What might her life have been like if she had gone to him in person instead of writing that stupid letter? Or what if he had guessed his brother’s part in the matter and came after her to reveal her mistaken assumptions?
A sigh escaped her. She probably would not have believed him. She had been so certain of his bad character, so convinced of her own good judgment. Then she had compounded her mistake by running off with Jimmy. At the memory of Jimmy’s proposal, she shook her head. Foolish, silly girl. Live on love, indeed. What a joke that had proved to be.
She turned away from the window. Not that Jimmy hadn’t cared for her. Sometimes she thought he really had. Certainly they’d had some enjoyable times together. But in the end, the money had clouded everything.
Her elopement and the ensuing scandal had sent Papa over the edge. He’d had a stroke, dying before he could change his will and disinherit her. Her mother had followed shortly after. As a result, Charlotte had received a very handsome inheritance. All of which merely compounded her guilt and shame. She couldn’t help blaming herself for her parents’ deaths.
Jimmy had told her not to. But then, Jimmy had been eager to spend her money, so he had hardly cared how it had come to them. Unfortunately, spending her inheritance had been his right as her husband. It had taken him a mere two years to work through the entirety by living extravagantly and investing badly.
By the time he had made the mistake of insulting a fellow officer and dying on the dueling field for it, there had been only enough money left to pay for his funeral. And even then, she’d had to borrow against his small pension.
Thank heaven she had been able to find a position with a girls’ school in Chelsea, or who knows how she would have lived?
“Good morning, Charlotte,” boomed a robust male voice behind her.
She jumped, then spun around to find her closest male friend standing in the doorway. “For heaven’s sake, Charles, don’t startle me like that!”
Charles Godwin quirked up one blond brow. “Actually, since I’m ten minutes late, I expected you to be out front tapping your foot, ready to remind me how busy you are when school’s in session.”
Late? For what?
Suddenly it hit her. He had promised to take her into town to view the Angerstein Collection today, so she could make sure that the paintings would be acceptable viewing for her girls. “Oh Lord, I completely forgot. I am so sorry.”
With a smile that looked forced, he entered the room. “Does your sudden lapse of memory have anything to do with the fact that I just saw Kirkwood’s carriage leaving here?”
Merciful heaven, this was awkward. Unable to meet his eyes, she went to sit behind her desk. “As a matter of fact, yes. He came here to discuss a matter of business.”
“Business?” Suspicion darkened his handsome features.
Charles was the only person alive, other than David’s family, who knew about her and David. She hadn’t even told Cousin Michael, unable to bear letting him know the worst about her.
But Charles knew it. Indeed, that was how she and the newspaperman had become friends. If anyone could advise her, it was he. Like Cousin Michael, he never pressed her beyond what she would accept.
Gesturing to a chair, she waited until Charles dropped into it before explaining about David’s visit and Sarah’s bequest.
When she mentioned the amount, Charles’s blue gaze narrowed. “That doesn’t sound like Sarah.”
“No,” she agreed. “But Lord Kirkwood insists that she was always a supporter of the school.”
“It must really stick in his craw that the woman who once destroyed his reputation will now receive a hefty portion of his wife’s money.”
“If it did, I saw no sign of it. He said that what happened between him and me is all in the past. And he acted as if it truly were.”
“Ah, I see.”
But Charles did not look as if he saw anything. He looked shaken. And she feared she knew why. Although Charles had been devastated by the death of his wife, Judith, a couple of years ago, in the past few months he had made it clear that he was ready to move on with his life. Judging from his recent behavior, which was more like a suitor’s than a friend’s, his readiness to move on included Charlotte.
She did not know what to do about it. She had always liked him a great deal, but had never thought of him as a man she could marry. She had been quite close to Judith, and it seemed disloyal to contemplate him as anything but her old friend’s husband. She suspected that the only reason he had not yet asked her to marry was that he realized how awkward things would become between them if she refused him.
Sometimes she wondered if he might be Cousin Michael. After all, Charles had come into a fortune through an uncle around the time of Jimmy’s death—it was what he had used to purchase the failing Morning Tattler and transform it from a gossipy rag into the London Monitor, a radical paper advocating government reform. Being married, he would have wanted to keep his involvement with her school very private.
Still, she had read his editorials—which bore no resemblance to Cousin Michael’s style. And if indeed Charles had been masquerading as her cousin all those years, why continue to do so now that he did not have Judith’s feelings and reputation to protect?
“May I see the document Kirkwood brought you?” Charles asked.
“Of course.” She handed it to him.
He took his time, reading it more carefully than she’d had a chance to. “Only an attorney could say for certain, but it seems legitimate.”
“Why wouldn’t it be legitimate?”
“Because it makes no sense. Sarah was certainly vain enough to want a building named after her, but this nonsense about having Kirkwood oversee the design seems blatantly intended to throw you and her husband together. That isn’t something she would do, even from the grave.”
Heat rose in Charlotte’s cheeks. “Sarah did not know about my previous association with her husband.”
“You can’t be sure of that. Husbands say a great many things in the privacy of the marital bed.”
She sucked in a breath. That had not even occurred to her, though it would explain why Sarah had always been so nasty toward her. “So what are you saying? That Lord Kirkwood invented this legacy? Why? What would it accomplish?”
He shrugged. “Perhaps he wants to begin where the two of you left off. This gives him an excuse for doing so.”
A wild laugh escaped her. “You must be joking. What I did to him was unforgivable.”
Charles gazed steadily at her. “You’re a beautiful and successful woman, Charlotte. Perhaps after marriage to Silly Sarah, Kirkwood wants a wife with more character.”
There was no mistaking the jealousy in Charles’s voice. She rose, uncomfortable with the direction the conversation had taken.
“If even I,” Charles went on, “who didn’t know you at the time, recognized how you were hurting when you wrote that letter, then perhaps he did, too.”
“Do not be a fool.” She went to stand at the window. “According to Anthony, who told me about it without knowing of my involvement, David Masters only spoke of me once to his friends. Although he would not reveal my identity even with them, he called me a vile name and thanked God that he had not ended up ‘leg-shackled to a woman who was half-mad.’ Does that sound to you like a man who could tell I was ‘hurting’?”
“It sounds like a man in the heat of anger,” Charles said. “But eighteen years gives a person time to cool down. And you said yourself that he didn’t act today as if he were angry.”
“No, but neither did he act as if he were eager to court me. David always was able to put a good face on things when necessary.”
“David?” Charles echoed, always the observant man of the press. “After all these years, you still think of him by his Christian name?” As she cursed her quick tongue, he added, “You must still have feelings for him.”
She whirled around, startled. “Do not be absurd. That is well in the past.”<
br />
He studied her for a long moment. “If you say so.”
She managed a smile. “This is nonsense. Sarah undoubtedly did this out of vanity, and thought it would be great fun to force her husband into being part of it.” Walking to her desk, she picked up the notebook she was taking to the Angerstein exhibit in Pall Mall. “Let’s go. If we do not leave soon, we will not have time to view the paintings before you have to be back at the paper.”
“I can spare a day.” He rose, his gaze still on her. “Besides, after we’re done at the exhibit, we should pay a visit to my friend Robert Jackson. He may be able to shed more light on this interesting document of Kirkwood’s.”
“I already intend to bring it to my attorney.”
“Do not take this wrong, my dear, but while your attorney is perfectly acceptable for dealing with parent contracts and vendor agreements, you need someone with a specialized knowledge of estate law. Jackson has that.”
A sigh escaped her. She hated it when he was right. “Very well.” She set her shoulders. “But I will pay the attorney’s fee.”
“For God’s sake, Charlotte, let me—”
“I mean it. Either I pay the fee or I do not use him.”
With an exasperated look, he offered his arm. “As you wish, madam. Though I don’t understand why you must always be so willful.”
Cautious, more like. Though she took his arm and let him lead her out, she had learned the hard way that a woman was responsible for saving herself. Relying on a man was dicey business. She had relied on Jimmy to save her, and instead he had left her destitute. Then she had been forced to rely on Cousin Michael for help, and even the man she’d come to regard as a friend had abandoned her.
Men were not the solution to her problems, and Charles most certainly was not. He would expect nothing less than love from her, and she did not feel that for him. She had married once without love, so she saw no point in doing it again, even if Charles was twice the man that Jimmy had been. She wasn’t even sure love was wise anyway. She had fancied herself in love with David, and it had only brought them heartache.
Besides, she was thirty-six, for heaven’s sake. A marriage at this age would be absurd.
Though a love affair would not be unwelcome.
The thought came out of thin air, as shocking as it was tantalizing. She had considered it before, of course, but she had always dismissed it because of the school and the necessity of upholding her reputation. But with the school in trouble and the now unattached David coming back into her life…
She stifled a curse. What was she thinking? That would be the height of madness.
“You know, Charlotte, there might be yet another reason that Kirkwood came to you with this bequest,” Charles said, startling her.
“What is that?” she breathed, praying that he did not guess the reason for the sudden tension in her.
“Perhaps Sarah did leave you the money out of vanity. But if it were in a codicil, Kirkwood might have influenced the attorney to write the contract he gave you in such a way as to involve himself in the process.”
“To what purpose?”
“So he could control how the funds were spent. So he could have you where he wanted you.”
“And where would that be?” she snapped, growing inexplicably annoyed with her friend’s determination to view this in the worst possible light.
“He might have seen this as the perfect chance to get back at you for what you did to him that summer. He might be using this to gain revenge.”
The possibility of that rose up to smite her where it most hurt—in the part of her that still found David far too appealing. “That is ridiculous,” she said in a hollow voice. “It has been eighteen years. No one holds a grudge that long, not even Da-…Lord Kirkwood.”
“We’ll see what the attorney says. But heed me well, Charlotte. There’s more to this than meets the eye. I’m sure of it.”
Sadly enough, so was she.
Chapter Nine
The night before David was to return to the school, he sat at a table in the Eel and Drake awaiting Joseph Baines, attorney-at-law, trying not to think about what Charlotte would say tomorrow.
He honestly couldn’t blame her for her suspicions. She had to find it odd that he was stepping back into her life after she’d treated him as she had. He found it a bit odd himself, even after all these years of corresponding with her.
God knows he’d been furious that summer, especially after hearing that she’d eloped. In his eyes, she’d not only toyed with his affections and publicly humiliated him, but she’d also thumbed her nose at him by marrying his rival for her hand. Even to this day that rubbed him raw.
He’d spent the next two years buried at the estate, preparing for when he came of age. But he couldn’t remain in hiding forever. Eventually he’d ventured out into society. Still shunned by people whom he’d once considered friends, he’d decided to show them that he didn’t care. Though he’d spent his days in fairly sober pursuits, letting his clever friend Anthony direct his investing, he spent his nights in wild carousing, trying to forget Charlotte.
It was during his second year in London, the fourth year after that blasted letter had been published, that news of Charlotte had trickled through the grapevine to him. He’d already known that she and her husband had inherited her family’s money, but it was the first time he’d heard that she had been a widow for some time and working as a teacher at a very prestigious school in nearby Chelsea.
For reasons he only half-understood now, it had infuriated him. She’d been doing precisely what she’d always dreamed of; she’d come out of their encounter smelling like a rose, while he’d still had matrons giving him the cut direct at social affairs. She’d embarked on a new life, while he’d been unable even to find a suitable wife with that albatross of a scandal hanging over his head. How he had resented that!
A week after hearing the news, drunk to the gills and stewing over Charlotte, David had wagered a huge sum on whist against Samuel Pritchard. Winning had given him little satisfaction—the nearly broke Pritchard had been in such dire financial straits that he’d risked more than he could afford, always a nasty situation.
That was when David had hit upon a way to gain his money from Pritchard and revenge himself on Charlotte at the same time. First, he’d convinced Pritchard to agree to a lien on the property where the school now resided. Since it was entailed, Pritchard hadn’t been able to sell it to pay his debt, but he’d agreed to give David the rents for fifteen years. Back then, Pritchard and his family had lived in Rockhurst next door, so the man had been grateful for a chance to save his honor without bankrupting his family or having to sell his own home at a loss.
Remembering Charlotte’s passion for opening a school, David had then approached Charlotte through Mr. Baines, pretending to be Captain Harris’s distant cousin so he could coax her into setting up her school on Pritchard’s land. She’d been so eager to pursue her dream that she’d taken him up on his offer. He’d even thrown in a bit of his own money to sweeten the deal, never dreaming that one day he’d need that money to drag his family out of debt.
His plan had been to offer her a very cheap rent until she’d had her school fully staffed and functioning, until she’d been lulled into complacency. Then he’d intended to raise the rents dramatically and demand repayment of the loan, watching with glee as she floundered.
A wicked plan to be sure. And one he had soon come to regret.
“I hope you haven’t been waiting long, my lord.”
Blinking, David glanced up to see that Mr. Baines had arrived at last. David brandished his tankard of ale. “Not long enough to get foxed.”
The solicitor laughed. “A pity, that.” Tossing his hat onto the bench opposite David, he folded his skinny frame into the seat and slid a document across the table. “I brought your original agreement with Pritchard as you asked, but you’ll find it unhelpful. I read it over again. My professional opinion is that there is nothin
g you can do to keep him from evicting the widow.”
With a grimace, David slid the agreement into his satchel. “I know you’re right, but I still want to look it over.”
Baines called for a tankard. “Did the ‘codicil’ pass muster?”
“Frankly, I’m not sure. Charlotte is too clever to swallow such a tale on my word alone. She wouldn’t even discuss it until she could have it examined by her own attorney. Will that be a problem?”
“My lord!” Baines exclaimed, his pasty face stiff with the insult. “That document is unshakable. Your family solicitor and I made sure of it.”
“Forgive me, Mr. Baines. This matter has me out of sorts.”
“I imagine so, what with Pritchard on the verge of selling Rockhurst to that Watson fellow from Yorkshire.”
David swallowed some ale. “Actually, that might help me. It will signal to Mrs. Harris that it’s time to move the school.”
“You do realize the irony of this situation.” Baines eyed him closely. “If you were to let matters take their natural course with Pritchard, you’d have Mrs. Harris exactly where you’d wanted her when you started this.”
“I know that only too well. I just pray that she never discovers it.”
“You had good cause to be angry.”
“Yes. But as I recall, you cautioned me against demanding that lien from Pritchard.”
“It wasn’t the lien I cautioned you against. That was clever. At least you had the forethought to realize that rents for properties in Richmond would soar.”
“You give me too much credit.” David knocked back the rest of his ale. “I didn’t give a bloody damn about soaring rents; revenge was my only aim.”
“Yes, well, that was what I cautioned you against. Fortunately for Mrs. Harris, you changed your mind.”
David snorted. “She changed my mind.”
“Got to you with her letters, didn’t she?”
A rueful laugh escaped him. “The woman can write, I’ll give her that. Here I was, relishing the moment when I could throw off the mask and demand what she couldn’t pay. Then she starts sending me all those missives, thanking me for my ‘kindness and generosity,’ asking advice about how to save her ‘dear girls’ from making the same mistakes she’d made.” He shook his head. “I swear, only a man with a heart of stone could have stood up to that for long.”
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