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That’s a very good question, Charlotte whispered inside her head. “Why, I am, of course.”
“You are? But you’re barely more than a girl yourself.”
“A few moments ago you had me donning spinster caps and leading apes in Hell,” she reminded him, mentally adding to her list of Reasons To Murder The Twins—an already lengthy list. Now they’d made a liar out of her.
“Then you’re staying at Ashurst Hall, and not simply on your way there for a visit? You were merely out for a walk.”
“All right…” Charlotte agreed slowly, wondering how deep a hole she could dig for herself in protecting Nicole and Lydia before the sides toppled down on her head. “That is, I mean, yes. Out for a walk. Visiting my parents. Mama…Mama has taken a putrid cold, you understand.”
“Probably acquired after walking outside in the cold wearing an inadequate cloak,” Rafe said, grinning at her. “There may be a lesson there for you, Charlie.”
She ignored his teasing. “But I’m not the twins’only guardian,” she said, improvising rapidly. “Their governess, Mrs. Beasley, is of course in residence, as well as a household staff numbering more than forty. Nicole and Lydia have hardly been left to their own devices.” Devices, machinations, mischiefs—oh, they would pay for this, the both of them!
“And my mother?” Rafe asked, obviously believing her. After all, why would she lie to him? Emmaline was right; men truly were gullible. “Is she also in residence?”
Charlotte shook her head. “No, I’m afraid not. Your mother, now, as she reminds us quite often, the Dowager Duchess of Ashurst, traveled to London for the Small Season, and from there to a house party in Devon, I believe it is.”
“Is she really the Dowager Duchess? God, I suppose she is. That must have tickled her straight down to the ground.”
“Except for the dowager part, yes,” Charlotte said, smiling as she remembered Helen Daughtry’s struggle between clasping an exalted title to her bosom and being thought old enough to be mother to a duke. “I think she has settled for Lady Daughtry.”
“My mother never settles for anything, Charlie,” Rafe said as he stopped at the bottom of the circular drive that led to the enormous front doors of Ashurst Hall and looked at the building. “I still don’t believe this. I still feel like one of the beggars come to town.”
He turned to look at Charlotte with those soul-deep eyes of his, and her stomach did another of those small flips. Really, she should try harder to control herself. “Now you sound like your cousin George.”
“I suppose I do. They’re really dead? This hasn’t all just been some long waking dream, and I’m about to be shown to my usual small room near the nursery?”
“The duke’s suite of rooms has already been prepared for you, Your Grace,” she told him rather kindly, for she could now at last see traces of the old Rafe, the less-sure-of-himself Rafe in those sherry eyes. “Your aunt Emmaline saw to it.”
“It’s still difficult to believe he’s gone. And his sons…”
“May they rest in peace,” Charlotte said, still looking at Ashurst Hall, all four floors, dozen massive chimneys and thirty bedrooms of it. Somewhere inside those massive fieldstone walls two unsuspecting tricksters were about to find themselves firmly under the control of one Miss Charlotte Seavers.
“Well, that sounded a tad perfunctory,” Rafe said, and she could feel his eyes on her. “You didn’t care for George or Harold?”
Charlotte averted her head as she answered, shivering slightly, and not from the cold. “I really didn’t know them that well these last years, once they’d for the most part taken up residence in London.”
“Yes, the mansion in Grosvenor Square. I stopped there for a week before heading here. I thought my wardrobe needed replenishing. Bought this cloak, that hat.” He looked at her questioningly. “Where’s my hat, Charlie?”
She really had to stop feeling sorry for the man. “It’s Charlotte, and I’m in charge of your sisters, Your Grace, not your hat.”
“And now I remember that tone of voice, as well. You left my new hat lying back there in the middle of the drive, didn’t you, to punish me for that remark about spinster caps?”
“In the middle of the drive? I most certainly did not!” she retorted quite honestly.
“No, I left it there, didn’t I? I take full responsibility. You know, Charlie, I wouldn’t tell anyone else, but it’s rather daunting, knowing I am now the custodian of all of this,” he said, indicating Ashurst Hall, the estate, all of his inheritance, with the sweep of his arm.
“I can well imagine, Your Grace,” Charlotte said, sighing as she thought of the twins. “Having an unexpected responsibility suddenly thrust on your shoulders is rather disconcerting.”
“Harris, my majordomo in London, grew rather weary of calling me Your Grace, just for me to not answer him. I know it has been some time, but it’s only now that I’m back in England that I’m beginning to realize the full consequence of what has happened. I was comfortable as Captain Rafael Daughtry. I’m not sure I’m up to this, Charlie.”
Her heart went out to him at his unexpected honesty and humility, and without thinking she placed her hand on his arm. “You’ll be fine, Rafe. And everyone at Ashurst Hall will help you.”
“That’s better. You called me Rafe. Please always do that, Charlie—Charlotte.” He sighed, nodded, and then seemed to remember that he was the Duke of Ashurst and should not be admitting fear or apprehension or anything else remotely human or vulnerable. “I’ve kept you outside in the cold long enough. Let’s go inside.”
Charlotte pictured the look on the twins’ faces when they were confronted not only with their brother—and if he looked huge and imposing to her, what would the twins see when they saw him?—as well as one Charlotte Seavers standing next to him, looking at them with a knowing glare in her eyes.
“Yes, let’s do that. At the least, you should have that head of yours attended to.”
“Funny, my friend Fitz says that a lot about my head, although he makes the suggestion not half so politely. You two will doubtless become fast friends.”
“Pardon me?”
“Never mind. Fitz and my coach will be along soon enough, making explanations unnecessary.”
The front doors opened even as they walked up the wide stone steps.
“Ah, I see my late uncle’s footmen are still as curious as ever. We’ve been observed, Charlotte. A good thing I didn’t attempt to seduce you as we stood here, casting your reputation to the four winds.”
“You wouldn’t do that,” Charlotte said, suddenly sober again.
“No, I wouldn’t. Should I?”
She collected her scattered thoughts. “You know, Rafe, you’re not half so amusing as you seem to think you are.”
“Yes, Fitz tells me that, as well.” He took her arm and, together, they entered the imposing foyer of Ashurst Hall, the cold and damp of the day immediately closed off behind them by the shutting of the door.
“His Grace has returned from Elba,” Charlotte informed the fairly dazzled young footman who, instead of jumping-to to help Rafe with his cloak, just stood there, his mouth at half-mast, goggling up at his new master.
“Billy,” Charlotte prodded quietly. “His Grace’s cloak?”
“A big ’un, isn’t he, ma’am?” the wide-eyed Billy muttered before he was pushed aside by Grayson, the starchy, silver-haired majordomo of Ashurst Hall.
“Allow me,Your Grace,” Grayson said, deftly sliding the cloak from Rafe’s shoulders even as he executed a perfect bow, one caught somewhere between perfunctory and fawning. “And may I be so bold as to welcome you home. I have already sent someone to alert the Ladies Nicole and Lydia. They await you in the main saloon.”
“Thank you, Grayson,” Rafe said solemnly before turning to assist Charlotte with her own cloak. “It’s good to be home. My traveling coach will be here shortly. Please see that my luggage is attended to, and that there will be ample assistance shown my good friend Captain Fitzgerald, who has sustained an injury and will needs must immediately be carried to a bedchamber.”
“It would be my honor, Your Grace,” Grayson said, bowing yet again.
“His honor? Poor fellow is probably near to bursting his spleen, having to bow to me. The man would much rather kick me down the stairs,” Rafe whispered as he and Charlotte made their way across the wide black-and-white marble tiled expanse toward the pair of doors leading to the main saloon. “I once put a toad in his bed, you know.”
“I know. And it was two toads, one under his pillow and one deep beneath the covers, so that he thought he was safe once he’d removed the more obvious one.” He took her arm, and she didn’t even bother to pretend she didn’t feel a small frisson of awareness course through her body. “And one thing more, although I would have thought you’d know. There is something about the configuration of the ceilings of the entrance hall that allows even whispers to carry to every corner.”
“The devil you say.” Rafe and Charlotte both then looked over their shoulders at Grayson, the man a good twenty feet from them. A man whose rather large ears had turned a most alarming shade of puce.
“Carry on, Grayson, carry on,” Rafe called brightly to the majordomo, and then, his hand tightening slightly on Charlotte’s forearm, he hastened her the rest of the way as Billy scampered ahead to fling open the double doors. “I’m not making the best of starts, am I?” he whispered.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Charlotte said as she looked ahead into the enormous main saloon, anxious to locate Nicole and Lydia. “I thought falling at my feet a nice touch. Ah, there they are, your dear, sweet sisters, eager to welcome you home.”
Charlotte watched as Nicole leaped to her feet and then signaled with an impatient twist of her hand that Lydia also should rise.
The two of them stood in front of one of the satin settees, not moving, as if the backs of their knees had somehow become glued to that piece of furniture.
The twins were sixteen now, hardly the awkward near-nursery infants Rafe had last seen before he departed for the war. Charlotte wondered if he even recognized them, or they him.
The pair was as alike in their looks as chalk and cheese. In fact, all three Daughtry children bore little resemblance to each other.
Nicole did share Rafe’s near-black hair, but her eyes were far from sherry brown. They were violet, a shade Charlotte had never seen in any other eyes, and Nicole’s dramatically arched brows and long black lashes only made that violet more startling, almost mesmerizing. Witchlike, Charlotte’s father had once commented, not completely in jest, warning that in an earlier century the girl would have doubtless ended burning at the stake.
Nicole had lovely pale skin, but because she refused to wear her bonnet and loved to run free, there was always a beguiling sprinkle of freckles across her nose and cheeks and a glow to her skin that, although most unladylike, was perfect for Nicole.
In short, Nicole looked as she was—fresh, unbridled, a child of nature and full of mischief.
The complete opposite of Lydia.
Nicole’s twin, who favored their mother, had hair the color of corn silk and eyes as blue as a summer sky. Her skin was unmarked by freckles because she was always careful to wear a bonnet—not because she feared freckles, but because she’d been told to always wear her bonnet. Shy, quiet, studious, Lydia was rather like a just-budding blossom, her head dipped to avoid attention lest she be picked from her comfortable spot in the garden before she was ready to bloom.
Right now Lydia’s chin was bent so near her chest that almost all Charlotte could see of her were those huge blue eyes swimming with guilt.
Nicole’s small, pointed chin, however, was fully raised, almost defiant.
If a portrait artist could capture the twins as they posed now, no volume of ten thousand words could do more to make clear the character of the two sisters.
Or who was in charge.
“Girls, how wonderful,” Charlotte said after only a heartbeat in time—one that had felt longer than an age. “Your brother is returned to you. I’ve already explained that your Aunt Emmaline has placed me in the role of chaperone while she is traveling, and what a lovely time we’ve all had with me residing here with you until her return. Now don’t just stand there like sticks, come welcome your brother home.”
Lydia looked up, goggling in confusion at this full budget of lies Charlotte had just loosed on them. But Nicole, her mind always alert for mischief, never so much as blinked as she said, “And quite the dragon of a chaperone she is, so that we’d never dare to be on anything save our very best behavior, as suits the sisters of a duke. A duke, Rafe! Isn’t it above all things wonderful?”
As she spoke, she advanced across the seeming mile of carpets, her arms outstretched, so that by the time she finished speaking she was close enough to launch herself into her brother’s arms.
Rafe glanced at Charlotte as he slowly put his arms around his sister, a look very much akin to panic in his eyes.
“You…you’ve grown,” he said at last, when Nicole finally stepped back, grinning up in his face. “I…I didn’t realize…” He coughed into his fist. “Which, er, which one are you?”
“I’m Nicole, of course. You called me Nicky, which I hated, but now I think it a lovely name. Lydia, don’t just stand there like a lump, come say hello to Rafe.” She turned back to her brother. “You call her Lydia,” she whispered conspiratorially. “Really, there’s precious little else you could call her, not with a starchy name like that.”
Charlotte wanted to poke Rafe with her elbow, nudge him into some sort of speech. He needed to say something, he needed to put Nicole in her place immediately or else risk never having control of the reins. But he said nothing. Nicole had flummoxed him completely, her own brother. This did not bode well for the day the girl was set loose in London!
“Welcome home, Your Grace,” Lydia said in her quiet, reserved voice as she curtsied and then held out her hand to him, quickly drawing it back when, Charlotte supposed, she realized her brother might feel the need to kiss it.
“Thank you…Lydia,” Rafe said, and then watched as she returned to the settee and sat down, settling her skirts around her. “Lyddie?” he asked Nicole quietly. “I didn’t even call her Lyddie?”
Nicole bit her bottom lip as she shook her head. “You wouldn’t have dared. Mama says thank God we’re not of the Roman persuasion or else Lydia would have crawled into one of their nunneries years ago. But she’s all right. It’s all in knowing how to handle her.”
Charlotte rolled her eyes. “Which you do, correct, and always to your advantage?”
“She’s my twin. I protect her,” Nicole stated, her violet eyes dancing in her head. “Would you like me to pour you a glass of wine, Your Grace? When we were informed that you were seen on the drive, I just had time to order Grayson to fetch one of Uncle Charlton’s best from the cellars. I’ll pour a glass for everyone. We should make a toast and celebrate your return.”
Rafe turned a questioning eye on Charlotte. “You allow them wine?”
“I most certainly do not,” Charlotte told him, glaring at Nicole. “You’ll have lemonade, my girl, and like it.”
Nicole’s full bottom lip came out in a pretty pout, but then she smiled. “See, Rafe? Charlotte is a veritable dragon of propriety. Aren’t you, Charlotte? Why, I don’t know what we should have done without her these weeks, with Aunt Emmaline gone.”
Rafe was beginning to look like a man outnumbered by hostiles, and without a weapon to protect himself. “Weeks? Emmaline’s been gone for weeks? She said nothing about that in any of her letters.”
“Duly chastised by my dragon chaperone, I’ll just go ring for Grayson to pour you that wine, Rafe,” Nicole said, and hurried away, sparing only a moment to shoot a desperate glance toward Charlotte, one that warned we’ll be fine, as long as you don’t muck it up now.
Charlotte swallowed hard and turned to Rafe. He looked much too inquisitive. So she went on the attack. “Is that your way of saying that you don’t believe I make a suitable chaperone for your sisters?”
“I…No, no, of course not. Please forgive me. Clearly, if Emmaline considered you competent to be in charge of the twins, who am I to question her judgment? But they’re…they’re not little girls anymore, Charlie, are they?”
“Charlotte,” she said without much hope of him heeding her. “And, no, they’re not. Nor are they young women, much as Nicole would like to believe otherwise. Last week I caught her in Emmaline’s chamber, attempting to put up her hair and wearing a rather garish pair of gold and ruby earrings Emmaline must have regretted the moment she purchased them.”
Rafe shot a glance toward the settee, where the girls were holding hands and whispering to each other. “I begin to miss the war,” he said dully. “Too old for the nursery, too young for a Season. What in God’s name am I supposed to do with them?”
“What else?” Charlotte said. “You leave them here in the country while you go cut a dash in London. You conveniently forget about them until it’s time to dress them up like Christmas puddings and send them out to the marriage mart, praying nineteen to the dozen that at the end of the Season you don’t have to haul either of them back to the country again. What else do families do with daughters?”
Rafe grinned. “Do I detect a hint of censure in your voice, Charlie? Were you one of those hauled back to the country? Well, of course you were. Are all the men in London blind? Or were you really waiting for me to return home?”
Charlotte felt a rush of color invade her cheeks at his words, even if she probably shouldn’t take any of them seriously. “I only said that because you’d made me angry,” she lied, and then nearly cheered as Grayson approached them to inform His Grace that his friend Captain Fitzgerald had arrived.
“A most…singular gentleman, Your Grace,” Grayson said, his tone making it clear that he had not just complimented the captain. “He desires your presence at once, sir.”
“He does, does he? I’d rather think my good friend Captain Fitzgerald demands my presence.”
“Yes, Your Grace. I knew him for your friend the moment he opened his mouth.”
“An insult wrapped in velvet. Very good, Grayson.” Rafe took Charlotte’s hand and turned her back toward the entrance hall. “Come on, Charlie. I want you to meet a fellow reprobate.”
“I wouldn’t wish to intrude—”
“Nonsense.With Emmaline doing her flit, I don’t know what I would have done if I’d had to face those sisters of mine without you. I want my friend to meet my friend.”
Charlotte smiled weakly. How wonderful. Just perfectly marvelous. Rafe considered her his friend. His childhood friend. Charlie. Feeling a bit apprehensive about his new station in life and all the attendant responsibilities, his aunt Emmaline not here, not even recognizing his sisters, he probably felt about Charlotte as he did his most comfortable old pair of socks.
While she—well, what did she feel about him, for him? She didn’t know. She’d loved the Rafe he’d been; the child she’d been had loved the youth he’d been. What would she discover about the Rafe he was now?
He looked on her as his friend, held her hand as a friend. Would he ever want more? And what would she do if he did? Would she tell him the truth? How would he look at her with those dangerous eyes of his if she did?
Suppressing a shiver, she followed him into the entrance hall.
Chapter Two
RAFE TUGGED CHARLOTTE along with him as he returned to the entrance hall to see Captain Swain Fitzgerald being supported between two footmen, his splinted leg looking awkward as he kept his foot from touching the marble floor.
“There you are,” Fitz bellowed when he caught sight of Rafe. “Do none of these idiots bloody understand the King’s English? I want my crutches. Nobody will fetch me my damned crutches. They keep telling me that His bloody Grace insists they carry me. Damn it, Rafe, I’ll not be hauled about like some bleeding baby.”
