Or perhaps he had recognized that she was right—that he could never forgive or forget what had happened between them in their youth. Why else had she not heard a single word from him in days?
Tears flowed down her cheeks, and she buried her face in her hands. Why had he not fought harder for her? Why had he run off to the country instead, without telling her where he was going or what was happening with the magistrate’s office?
Lifting her head, she strove to quash her tears. She was a fool to even be wondering—had she not decided to put an end to their mad affair? To stop him from hurting her anymore? She had as much as told him that at their last meeting. So why was she crying because he had taken her at her word?
“Mrs. Winter and her children are here, madam,” said Terence’s voice from beyond the door.
She shot up from the settee. Good Lord, she had entirely forgotten that this was the day she and Amelia had arranged to meet. Before she could do more than draw out her handkerchief to wipe her eyes and nose, Amelia was bustling into the room, tugging along two adorable little girls.
“Mrs. Harris, it’s so good to—” Amelia broke off as she caught Charlotte surreptitiously dashing away her tears. “Oh no, what has happened?” the young woman said as she rushed to Charlotte’s side.
That only started Charlotte crying again, harder than before.
“Terence,” Amelia said, “would you take the girls down to the river landing to see the ducks? They’re very fond of ducks.”
“No,” Charlotte choked out, “I-I want to visit with your girls…”
“And you will. Later.” After waving off Terence and the children, Amelia urged Charlotte to sit back on the settee. “For now, I think you and I should talk.”
Charlotte needed no more invitation than that to throw herself into Amelia’s arms and start sobbing again.
Amelia took it all in stride, stroking her back, soothing her with soft words. After Charlotte had finally gained control, Amelia murmured, “Dare I guess that this has something to do with my husband’s cousin?”
Charlotte nodded. She considered how much to tell Amelia, then realized she need not hold back anything from her. What was there to hide? She had to tell someone about David. She needed a female confidante, and Amelia would understand better than anyone, since she knew David better than Charlotte’s other friends.
The whole tale came out: what had happened between her and David years ago, how he had come back into her life, the supposed legacy from Sarah. She left out only the fact that she and David had shared a bed, saying he had been courting her while helping her look at properties.
But when she got to the part about David’s being Cousin Michael, Amelia gazed at her in stunned amazement.
“Lord Kirkwood?” she queried. “He’s Cousin Michael? Are you sure?”
Charlotte gave a mad laugh. “As sure as I can be.” She told Amelia everything that had happened at Mr. Baines’s office, including what she’d said to David at the end. When she was done, Charlotte asked, “Do you think I was wrong to say those things to him? Do you think I am wrong now to be so angry at him?”
“About his deceiving you? Absolutely not.” Amelia scowled. “A plot for revenge indeed. Next time I see my husband’s cousin, I shall give him quite the tongue-lashing. How dare he lie to you and plot against you, all because you wrote some silly letter!”
“You don’t understand,” Charlotte said. “Thanks to my ‘silly letter,’ he was publicly vilified for months and months. I heard that whenever he walked into a room, mothers hid their daughters. Imagine having to face that every time you went into society, yet never even knowing why I had humiliated him so. He had no clue that I had seen Giles with the maid. One moment, I was promising to consider marrying him, and the next I was mocking him in a most public forum.”
“Yes, but to engineer a plot to set you up for failure! That is abominable!”
“I quite agree.” She blew her nose. “Still, he did not go through with it. And to be honest, without his vile plot, this school would not exist. I would never have been able to save enough money to begin it on a teacher’s salary. And it would have been years before anyone even considered making me a headmistress. Thanks to him, I realized my dream. It is hard to hate him for that.”
“Ah, but you can hate him for lying to you about Mr. Pritchard. What would have happened if this had gone on until Mr. Pritchard evicted you?”
“David would not have let it go so far. I know it.”
“How can you be sure of that? My goodness, the man invented a fake legacy just to keep from admitting the truth to you!”
“He invented a fake legacy because he knew I wouldn’t take the money otherwise. And he was right about that. If he had come forward and told me he was Cousin Michael that very first day, I would have demanded to know everything. Once I heard he had done it out of revenge, I would have thrown him out and never spoken to him again.”
She glanced up to find Amelia smiling ruefully at her. “Do you hear yourself, my friend?” Amelia said. “You defend him at every turn. You must not be quite as angry at him as you think.”
That was the trouble. Every time Charlotte summoned up her moral outrage, she thought of the stricken look he had worn in Mr. Baines’s office. She remembered the many times he had said rather harsh things about Cousin Michael. Had he even then been feeling guilty about his deception?
Worst of all, she remembered how sweetly he had made love to her at Stoneville’s property. He might not have said he loved her, but he had shown it in so many ways—trying to protect her from Pritchard, pushing her to move the school, offering her his own money…
“I do not know what I feel anymore,” she admitted. Tears welled in her eyes again. “And now he has left town, and I cannot even see him to find out.”
Amelia hugged her. “Oh, I think you do know what you feel. You just don’t want to admit it. It sounds to me as if you’ve already forgiven him.” Drawing back, she took Charlotte’s hands in hers. “It sounds to me as if you’re still in love with him.”
Charlotte stared bleakly at her friend. Was she? It was quite possible. Why else was she so miserable without him? Why else did the thought of never seeing him again send a knife through her heart?
He might have deceived her and manipulated her all these years, but he had also been a friend to her. A good friend, if she were honest about it.
“What am I to do?” Charlotte whispered. “I don’t know if he only pursued me out of some long-suppressed desire to revenge himself for what I did to him. Or if he really cares and just cannot admit it to himself. I need to know that.”
“Of course you do.” Amelia squeezed her hands. “Do you still have the letters he wrote to you as Cousin Michael?”
Charlotte nodded. “Mr. Baines gave the magistrate’s office his originals, so I still have the copies that were delivered to me. I have kept every one.”
“Perhaps you should look there for some sign of what Lord Kirkwood really feels for you. I know he was playing a role, but I doubt that even my husband’s Machiavellian cousin could hide himself entirely from a woman he cared about.”
“Or from a woman he secretly hated.”
“Exactly. You said that his anger leaks out whenever he speaks of the past. It must have leaked out in his letters, too. Perhaps if you can read them in the cold light of day, you can determine if his anger is at you. Or at himself.” Amelia arched one eyebrow. “And if you can read them without wanting to strangle him for deceiving you, then you’ll know how you feel as well.”
Charlotte managed a smile. “It is a good suggestion, thank you.”
“You’re welcome. I owe a great deal to what you taught me here, so the least I can do is offer a bit of advice now and then.”
Impulsively, Charlotte hugged Amelia. “Oh, you do more than that, my friend.” When she drew back, she squared her shoulders. “Now, let us go see how your daughters are faring with Terence. I don’t think he is used to dealing
with girls quite that young.”
As they headed out to the river landing, they spoke of the school and Amelia’s children. But Charlotte was still aware enough of where they were going to tense up as they neared the river.
And Amelia was astute enough to notice. “Still uneasy around the water, are you?”
Charlotte sighed. “I keep thinking I will grow out of this silly fear, but I never have.”
“Did you know that Lucas has a fear of closed places? He spent two days trapped in a tunnel at Dartmoor, and he gets very uneasy whenever we are belowdecks on a ship or confined somewhere in a small room. But he always manages to fight back his fear.”
“I should dearly love to know how he manages that.”
“Mostly he talks, to me or to whoever is near. He rattles on about whatever he can think of, and I do my best to help by saying outrageous things to make him laugh. He says keeping his mind on something other than his surroundings helps.”
“I shall have to try that sometime,” Charlotte said, though she doubted anything so pedestrian could ever make her feel easy on the water.
The girls spotted them just then and uttered a glad cry. Five-year-old Isabel, with chestnut curls and eyes as blue as her father’s, broke into a run to meet her mother, while black-haired, three-year-old Emily toddled less swiftly toward them.
“Mama, Mama, Mr. Terence showed us the river wherries!” Isabel cried as she threw her arms about her mother’s legs. “Can we ride in one? Please, please?”
“Not today, sweetie. Perhaps another time. We’re going to have tea with Mrs. Harris instead.”
Isabel gazed up at Charlotte with wide eyes. “Will there be plum cakes?”
“There will be lemon cakes,” Charlotte said, charmed beyond words. “Will that do?”
After they all trooped inside, an ache settled deep in her chest as she watched the girls with their mother. Would it be so bad to marry David, even if he did not love her? Or could not say he loved her, at any rate? They might have children together. After all, she was not sure she was barren.
And he would expect you to give up the school to raise those children, and be Lady Kirkwood.
Yet even that might be worth it, if she thought he truly cared for her.
As soon as Amelia and her sweet girls left, Charlotte headed to her private drawing room and pulled out David’s letters. For several hours, all she did was read. Now that it was too late, she saw David in every turn of phrase, every acerbic remark. But though his arrogance was blazoned upon every page, there were flashes of kindness, too. Like when he showed such concern for her staying alone at the school over the Christmas holidays. Or when he blamed himself for what had happened with Lucy.
That letter in particular arrested her. He had written it shortly after his wife’s death. Despite his grief, despite everything he must have been dealing with, he had taken time to assuage her guilt over Lucy’s disappearance and blame himself for it.
With her heart racing, she flipped back to the letter he had sent the night of Sarah’s death, the one he had been delivering while his wife was being murdered. It was full of assurances that if Diego Montalvo proved a blackguard, David would make sure the man was packed off to Spain.
It was one offer of intervention among many, the offers of a friend to a woman who had started her enterprise with few connections and even fewer friends. David’s scheme might have begun as revenge, but it very clearly had become something more.
His voice echoed in her mind: I was your friend, damn it! I still am. Nothing has changed, not for me.
Did she dare believe him? Did she dare to believe that he felt even more? That in time he could love her again?
That was the question that plagued her for the next couple of days. With the girls gone and the investigators no longer around, she could not concentrate on school business. She spent her time reading through David’s letters and strolling about the school grounds, trying to sort out her confused feelings.
Late one afternoon, she found herself near the boathouse where she and David had made love, and something dawned on her. David had been right when he’d said, You use your bloody school as an excuse for not taking risks in your private life, for not letting any man close enough to gain your heart.
She was proud of what she’d done, building this wonderful institution, but now she began to realize that it was not enough for her anymore. She was lonely. That was why Cousin Michael’s defection six months ago had struck her so cruelly. Because in many ways he had been her closest friend, and without him she had felt adrift, uncertain…alone. So very alone.
Her parents’ example and her two unsatisfactory romances had left her cynical that there could ever be someone else for her. But then David had come back into her life and offered the promise of a future. Of an existence beyond the cozy—and stifling—society of the school.
And it had frightened her, just as he said. Because what if she risked everything for him and ended up disappointed again? Then she would no longer have the safety of her school to fall back on. It was easier to wall up her heart here.
But that was no way to live.
She turned from the boathouse to go back inside, now that dusk was falling. A man stepped in front of her, startling her. It took her a moment to recognize him.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
Then she spotted his pistol. Before she could even scream, someone stepped up behind her and pulled a filthy rag between her teeth to gag her while another person tied her hands.
As they pushed her toward the river, she saw the wherry waiting at the landing. Then panic really set in. She kicked and struggled against the strong arms hauling her back toward hell. Her heart thundered in her chest, her fear making her throat raw. Screaming behind the gag, she dug her heels into the ground, and when that didn’t work, dropped to her knees in hopes of delaying them.
But it was no use. Within moments they had lifted her bodily onto the boat. And she was out on the river.
Chapter Twenty-six
David sat at the kitchen table with a pack of cards and three of Pinter’s men, who were dressed in David’s livery. “This time, gentlemen, we should play for sixpence a point,” he said as he dealt the cards.
“Oh, Mr. Pinter wouldn’t approve of that at all,” the man across from him said. “So I say we do it.”
They all laughed. It hadn’t taken long for David to figure out that Pinter’s men found him as much an annoying enigma as David did. The man could freeze fog with his cold glances, and David had yet to see him crack a smile.
But David had to hand it to the runner—he was nothing if not thorough. He and his men had searched the house from top to bottom and found nothing that was any help, not even under the floorboards in George’s room.
Lately, when the man wasn’t at the magistrate’s office interviewing witnesses, he spent his time going through the Cousin Michael letters. David sometimes fancied that Pinter had softened toward him since starting to read them. And though Pinter wasn’t the sort to be easily swayed from his convictions, he had seemed impressed when Sarah’s father had stepped forward to argue on David’s behalf. Given that David had initially married Sarah for her money, Linley senior’s defense of his son-in-law had gone a long way to lift Pinter’s suspicion of David.
But unfortunately not Pinter’s suspicion of Charlotte.
David stared blindly at his cards. He’d tried not to think of her, of what she’d said to him at the end, but it rang in his head at night and tormented him when he rose in the morning.
Now that his anger had worn off and he could consider her words more rationally, he wondered if she might have been right. Deep down, was he still nursing that ancient wound?
All this time, he’d seen himself as doing everything for her, to help her. Yet he’d been protecting himself with every step. He’d manipulated her and lied to her…and goaded her—whatever it had taken to gain his way.
To gain her.
N
o, not her exactly. The Charlotte of his youth. If he were honest with himself, part of him had wanted to force her back into that role. To relive their past so they could make it come out right the second time.
But one could never go back. He was not the same man, and she was certainly not the malleable innocent he’d hoped in his youth to initiate tenderly into lovemaking. She was a woman full-grown, capable of making important decisions and eager to conquer the world in her own way. He should have approached that Charlotte, told her the truth, and laid his cards on the table.
Yes, she would have been angry. She might even have refused his help and lost her school. On the other hand, they might have been able to build a friendship that could have blossomed into an honest, open affection. It wouldn’t have been the same as in their youth, but it might have been better.
So why hadn’t he done that?
Because he’d been too afraid to risk it.
David shook his head. He’d accused her of being a coward, but he was the coward, afraid to expose himself. Afraid he might discover that their years of correspondence and his fond memories of their youthful love were as nothing against the lies and manipulations of his masquerade.
Now he was paying for that. With every day that he and Pinter’s men waited for Sarah’s killer to enter their trap, Charlotte was out there rebuilding her walls against him, higher and firmer this time. She always learned from her mistakes—and he’d made sure that she would want nothing to do with him in the future.
How would he bear it? When he’d lost her the first time, he’d had his anger to sustain him, to drive out the love that had consumed him.
This time he had nothing but remorse and regret. He almost didn’t care what happened now with Sarah’s killer. Let them take him to gaol. Let the press foment scandal around him. Let his life be ruined. Without Charlotte, he had no life anyway. If he could not have the woman he loved…
Loved? He groaned. Yes. What a fool he had been not to see it. For all his attempts to change her, he loved the new Charlotte as much or more than the old. He loved that she didn’t let him bully her, that she knew her own mind, that she believed fiercely in her school. Being with her was like racing at breakneck speed down an endless road of possibilities.
Wed Him Before You Bed Him Page 27
