Page 59 of Miss Beresford and the Beast

Charlotte fell silent again. A look of faint disapproval was nevertheless evident at the back of her eyes. “So, you informed her that you had no regard for her?”

“I did.”

“I find that rather cruel.”

“The truth often is,” Magnus said. “Though, I confess…I did attempt to state it without excessive brutality.”

“How did she take it?” Charlotte asked.

Picking up his cup, Magnus downed a swallow of cold, bitter tea. “Badly.”

Chapter Nineteen

Magnus made no effort to sugarcoat the story for Charlotte’s benefit. She’d asked for his version of events and that’s what he was going to give her. If she was disposed to think ill of him because of it, then that’s how it must be. He’d had worse disappointments in his life than the loss of one young lady’s good opinion.

Though, admittedly, at the moment, risking this particular young lady’s good opinion felt like a risk rather too great to take.

But he owed her his honesty if nothing else.

“There were tears on Miss Farr’s part,” he said. “A great many. Her father was away in Upper Beadwell, so it fell to her brother to allay her disappointment. Unfortunately for me, Jeremiah wasn’t disposed to wait for his father’s return. He took the whole affair as a slight, not only against his sister, but against his entire family. Yet another example, he claimed, of the peerage treating the local gentry with disrespect.”

Charlotte leaned forward in her seat. Chase’s lead had gone slack in her hand. “He called you out?”

“He did.”

She drew back slightly, betraying her disbelief. “But no one does that anymore! It’s an antiquated practice. The sort of thing our grandfathers would have done. Indeed, my grandfather, Lord Allendale, often dueled with pistols. My grandfather Heywood too. It was common in their generation, though I expect they were greater shots than most. My family is known for it.”

Magnus inwardly grimaced. Of course it’s what her family would be known for. Duels and marksmanship. And she had brothers, did she not? Two of them, each probably well-armed to act in defense of her honor.

“My family isn’t known for it,” he said. “Nor was Miss Farr’s.”

“Then why would her brother⁠—?”

“The same reason that his sister imagined herself in love with me,” Magnus said. “Village life in these parts is excessively dull. People are prone to making their own dramas. Gossip about their neighbors, long-running prejudices, and whispers of scandals long past. Miss Farr and her brother were no different. They were both of them prone to ridiculous, outsized gestures.”

“They were young,” Charlotte suggested. Her frowning gaze drifted over his face. “You must have been quite young too.”

“I was not yet seventeen.”

She stilled in surprise. “Why, that’s practically a child!”

He smiled briefly at her dismay. “You’re not much older yourself.”

“I’m one and twenty,” she replied, on her dignity. “That age in a young lady is far older than a gentleman of the same years. It’s a simple fact.”

“I won’t dispute it.”

She paused before asking, “How old was Miss Farr?”

“Sixteen as well.”

She shook her head. “You were children.”

“It seems so now,” Magnus said. “Not so much at the time.”

“My father would never have allowed me to marry at sixteen. And to a gentleman no older!”

“Miss Farr’s family had no such qualms.”