Chapter 14
Chapter Fourteen
Hours later and Charlotte’s heart was still thumping hard. She’d said scarcely anything during the carriage ride back to Sowerby Hall (despite the endless peppering of questions from Lucy and the constable), and even less when she’d arrived.
Now, ensconced in the Champions’ comfortable guest chamber, bathed and dressed in a clean cotton nightgown, with her hair freshly arranged in an orderly plait. Charlotte rested in the pink, silk-draped four poster bed as Dr. Calthrop finished his examination.
Mrs. Goodenough and Lucy fussed nearby, endlessly straightening the coverlet, fluffing the pillows, and arranging fresh cloths at the washstand.
Charlotte hardly noticed them. And she paid little mind to the doctor.
No.
Her mind was still caught in that final moment with Magnus. The way he’d taken her hand. The way he’d kissed it. Not like some cross, miserable, battle-scarred curmudgeon, but like a courtly gentleman of old.
Had he been mocking her?
The thought had occurred to Charlotte as the Champions’ carriage had rolled out of the drive. But Charlotte didn’t think so. Indeed, she very much suspected that he’d meant it.
But meant what, exactly?
There was the puzzle.
“A concussion all right,” Dr. Calthrop concluded. Withdrawing from Charlotte, he returned his instruments to his leather bag. “Might easily have been worse if left untended.”
Lucy froze in the act of smoothing the bedclothes. “What do you mean it could have been worse?”
“The things I’ve seen, Miss Champion…” Dr. Calthrop shook his head with somber significance. “Young lad in Upper Beadwell tumbled out of a tree in ’67. Fell into a coma and died three weeks later. And that tree wasn’t half as tall as the wall around Moorcross Manor.”
“Farmer Fletcher’s boy,” Mrs. Goodenough remarked knowingly. “God rest his soul.”
Lucy looked between them, pale faced. “Miss Beresford isn’t still in danger of dying, is she? Not now she’s awake?”
“She’s been well tended by the look of it.” Dr. Calthrop snapped his case closed. “Eversleigh’s boy, was it?” He gave an amazed huff. “Not to be believed.”
“He is Eversleigh now, according to the young mistress,” Mrs. Goodenough said. “And not a boy, neither.”
“To be sure, he was not,” Lucy interjected tartly. “He must be as tall as that wall of his. And twice as wide.”
“Lucy, don’t be absurd,” Charlotte said.
“And his face!” Lucy went on, unchastened. She gave an eloquent shudder, making her upswept brown curls tremble in their pins. “All burned up like a demon from the pit.”
“A fitting end,” Mrs. Goodenough pronounced.
Charlotte had had just about enough of such talk. “What nonsense. He can’t be a demon, can he? Not if he’s just saved my life.”
“Never know what tricks a demon is up to, do you, miss?” the housekeeper retorted. “Might be he had other designs when he took you in. Lucky the constable found you when he did.”
“Constable Reeves seemed satisfied enough with Lord Eversleigh’s story when he left,” Charlotte reminded her. “It’s the same story I told the constable, with no discrepancies.”
“But you weren’t awake the whole of the time, were you?
” Lucy interjected. “You were lying in a bed somewhere in that house, completely at that monster’s mercy.
” She turned to the doctor. “Is she likely to suffer a recurrence of her symptoms? To fall into another coma like that boy in Upper Beadwell?”
Charlotte groaned. “I wasn’t in a—”
“I shouldn’t think it likely,” Dr. Calthrop said.
Collecting his bag, he moved to take his leave.
“Keep her in bed for a few days. See that she’s well nourished.
Plenty of peace and quiet to start. Fresh air after that.
Walking, within reason.” He opened the chamber door. “I’ll call again tomorrow.”
“Thank you, Dr. Calthrop,” Lucy said. “Mrs. Goodenough will show you out.”
Mrs. Goodenough crossed to accompany the doctor. They exited the room together, closing the door after them.
Lucy sat down on the mattress next to Charlotte. It was the first time they’d been alone all day. “So much trouble you’ve caused us. I shouldn’t be surprised.”
“It could have happened to anyone,” Charlotte said.
“Nothing like this ever happens to anyone else. Adventures pass the rest of us by, but they never fail to come to you. And you never fail to heed their call. Though you should, Charlotte. You really should.”
“It was an adventure,” Charlotte acknowledged. “But not a dangerous one. Aside from my head wound, I mean. And you heard the doctor—”
“Oh, but I wish I’d known you’d been injured!” Lucy burst out before Charlotte could finish. “If I had, I would never have acted so rashly!”
Charlotte lifted her brows. “In what way rashly?”
A spasm of guilt crossed Lucy’s face.
Charlotte felt an answering flicker of apprehension. “In what way, Lucy?” she asked again.
“I thought you’d gone.”
“Gone? Gone where?”
“Home, I presumed. Where else?”
“Back to Somerset? Without telling you?” Charlotte laughed at the ridiculous suggestion. “Why on earth would I have done that?”
“Any number of reasons. The first being the obvious.”
“It’s not obvious to me.”
“Boredom,” Lucy pronounced direly.
Charlotte’s amusement faded. It was replaced by a prickle of regret. “You think I’m bored with you?”
“Oh, not with me. With this place.” Lucy gestured vaguely about her. “It isn’t like what I promised you for the holiday, is it? And with Mama gone—”
“Nonsense.” Charlotte took Lucy’s hand. “I think it’s wonderful.”
Lucy rolled her eyes.
“I do,” Charlotte insisted. “Why else do you imagine I’ve been exploring?”
Lucy exhaled heavily. “Did you have to explore in that precise place? Atop that precise wall? After all my warnings—”
“I didn’t plan on it.”
“You never do plan,” Lucy said. “You simply do. Just plunging ahead, no matter the consequences. You always were far more courageous than the rest of us.”
Releasing her friend’s hand, Charlotte reclined back against the pillows. “It’s not courage that compels me, but curiosity, I fear. Or, in this case, compassion.”
“Mrs. Daventry called curiosity your besetting sin.”
“I remember.”
“And now I fear…” Lucy trailed off again.
Her face was unusually troubled. It was the exact expression she’d worn last year when she’d confessed to reporting one of their friends to the headmistress for taking a moonlight drive with a gentleman.
A justified action, to be sure, but one that had resulted in a great deal of trouble for the young lady in question.
Recalling that particular incident, Charlotte’s apprehension surged anew. She looked at Lucy intently. “What?”
“You spent the night with him, Charlotte,” Lucy said as if it were the most obvious fact in the world. “What do you suppose it is that I fear?”
Charlotte lapsed into a meditative silence. She knew her friend was right. That the time Charlotte had spent in Magnus’s company—in his house and in his bed—would cast a long shadow over the days to come. And possibly longer, too, if gossip were to spread.
Which it very well might, given that Kitteridge woman’s predilection for spewing village tittle-tattle.
The question was, would that gossip spread as far as London? As far as Somerset? Would it travel all the way to Beasley Park and to the ears of Charlotte’s mother.
Or worse, Charlotte’s father?
“It’s like one of those dreadful fairy stories,” Lucy said. “The one where the princess eats the pomegranate seeds. A careless decision that ends up changing the course of her whole life.”
Charlotte gave her friend a dark look. “That’s not a fairy story. That’s Greek Mythology. And she wasn’t a princess. She was a goddess.”
“And what was he, hmm?” Lucy returned. “Not a prince. Not a hero, certainly.”
“He was a God.”
“Yes, indeed. The God of hell.”
Mrs. Goodenough reentered the room with an armful of freshly folded towels. “We all know what he is,” she said. “Though I beg your pardon for saying it outright.”
Charlotte expelled an exasperated breath. “No one is saying anything outright! No one ever does. Only that he’s a beast or a demon, and that he’s responsible for a curse falling on the village. But no one ever says why.”
“Might be that it’s not fitting for a young lady’s ears.” Mrs. Goodenough crossed to the washstand where she deposited the clean towels. “Might be that it doesn’t bear repeating.”
“It involved a girl, did it not?” Charlotte asked Lucy.
Lucy dropped her gaze. “I don’t know the particulars. Only that he was a terrible man. And that it was because of him that she died.”
Charlotte’s blood ran cold at the accusation, but her courage didn’t falter. She’d never quailed from the truth before. She didn’t intend to start now. “Did he kill her?” she asked bluntly.
Lucy flinched. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “I suspect so.”
Charlotte looked to the old housekeeper. If anyone knew the truth, surely it would be her. “You’ve lived in Bead’s Hollow a long while, haven’t you, Mrs. Goodenough? You must know the facts of the case.”
“Aye. I know them.” Mrs. Goodenough collected Charlotte’s soiled dress and underthings. “Wasn’t but eleven years ago. Back then, Squire Farr’s family was the second finest in the district. And his daughter the handsomest.”
Charlotte hesitated. “Is she the one who—"
“Arabella Farr. That was her name.” Mrs. Goodenough clucked her tongue. “Had the misfortune of losing her heart to the old earl’s son. Lost her life as a result.”
Charlotte frowned. “But…how?”
“He ruined her, didn’t he?” Mrs. Goodenough said. “Strung her along, made her think he’d marry her, and then held her honor cheap as dirt.”
Charlotte shook her head. She couldn’t believe it.
Yet what did she really know of Magnus Sterling, Earl of Eversleigh? Nothing except the way he’d treated her.
“What was he like, Charlotte?” Lucy asked. Her face was lit with unwilling curiosity.
“Rude,” Charlotte replied frankly. “And consistently cross. But not cruel or inconsiderate. Indeed, he was kind to me.”
Mrs. Goodenough gave a cynical chuckle. “That sort always is at the beginning. You only have to look at the story of poor Miss Farr.”
“How did she die?” Charlotte asked.
Mrs. Goodenough busied herself with straightening Charlotte’s things. “Her older brother, Jeremiah, went to Moorcross Manor to call the beast to account,” she said. “There was a duel of some kind. Miss Farr was shot and killed, and young Mr. Farr was injured. He died of sepsis five days later.”
Both Charlotte and Lucy stared at the housekeeper in shock.
“Old Squire Farr passed too before long,” Mrs. Goodenough continued.
“Of a broken heart some say. Spent his remaining years dwindling away to nothing, leaving his workers unpaid and his crops untended. Took years for the village to come right after he was gone. Many folks lost their livelihoods. Many folks went hungry.”
“The whole family dead?” Lucy echoed in dismay. “Not just the daughter?”
“All of them,” Mrs. Goodenough said with grim significance. She cast a look at Charlotte. “Didn’t I warn you, miss? I told you that if you didn’t change your ways an evil beast was going to follow you home. And now he has done.”
Charlotte’s brows notched. “But he didn’t follow me,” she said.
No.
When it had come to the point, Magnus had let her go.