“A jolly good idea,” their father said, and Charlotte recoiled. “Matthew, if you could bring me back a splash of Madeira.” At least her father was notcompletelyoblivious. “And make the rounds with Eleanor once you’re done.” Or not.
The four set off, and Charlotte could not decide whether she or her brother groaned the loudest. The Duke of Gamston rode up beside her, sandwiching her against Eleanor. She grabbed her sister’s arm and made quick, vapid conversation—anything to thwart the Duke’s attempts at soliciting her attention.
“I feel quite rotten at leaving Papa on his own,” Eleanor murmured, looking around like a frightened doe. She craned her neck to glance back at him, and Charlotte followed suit. He was toying with a tassel on the side of his armchair, looking terribly sorry for himself. “He’s not quite so amiable these days, not since Mama, and I think he knows it.”
Charlotte turned back, and guilt shot through her chest. “Aunt Letitia is soon to arrive, and when she does, he can tend to his convalescence properly. No more traipsing after us at all these parties. It must be awfully taxing for him.”
Suddenly, dismally, the Duke cleared his throat to speak. He asked, “Lady Letitia Duval is soon to be among us, is she? What tremendous news!”
Charlotte bit her tongue—literally—before forcing a smile to conceal a wince. “Yes, Your Grace. She is recently returned from her tour around England with one of our cousins, Helen. They are poised to travel back to London following a stop in Dover on the nineteenth, then up to the Twicham country seat.”
“I could not imagine traveling in the dead of winter,” Eleanor muttered, then quickly hopped out of the way as a passing lady almost knocked her off her feet.
“Lady Duval has a spirit like no other,” he noted, then leaned closer to Charlotte. She could smell his cologne, and it stank of austerity. “I find that you look more like her every day, my lady.”
It must be our hatred for you. “It must be our eyes,” she said instead, then breathed a sigh of relief as they reached the back of the hall, where all the refreshments lay in wait.
Eleanor almost fell into their trap, reaching for a wine glass on the tray of a nearby footman. Matthew quickly batted her hand away. How he saw all things at all times, Charlotte did not know. “Not for you, Eleanor,” he admonished and waved her toward the non-alcoholic syrups.
Charlotte sighed, and it caught the attention of Gamston. His cane clicked against the base of the table as he settled beside her. “You will thank him for his safeguarding one day. I promise you that.”
“You call itsafeguarding. I call it tyranny, Your Grace.”
“If I had any children, I fear I would be as tyrannical as young Matthew.” He paused. “Perhaps there is time for that yet,” he added with a grin before stepping away and taking up conversation with a nearby lord.
Charlotte tasted bile. She turned toward the table, seeking anything to wash the taste of it away—to forget the Duke’s comment, too. As she reached for a glass of fortified lemonade, a hand brushed against hers. She hadn’t even heard anyone come up over the sound of the music. She looked up and pulled her hand away with a gasp.
Stood beside her, reaching still for the lemonade, was the imposter poet.
Charlotte’s eyes almost popped out of their sockets in surprise, only to be set back by feelings of scorn and the fluttering of her heart. Goodness! He was even more handsome up close—devilishly so. She saw him in perfect detail, taking in all his features at once: the light, umber undertones of his skin, the Roman arc of his nose, the light freckling on his forehead, and the disdainful amusement that twisted each one of his features slightly upward.
He seemed momentarily taken aback, though she had no idea whathehad to be startled by. “Did you want that?” he asked, and the sound of his low, rumbling voice set her veins on fire. No, ‘my lady.’ No sense of courtesy or etiquette whatsoever.
Charlotte had to blink hard, having forgotten how to speak. “Yes,” she declared angrily, the word catching halfway in her throat. “Of course I did, sir.”
The man looked perplexed, then regarded her up and down with a crooked smile. Charlotte prickled all over. He picked up the glass and tended it to her.
Without thinking, she snatched it from him and downed it, then passed the empty glass to a nearby footman without breaking eye contact with the trickster.
“It is customary for a gentleman to introduce himself first,” she asserted, wanting desperately to know if he would keep up with his act. “So,” she added when he said nothing, with a wave of her hand.
“Mr. Charles Huxley,” he replied with a slight bow, still grinning sententiously. “Perhaps you’ve read some of my work.”
Charlotte breathed a laugh, raising her eyes to the ceiling as though the heavens might make sense of things for her. She pressed a hand to her bosom and drew her gaze back down. “Well,” she averred, “I dare say I might have.”
CHAPTERFOUR
As Benjamin looked over the woman, her lips still wet with lemonade, he concluded that he had never seen such a beautiful creature in all his life. She was positively luminous with anger, her bosom rising and falling quickly as though she were fighting the most unrelenting of inward battles. Her eyes were stormed over in fury, but he peered behind the tempest and looked for the woman beneath.
Then he saw her. All at once, it dawned on him who she was.
Heknewthis woman. He knew her most terribly. She was the girl he had stopped almost two months ago on the road through the Twicham moors. She was the girl he had accosted with his partner, whom they had robbed and left alone to fend for herself. And if she was all those things, she was also the woman who had penned the poems he had used to make a name for himself. It washername.
She was Charles, and yet not Charles at all. She was here before him now, though he had hoped to postpone their meeting for as long as he could—forever, if possible. Truth be told, he hadn’t believed her, this dark, brave princess, when she had sworn her father was a powerful man. All the travelers they had assailed had spun tales of equal folly. Now, she was here. It must have been true.
He only hoped she had the sense not to press the matter further, not in front of all her equals, his betters, at the very least. More than that, he hoped she had been so blinded by her fear that night, that she had not seen past his disguise—that she could not tell now that the man before her was not simply a plagiarizer but a common brigand.
From what he could tell in the way she regarded him, she was not frightened but angry. So, he resolved to feign ignorance for as long as he could. Women of her sort were not like to pick a fight with a man. Small mercies.