Page 30 of Miss Beresford and the Beast

She didn’t.

Her sentence remained unfinished, the furrow in her brow growing deeper with every line she read.

Magnus’s shoulders bunched with tension. It was all he could do not get up and stalk from the room. To leave her and this quagmire behind, and to flee, just as he’d done all those years ago.

But unlike the catastrophic scandal of his youth, this mess was one of his own making. He’d be damned if he ran.

No. This time he was going to face his failings like a man of nearly thirty, not as a stripling lad.

“Artemis,” she whispered to herself. “My mare.”

“So it seems.”

“And Mr. Aloysisus.”

“Your cat,” Magnus concluded.

Her eyes lifted to his. They held a new wariness. “And you.”

“And me,” he repeated grimly.

Charlotte’s face had gone pale. “Not my husband.”

Magnus looked steadily back at her. “Decidedly not your husband.”

Chapter Ten

The letter fell from Charlotte’s nerveless hand. The words within it were now emblazoned on her brain. Damning words about Magnus being an evil gentleman who had done terrible things. About his father being dissipated, the house abandoned, and the village cursed.

And about her.

Not a new and very much unwelcome bride, as it transpired. Not a bride at all. She was a stranger.

He was a stranger.

A roiling swell of panic swept over her. She moved to stand. Her limbs immediately sagged beneath her.

Magnus caught her elbow before she could fall into an undignified heap. He wordlessly pressed her back into her seat.

As she shakily resumed it, she stared at him with new eyes. Seeing the implacable firmness in his frame. The humorlessness in his eyes. The searing path of his scars.

Her heart hammered an erratic rhythm in her breast. She had the sense that he was marking every skittering beat. That he could feel her confusion, her fear, the slow build of her trembling indignation.

“Are you going to have the vapors?” he asked without inflection.

Her spine stiffened at the suggestion. “I am not, sir.”

“A fit of hysteria?”

“Thank you, no.” Charlotte removed her elbow from his grasp with one decisive jerk. “I don’t indulge in such theatrics.”

She knew that now. Along with several other facts about herself.

They had come back to her as she’d read. Words, written with her own hand, conjuring an image of the life she’d lived before. It wasn’t fully solidified yet, only a shadowy sketch, but it was enough for her to understand the essential truth.

She wasn’t Magnus’s wife. She wasn’t anyone’s wife. She was a Beresford.

“Under the circumstances,” he said, “one could understand why one would.”