Page 86 of Miss Beresford and the Beast

Lord St. Clare cocked a brow. “Did you not find her after she’d fallen from your garden wall?”

“I did.”

“And did you not nurse her back to consciousness?”

Magnus flinched. “I wouldn’t call it nursing.”

Lord St. Clare regarded him with a cool stare.

“I cleaned her wounds and gave her some whiskey,” Magnus said. “I saw to it that she was safe and warm, that she ate something when she awakened, and that she came to no more harm.” He ran a hand over the back of his neck, recalling the fraught hours after Charlotte’s fall. “I did send my valet for help. He went into the village on multiple occasions. Regrettably⁠—”

“It wasn’t until the following day that help arrived,” Lord St. Clare finished for him. “Quite.”

There was a soft rustle of papers from across the room as Mr. Tate silently perused the documents in his briefcase.

“I won’t ask how many know of this,” Lord. St. Clare said. “It’s evident that word of the affair has already traveled far and fast.”

“I’m sorry for it,” Magnus said.

“Are you?” Lord St. Clare wondered.

Magnus’s jaw stiffened. No, he wanted to answer. How the devil could I be sorry that I met Charlotte? “I didn’t seek your daughter out, sir,” he replied instead. That much, at least, was true.

“No.” A frown worked its way over Lord St. Clare’s brow. “Yet, she has seen fit to publicly attach her name, and the names of all of her titled forbears, to you and your cause.”

“I have no cause.”

“What about your ambition? You are a man of ambition, I take it. You desire to repair your fortunes, your estate. Your good name, perhaps.”

“Until I met your daughter I desired nothing more than to be away from this place,” Magnus said. “That was the extent of my ambition.”

“And now you’ve met her?”

Magnus’s fingers curled tightly on the arm of his chair, making the warped wooden frame creak uneasily beneath them. It went against his every instinct to expose himself in this way. To reveal the innermost desires of one’s heart was the surest way to see them denied. But he had no ability to dissemble. Not when it came to Charlotte.

“I hope to one day be worthy of her,” he said gruffly.

“A commendable answer,” Lord St. Clare replied, “in light of your circumstances.”

A muscle flexed in Magnus’s cheek. He’d been waiting for it to come to this. “I’ve made no secret of my circumstances.”

“Or of your past?” Lord St. Clare smiled faintly. There was nothing of warmth in the expression. “It’s true, I have not been idle during my short stay in Yorkshire. My secretary has brought me a steady stream of reports about your history and your conduct. You were named in an inquest, I learned. Deemed responsible for two deaths, if only through misadventure.”

Magnus’s mouth went dry. Good God. No one could accuse Charlotte’s father of beating about the bush. The man was as blunt as a blacksmith’s hammer. Magnus saw no reason not to be equally direct with him, no matter that the admission rubbed him on the raw. “It has been the great shame of my life,” he said.

“One you’ve borne since the age of sixteen. And commendably, it seems.”

Magnus snorted. “I don’t know about that.”

“I know it,” Lord St. Clare said. “I have friends at the Admiralty.”

Of course he did.

“Mr. Tate brought me a wire from the Vice-Admiral only this morning. He attests to your bravery at the Battle of Kagoshima.” Lord St. Clare’s gaze flickered to Magnus’s burn scars. “You put yourself at great peril, he tells me, preserving what remained of the chain of command on your ship.”

“Others faced greater,” Magnus said.

“You left subsequently? Not long after being elevated to captain?”