Page 32 of To Seduce a Stranger

But she could not remember ever before feeling curious about what a grown man would look like in the all-together, how it would feel to run her fingers down his chest, along his . . .

Recalling suddenly that she was meant to be a worldly-wise widow, she dragged her gaze back to his face.

As if trying to persuade himself that she was not really standing before him, he shook droplets of water from his hair and blinked his eyes, then snatched his shirt from where it had been hanging and jerked it over his head with a grunt of surprise. The fine linen clung to his damp skin, and quickly grew transparent, revealing whorls of hair and the small brown peaks of his nipples.

He seemed too stunned by her unexpected appearance to speak. Not waiting for him to recover, Charlotte gave a very proper nod of greeting and began to hurry on her way, back to the relative security and familiarity of Ravenswood. She didn’t know how many more shocks to the system she could stand.

“Miss—Charlotte. Wait. I—”

“Please don’t,” she spoke over him without turning back to face him, fearing he would offer either an apology or a scold. She wanted neither. “I am sorry for intruding.”

“You didn’t intrude.”

The obvious falsehood lured her back from the edge of the woods. It was almost as if he did not want her to leave.

“I was hoping for a chance to thank you. For this morning,” he added in hurried explanation.

Charlotte knitted her brows together. “This morning?”

“You . . . stepped in. Between me and Garrick. Not that it was necessary. I—I meant what I said. I wouldn’t have struck him.”

From the look in his eyes, she could see he was trying to reassure himself. Recollecting what Mari had told her, she said simply, “I know. It was Mr. Garrick’s temper I doubted. I merely wanted to give him a moment to . . . reflect.”

Her response seemed to catch him off guard. One of his sun-browned hands brushed along his damp sleeve, precisely where she had laid her fingertips earlier, as if chasing away the ghost of her touch. “Ah. I see. I—I thought perhaps . . .”

“You and Mr. Markham have been hard at work today, I suppose?” she asked, hoping to direct the conversation onto less muddy ground.

“No. When I left the house this morning, I first walked into town, as I planned. On my way back, I decided to inspect the lower farms instead.”

“And what did you find?”

For answer, he gave a slow shake of his head. “Nothing cheering. I helped one of the tenants, a man named Weston, free a ram that had got himself stuck in a stile. That’s how I came to be—” His eyes darted down and away, a sort of apology for his state of undress. For the first time, she noticed his dirt-streaked buff breeches and scuffed boots. “Weston’s too old to manage that farm on his own. The sheep pens were sties, and the ewes haven’t been sheared yet this spring. But I . . .” As the words faded, he shook his head again. “That is, I’m not sure how to . . .”

For some reason, the defeated dip of his shoulders reminded her of how she had felt when she had first arrived in England, surrounded by jabbering voices that spoke a language she had imagined she knew. In private, she had wept while puzzling over whatever strange sounds she had managed to catch. But in public, she had always claimed confidently that she understood what she had been told. Aunt Penhurst had never caught her in that lie.

Sometimes, a lie told often enough became truth.

Charlotte squared her gaze. “I do not recall you ever making mention of sheep in your letters, Mr. Cary.”

“My . . . letters?”

“The ones you wrote to me from Antigua, of course. Surely you have not forgotten?”

His eyes sketched across her face, a mixture of incredulity, amusement, and something very like relief in their clear blue depths. “How could I forget, Mrs. Cary?” he said with a small smile. “No, the climate of the West Indies is not favorable to the production of wool.”

“In time, you will learn what is required here,” she insisted, more quietly. His momentary indecision could not erase his usual air of assurance. “Until then, put Garrick to the shearing.”

When he tilted his head and gave an almost devilish grin, sunlight caught his damp hair, a tumble of waves she longed to smooth, its darkness only accentuating the brightness of his eyes. Aunt Penhurst had been firmly of the opinion that only gentlemen could be called handsome. Edward Cary gave the lie to her words.

But perhaps part of his appeal was that he was not, properly speaking, a gentleman—a distinction of dubious merit, in Charlotte’s experience. After all, her father, wherever he was, was a gentleman—an earl, like the owner of this derelict estate—and he had abandoned both her and her mother. Then there had been Mr. Sutherland and his grasping, groping hands. And of course Robert, now Duke of Langerton.

The only gentleman who had ever lifted a finger to help her had been her late husband. And for that his peers had been ready to cull him from their ranks, if Robert’s stories were to be believed.

No, she would rather not think of Edward as a gentleman. Just as she was obviously no lady. Ladies did not have to keep their gazes from wandering down the deep vee of a man’s open-necked shirt.

As if aware of her distraction, he crossed his arms over his chest, blocking her view. “By the way, I ordered those cleaning supplies you wanted.” She nodded somewhat hesitantly, caught off guard by the reminder of her last-minute request. “They should be delivered tomorrow or the next day.”

Hadn’t he insisted he did not want her to meddle with the house? What had changed his mind?