal more than one, and not so secret as they should be, neither.”

  Ah. There it was—the scold Charlotte knew was coming since Sarah dragged her from her bed an hour ago. Despite her rigid sense of propriety, Sarah had a tongue like a striking adder, and she never could hold it for long.

  “How dull it would be if everyone kept their sins to themselves.” Charlotte hid a yawn behind her gloved hand. “Thank heavens the ton doesn’t think as you do, Sarah, or we’d never have any amusement. Public sins are far more diverting.”

  Sarah drew herself up, her spine rigid against her seat. “Surely you didn’t just thank heaven for shameless sins, my lady?”

  Charlotte laughed at the maid’s scandalized look. “Why yes, I believe I did. But really, Sarah, I begin to think all this talk of sin is your attempt to divert me from the question at hand. If you’re not a spy, then how does my sister, Eleanor, always know when I set a toe over the line of propriety?”

  Sarah snorted. “A toe, indeed. It’s a whole foot for you every time, or nothing at all, and Lady Eleanor knows it as well as I do.”

  “That’s precisely the issue at hand, Sarah. How does she know it?”

  It was no great mystery, of course. Charlotte knew very well Sarah had been whispering in Ellie’s ear almost from the moment they’d arrived in London. She should dismiss Sarah at once for such blatant disloyalty, of course, but she was perversely fond of the impertinent creature.

  “One of your widow friends told her, most like.” Not a blush stained that guilty cheek, and Sarah’s gaze never wavered. “Probably that little French one.”

  She was blaming Aurelie? Shameless.

  Until now Charlotte hadn’t been terribly concerned about Sarah’s tattling. She didn’t like to upset her sister, but she was a widow, not a debutante, and a widow of independent means, at that. She could do as she wished.

  But now—now she was concerned, and had been since Julian West dragged her out of that brothel last night. Well, perhaps dragged wasn’t quite the right word. He’d taken advantage of her foolishness to maneuver her out. She’d been so shocked to see him it hadn’t occurred to her his presence at that particular brothel couldn’t possibly be a coincidence. Cam and Ellie knew she’d be there last night, because Sarah had told them. They’d sent Julian to retrieve her, and she’d helped him finish the job by being fool enough to bargain for his silence.

  It wouldn’t happen agai
n. Sarah couldn’t tattle if she had no tales to tell, and Charlotte would take care in future to see she didn’t.

  She yawned again. “Honestly, I don’t know why we indulge Ellie’s whims in this ridiculous way, rushing over to Bedford Square at the crack of dawn as if we’d been summoned by the queen herself.”

  “Dawn? It’s one o’clock in the afternoon, my lady. It’ll do you good to be up and about before the sun sets. The fresh air will put color in your cheeks.”

  “One o’clock?” Charlotte’s heart plummeted from her chest to her stomach with a sickening thud. Only one o’clock. Too early. She’d meet her friends again at the theater tonight, but that engagement was hours away.

  The day loomed ahead of her, silent and empty.

  Think of something else.

  She yanked her skirts over her knees with an agitated jerk, pressed her nose against the window, and tried to focus on the blur of horses and carriages, the sound of their wheels against the cobblestones, the clatter punctuated by the cries of the costermongers.

  But it was too late. The familiar panic rose in her throat. She squeezed her eyes closed as the dread began to claw at her—

  Sarah plucked the crumpled folds of silk skirts from Charlotte’s clenched fist. “Maybe Lady Eleanor will let Miss Amelia come back to Grosvenor Square with you this afternoon.”

  Charlotte turned from the window. “Won’t she—” She cleared her throat, but her voice sounded small nonetheless. “Don’t you suppose Amelia has lessons today?”

  “Like as not, but you could hear how she does with her pianoforte, and then take her for a ride in the park afterwards. A little holiday won’t hurt the child.”

  Charlotte relaxed her fists with an effort. “Well, it won’t do any harm to ask, I suppose.”

  “No harm at all. Go on with you then,” Sarah added as the carriage stopped in front of Cam and Ellie’s townhouse and a footman appeared to hand Charlotte down. “Lady Eleanor’s note arrived over an hour ago. She must wonder what’s kept you so long.”

  Charlotte paused a moment to steady her breath.

  For pity’s sake, get ahold of yourself.