He took a sip from the glass Fairfax offered. Real French brandy. Nothing like that served in roadside inns near Chippenham.
What had inspired Fairfax to leave all this behind, even for a time? But that was, given his own choices, rather a ridiculous question to be asking. And despite the time spent in a far different world, Fairfax looked right at home in this one, every inch the English aristocrat.
Could he be the ally Edward needed?
“Fairfax,” he said, setting aside the tumbler and leaning forward, elbows propped on his knees, “I have something to confess.”
“What’s that?”
After weighing his words for a moment, he told him. All of it. About his father. Why he had left England. What was left of the home to which he had returned. The woman who had made him believe it could be made whole again.
The woman who had made him believe he could be made whole again.
And then had left him, and shown him the folly of such a belief.
As he listened to Edward’s story, Fairfax twirled the bottle stopper between his fingers, watching its facets catch the light. When Edward finished speaking, he expected his friend to ask about the Beckley title, or his plans for claiming it. Instead, he asked, “Does the lady have a name?”
The answer required another sip of fortitude from his glass. “Charlotte Blakemore.”
“The Disappearing Duchess?” The heavy glass knob slipped from his fingers and landed on the plush-carpeted floor with a thud.
“Yes.”
For a long moment, Fairfax said nothing more, though Edward suspected him of fighting the impulse to say a great deal. His words, when they came, were restrained to a simple observation. “I believe her aunt resides nearby. On Brook Street.”
“I cannot think she would go there,” Edward said, recalling the stories Charlotte had told.
“No,” Fairfax agreed. “Certainly not if she had any inkling of the sorts of things Lady Penhurst has been saying since her niece’s disappearance.”
Edward started. “Lady Penhurst?”
“Mm, yes. Very poor ton. But then, she’s been trying for years to distance herself from her brother’s gadabout ways. You know, of course, that your duchess is the Earl of Belmont’s daughter—his natural daughter,” he added in a softer tone, as if he feared to impart unpleasant information.
This time, Edward tried to mask his surprise. He failed, but Fairfax was too much of a gentleman to remark upon it. Why would Charlotte have left out that crucial detail of her parentage? In terms of her social standing, it ought to have made an important distinction, despite her illegitimacy. Apparently, however, it had not. People had, no doubt, taken their cues from the behavior of her aunt.
“And of course Blakemore House—the Duke of Langerton’s residence—is just a few doors away. She was meant to have the use of it, according to her husband’s will. Would she go there, do you think?”
“And challenge her stepson?” He shook his head. “I can’t imagine she would.” Or perhaps he simply didn’t want to believe she would do anything so foolhardy. “The truth is, I haven’t the faintest idea where to begin looking for her. I suspect she does not want to be found—at least, not by me.”
Fairfax’s brows quirked as he looked Edward up and down.
“I suppose I don’t look much like the heir to an earldom,” Edward acknowledged, wondering if his friend doubted the truth of his story.
“No. You look like a man who feared any delay would cost him something far more important. Come,” he said, rising. “While you freshen up, I’ll see what I can learn. Our housekeeper always seems to know the latest gossip.”
As they climbed the stairs, Fairfax laid a hand on his shoulder and said, “Just remember, you ran away once. As did I. Maybe everyone does, at some point.”
“I ran because I felt helpless,” Edward protested. “Because I believed someone I loved would be better off if I left.”
“Exactly.” Fairfax’s toe paused on the next step, giving that single word a moment to sink in. “But in the end,” he added, not looking back as he resumed his ascent, “the most important thing was finding your way home.”
* * *
Charlotte woke early the next morning—not refreshed, exactly, but resolved. Rising, she went to the washbasin to splash her face, then pressed cool fingertips to her eyelids. Her eyes felt as if she had stepped in the path of someone sweeping and caught a broomfull of dust in the face. Nevertheless, she smoothed her hair and pulled one of her own gowns from the cupboard.
The black crape made her think of George, as it was of course intended to do. How much had happened in the short time since he had died. How much had changed. Had she betrayed her husband’s memory by giving herself to Edward? Certainly, Society would see it that way. But she rather thought that George would have winked and told her to be happy.
Pray God she had not destroyed her best chance at happiness by concealing part of the truth.
Although it was early, the house was stirring. Footsteps thundered above her head—what she judged as the likely location of the nursery. Once she had packed her few things in her valise, nestling the book and its contents carefully among them, she peered up the empty staircase and then ventured one floor higher, in search of Jane.
She found her tying the younger boy’s shoes, while the other eyed the lace-edged handkerchief he had been given, as if its use was unfamiliar to him. “Now, boys, you mustn’t—oh! Your Grace.” Jane tugged on the older boy’s wrist to draw him down into a bow. Sally wandered in, covered head to toe in jam, and the baby chose that moment to begin crying. Beneath the ruckus, she heard Jane sigh.
“Here,” Charlotte said, snatching the unused handkerchief from the older boy and applying it to Sally’s sticky hands. “Let me tell you a story while your aunt Jane tends the baby.”
The elder boy—Richard, wasn’t it?—shot her a doubtful look, but Sally and Charles gamely came to her side as she wedged herself into one of the tiny chairs at the nursery table. She knew lots of stories, had regaled her younger French cousins with them time and again. But she had never told one aloud in English. Her stumbling start seemed to reward Richard’s skepticism, but a few moments in, she had all three of them at her feet, rapt. Even the baby stopped crying as Jane came to the edge of the circle and stood, rocking and bouncing her, as she listened.
“Another!” Sally demanded when she had finished, and before Jane could admonish her niece, Charlotte launched into a second. At the request for a third, however, she shook her head. “I cannot. I have something I must attend to this morning.”
There was some grumbling, but Jane prompted them to remember their manners. “Thank you, ma’am,” they each mumbled, with obvious reluctance.
“No, thank you.” She smiled down at them. “It has been too long since I told those stories.” She had almost forgotten their magic.
At a nod from their aunt, the three eldest scurried downstairs to greet their parents for the day. “Where did you learn those marvelous tales, ma’am?” Jane asked when they had gone. “Did you read them in a book?”
“Why, no. They came from my own head.”
Jane’s lips quirked in surprise. “I’d no idea you’ve a way with children, ma’am. You ought to write those stories down.”
With a small smile, Charlotte accepted the compliment, exaggerated though it was. Perhaps it was possible her wild imagination wasn’t entirely a curse, as Aunt Penhurst had always claimed. What was it Edward had called it? Her gift for inventiveness.
Would he call it that still?
“Now, what was that urgent business you spoke of?” Jane asked.
Charlotte stood and smoothed her inky skirts. “I have to say goodbye, Jane.”
“Where are you going?” she demanded with wide eyes. “To your aunt? Back to France?”
“If I tell you this time, Jane, you must promise not to try to stop me.”
“Not to—him?”
“I’m afraid I must.
”
After a long moment, in which Jane struggled valiantly to contain her impulse to argue, she at last nodded and turned to go call a cab. “Are you sure, ma’am?” she asked, pausing on the threshold.
Blinking away a prickle of tears, Charlotte managed a steadying breath. “Not in the least, Jane. But I really haven’t any choice.”
She would never be free if she did not confront Robert—and perhaps not even if she did.
Chapter 20
Though it was far too early for a social call, the door of Blakemore House opened promptly to her knock, almost as if she had been expected. She had not, of course. That much was clear when the butler, an unfamiliar man with droopy features, actually gasped when she lifted her dark veil to reveal her face.
“You’re—Your Grace,” he corrected with a bow so abrupt it threatened to snap him neatly in two.
“I wish to speak with the duke.” From whence this sudden show of firmness had come, she did not know. She felt certain the driver of the hackney must have been able to hear her knees knocking together.
“I shall inform His Grace you are here,” he said, offering no practiced pretense that the duke might not be at home.
“No.” She stepped up beside him as he turned to ascend the stairs. “I do not wish to be announced. Take me to him.”
Something like panic flickered behind the man’s sad eyes. Was she condemning him to lose his place over this? But he jerked his head in a stiff nod. “Very good, ma’am. Right this way.”
He led her through the unfamiliar house that was to have been hers. In a small study, which must adjoin the duke’s private chambers, Robert sat in his dressing gown perusing a freshly pressed newspaper. “Have I not made myself clear, Aimes?” he said without looking up. “I do not wish to be disturbed in this room.”
The answering sound that issued from Aimes—an attempt, Charlotte thought, to clear his throat, though it sounded as if the man had tied his cravat too tightly—at last caused Robert to lift his eyes.
She had succeeded in catching him off guard, at least, though he recovered quickly. He flicked a dismissive hand in Aimes’s direction, causing the butler to scuttle from the room. He did not rise.
“Well, well. So you’ve decided to come out of hiding.”
“I was not hiding,” Charlotte said, thinking of Tessie. “I was surviving. How dare you set men to watch me, to follow me, to hunt me.”
Robert pressed four fingers to his chest. “I? I did no such thing. I was quite worried for your safety. I offered a suitable recompense if anyone could supply any . . . reassuring information.”
“Information useful to your suit, you mean.”
When he lowered his hand and smoothed his palm over the newspaper, his father’s signet ring winked. She was not deceived by the calmness of his movements. “Why have you come, Charlotte?”
“To ask you to drop your suit. For your father’s sake,” she added, though it seemed futile to try to prick his conscience. She had seen few signs of mourning in the house. “I am not so naïve as to imagine you would do it for mine.”
At last he stood and moved two steps closer. “And I suppose in exchange you’ll give up your claim on my father’s estate,” he sneered.
“Yes.”
She watched as he absorbed the word. His lips parted, his eyes widened, and some of his sneer melted away. “Yes?”
Refusing to repeat what she knew he had heard, she simply met his still-contemptuous gaze with a steady one of her own.
It was confirmation enough.
In a series of quick movements, he brought pen, ink, and paper from his desk and rang the bell for his valet, who was instructed to fetch Aimes. When Robert handed her the quill, she scratched out a few words and began to sign her name.
“Wait.”
Once the servants had been assembled as witnesses to her signature, she gave it, then handed the paper to Robert. Once the butler and the valet had been dismissed, he held the document up to the window for more light by which to study her words. “Yes,” he murmured, more to himself than to her. “Yes, I think this will serve.”
How could dear, sweet George’s child be so greedy? But fathers and sons were not always cut from the same cloth.
Edward was proof of that.
“I did not marry your father for his money, Robert.”
“Mm?” He did not lift his eyes from the all-important paper. She doubted he was even listening. But after a moment, he asked, “Why, then?”
“Because he cared. About me. Had he been a ditch-digger instead of a duke, I could not have refused his offer. But that was not the most important gift he gave me.”
Those words caught Robert’s attention. “Something not in the will?”
She almost laughed. “No. Something quite intangible. He believed I deserved happiness.” Beneath her glove, she twisted her wedding band. Amore digna. Worthy of love. “I realize now, he was trying to teach me to believe it, too. And I do. Now, you have what you wanted, so call off your dogs. Leave me in peace.”
Then she turned and marched from the room, wondering as the door latched behind her if he would accede to that simple wish.
In the entryway, Aimes held the door, then followed her to her waiting cab. “I was honored to serve the late duke, Your Grace. May I make so bold as to offer my condolences?”
“Thank you, Mr. Aimes.” She dropped her black veil back into place.
“I understood Blakemore House was to be your home.”
“No.”
“Ah.” Aimes bowed and opened the carriage door. “Then I am sorry for that, too, ma’am.”
These unexpected expressions of regret, of sympathy, almost caused her to stumble on the steps. Perhaps not everyone thought Robert was in the right, after all.
“Where to, ma’am?” the driver called down.
Somewhat self-consciously, she jingled her reticule. She had sufficient funds to last for quite some time, if she was frugal. Enough to take her anywhere. She thought fleetingly of France, and the little cottage in the Lake District of which she had once dreamed—had it been only two weeks ago?
But those were no longer the destination she had in mind.
* * *
Fairfax was as good as his word. Edward had just finished scraping the last flecks of shaving foam from his jaw and was donning a fresh shirt when his friend knocked on the door.
“We’re going to Blakemore House.”
Edward’s fingers fumbled the knot of his cravat. “Why?”
“She’s been sighted.”
“By whom?”
“Langerton’s valet,” Fairfax explained as they hurried down the stairs. “I assumed he was hanging about the kitchen to flirt with the new parlor maid. He’s a preening dandy—probably has girls in every servants’ attic in Mayfair dreaming of him.” Out the door and onto the square, without even stopping for their hats. “But this time, he was fit to burst with real news: The Disappearing Duchess just paid a call on the duke.”
“Is she there still?” His own breathlessness alarmed him. It had nothing to do with their hurried pace.
“He didn’t know,” Fairfax said as he rapped on the door.
The man who answered his knock replied to their inquiry with a butler’s typical restraint. “I’ll see if His Grace is receiving callers.”
Then he held out a salver for their cards, and Edward was brought up short.
Fairfax, however, quickly withdrew one of his own and dropped it on the tray. “Accompanied by Lord Beckley,” he instructed the butler to add, and in another moment they were alone in the entry, which was every bit as stately as that of Sutliffe House—more so, perhaps, as there were no precocious little girls, or costumed cats, or toy perambulators in sight. In fact, Edward might be tempted to call the space cold. Difficult to imagine Charlotte here, in a mud-spattered dress with her hair half tumbling down. But perhaps that had only been her country costume. No doubt she had worn quite a different one as Duchess of Langerton
.
Still unsure as to why she had left Ravenswood, he could invent no explanation for why she had come here, of all places. Unless, of course, she intended to boast to her stepson of how she had taken a lover and thwarted his plan.
“Don’t worry, my friend,” Fairfax said, misinterpreting his expression of uncertainty. “If Langerton knows where she’s gone, we’ll get it out of him.”
Before Edward could reply, the butler had returned to show them upstairs. Behind a door opened by a footman, Langerton sat at breakfast, dressed for riding, the day’s post spread around him. With a nod to dismiss another servant standing by the sideboard, Langerton peered over his table at them with shrewd eyes. “Lord Fairfax,” he said with a nod. “I believe I’ve seen you around town.” Fairfax bowed. “And . . .” The duke fingered the edge of Fairfax’s card as he studied Edward.
“Edward Cary, Duke. Heir to the Earl of Beckley.”
“The one who’s been missing for twenty-odd years?”
“The same.”
With a skeptical twitch of his lips, Langerton resumed eating. “What can I do for you gentlemen this morning? I know nothing of the late earl’s estate, or any claimants to it.”
Shaking his head at Edward, whose expression had deepened into a scowl, Fairfax said, “We came to inquire about the duchess.”
“My wife is well. In general, however, she does not see callers at this hour.”
“Not your wife,” Edward explained, drawing something like patience from the steadier presence of his friend, but unable to keep the edge from his voice. “Your stepmother. The one they call the Disappearing Duchess.”
Langerton ceased to chew, although he did not lower his fork. “You’ll not find her here.”
“Do you know where might we find her?” Fairfax asked, all politeness.
But Edward spoke at the same time. “Did not the terms of your father’s will name this house as her place of residence?”
If the table had not been solid mahogany, the force with which Langerton pushed away from it would have sent it scraping across the floor. “What do you know of my father’s will, Mr. Cary?” he demanded as he rose and stepped toward him. He was not an especially tall man, but he was wiry, and fit enough to stand his ground.
To Seduce a Stranger Page 24
