Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
The letter fell from Charlotte’s nerveless hand. The words within it were now emblazoned on her brain. Damning words about Magnus being an evil gentleman who had done terrible things. About his father being dissipated, the house abandoned, and the village cursed.
And about her.
Not a new and very much unwelcome bride, as it transpired. Not a bride at all. She was a stranger.
He was a stranger.
A roiling swell of panic swept over her. She moved to stand. Her limbs immediately sagged beneath her.
Magnus caught her elbow before she could fall into an undignified heap. He wordlessly pressed her back into her seat.
As she shakily resumed it, she stared at him with new eyes. Seeing the implacable firmness in his frame. The humorlessness in his eyes. The searing path of his scars.
Her heart hammered an erratic rhythm in her breast. She had the sense that he was marking every skittering beat. That he could feel her confusion, her fear, the slow build of her trembling indignation.
“Are you going to have the vapors?” he asked without inflection.
Her spine stiffened at the suggestion. “I am not, sir.”
“A fit of hysteria?”
“Thank you, no.” Charlotte removed her elbow from his grasp with one decisive jerk. “I don’t indulge in such theatrics.”
She knew that now. Along with several other facts about herself.
They had come back to her as she’d read. Words, written with her own hand, conjuring an image of the life she’d lived before. It wasn’t fully solidified yet, only a shadowy sketch, but it was enough for her to understand the essential truth.
She wasn’t Magnus’s wife. She wasn’t anyone’s wife. She was a Beresford.
“Under the circumstances,” he said, “one could understand why one would.”
“One could,” Charlotte returned. “But I will not.”
She held his gaze, refusing to be intimidated by him. Never mind that, until this moment, she’d believed him to be her husband. That she’d called him my love, for heaven’s sake.
The realization of her folly brought heat to Charlotte’s cheeks.
It was embarrassment, she recognized, not fear. Despite his crimes, Magnus had never actually hurt her. Quite the opposite, in fact. He’d tended her wounds, sat with her for hours, given the last of his bread to her dog.
“What I’m going to do,” she informed him, “is listen very carefully while you tell me exactly how it is I came to be here.”
A muscle flexed in Magnus’s cheek.
“Well?” she prompted him.
“You were standing atop my stone wall,” he said. “And you fell into my garden.”
“What was I doing on your wall in the first place?”
“You still don’t remember?”
Charlotte’s brow furrowed. The truth was that she didn’t.
Though her mind was no longer completely in a fog, her memory remained as full of holes as a piece of Swiss cheese.
She recalled Miss Champion. And some aspects of their journey to Yorkshire.
She recollected Agatha, Artemis, and her cat, Mr. Aloysius.
And she certainly knew that she wasn’t married. But as to the rest…
She huffed a frustrated breath. “I don’t remember that.”
“You were asking after your dog,” Magnus said. “You claimed he had come into the garden.”
“Claimed?” she echoed in indignation.
A rustling sound from beneath the wardrobe attested to the veracity of that claim.
Magnus’s lips thinned. “At the time, I had no reason to believe you.”
Charlotte picked up her letter from where it had fallen at her feet. Her eyes swept over the description she’d written of Magnus. An evil gentleman, indeed. Always assuming the worst about people.
Her mind jumped from that realization straight to another. A flash of memory as bold and clear as a lightning strike. It sent a chill straight through her veins.
“You thought I was spying on you,” she said.
Magnus went peculiarly still. He didn’t deny it.
“‘What the devil are you doing up there, you little spy?’” Charlotte fixed him with a kindling glare. “That is what you said, is it not?”
“Something to that effect,” he muttered.
Their eyes remained locked.
“And you pointed a pistol at me.”
Magnus flinched.
She pressed him without mercy. “Didn’t you?”
“I’m not proud of it,” he said.
“Is that when I fell? After you attempted to shoot me?”
“Thereabouts,” he admitted. “But I didn’t attempt anything. I only threatened—”
“Only threatened!”
Magnus scowled. “Don’t be dramatic.”
She folded her arms. Her head was throbbing worse than ever, but it would have to fall off her neck entirely for her to desist in this quarrel. She may not remember everything, but she knew that she was in the right. “Is that your defense?” she inquired with awful civility. “Name calling?”
“I require no defense when protecting my privacy on my own property,” he shot back. “You’ve no idea what I’ve had to put up with here. The villagers. The law. My father. The history of this place—”
“None of that’s any excuse.”
“I’m well aware.” He pushed a hand through his hair. “If you require an apology—”
“Chance would be a fine thing!”
“I am sorry, by the way,” he added gruffly.
He meant it, Charlotte could tell. She recognized the signs. The vague droop in his broad shoulders. The deep husk in his voice.
He was in over his head.
Gentleman often found themselves so when attempting to make a course correction. She knew that first hand. She had, after all, been raised with two scapegrace older brothers.
Nick and Arthur.
Their names had been mentioned in her letter to Agatha, but Charlotte hadn’t recollected them properly until now. Like the rest of her memories, they came back inch by inch—dark silhouettes edging slowly into the light.
But Magnus wasn’t exactly like a brother, was he?
Some of her outrage receded. “If I was only looking for my dog, and not attempting to spy on you, then you’re the cause of all this confusion.” She gave him a scolding look. “Not to mention the fact that you didn’t deny that you were my husband.”
Magnus exhaled a frustrated breath. “You may set that blame squarely on Turner’s shoulders.”
“What has your valet to do with it?”
“He assured me, on his mother’s grave, that disabusing an amnesiac of their delusions was a surefire way to send them into fits. He said we had to humor you.”
Another surge of heat rose in Charlotte’s face, remembering how Magnus had undressed her last night. How gently, almost reverently, he’d removed her gown, her crinolette, her corset. “May I say, sir, that you take humoring rather too far.”
A corresponding flush of red crept above the line of Magnus’s collar. “It was either that or risk your health.”
“And my health was your only concern?”
His black brows lowered. For the first time, she caught a genuine flare of anger in his gaze. “It may have escaped you in your weakened condition, madam, but this bedchamber is hardly equipped for seduction.”
Seduction.
Charlotte wished he hadn’t used the word. It thawed her cool demeanor still further, replacing it with something worse—an unsettling and completely unfamiliar tremor of warmth.
Yet, he wasn’t wrong.
She cast her gaze over the room in an effort to compose herself. To think she’d imagined herself to blame for all this neglect! “You know,” she said, “you should really hire a housekeeper.”
“Perhaps that’s escaped your notice as well.”
Her eyes returned to his. “Your housekeeper?”
“There’s no housekeeper, Charlotte. No one in thirty miles would set foot inside this place. No servant, no tradesman, no bloody doctor. We summoned the blackguard yesterday morning. He never materialized. Why the devil do you think I was obliged to treat your wounds myself?”
Charlotte couldn’t believe it. “The doctor refused to come?”
“That’s how deep prejudice runs against my family in these parts. They’d sooner leave me and anyone else within these walls to rot.”
“I’m sure that isn’t true. Doctors are men of science. Surely there’s some other explanation for why—" Charlotte broke off at the furious sound of footsteps racing up the hall.
Turner pounded on the bedroom door, hard enough to rattle the rotting doorframe. “My lord?” he called franticly. “My lord!”
With a bone-weary sigh, Magnus rose to answer the summons. He opened the door. “What is it now?”
She caught a glimpse of the valet’s face. It was white as milk.
“Someone’s come, sir,” he said.
Charlotte stood. “The doctor,” she concluded. “Didn’t I tell you, Magnus?”
“Not the doctor, my lady.” Turner’s attention remained on his master. “It’s the constable.”