Page 18 of To Seduce a Stranger

If she stayed, it would surely cause a major one.

“No,” he said sharply. “We cannot possibly—”

“Just what do you imagine I am proposing, Mr. Cary?” Despite her bedraggled state, she managed to convey a good deal of hauteur.

“I’m not quite sure.” He lifted one brow. “Mrs. Cary.”

“Although I appreciate your generous offer of assistance, I would prefer not to return to society at present. The quiet here suits me. If you allow me to stay, in exchange, I will . . .”

Everything seemed to hang suspended in her pause. But what exactly was he hoping she might offer?

“Why, perhaps I can make this place livable,” she suggested, glancing around once more. “I am not afraid of hard work. I could scrub and straighten—earn my keep, so to speak.”

His breath, his heartbeat, the spinning of the earth on its axis—all jerked back into their normal rhythms. “It will not be necessary for you to play the parts of both the steward’s wife and a scullery maid.”

It would be absolute madness to let her stay, on any terms. Only he could not shake the feeling that there was something behind her she wanted—no, needed—to escape.

He understood the impulse, even as he knew her attempt was likely doomed to failure.

One simply did not outrun the past.

“You may remain at Ravenswood if you wish,” he agreed at last, drumming one fingertip against the mantelpiece. “But not in the Rookery.” Having her that close would be an invitation to trouble. Thank God he would be heading to London in a few days’ time.

“Very well,” she said, sounding relieved, whether at his willingness to allow her to stay, or his plan for keeping himself as far from her as the estate’s business would allow, he could not say. Perhaps a bit of both. “Shall I invent some excuse for our, ah, separation?” The faintest blush pinked her cheeks as she spoke the last word.

Trouble indeed.

“I should think the hole in the roof would be sufficient explanation for your residing elsewhere. If it comes up, say I am working to make the place livable again.”

Raising wary eyes toward the ceiling, she nodded. “Certainement.”

He was beginning to notice patterns in her behavior. She lapsed into French when she was tired or distracted. She giggled when she was nervous or afraid.

And he did not want to know even that much about her.

When she turned to leave he could see debris from her fall still clinging to her. “Wait, Miss Bl—Mrs. Cary,” he said, stepping forward. No, I cannot call her that. “Charlotte.” She paused. “Your dress,” he explained. “May I—?” A glance over her shoulder revealed the problem, and she tipped her head in assent.

Setting one palm on her shoulder, he swept the other quickly and firmly down her back to brush away the worst of the dirt and dead leaves. Dissatisfied with the result of his effort, however, he allowed himself a second pass, slower this time, over the same soft curves that had been pressed tight against him as they rode.

Had yesterday’s misadventure taught him nothing?

Once more, she held herself rigid beneath his touch. “As to names,” she said when he had done, “I believe ‘Mrs. Cary’ will be sufficient when an address in public is absolutely necessary. Living separately, we shall have little occasion for private conversation, thus no need for intimacies.”

Wise words. Too bad they had come too late. He lifted his hand from her shoulder.

As she moved away from him, however, he stayed her once more. “I think you will agree we have arrived at what is at best a short-term solution. When you are ready to leave, how shall we explain your absence then?”

As the question left his lips, it brought with it an unexpected pang. Ravenswood had always been a lonely place. Her inevitable departure would not make it less so.

“We shall just have to, to—what is the expression? Something about uh, a river—?”

“We shall cross that bridge when we come to it?”

Her shoulders lifted in a Gallic shrug. “If you say so. These things, they have a way of working out,” she said reassuringly. “I am really quite good at thinking on my feet.”

“So I gathered.”

Before she could step away, he reached up to pluck a stray twig from her dark, glossy hair, revealing an angry-looking scratch that disappeared beneath the collar of her dress. When a newly freed lock swept across it, she flinched.