To Seduce a Stranger

by Susanna Craig

  “Try to relax,” Edward said, his voice low and calm. “Samson can feel your fear. We won’t let you come to any harm. Trust me.”

  Another awkward laugh almost escaped her. How ridiculous to speak of trusting a perfect stranger.

  Although, of course, she was trusting him. At least a little.

  What choice did she have?

  Concentrating on each muscle, she forced her limbs to ease. The task proved far more difficult than the one she had set for herself in the public room: keeping herself from shivering and tossing back the tot of brandy like an old sailor. For one thing, the change in posture made her uncomfortably aware of the breadth of his chest against her back, the band of his strong arm about her waist. When he guided the horse around a treacherous-looking rut, she could feel the flex of his muscled thighs along her hips and legs.

  No one had ever held her so close.

  Well, that was not entirely true. Someone must have, when she was a child. Surely she had once been nestled against a breast or dandled on a knee, although she had no memory of it. More recently, there had been that Mr. Sutherland, a friend of her cousin Roderick, the young Baron Penhurst. Late one night, Mr. Sutherland had grabbed her on the servants’ stairs and tried to steal a kiss . . . and a bit more. She had made short work of his roving hands with the press of a pointed heel to his instep, and had taken secret delight in the fact that he had still been limping when he left the house three days later. When Aunt Penhurst had asked him the cause of the injury, he had looked pointedly at Charlotte before claiming he had tripped, sparing her for once from having to make up some story that her aunt would never have believed.

  In any case, if physical contact was not quite unprecedented, it was still unusual enough to leave her feeling a bit breathless and longing to sit up straighter again, if only to fill her lungs properly and shake off the unaccustomed sensations. She would not do it, of course, because she did not want to incur Samson’s, or Mr. Cary’s, displeasure. Besides, the change of posture had made the motion of the horse almost bearable.

  At least, until Mr. Cary urged him to a faster pace.

  “O-oh!” The jarring motion of the trotting horse rattled the gasp from her chest.

  “Tell me, Miss Charlotte Blake.” His voice in her ear was a distraction, as she suspected he had intended. “How does a Frenchwoman come by such an English name?”

  “My—” Husband, she had been about to say, but she bit the word off just in time. “Er, that is, I—my father was English.”

  “But you were raised in France?”

  “Yes.”

  Usually, that fragment of her story was sufficient. Anyone who did not know the rest was quick to sketch in the blank spaces, rarely to Charlotte’s advantage.

  “By your mother?” Mr. Cary prompted.

  So he wanted to hear the damning tale right from her lips, did he? Knowing what use gentlemen like Mr. Sutherland had made of such information, she was loath to supply it. Only the late Duke of Langerton had ever been willing to overlook her shameful origins, and look where that had got him.

  What would Edward Cary do with the truth?

  Based on what he had told her, she suspected there might be more than a few unsavory bits in his own past. Young men did not leave England to work on West Indian sugar plantations if they were secure of a future at home.

  Perhaps he was a foundling, as his story suggested. Perhaps they were two of a kind.

  But she could not afford to find out.

  “My mother died when I was a young child,” she answered at last. An infant. In truth, she had no memory of the woman at all. “I was raised in the household of her brother, a wine merchant in Rouen.”

  “Who taught you English?” he asked after a moment.

  “My uncle rented rooms to an English poet and his . . . sister.” Even as a child, Charlotte had recognized the lie for what it was. Dorothy, the poet’s mistress, had divided her time between copying his work and keeping him from committing some act of self-harm in a fit of artistic despair. “When she had a spare moment, she invited me in to converse. To improve her French, she always insisted, although she spoke it flawlessly.”

  Those few hours, snatched away from dismal years, had been some of the only bright spots in a childhood that had required her to grow adept at storytelling: tales to entertain her younger cousins to keep them from getting underfoot; small lies to explain the bruises, the tears, the torn dresses inflicted by the older ones; outright fabrication when grim reality simply could not be faced. Over time, the truth had begun to blur around the edges. Sometimes, she was no longer certain which was memory and which invention.

  The horse’s hooves slipped a little as he shifted onto a more northerly path, but she had forgotten to be frightened of its movements. “When I was not quite sixteen, we began to hear terrible rumors of blood flowing through the streets of Paris. The poet hurried to see for himself, insisting his sister return home. Much to everyone’s surprise—including the poet’s, I don’t doubt—she did. I begged her to take me with her.”

  “It was not she who left you destitute back there?” There was something encouraging, almost comforting about the edge to his words, as if he hoped one day to have an opportunity to chastise the person responsible for her present predicament. What would he say if he knew she alone was the one to blame?

  “Oh, no. Once we arrived in England, she helped me to track down my father’s sister, and I went to her. It was she who . . . gave me my start in service.”

  Not a lie. Not really—although Mr. Cary might beg to differ if he ever had cause to hear the whole story. Despairing of making any kind of match for her brother’s “sallow-faced, sickly bastard,” Aunt Penhurst had made use of her instead. Household mending, at first. Later, when she had proved she could write a neat hand—in English, no mistakes—she had graduated to a sort of unpaid lady’s companion. Not quite a lady’s maid.

  Not so well treated. Never so well dressed.

  And if Aunt Penhurst had not snapped her fingers once too many times in the presence of the Duke of Langerton, Charlotte might be there still. Right at this moment, she was no longer persuaded that the old duke’s interest had been entirely beneficial. Certainly, the new duke’s did not seem to be.

  Would she rather be back in the Penhurst household, then? Or riding through the damp countryside in the embrace—for there could be no other word for it—of a man she did not know, escaping . . . what? Her stepson? A stranger in a dark coat? Society’s sneers?

  She could have faced any one of those challenges.

  But why should she have to?

  Power flowed through the muscles in the horse’s neck, warming her fingers, and when she stretched slightly forward, Samson responded by moving faster, his new gait smooth and swift. Charlotte welcomed the wind as it rushed past them, rippling her hood, loosening the pins in her hair.

  No one knew where she was. No one knew who she was.

  She ought to have been frightened.

  But for the first time in her life, she felt free.

  Chapter 3

  In Edward’s dreams and nightmares, his last glimpse of his childhood home had been late at night, light pouring from the windows as he sneaked away into the dark forest. In actuality of course, it had been morning, the birds had been singing, and his mother had walked with him almost into the village, where he was to have his Latin lesson with the curate.

  He had never made it to the vicarage. Instead, once his mother had planted a goodbye kiss on his cheek—one he, as a would-be young man, had been obliged to protest—he had turned and headed south, meeting up with the mail coach in Marshfield, a village a few miles down the road. So sure had he been of his decision to leave, he had actually managed to fall asleep on the way to Bristol.

  Well, he was awake now, although he felt quite certain Charlotte was not. His arm was beginning to ache where she leaned against it—a welcome distraction from the aches he felt in other places. The very last thing he h
ad needed was to ride for hours with a woman’s soft arse pressed into his groin.

  At first he had imagined it a simple matter of leaving her at the next crossroads with a few coins for the stage, so she might travel wherever she had a mind to go. But her evident tension had soon made him realize she feared being followed by whomever she had fled. So they had carried on despite the drizzle. Surely, given Samson’s increasingly plodding steps through the mud, his baggage coach would overtake them eventually, and she might travel inside, in reasonable propriety and comfort. By late in the day, however, it had become apparent to him that they were not to be so fortunate. His last hope had been the inn they passed just as the rain broke and darkness began to fall. They could rest for the night, finish their travels by daylight. But innkeepers asked questions for which he hadn’t any good answers. What was his relation to the young woman with whom he was traveling in such an unconventional fashion? So they went on, under the moonlight, completing the final stage of a journey he had delayed too long already.

  Still, when he caught his first glimpse of Ravenswood Manor, he drew up the reins, bringing Samson’s ambling gait to a halt.

  Just ahead, buttery stone gleamed among the trees, painted white by the light of a rising moon. But there were no candles in the windows as there had been in his dream, no smoke rising even from the kitchen chimney, no sign of human habitation at all. Only the shadow of an owl, a dark gash across the pale façade, as it swooped silently in search of some unsuspecting prey.

  “Miss Blake,” he said, tightening his grip on the reins even as he shifted his left arm to rouse her. “We’re here.”

  She did not start as he had expected. Perhaps she had not really been dozing, although when she spoke, her voice was husky as if with sleep. “Nous sommes où?”

  “Ravenswood Manor,” he said. “Principle seat of the Earl of Beckley.”

  “An earl?” The title brought her to full alertness. He knew he was not imagining the alarm in her voice. She had reason to be wary of the aristocracy, certainly, given her treatment at its hands, but surely the lady she had served would not waste her time with further retaliation. Was it the woman’s husband she feared, then? From whom was she trying to hide?

  “It does not look as if he is in residence.”

  “No.” Brambles had been allowed to crisscross the path, and the front gardens were in shambles. When he dismounted, no one answered his shout toward the stable block, and as his eyes passed over the front of the house, he saw a broken window high above. Total neglect. And not of recent date. “It does not look as if anyone is in residence.”

  He looped the horse’s reins around a piece of crumbling statuary, some lesser Greek god missing one ear and his nose, then reached up to lift Charlotte down. As he trotted up the steps—two at a time, despite their depth—and pounded his fist against the front door, he could feel her hesitating, lingering beside the horse, as if she expected to have to make an escape.

  Defeated by silence in answer to his knock, he was about to turn and join her when he caught a sound from inside the house. Shuffling footsteps across a stone floor, followed by the scraping sound of the bolt being drawn. The heavy paneled door swung inward, and in the darkness of the cavernous entry hall stood a man of indeterminate age, clutching a tallow candle, heedless of its oily drips.

  “Here at last, are ye?”

  It was not the greeting he had expected. “Where is Jewkes?” Edward demanded, resurrecting the butler’s name from some corner of his memory.

  “Don’t know nobody by that name,” the man said. Jewkes was almost certainly gone, of course. Everything would have changed in twenty years. But the former butler’s replacement looked—and smelled—more like a shepherd. “Who’re you?” The man raised the candle higher, looking sharply into Edward’s face.

  Edward nearly choked on his reply. “Cary,” he said at last. Would the name reveal enough? Too much? But only the dimmest light of familiarity flickered in the man’s gaze. “Is the family abed?”

  “Dunno.”

  “Are they here, man?”

  “Naw,” he said, and spat. “His lordship went t’ Lon’on years ago. Ain’t none from t’ family lived here since.” With that, he turned and walked back into the house, and as he did not slam the door behind him, Edward followed, forgetting for a moment that he was not alone.

  The pattering sound of Charlotte’s feet trying to catch up caught him by surprise. “But you seemed to be expecting us?” she asked.

  The man paused but did not turn as he replied. “’Spected them trunks b’longed to somebody.” Resuming his shuffle, he led them past broken furniture moldering in disarray and priceless portraits rotting beneath swags of cobweb. Bile stung the back of Edward’s throat.

  “So, my things have arrived?” he asked, forcing a note of calm into his voice.

  A laugh wheezed from the man’s lips, almost extinguishing the candle. “Aye. All of ’em.”

  Eventually, they came to what had once been the servants’ quarters, and the man opened the door to the butler’s room, where a sagging rope bed and a rag-covered chair passed for coziness. In a spacious manor full of once-elegant furnishings, what would have possessed a vagrant to take up residence in this meager chamber? But the pile of empty bottles discarded in one corner answered Edward’s unspoken question. Proximity to the wine cellar had been the lure of this particular room.

  “You are the, ah—the, er—?”

  Charlotte’s soft voice was a raft of tranquility in the noisy sea of chaos rushing through Edward’s brain, and he grasped for it like a drowning man. “Caretaker?” he supplied, uncertain whether she fumbled for an English word she did not know, or merely a word, any word, to describe the man’s role in the rubble of what had once been Edward’s family home.

  “I guess you can call me that, if you like. I’m what’s left. Samuel Garrick, by name. Used to be second stable boy. When there was horses.” Nonchalantly, he took his pipe from his waistcoat and lit it with his candle, producing a cloud of even more noxious smoke, if such a thing were possible. “You fixin’ t’ stay, Mr. Cary?”

  Words simply would not come. How in God’s name had his father let this happen? When Edward had run away, he had told himself he was saving his mother’s life. But he had always let himself believe he could return to Ravenswood one day.

  This time, Charlotte came to his aid. “Mr. Cary has just returned from the West Indies. The earl is expecting him to serve as steward of this property.”

  Garrick shrugged. “Don’ know nothin’ ’bout that.” His dark eyes glimmered with interest as they looked Charlotte up and down. “An’ who’re you?” Even disheveled and travel-weary and surrounded by squalor, she was striking, and Edward supposed the man could be forgiven his inquisitiveness.

  But the answer to his question was not an easy one.

  Although Edward could never have imagined what he would find when he got here, he had allowed his anxiety over returning to Ravenswood to cloud his judgment where Charlotte Blake was concerned. People who ran roadside inns were not the only ones who asked inconvenient questions. Of course a young woman traveling alone with a man would excite speculation. He had meant merely to help a mistreated lady’s maid. Instead he might have ruined her. What plausible explanation for their peculiar arrangement could he offer? If she did not look quite so exotic, he supposed she might pass for his sister . . .

  “I,” Charlotte began, unperturbed, tugging loose the fingers of one glove, “am Miss—”

  The candlelight struck gold on her fourth finger and sent forth a dazzling gleam. A gold band. A wedding ring. Too much to hope that it had not caught Garrick’s eye.

  “Mrs. Cary,” Edward spoke over her. “My wife.”

  Even as the word passed his lips, he feared it was the sort of promise on which a man might eventually be expected to make good. Except that she was already married. Good God.

  With what sort of woman had he saddled himself when he made that rash o
ffer of assistance? A lady’s maid? Perhaps. He half suspected, given her own account, that she was some English adventurer’s by-blow. For all he knew, a French spy to boot. Any and all of whom were the last sort of woman he needed or wanted.

  Pale-faced and wide-eyed in response to Edward’s claim, Charlotte sank onto the chair behind her, then leapt up again when the pile of rags on its seat screeched and hissed.

  “Mind the cat.” Garrick puffed lazily on his pipe, while the affronted feline stared unblinkingly at Charlotte for a long moment before beginning to lick its sleek black fur back into place. “So you was in the West Indies too?”

  “Er—ah.” Edward began to fumble for an explanation, but Charlotte stepped smoothly into the gap, gathering her gloves in the palm of one hand and drawing back her shoulders like a damned duchess.

  “No, Mr. Garrick,” she said. “I was companion to a widow, the widow who owned the property Mr. Cary managed in . . .”

  For reasons he could never have explained, even to himself, Edward softly inserted, “Antigua.”

  She bristled. “Of course I know that. Didn’t I write out the direction often enough? I was in charge of her correspondence,” she explained to Garrick. “One day, on a whim, I added a line of my own to the bottom of one of her missives to Mr. Cary. Some question about the weather, wasn’t it, my dear?”

  Edward started. He had almost forgotten he was meant to be an actor in this little play. He should stop her.

  Instead, he nodded. “Er, yes. I believe it was.”

  “My”—she began, and then shook her head with a sly little smile cast in Edward’s direction—“our employer rarely looked at the letters herself, you see, Mr. Garrick. Mr. Cary and I began to correspond. When he returned to England, he paid a call on my mistress, and—”

  “And that, as they say, was that,” Edward spoke over her, sensing that Garrick’s interest in the tale thankfully had begun to flag. “Happily ever after and whatnot,” he finished lamely.