Page 35 of Miss Beresford and the Beast

“Forgive me.” The constable drew up a tattered armchair. “You hurt your neck, you say?”

“My head.” Charlotte touched her fingers to her temple in a not wholly fabricated affectation of pain.

Magnus strolled to the fireplace. The busybody in the black dress—Miss Kitteridge, was it?—scurried out of his path. She relocated herself to the opposite side of the room, still surveying Charlotte and Magnus down the length of her narrow nose.

The constable withdrew a small notebook and pencil from his pocket. He opened the notebook to the first page and, wetting the tip of his pencil on his tongue, began to write. “How did you injure your head, Miss Beresford?”

Charlotte glanced at Magnus. He was leaning against the mantelpiece, arms crossed at his chest. A portrait was mounted on the wall above him, festooned with cobwebs and blanketed in a thick layer of dust. It was a painting of a lady. A stately, dark-haired one in a fitted evening dress with an enormous diamond necklace at her throat. A matching diamond bracelet adorned her wrist and a huge diamond solitaire graced her ring finger.

Was she Magnus’s mother? Charlotte scanned his face for any resemblance.

Magnus looked back at her steadily, but not at all warmly.

He wasn’t the only one whose eyes were upon her.

Charlotte refocused her attention on the task at hand. “I-I was atop the garden wall,” she began in a halting voice.

“Atop the wall?” Miss Kitteridge echoed in blatant disbelief. “That ten-foot stone monstrosity that surrounds the estate?”

“Nine foot,” Magnus corrected quietly.

Charlotte moistened her lips. Not all of her memories had come back. There were parts she was going to have to make up as she went along.

Luckily, she had an excellent imagination.

As for the rest…she recalled enough of it now to give an adequate account of herself.

“I’d spotted a hurt dog, you see,” she said to the constable.

Magnus’s gaze sharpened. His thoughts were as clear in that moment as if he’d spoken aloud. Indeed, she could practically hear the sarcasm in his voice. A hurt dog? he seemed to ask. Not your hurt dog?

Charlotte averted her eyes. This wasn’t the time to be feeling guilty over all the trouble he’d gone to in bringing the biting, thrashing little canine back to her. It wasn’t her fault that she’d believed it to be her dog, any more than it was that she’d believed Magnus to be her husband.

To be sure, one could argue that it was, in fact, Magnus’s own fault. Had he shown her the letter she’d written from the first, she might have remembered who she was earlier instead of spending nearly two days confounded by a bewildering delusion.

“I have a weakness for animals, you see,” Charlotte explained to the constable. “My mother instilled it in me.” She paused, adding, “She’s the granddaughter of the Earl of Gordon, did I mention?”

Mrs. Kitteridge’s mouth fell open.

“You have an esteemed lineage, Miss Beresford,” the constable said. “Yet you find yourself here, on the outskirts of Bead’s Hollow? Atop a great wall, no less? It is a puzzle.”

“Yes, quite,” Charlotte agreed. “But the dog was injured, as I said. Once I saw him enter the grounds of the estate, I couldn’t simply leave him here, could I?”

“This place isn’t fit for man or beast,” Mrs. Kitteridge said.

“I had no notion at the time that the new earl was in residence,” Charlotte went on. “If I had, I’d naturally have inquired at the front door.”

“We none of us knew,” the constable told her.

“Which is why the only option available to me was to climb the wall.” Charlotte set her hands in her lap. “I was attempting to stand up to get a better look into the garden when I lost my balance and fell.”

Constable Reeve scribbled rapidly in his notebook. “And after that?”

Charlotte looked to Magnus. “Lord Eversleigh will have to supply the rest. I can remember nothing until I regained consciousness later that day.”

Magnus looked back at her. There was an expression in his eyes that was impossible to interpret.

Had he thought she would mention the pistol?