Page 10 of To Seduce a Stranger

So he wanted to hear the damning tale right from her lips, did he? Knowing what use gentlemen like Mr. Sutherland had made of such information, she was loath to supply it. Only the late Duke of Langerton had ever been willing to overlook her shameful origins, and look where that had got him.

What would Edward Cary do with the truth?

Based on what he had told her, she suspected there might be more than a few unsavory bits in his own past. Young men did not leave England to work on West Indian sugar plantations if they were secure of a future at home.

Perhaps he was a foundling, as his story suggested. Perhaps they were two of a kind.

But she could not afford to find out.

“My mother died when I was a young child,” she answered at last. An infant. In truth, she had no memory of the woman at all. “I was raised in the household of her brother, a wine merchant in Rouen.”

“Who taught you English?” he asked after a moment.

“My uncle rented rooms to an English poet and his . . . sister.” Even as a child, Charlotte had recognized the lie for what it was. Dorothy, the poet’s mistress, had divided her time between copying his work and keeping him from committing some act of self-harm in a fit of artistic despair. “When she had a spare moment, she invited me in to converse. To improve her French, she always insisted, although she spoke it flawlessly.”

Those few hours, snatched away from dismal years, had been some of the only bright spots in a childhood that had required her to grow adept at storytelling: tales to entertain her younger cousins to keep them from getting underfoot; small lies to explain the bruises, the tears, the torn dresses inflicted by the older ones; outright fabrication when grim reality simply could not be faced. Over time, the truth had begun to blur around the edges. Sometimes, she was no longer certain which was memory and which invention.

The horse’s hooves slipped a little as he shifted onto a more northerly path, but she had forgotten to be frightened of its movements. “When I was not quite sixteen, we began to hear terrible rumors of blood flowing through the streets of Paris. The poet hurried to see for himself, insisting his sister return home. Much to everyone’s surprise—including the poet’s, I don’t doubt—she did. I begged her to take me with her.”

“It was not she who left you destitute back there?” There was something encouraging, almost comforting about the edge to his words, as if he hoped one day to have an opportunity to chastise the person responsible for her present predicament. What would he say if he knew she alone was the one to blame?

“Oh, no. Once we arrived in England, she helped me to track down my father’s sister, and I went to her. It was she who . . . gave me my start in service.”

Not a lie. Not really—although Mr. Cary might beg to differ if he ever had cause to hear the whole story. Despairing of making any kind of match for her brother’s “sallow-faced, sickly bastard,” Aunt Penhurst had made use of her instead. Household mending, at first. Later, when she had proved she could write a neat hand—in English, no mistakes—she had graduated to a sort of unpaid lady’s companion. Not quite a lady’s maid.

Not so well treated. Never so well dressed.

And if Aunt Penhurst had not snapped her fingers once too many times in the presence of the Duke of Langerton, Charlotte might be there still. Right at this moment, she was no longer persuaded that the old duke’s interest had been entirely beneficial. Certainly, the new duke’s did not seem to be.

Would she rather be back in the Penhurst household, then? Or riding through the damp countryside in the embrace—for there could be no other word for it—of a man she did not know, escaping . . . what? Her stepson? A stranger in a dark coat? Society’s sneers?

She could have faced any one of those challenges.

But why should she have to?

Power flowed through the muscles in the horse’s neck, warming her fingers, and when she stretched slightly forward, Samson responded by moving faster, his new gait smooth and swift. Charlotte welcomed the wind as it rushed past them, rippling her hood, loosening the pins in her hair.

No one knew where she was. No one knew who she was.

She ought to have been frightened.

But for the first time in her life, she felt free.

Chapter 3

In Edward’s dreams and nightmares, his last glimpse of his childhood home had been late at night, light pouring from the windows as he sneaked away into the dark forest. In actuality of course, it had been morning, the birds had been singing, and his mother had walked with him almost into the village, where he was to have his Latin lesson with the curate.

He had never made it to the vicarage. Instead, once his mother had planted a goodbye kiss on his cheek—one he, as a would-be young man, had been obliged to protest—he had turned and headed south, meeting up with the mail coach in Marshfield, a village a few miles down the road. So sure had he been of his decision to leave, he had actually managed to fall asleep on the way to Bristol.

Well, he was awake now, although he felt quite certain Charlotte was not. His arm was beginning to ache where she leaned against it—a welcome distraction from the aches he felt in other places. The very last thing he had needed was to ride for hours with a woman’s soft arse pressed into his groin.

At first he had imagined it a simple matter of leaving her at the next crossroads with a few coins for the stage, so she might travel wherever she had a mind to go. But her evident tension had soon made him realize she feared being followed by whomever she had fled. So they had carried on despite the drizzle. Surely, given Samson’s increasingly plodding steps through the mud, his baggage coach would overtake them eventually, and she might travel inside, in reasonable propriety and comfort. By late in the day, however, it had become apparent to him that they were not to be so fortunate. His last hope had been the inn they passed just as the rain broke and darkness began to fall. They could rest for the night, finish their travels by daylight. But innkeepers asked questions for which he hadn’t any good answers. What was his relation to the young woman with whom he was traveling in such an unconventional fashion? So they went on, under the moonlight, completing the final stage of a journey he had delayed too long already.

Still, when he caught his first glimpse of Ravenswood Manor, he drew up the reins, bringing Samson’s ambling gait to a halt.

Just ahead, buttery stone gleamed among the trees, painted white by the light of a rising moon. But there were no candles in the windows as there had been in his dream, no smoke rising even from the kitchen chimney, no sign of human habitation at all. Only the shadow of an owl, a dark gash across the pale façade, as it swooped silently in search of some unsuspecting prey.

“Miss Blake,” he said, tightening his grip on the reins even as he shifted his left arm to rouse her. “We’re here.”