The sun was no longer directly overhead, but there was no denying that this was the first genuinely warm day since Edward had returned. Some might even have called it hot. Sweat trickled along the valley of his spine, and he stopped to shrug out of his coat, then swung it easily over one shoulder. Markham had long since shed his.
“I might have done.” He was certainly hungry enough. Mari had closed the kitchen three days ago to devote herself to helping with the grand cleaning project. He missed her cooking, and her company, more than he would have thought possible. He would not allow himself to wonder whether he missed Charlotte’s company, too. “But it didn’t seem to me that the Westons had much to spare.”
Markham gave a slow nod. “They don’t, and that’s a fact.” The two men walked a dozen paces before another word was spoken. “They’ll do better now, once they sell that wool. The lambs looked healthy enough.”
“Indeed,” Edward agreed, and Markham laughed, no doubt thinking of the spindly legged, black-faced creature that had butted Edward behind the knees, catching him unawares and knocking him onto the barn floor.
When the empty fields that stretched between Ravenswood Manor and Markham’s farm came into view, Markham paused. “Do you suppose Garrick’ll be back with that load of seed before nightfall?”
Much to Edward’s surprise, Mr. Toomey had walked all the way to the Westons’ farm to inform him that the seed had arrived in Marshfield. The eight-mile journey to Marshfield was more than Toomey himself could manage, not wanting to leave his shop unattended for another day. Garrick—tufts of wool stuck to his sweat-damp skin—had offered to go after it before Edward could ask.
“He could be,” Edward answered. “But he won’t.” Garrick had more than earned his pint today, and Marshfield, by his dim recollection, had at least three pubs.
Markham stretched and resumed walking. “Good.”
In the shadow of Ravenswood Manor, between the kitchen and the separate paths that led to the Rookery and Markham’s farm, they stopped and prepared to part ways. Markham glanced over Edward’s shoulder at the house, but said nothing.
How were they getting on inside? Curiosity prickled at Edward, an affliction almost worse than the scratchy fibers of wool that had found their way beneath his clothes.
“Let’s step into the kitchen and get something to eat,” he suggested.
“But Miss Mari said . . .”
Markham’s voice trailed off when Edward swung open the door. He did not intend to be denied access to his own house.
As luck would have it—or not—Mari was at the fireplace heating water, and Edward prepared himself for a scold. But Markham’s presence seemed to temper her response.
“I knew you wouldn’t last out the week,” she said, hands on her hips. Her normally pristine dress was streaked with dust, and her turban was askew. The day’s warmth, combined with the fire, made the kitchen shimmer with heat.
“Have you eaten?” Edward asked.
“If you think, Mr. Edward, that I’m going to drop everything to prepare your—”
“I’m not asking you to prepare anything, Mari. It’s a beautiful day. Come outside and eat with us.” While he spoke, he began gathering a few things into a basket: bread, cheese, wine. Following his lead, Markham stacked plates in a clean cloth and tied it securely around them.
He could see the protest building behind Mari’s eyes, like steam in a kettle. But before it could boil over, he heard Markham ask, “Will you join us, Mrs. Cary?”
Charlotte stood in the doorway to the corridor, looking from one to the other. When she got to Edward, her gaze dipped away. “I don’t think—”
“Please.”
Edward hardly knew whether the word had actually slipped from his lips. But her eyes lifted to his, nonetheless. “If you insist,” she said, the reluctance in her voice belied by the way her fingers fumbled eagerly at the knot in her apron strings.
He was past wondering whether he would ever see her looking more like a lady than a maid. Correction: He was past caring. She was dusty, yes, although this time, the apron had borne the brunt of it. Her hair was, as always, slipping from its pins. But the hard work had brought a flush to her cheeks and a sparkle to her eyes. No one with eyes could fail to see her beauty.
“I know just the place,” he said, gesturing toward the door with the laden basket. Markham led the way, the bundle of plates in one hand and four tumblers hooked on the fingers of the other. With a sigh—as if the safety of the kitchenware could be secured no other way—Mari followed him.
Charlotte came last, and when she slipped past Edward, she whispered, “Merci beaucoup.”
He chose to imagine she was thanking him for more than holding the door.
Once outside, he took the lead, heading toward the back of the house, striding across the empty terrace and into the wooded area behind. What had once been a fashionable “wilderness” was now genuinely wild, its carefully manicured paths having long since been reclaimed by the undergrowth. On its far side stood a dilapidated summer house overlooking a largish pond.
In his childhood, it had been one of his favorite haunts. “I, er, stumbled upon this when I was exploring the other day,” he told the others to explain his familiarity with the secluded spot. In the shade of a lazy willow, he motioned for Markham to put down his burden. On the square of linen that had contained the plates, he laid the food from the basket. “An open-air feast.”
The men spread their coats on the ground to make places for the ladies, then made themselves comfortable beside them on the soft, long grass. Hard work had given them all hearty appetites, and for many minutes, little could be heard above the sounds of eating and drinking. Afterward, Markham told the story of how Edward had been vanquished by a three-week-old lamb, making Mari laugh—a rare sight, in Edward’s experience. Charlotte tried and failed to hide her smile behind her half-empty glass.
When he caught her at it, she nestled the base of the glass securely between two folds in the blanket and said, “I was once knocked into the Serpentine by a swan.”
“It’s a sort of a lake, in London,” Markham explained to Mari, so that she might join in the merriment. “In one of those parks where nobs can fancy themselves in the country.”
Esoteric knowledge for a West Country farmer. Edward wondered how he had come by it.
As he chuckled with the rest, Edward studied Charlotte’s self-deprecating smile. Then her dark eyes lost some of their twinkle, and she suddenly strangled her quiet laughter with her hand, cupping it over her mouth.
Why had she told the story if the memory pained her so?
“I hope that experience hasn’t given you a lasting fear of the water,” he said, rising. “Come. That pond has been beckoning for the last half hour.”
Warily, she accepted his outstretched hand and came to her feet. “Surely you do not mean to swim?”
“I’d like nothing better. But I’ll content myself with wading. Join us?” he asked the others.
Mari shook her head almost primly. Markham stretched out lazily in the grass beside her. “Too much trouble.”
“Suit yourselves.” Edward shed his boots and stockings and tried not to watch while Charlotte did the same.
But it was impossible not to catch a glimpse of her pale feet and delicate ankles as she raised her skirts to mid-calf and stepped gingerly into the pebbly shallows. “Oooh. It’s cold!”
Undaunted, Edward walked farther out, until the water lapped at the knee-bands of his breeches. “It’s wonderful,” he corrected. “Come deeper.”
“I couldn’t possibly. My dress will get soaked,” she protested. But she took two wobbly steps in his direction, all the same.
He glanced toward the shore to see if the others were watching. But Mari was turned toward Markham, speaking animatedly, while the man nodded as he listened, eyes only for her.
Turning back to Charlotte, he asked, “Was it true, the story about the swan?”
Her skirts slip
ped from her hands and splashed into the water. Silvery minnows darted through the clear water, seeking cover.
“No,” she confessed. “Not exactly.”
“Then why did you tell it?”
“I . . .” Her shoulders crept higher but did not fall, a sort of half shrug turned into a cower. “I do not know if I can explain.”
“Try.” The monosyllable was sharper than he had intended.
“When Mr. Markham told the story about the lamb, it made me remember . . .” She twisted back and forth, dragging her skirts across the surface of the pond. “Did you ever hear a story so often in your childhood that you believed it must have really happened?”
“I suppose.” Perhaps, when he had been very small. Certainly not the age Charlotte said she had been when she came to England.
“Sometimes, I begin a story, thinking it really happened. And then I recall the truth.”
It was a shocking confession. An inability to differentiate fact from fiction was the first step toward the madhouse. Or prison. “What really happened?” he asked.
“Nothing so . . . amusing, I’m afraid.”
He stepped toward her, close enough that her hems swirling through the water swept across his bare feet. “Were you often required to be amusing?” The thought was somehow chilling, like Scheherazade forced to spin her thousand-and-one tales to keep her head.
“Sometimes.”
“By your husband?”
“Oh, no. In—in France, I used to tell stories to entertain my younger cousins, to keep them from pestering their father. I tried to do as much when I first came to England, but my aunt said she would not tolerate such childish nonsense.”
He thought he knew the type. Of greater interest, however, was the unlooked-for revelation about her family. “So you have English cousins as well?”
“Just one. And it was he who was responsible for that tumble into the Serpentine.” Her gaze drifted away as she remembered. “His mama insisted that he accompany me on some errand—oh, yes. I recall. To fetch her new hat from the shop. On the way home, he ran off, into Hyde Park. I had no choice but to follow. He jumped at me from behind a bush, snatched the hat from my hands, and threw it into the river. Then he pushed me in as I leaned over to try to save it. The hat was ruined, of course. I had to make excuses to my aunt. She would never have believed anything bad of her son, so I made up the story about a swan.”
“And was she . . . amused?”
Charlotte managed a weak smile. “Not enough.”
He wished, suddenly, for some bit of magic that would wash the hurt of a joyless childhood from her eyes.
“If you stand perfectly still, the minnows will nibble at your toes.”
She shot him one wide-eyed glance before inching her dripping skirts high enough that she could see her feet. “Really? Oh, there’s one. And—oh—another, and . . . Oh!” Her chin lifted as she looked back at him. “It tickles.”
He nodded encouragingly and watched as she wiggled her toes experimentally, trying to coax the tiny fish. The drowsy hum of insects filled the silence between them; in the distance, he heard Markham laugh.
When a cloud crossed the sun and cast the pond into shadow, the minnows once more flashed away. Edward took Charlotte by the elbow, led her back to shore, and sat down beside her as they dried themselves in the warm spring air. “So, your aunt punished you to keep you from telling stories.”
Charlotte paused in the struggle to tug a surprisingly elegant silk stocking over her damp toes. “To keep me from telling lies,” she corrected.
Her aunt’s plan hadn’t worked, of course. If anything, stifling her so-called lies had only forced her to get more creative with telling them.
Balling his stockings in his fist, he stood, stomped his feet into his boots, and strode back to the others, snatching his coat from the ground and stuffing the discarded hosiery into his pocket.
“Is everything all right, Mr. Edward?” Mari asked, springing almost guiltily to her feet. Beside her, Markham rose more slowly.
“Yes. No.” He slapped his hat on his head and bent to pick up the basket, now laden with the used plates. In his haste, he knocked over Charlotte’s half-empty glass. Wine spilled like blood across the ground.
As he passed her on his way back to the house, he nodded sharply. A gesture of apology? Or leave-taking? He could hardly say. He tried to convince himself that the frustration building inside him was due to the heartlessness of Charlotte’s family, who had exploited and distorted what once might have been a gift.
But something else was eating at him, too—something far more dangerous than a few curious minnows.
She’d just handed him more proof that he could never trust what she said. Yet he felt, somehow, as if he’d finally caught a glimpse of the real woman beneath her stories.
And what he’d seen only made him want to know more.
Chapter 10
Charlotte had always been skeptical of the notion of a “good” sort of tired. Exhaustion was exhaustion. But as she eased her body into the silky cool cambric of her—well, technically Jane’s—night rail, she thought she finally understood. Her legs, her back, her hands—everything ached, but the dull pain of strained muscles and chapped skin faded beneath the glow of intense satisfaction that had swelled in her chest as she looked with pride at all she had accomplished in the last few days.
The dining room, the entry hall, the Great Room, and the gallery all gleamed with polished wood and sparkling glass. No more dust, no more cobwebs. No more draperies, either, and considerably less furniture and fewer broken knickknacks. Just the warm, sweet scent of beeswax, and beneath it, the sharper tang of vinegar. Perhaps, when—if—the Earl of Beckley ever returned to his estate, he would be displeased by what he saw. But she rather imagined he would think nothing of it. If her aunt was any indication, aristocrats knew very little about how their houses were kept clean, only demanded that they were.
Once dressed for sleep, she lifted a drowsy Noir from the seat of the chair and placed him on the bed instead. Stretching lazily, he looked for a moment as if he were considering protesting, but instead curled back into a ball, laid down his head, and closed his eyes. Only the tip of his tail twitched to reveal his feelings about the disruption of his nap.
Easing herself into the chair, she took up her hairbrush and peered into the piece of broken looking glass she had rescued from the gallery. Thanks to a few new blisters and her aching hands, her grip on the brush was tenuous, and she dropped it twice before managing to make a pass through just the ends of her hair, from not quite her shoulders to below her waist. Her arms did not seem to want to rise any higher, and when she attempted to make them submit to her command, pain knifed across her shoulders. Halfheartedly, she tried once more before twisting her lips in a grimace of both discomfort and annoyance. Laying the brush on the small table, she was about to give up and go to bed when the reflection of something behind her, the slightest movement, caught her eye. With a gasp, she spun around to see what it was.
She had left the door half open to allow Noir to come and go as he pleased. Now the once narrow gap had been widened to accommodate Edward’s broad shoulders, one of which leaned casually against the jamb. He had been watching her, and nothing about his posture—arms folded over his chest and around a book, legs crossed at the ankles, the toe of one booted foot propped against the floor—suggested the slightest chagrin at having been caught in the act.
A nervous hiccup of laughter bubbled in her chest, and she turned back to the mirror to hide it, covering the handle of the hairbrush with trembling fingertips, as if its smooth ivory curves could be mustered in her defense. “Bonsoir, Mr. Cary,” she said, eyeing his reflection. Days of breathing in dust had parched her throat, turning her words into a ragged whisper. “Did you—did you want something?”
For a long moment, he did not answer. Half shadowed by the door, his face revealed nothing. Nudging the door wider, he stepped into the room. “I have already fo
und what I was looking for, thank you.”
In the mirror, the square set of his jaw looked slightly ominous. At least, it raised her pulse a notch or two. He was fully clothed, of course, but every time she saw him, the mental image of him stripped to the waist seemed determined to interpose itself.
She forced herself to turn and face him, and he held out the small volume to her. Ah, bien sûr. That was all he had sought. A book. Flipping to the yellowing title page, she read, “The Farmer’s Kalendar; or, a Monthly Directory for All Sorts of Country Business: Containing, Plain Instructions for Performing the Work of Various Kinds of Farms, in Every Season of the Year.” Her eyes darted up to meet his. “Are you having trouble sleeping, Mr. Cary?”
The jest caused one corner of his mouth to curve. “A West Indian sugar plantation is not an English farm. But as someone recently reminded me, if I once managed one, I can learn to manage the other,” he said, lifting the book from her hands. A moment of awkward silence fell, then he cleared his throat. “The transformation you have wrought here is nothing short of miraculous.”
“I did not do it alone. Mari helped, as you know. And Peg, the girl from the pub. Even Garrick—”
“Yes, I heard. He told me you stole the ladder and nearly stranded him in the stable loft.” His smile crept higher, into his eyes.
She tipped her chin in acknowledgment. “It was the only way to reach the corners of those high-ceilinged rooms.”
“I certainly did not intend to deprive the others of their due,” he said, sliding the book into the pocket of his coat. “But I think we both know who deserves the credit.”
Embarrassed, she turned to face the table again, refusing to meet his eyes even in the mirror.
“I am—” Edward continued, “that is, Lord Beckley will be pleased to see everything so well taken care of.”
“I thought you said he had expressed no concern about the house.”
“I said he had given no instruction about it,” he corrected.
“Ah, well. It takes no great skill to sweep and polish.” Absently, she tapped the ragged nail of her first finger against the brush before lifting it to resume her toilette, although she had no more success than before. She still could not raise her arms above her head to make a proper job of it.
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