Page 3 of To Seduce a Stranger

No one had negotiated marriage settlements on her behalf. Aunt Penhurst had refused to attend the ceremony. Perhaps it was an inauspicious beginning for wedded bliss—but bliss had been beyond Charlotte’s expectation. It was enough that the exchange of vows in Bath Abbey just a few days after Easter had ushered in six weeks of the closest thing to peace she had ever known. Six weeks, broken by his heart seizure. Not the first he had suffered. Sadly, however, the last.

“Where will you go?” Robert asked, taking up the position behind the desk once the solicitor had vacated it.

“London.” A note of wariness crept into her voice. “Your father’s will—”

“Blakemore House is a residence of the Duke of Langerton.” As he spoke, he began to rearrange various items—the inkstand, a paperweight, his father’s seal—with a possessive hand. “And I do not intend to share it with the fortune-hunting daughter of a French whore.”

Long years of practice had taught Charlotte how to disguise what she felt—fear, dismay. Even joy. Although her feet itched to fly from the room, away from her stepson’s smirk, she refused to give him the satisfaction. “Fortunately for you, you needn’t. Your father specified the house was to be mine.”

“You have at best a lifetime interest in the property, to be clear,” he corrected, crossing his arms behind his back and looking her up and down. “But if I were you, I would not put a great deal of faith in the promises of that particular piece of parchment.”

Her hard-won composure deserted her. “You mean to—to—?” As sometimes happened when she was distressed, the English words flew from her head, leaving only French, and that she would not speak before him again.

“Fix my father’s mistakes?” Robert supplied in a mocking attempt at helpfulness. “As best I can. There can be very little doubt that he was not thinking clearly when he married you. To say nothing of his state of mind when he rewrote his will.”

Her lips parted on a gasp. “How can you be so . . . so cruel?”

“To you? Nothing so easy, ma’am,” he said, making the last word sound like an insult.

“To your father,” she corrected. “To the memory of a decent, generous man. You would have him called mad merely to serve your own selfish ends?”

A dismissive flick of one hand. “The damage is already done. Since your hasty marriage, he’s known far and wide as a crazy old fool. The words are whispered behind every drawing room door in Mayfair, tossed about like dice in a gaming hell. How you must have plotted and connived to pull off that marriage,” he said with a shake of his head, as if reluctantly impressed. “But the world knows it for a farce, Charlotte.”

“A farce? How dare you suggest—?”

“I suggest nothing. You convinced a doddering old man to sign his name in a parish register. Can you prove he knew what he was about? No,” he said, answering his own question. “Because he did not. Then you persuaded him to leave an exorbitant sum to some person he believed to be his wife,” he continued. “But given his mental state, your marriage was invalid from the start. Now it’s up to me to restore the natural order of things.”

The natural order of things. Spiteful dukes and mean-spirited baronesses on top. The Charlottes of the world on the bottom.

“Such a ploy will only humiliate the family and tarnish your father’s memory,” she said, lifting her chin and striding from the room. No matter Robert’s accusations, she was a duchess. At the doorway, she paused. “I will pray that time tempers your grief enough to make you see it for the foolishness it is.”

He stepped within arm’s length and fixed her with a narrow-eyed glare. A chill scuttled down her spine. She might have thought he meant her harm—if she could imagine him dirtying his hands with the effort. Should she call a footman? Or the butler? Would they dare to act against the Duke of Langerton if she did?

In the end, however, he waited only long enough to force her into betraying her own nervousness. She giggled. And when she attempted to stifle the sound, a satisfied smile curved his lips, and he slammed the library door in her face.

Then, and only then, did she allow herself to run—down the corridor, up the stairs, and to her bedchamber.

“Was it as bad as you’d feared, ma’am?” asked her maid, Jane, from the dressing room.

“Worse.” Charlotte paced to the window and looked down on the garden. Just two weeks ago she had sat beside her husband on that very bench and admired the spring blooms. Now, they had already begun to fade.

“Never say His Grace left you with nothing?”

“If only he had, Jane, I might be better off. Instead he left me so much that his son grows vindictive. He means to forestall my claim to any inheritance by contesting the will . . . by contesting the validity of my marriage . . .” Without conscious thought, her eyes darted to the perfectly made tester bed in the center of the room.

The sight of it catapulted her back to her wedding night, when her new husband had stood beside her on the threshold to this room, patted her hand, and told her she had no cause to feel apprehensive. I will not disturb your rest, Lottie dear, he had told her. And he had not—not that night, nor any other.

She had not exactly been saddened by the discovery he did not intend to share her bed. Certainly nothing her aunt had told her had given her cause to look forward to what happened between husband and wife. And the late duke had been an old man, hardly the stuff of any girl’s fantasy. Not that she ever permitted herself those sorts of fantasies.

Still, she had felt a pang of something—something for which she had no word, either in French or English—when he had brushed her knuckles with dry lips and wished her good night before retiring to his separate chambers. She had always been so very lonely, especially at night, when the house grew still but her mind did not.

She had let herself imagine that, perhaps, married life would be different.

Entering from the dressing room on silent feet, Jane must have caught the direction of Charlotte’s gaze for she said only “Oh,” in a quiet, knowing way.

Jane knew how things had stood between her mistress and her husband, of course. Such matters could hardly be kept from one’s personal servants. How many others suspected the truth? Could Robert somehow use it as evidence against her? The late duke’s mind had been perfectly sound, but all in her marriage had not been as it should have.

“They won’t do you as they did poor Lady Cleaves, will they?” Jane asked.