Chapter 17
Chapter Seventeen
Magnus prepared both their cups of tea, his black and hers with milk and sugar. Cups in hand, he joined her at the table.
She’d removed her hat and gloves on entering. Her head was bent over the loaf of bread she’d brought with her, a knife that was desperately in need of sharpening poised in her hand.
Magnus paused a fraction of a moment to stare at her. He couldn’t help himself, though it pained him to acknowledge it. He’d never seen her looking so beautiful. So exceedingly well turned out.
Her glossy auburn hair was twisted back into an elaborate roll at her nape.
The fitted bodice of her walking dress hugged her every curve, and her skirts fell in an elegant spill over the swell of her hips, secured behind her in a profusion of ribbons and pleats atop what must be another variety of infernal wire underpinning.
The same kind of wire underpinning Magnus had removed from her less than a week ago.
Was it all for his benefit? he wondered. The effort she’d put into her appearance? Or was this how she always looked during the normal course of her day?
He placed their cups down on the table. She’d been busying herself while he was occupied at the stove, cutting the loaf of bread into neat, even slices. At her feet, Chance was just finishing a crust of his own.
Magnus had had the devil of a time earning the little cur’s trust. In the end, only constant proximity had done the trick.
Nearly a week of spending every hour in Magnus’s company, and Chance was finally at his ease.
Magnus didn’t flatter himself that it was on account of any fondness the dog had for him. He was a prisoner resigned to his fate.
A comfortable fate at that. Vastly preferable to his previous existence, starving and hiding in razor-sharp brambles. Chance was rapidly becoming greedy for more. He pawed at Charlotte for another crust.
Magnus pushed her teacup to her from across the table as he sat down. “He’s already had his breakfast.”
“It’s just a little treat.” Charlotte gave Chance a second piece of bread. “It helps him to trust me.”
“He trusts you enough.” Magnus jerked his chin in the direction of her cup. “Drink.”
Charlotte picked it up. She took a meditative sip. Her brows immediately lifted. “You remembered how I take my tea?”
“It wasn’t difficult.”
“Still…” She took another sip. “I don’t know how you take yours.”
“Black.”
Her lips twitched. “Of course.” She lowered her cup back to the table. Her attention turned to the sliced bread, butter, and jam arrayed between them. “I brought plenty. Perhaps we should ask Turner to join—”
“Unnecessary,” Magnus said.
Too late he realized how quickly he’d said it.
Infuriating.
Must he sound so desperate to be alone with her? Like some great, hulking recluse starving for a few seconds of her company?
Never mind that he’d been thinking of her every day since she’d left. That when he’d opened the kitchen door and seen her there, his heart had stopped—quite literally, stopped.
She looked radiant, elegant, fashionable. Unspoiled by disappointment or misery, and so far removed from Magnus’s sphere of life as to be completely on another planet.
Perhaps once they might have met as equals.
Even then, he doubted she’d have looked at him twice.
The only reason he’d ever appealed to anyone was because of the title he’d one day inherit, and the riches that were meant to come with it.
But Charlotte had wealth and pedigree of her own. She had no need of his.
And Magnus hadn’t any riches anyway. His expectation of them was dwindling by the day.
He and Turner had excavated most of the garden, and were now systematically tearing apart the house.
All they’d found were reminders of Magnus’s miserable past. There was nothing that would help secure his future. Not so much as a few gold sovereigns.
“I shall set some aside for him,” Charlotte said, “Indeed, I can leave all of the provisions here when I return to Sowerby Hall. They’ll tide you over until Turner can get to the market.”
“He’s been to the market,” Magnus said, picking up his teacup. “They won’t serve him.”
She paused in the act of buttering a piece of bread. “Whyever not?”
Magnus shrugged. He’d have thought the answer was evident. “They know he’s my man.”
Charlotte lowered the butter knife. “Oh,” she said. The single syllable held a wealth of emotion. Surprise, disappointment, outrage.
Sympathy.
Magnus privately recoiled. He had no desire for her pity. “It’s no matter,” he said stiffly. “We have enough to see us through the week. After that, we’ll be gone.”
Her eyes went wide with surprise. “You’re leaving Moorcross Manor?”
“I am.” He drank his tea. “And not a minute too soon.”
“But…where will you go?” she asked. “And why leave at all? You’ve inherited the title, haven’t you?”
“I have.”
“And this is your ancestral estate, isn’t it?”
“Unfortunately.”
“Wouldn’t it make more sense to—”
“You weren’t half so talkative when you were staying here,” he observed.
Charlotte gave an impatient huff. She passed him the piece of bread she’d been buttering. She had buttered it for him, he realized. “Perhaps that’s because I didn’t remember who I was then,” she said. “I didn’t know I was Charlotte Beresford.”
Magnus’s bare fingers brushed hers as he accepted the proffered bread. A jolt of heat went through his vitals.
Dashed inconvenient.
If he had any sense, he’d send her straight back to Sowerby Hall. It was far too intimate here, just the two of them, having her serve him like a wife might serve her husband. As if she cared for him enough to look after him.
Magnus couldn’t recall when anyone had cared for him so. Perhaps they never had. It had been too long ago to remember.
“Just who is Charlotte Beresford?” he couldn’t resist asking. “That’s what I want to know.”
Charlotte spooned some jam onto her own slice of bread. “A simple West Country, girl,” she said. “A sister. A daughter. A granddaughter.” A smile came into her eyes at the mention of her family. “I’m a person in my own right, too. I have keen interests.”
He bit into his buttered bread. It was fresh. Soft. The best thing he’d had in days. The butter, it seemed, had been sweetened with honey. “Such as?”
“Walking, riding, reading, sketching. The usual things.” Charlotte returned the spoon to the jam jar. “I’m excessively fond of animals as well. All animals.”
“Yes, I recall. Even wild beasts, you said.”
She licked a stray bit of blackberry jam from her fingers before raising her bread to her mouth. “I’m not intimidated by a challenge. My parents raised me to be bold.”
“This bold?” Magnus cast a wry glance at their current surroundings, seated together at his table, enjoying tea and conversation, without benefit of a chaperone.
She swallowed her first bite of bread and jam. “I know my own mind.”
“All of it?”
“Most of it.”
“That’s comforting,” he remarked with unconcealed sarcasm.
Charlotte tore off a piece of her bread and jam and passed it to Chance under the table. “Anyway, it’s as I told you. I had to see my dog.”
“And now you have.”
Her eyes met Magnus’s. “And now I have.”
Magnus held her gaze. His pulse wasn’t entirely steady.
“Besides,” she said. “I doubt anyone would have accompanied me here. They’re all terrified of you for some reason or other.” A frown shadowed her face. “Actually, that’s not true. I do know the reason.”
Magnus’s stomach tightened. He slowly returned his teacup to the table.
Naturally someone had told her. A great many someones, no doubt. Mrs. Kitteridge. The constable. The doctor. The servants at the Hall. Charlotte had probably heard the sordid story a dozen times by now.
She fell quiet for a protracted moment.
He didn’t help her. If she wished to confront him, she would have to muster the words herself. If he remained silent long enough, there was every chance she might lose her nerve. All he had to do was wait and—
“It’s because of what happened to Miss Farr, and her father and brother, isn’t it?” she blurted out.
Magnus couldn’t conceal a flinch. So much for her losing her nerve. “You seem to already know the answer,” he said.
Her bosom rose and fell on a heavy breath. “But I don’t really know it, do I? I only know what other people have told me. And it can’t be right. It simply can’t be.”
“Can’t it?”
“That because of you, a whole family died? That you were somehow to blame—”
“I was to blame,” Magnus said. He stood abruptly, pushing out his chair with a resounding scrape of wood on stone. “And yes, Miss Beresford. They all died. Arabella Farr, Squire Farr, Jermiah Farr. All of them dead because of me. Any other questions?”