Chapter 7 #2
The endless racket wasn’t helping Charlotte’s headache.
Indeed, the pain in her skull seemed to worsen with every footstep.
Possibly she had been over-optimistic about her stamina.
But it was too late to turn back now. Entering the front hall, she headed for the set of tall double doors. She found them heavily bolted.
“Oh, how provoking.” Charlotte rattled the iron bar, tugging and pulling to no avail.
A swell of panic constricted her chest.
Good heavens, was she trapped here? Being held prisoner?
“Confound this place!” she said, dropping her hand from the bolt. “There must be another way out.”
She cast about for an alternative means of exit.
There was a second closed door nearby, much smaller in stature than the main entry.
Crossing to it, Charlotte was relieved to discover it unlocked.
She was somewhat less relieved to find that it led to another flight of stairs.
They were narrow and dark. A servant’s stair, she guessed.
After descending to the bottom of them, she was breathless and perspiring. She wiped her brow with the back of her hand, belatedly registering that her fingers were trembling.
“I’ve overexerted myself,” she said with an unsteady huff. “By the time I find Magnus, I shall doubtless be ready to leap into that grave he’s dug for me.”
The stairway opened into a large but dilapidated stone kitchen. Charlotte could scarcely take it in. By some miracle, she found a door that led outside. It was mercifully unlocked. From there, it didn’t take much to find her husband. She simply had to follow the noise.
Thorny shrubs and bushes caught at her skirts as she wove her way through the overgrown garden. Voices rang out, clearer now the closer she approached.
“You can’t dig up the whole of the property,” Turner was saying.
“Watch me,” Magnus replied. His shovel thudded hard as he drove it back into the earth.
Charlotte drew nearer, pushing another snarl of rosebush branches out of her way.
She could see them now. Magnus’s head was bent over the hole as he dug, his shoulders taut and his brow set in what she was beginning to recognize as its perpetual scowl.
The collar of his black linen shirt was open at his throat and his sleeves were rolled up, baring a daring expanse of his leanly muscled forearms.
Turner was perched on a broken stump nearby, his own shovel loose in his hand as he watched his master’s labors. “Could an old fella have dug so deep on his own?” he asked.
“My father was capable of anything,” Magnus said.
“Don’t know ’bout that,” Turner mused. “More likely it’s in a bank in London or Southampton. Someplace civilized. Happen we should travel there?”
“It’s here,” Magnus growled, still digging. “I know it’s here.”
A twig snapped under Charlotte’s foot.
Both men’s heads jerked in her direction. Turner’s brows shot up. He directed a significant glance at Magnus.
Magnus straightened and set down his shovel. His expression when he looked at Charlotte was anything but welcoming. “What the devil are you doing out of your bed?”
“Getting some air.” Charlotte took an uneven step forward. “Is that a grave you’re digging, perchance?”
Magnus and Turner stared at her as if she’d just spoken to them in an as yet undiscovered language.
She peered into the hole. “My grave?”
Magnus’s scowl deepened. “What in blazes gave you that idea?”
“I’m the only one here who might be accused of being close to death.” Her gaze lifted to his. “I’m not, by the way. I’m quite hale and hearty, as you see.”
Another wave of dizziness chose that unfortunate moment to roll over her. She swayed on her feet.
Magnus was at her side in an instant. “Get away from the edge, you little fool,” he said harshly, catching her by the arm. “Do you want to fall in?”
She permitted him to pull her back. “I did venture a trifle too far, I fear,” she said with a breathless laugh. “I’m a little unsteady.”
He moved to put an arm around her. Not just around her back, she comprehended, but under her legs as well. A flash of memory made her start.
“Oh no!” She stepped out of his reach. “You needn’t carry me again!”
Magnus’s gaze sharpened. “You remember that I carried you once before?”
Charlotte went still. “I must, but…I don’t know. I can’t…” She shook her head.
It was something about being here in the garden, among this wild tangle.
To smell the rotting leaves and to feel the thorns tugging at her skirts.
And for him to bark at her that way! What the devil are you doing?
he’d demanded. So startlingly familiar. As if he’d said it all before.
And then to attempt to pick her up. It called to mind—
But she couldn’t bring the disparate parts together in her confused head. It was as fleeting as air, slipping through her fingers before she could grasp it.
Magnus regarded her with a brooding frown. His hand remained a reassuring weight on her back, holding her steady without confining her.
Charlotte cast her eyes about the garden. Tension coiled in her breast. The memory was near, so close she could almost touch it. “Was it here I fell?”
“Not far from here,” Magnus said.
“Will you show me?” she asked.
He exhaled. She was interrupting whatever it was he was doing. Grave digging, she supposed. Or searching for something, if Turner’s remarks could be made sense of. “That depends,” he said.
“On what?”
“On whether I can persuade you to take my arm.”
Charlotte’s mouth tipped in relief. She’d been afraid he was going to refuse her request. A foolish fear, now she thought of it.
Hadn’t Magnus been doing everything she’d asked of him since the moment she’d awakened?
Despite his growls and grumbles. Despite the miserable circumstances of their home.
He’d been taking care of her—and her dog—the best he was able, even if he did complain the entire time he was doing it.
She tucked her hand into the crook of his arm. Whatever gaps there were in her memory, she knew one thing for certain. Her husband was a good man. A man she was safe with. “It requires no persuasion,” she told him. “You need only lead the way.”