Lady Charlotte's First Love

by Anna Bradley

  “Captain West, my lady.”

  Julian came into the room just as the case clock struck the hour.

  Eight chimes.

  By the fourth chime Charlotte had no air left in her lungs. By the sixth there was no air left in the room, the house—all of Hampshire. The clock fell silent at last, but by then the fear was a bottomless chasm in her chest, and she couldn’t look at him, couldn’t speak. Without thinking she stumbled to her feet and flew back behind the desk before he could see how badly she was trembling.

  Was this what fate wanted from her?

  To make me afraid, a coward, and to make me ashamed of it.

  Julian saw it all—her trembling, her fear, even her shame, and a look of bitter regret passed over his face, a face already gray with exhaustion. He ran a weary hand though dark hair slick with sweat, then held out both hands in front of him, palms out as if to show her he had no weapon. “It’s all right, Charlotte. You don’t need to run away from me. I came here to help you, to escort you to Bellwood.”

  At last an emotion penetrated the fog that had surrounded her since last night, after that terrible scene in Lady Elliot’s garden. Fury, sharp as a scalpel, cleansing. Bellwood. Bellwood. Bellwood. She was sick of the very idea of Bellwood. Even the word made her flesh quiver with anger, and on its heels a resentment so bitter it scraped her throat raw, gagged her.

  Cam and Ellie—they’d sent him here after her? Him. Why? So she could add another nightmare to those that already haunted this house? This place offered her nothing, no relief, no protection, but she’d thought at least to be safe from him, and now here he was, his gaze fixed on her, the black eyes aware of her every twitch and shudder. With each tick of the clock she grew more and more transparent. Soon he’d see all the way through.

  His words from last night in the garden whispered through her, just as if he’d pressed his lips to her ear. I almost pity Devon… I don’t care about you.…

  No. He couldn’t be here. She couldn’t be here with his ugly words ringing in her head, growing louder by the moment, their roar deafening her—

  But then suddenly, nothing. Silence.

  No sooner did the pain threaten to devour her than it retreated, and the blessed numbing fog descended again, leaving her drained, listless. Ah, yes. It was so much better this way. So much easier. “Bellwood. No, Captain, I won’t be going to Bellwood.”

  His arms dropped to his sides. “I know you don’t have any reason to, but do you think… Is there any way you can trust me? Please, Charlotte. I won’t hurt you again.”

  Charlotte stared at him, puzzled. He didn’t understand. He would hurt her again, and he didn’t need a weapon to do it. He was the weapon, and his task was to punish her. “But you will. It’s what you’re meant to do.”

  His brows drew together. “I’m meant to hurt you? I don’t understand.”

  No, he didn’t, did he? But how strange. If he didn’t understand, then why had he come at all? “Why are you here, Captain?”

  He spread his arms wide, a helpless gesture, unlike him. He seemed not to know what to do with his limbs. “To bring you to Bellwood.”

  “I’m sorry you came all this way, Captain, only to have to turn back again.”

  He shook his head, his anxious gaze steady on her face. “No. I won’t turn back, Charlotte. I won’t leave you here alone.”

  “Not leave? But of course you’ll leave, Captain. You can’t stay here with me. It’s not proper, and in any case I’m meant to stay here alone.” She frowned a little as she considered this. “Yes, I feel sure that’s right. It’s not a proper punishment if I have someone here with me.”

  Julian’s face went grayer with every word she spoke. “Is that what this is about? Punishment? Are you trying to punish me for what I said, what I did? Do it. I deserve it. But don’t do this to yourself, Charlotte. You haven’t done anything wrong. Don’t punish yourself because I was cruel to you.”

  Punish him? Again, how odd. Why should he think so? “No, you still don’t understand, Captain. Don’t you see? You pretended to care for me, and I pretended, too. I pretended I could learn to love Hadley. I didn’t realize it was a lie at the time, but it hardly matters. I lied to him, and then you lied to me. A liar is punished with a lie. It’s all just as it should be.”

  She’d taken pains to speak politely, but for some reason her words made him cringe. He took a step toward her. “You think this is your fault.”

  Oh. Now she began to see the problem. He believed it was his fault she’d come to Hadley House, because he’d said all those cruel things to her in the garden. Well, it couldn’t have been pleasant for him to have to be the one to deliver those truths, but someone had to do it. “And you think it’s yours, but it isn’t. Try and see it this way, Captain. My family struggled for months to get me to leave London, and they all failed. You succeeded because you told me the one truth I couldn’t ignore.”

  He went paler still and… Oh dear, was that fear on his face? Whatever ailed him?

  “The one truth.” He cleared his throat, but his next words were strained, hoarse. “What truth is that?”

  Didn’t he remember? She remembered everything about that moment as if it had just happened. His face, and his tone when he’d said it. So much contempt. At the time she’d shrunk from him, from the disgust in his eyes, but that was before she understood it was all for her own good. “You said nothing but heartache can come—”

  An odd catch in her throat suddenly stopped her words. It made no sense her heart should choose this moment to swell as if bruised, to rush into her throat and silence her. She wasn’t saddened by what he’d said. Oh, she’d been devastated at the time, of course, but she wasn’t…anything now. Not anymore. So much easier that way. “You said nothing but heartache can come from wanting a woman like me.”

  Julian went rigid for a heartbeat, but then his entire body slumped, his shoulders hunching into his chest. He covered his eyes with his hands as if it pained him to look at her, and when he let them fall, his face was slack, ashen. “I should never have said such a thing, not only because it’s cruel, but because it’s a lie. Please, Charlotte. I would do anything not to have said it.”

  Charlotte felt a slight shift in her chest, a vague twinge of sympathy. “But you had to say it, and it’s not a lie at all. You, Hadley, Devon. It’s rather an incriminating trail of disappointment, heartbreak, and death. Don’t you agree?”

  “No,” he whispered. “But I can understand why you might think so, after—” He broke off, and for a moment he seemed not to know what to say, then, “You didn’t make those things happen, Charlotte. Those things—they happened to you, not because of you.”

  Dear God, he was naïve. “You mean to say they were simply bad luck.”

  A glimmer of hope lit his eyes. “Bad luck, yes.”

  She gave him a pitying smile. “There’s no such thing as luck, Captain. Only justice.”

  The glimmer died. “Do you really believe that?”

  “Don’t you?”

  A strange look passed over his face then, one she couldn’t decipher. He didn’t answer the question, but asked instead, “Do you remember the night we first met, Charlotte? Before things went wrong. Before Hadley.”

  “Yes.” She remembered, but she wished she didn’t, because she didn’t want to think on it.

  Now he was looking into her eyes. “I lied to you then. I swore I didn’t seduce you in the garden that night to aid Cam’s scheme to blackmail Ellie into marriage. Do you remember?”

  “I remember. What of it?”

  “My lie set in motion this entire nightmare—our estrangement, your marriage to Hadley, his death, and every heartbreak that followed. If anyone should be punished it’s me, not you. That would be justice.”

  But you have been punished, in the most terrible way a person can be punished. You simply don�
��t know it.

  The words rushed to her lips, but she choked them back. He was trying to trick her into revealing her secrets again. The minute she trusted him, the minute she revealed herself he’d hurt her. He’d say it was her fault, all her fault—that she deserved everything she got, and worse.

  He seemed to be holding his breath, waiting for her answer.

  She looked away from him toward the glass doors. “I suppose you’ll have to stay here tonight, after all. It’s too dark to travel.” She pulled the bell, and after a moment Mrs. Boyle appeared. “Captain West will remain tonight, Mrs. Boyle. Please make up a room for him, and bring him some refreshment, if you would.”

  “Yes, my lady.”

  Julian stood frozen before the desk, stiff and silent, staring at her.

  “Oh, and Mrs. Boyle?”

  The housekeeper turned back. “Yes, my lady?”

  “No need to go to too much trouble with the bedchamber. Captain West will be leaving us tomorrow.”

  Chapter Twenty

  She was hiding from him.

  Julian slid down the wall at his back until he rested on his haunches, his hands dangling helplessly between his spread knees. He’d been hovering in the hallway outside the marchioness’s apartments for the better part of three hours, but Charlotte had yet to emerge. The chamber doors remained firmly closed, and not a sound disturbed the silence on the other side.

  She could be asleep, of course.

  But she wasn’t. Julian knocked his head rhythmically against the wall behind him. Somehow, he knew she wasn’t. She’d slipped through his fingers again. He hadn’t any idea how, unless she’d gone out a window and shimmied down a trellis to the ground, but one thing was certain. He’d never find her now.

  Like chasing a particularly clever fox through every alleyway in London. Except Hadley House, with its endless series of rooms and haphazard hallways made the London rookeries look organized. She hadn’t insisted he leave her house, after all, and no wonder. Why bother to chase him away? He may as well be at Bellwood for all the time he’d spent with her since he arrived here.

  He’d wandered from room to room his first two days, fruitlessly searching for her. On the third day he rose before the sun and stationed himself at the foot of the main staircase so he could catch her before she disappeared into the complex maze of Hadley House, and he was forced to scurry after her like a dim-witted rat.

  She’d frozen to a halt at the top of the stairs as soon as she saw him, but even this strange, hollow Charlotte refused to turn and run from him. She came slowly down the stairs, her face blank, but Julian could see her knuckles go white from her grip on the railing.

  “Captain West.” Her dull eyes flicked over him and then away. “You’re up early this morning.”

  His own face felt stiff, but he made an effort to produce what he hoped was a reassuring smile. “Too restless to sleep, I suppose. May I escort you into breakfast?”

  She eyed the arm he offered with a frown, as if she weren’t quite sure what to do with it. “No, thank you. I prefer to walk in the gardens before I breakfast, but I’ll be sure to join you for luncheon later this afternoon, or perhaps for tea—”

  Gardens again. Gardens seemed to bring out the worst in him, but there was no help for it. “I’d be delighted to stroll in the gardens with you. I’m curious about the house. Cam’s told me a great deal about it, especially the grounds. He says they’re spectacular.”

  He half expected her to refuse him, but after a moment she shrugged as if it made no difference to her what he did. She ignored his arm, but she didn’t object when he followed her down the hallway and through a glass-ceilinged conservatory to a terrace at the back of the house. “They’re commonly thought spectacular, yes.”

  “But you don’t find them so?”

  Because you dread being here, because you blame yourself for Hadley’s death—

  He bit his tongue before the words could slip out and forced himself to keep his tone light. “Rolling green hills and extravagant formal gardens don’t appeal to you?”

  Another shrug. “They’re very nice.”

  Nice. A meaningless word, one that led nowhere, just as this garden did. The twisting pathways circled and doubled back on themselves, with no center and no visible end—

  Julian halted on the path. No, that was wrong. Every pathway led somewhere, and every garden had a center, a heart. He couldn’t see it yet, but it was there, and it only took steady, careful steps to find it.

  He brushed his fingers across the pink petals of a rose and smiled at Charlotte. “Just nice? I’d call them spectacular, but then I look at them with new eyes, a luxury you don’t have.”

  A frown appeared between her brows, but it was the wrong frown, as if they were discussing a complex scientific theory instead of how she might feel about a place that had nearly destroyed her. “What does that mean?”

  There was no heat in her voice. It wasn’t an accusation, only a simple question. He drew a little closer to her, until only a few steps separated them. “I mean you have terrible memories of Hadley House, Charlotte. The sorrow you endured here affects the way you see it.”

  Her mouth opened, but she closed it again without speaking. Her expression didn’t change, exactly, but he sensed a faint shift in her, a new rigidity—a tiny fissure in the blank façade.

  Gently. Go gently.

  “Your husband’s death was sudden. A shock. It must have devastated you. It would only be natural if being here caused you pain.”

  “I—it was sudden, yes.” She gave him an uncertain look, the look of a child whose hurt herself and isn’t sure whether her mother will hold her and soothe the pain, or punish her for recklessness.

  God, he wanted to hold her, hold her until she was so warm and safe in his embrace she dared to reveal a true emotion, but he’d lost the right to touch her. “A tragic accident.” He hesitated, but then forced the words that must be spoken past his cold lips. “But it was an accident, Charlotte, and it’s time you stopped blaming yourself for it.”

  It was the wrong thing to say. Or perhaps exactly the right thing, because she went suddenly stark white, and he saw at once he’d struck a chord, plucked at one of the taut strings inside her chest so the pain vibrated, reverberated.

  She gasped a little, and her hand flew to her throat. “I won’t speak to you about him—him, or anything else that happened here. I know you don’t truly care about me. Do you think I’ve forgotten what you said? You’re a liar, Julian, and a liar will say anything to get what they want.” She threw the words between them, piling them one on top of the other, hurtful words to build a wall he couldn’t scale.

  But he could. He would. Gently. One stone at a time.

  He held out a hand to her. “I did lie to you. I lied when I said I didn’t care about you. I do care, Charlotte. So much.”

  All the anger he felt, the bitterness and shame, the regret—it had torn and bruised him inside, so badly he hadn’t believed he could find anything to salvage in that wreckage, but it was there, underneath the hurt and pain and guilt—so fragile still, like a tiny, beating heart—but it was there.

  Tenderness. For her.

  “No!” She pressed her palms over her ears. “I don’t believe you.”

  His heart crashed against his ribs, both pain and hope at once. It hurt, God, it hurt to see her suffer, but her pain was pure, and like blood flowing from an infected wound, it would heal her. “I know you don’t, sweetheart—not now. But you will, Charlotte, because I’m going to stay here with you until you do, and when you’re ready, I’ll take you home.”

  She stumbled back, away from him. “I won’t ever be ready. Not for you.”

  She ran then, and it took everything in him not to chase after her, but it was enough—for today, for now, it was enough. If he pushed too hard all at once he’d hurt her too much. L
ater, he’d try again, and then again, as many times as it took to reach her heart.

  But he didn’t see her later. She didn’t leave her room for the rest of the day. The following morning he waited for her at the bottom of the staircase again, but she never came down at all.

  Now it was four days later, and today would be another day wasted. His face fell into his hands. With each day that passed Charlotte would retreat further and further into herself, and all the while the pain trapped deep inside her would continue to poison her.

  He couldn’t bear to watch it.

  If he didn’t bring Charlotte to Bellwood soon, Cam would come for her, and once he was here he wouldn’t accept her refusal. Time was slipping away like sand between Julian’s open fingers—slipping away with every hour, as surely as Charlotte was.

  I’m failing her.

  “Why, Captain West. What are you doing here? Are you lost?”

  Julian looked up to find Mrs. Boyle standing over him, her arms full of fresh linens and her kind face creased with concern. “Lost?”

  She propped her bundle against her hip and gave him a cheerful smile. “Aye. Such a large, rambling place, Hadley House, with hallways running every which way. It’s quite easy to get turned around, you see.”

  Julian came to his feet. “No, I didn’t get turned around. I was just—”

  He hesitated. It was hardly proper to lurk in a hallway waiting for a lady to emerge from her bedchamber, and Mrs. Boyle struck him as the type of woman who didn’t tolerate nonsense from curious gentlemen. “I thought I might escort Lady Hadley down to breakfast, but I seem to have missed her.”

  Mrs. Boyle looked confused for a moment, but then her face cleared as realization dawned. “Oh, dear. I see the trouble. Lady Hadley doesn’t use these apartments, Captain. She’s taken a much smaller bedchamber on the other side of the stairs, at the end of the hall.”

  Julian blinked. For God’s sake, he’d spent the entire morning sitting outside an empty room? “But these are the apartments meant for the lady of the house, aren’t they?”