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“Grayson, see to it, please,” Rafe said, letting go of Charlotte’s hand and going over to lend his support to his friend. “Act like a baby, be treated like a baby. Why does it bother you so much to be helped? Or do you plan to crawl upstairs to your bed?”
“Bed? Oh, no, Rafe Daughtry, I’m not going to be carted off to any sickbed, no matter what that fancy London surgeon of yours said. I’m fine, better than fine, and perfectly capable of doing for myself. Just get me my damned—Well, hullo, young lady.”
Rafe grinned at the sudden change in his friend’s tone. “Yes, Fitz, a lady, as opposed to your usual sort of female. Behave yourself, and I’ll introduce you, you great hairy Irish ape.”
“Pretty little thing. One of those twin sisters of yours?” Fitz whispered close to Rafe’s ear. “Or can I take a run at her?”
“That depends. Are your intentions honorable?”
“Six and twenty years on this earth and they haven’t been honorable yet,” Fitz said, still whispering.
“I can hear you, you know,” Charlotte said from where she stood just in the doorway between the main saloon and the entrance hall. “Both of you.”
Fitz looked at Rafe in panic. “She can’t hear me. Tell me she can’t hear me.”
“I’m sorry, Fitz but, yes, she can,” Rafe said, laughing at his friend’s expression. He was only amazed that she would say so. Then again, he’d been fairly amazed by everything about Charlotte since he first set eyes on her. Her stunning good looks, her pert tongue, her refusal to be overly impressed by his title even as she paid mocking deference to it. She intrigued him mightily.
Charlotte walked forward, stopping only a few feet away from the grinning Fitz. She looked him up and down as if assessing his injury, and then smiled into his face. “I don’t think you’ll be taking a run anywhere for quite some time, Captain.”
“Fitz, ma’am, if you please, and I most truly beg your pardon. It’s just that it has been many a long year since I’ve been blessed to be in the company of a real lady, and never since I’ve been in the presence of any woman as lovely as you.”
“How very flattering, Captain,” Charlotte said, dropping into a small curtsy. “I can see I must be very careful, or else a silver-tongued rogue like you might just break my maidenly heart.”
Now Rafe gave a shout of laughter, forgetting himself enough to give his friend a hearty slap on the back, which nearly sent Fitz to the floor. “Oops, sorry, Fitz. I shouldn’t want to knock your one good leg out from under you. Especially as Miss Seavers has already done it for me. Miss Charlotte Seavers, allow me to belatedly introduce you to my friend and companion for too many years to contemplate, Captain Swain Fitzgerald. Fitz, make your bow to Charlie.”
“Hello, Fitz,” Charlotte said. “It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance.” She shot a quick look at Rafe. “As we’re very informal here in the country, please call me Charlotte.”
“So this is your Charlie, is it? You must have been a very slow youth, Rafe, my friend, not to see what a lovely piece of perfection your Charlie is. How you could have left her, I’ll never know.”
Rafe glanced at Charlotte, who immediately avoided his eyes.
“Ha, now I’ve made him mad, and put you to the blush, haven’t I, Miss Seavers? Charlotte. I beg pardon, and I’m honored to meet you.” Fitz looked toward the doorway. “Ah, and here are my crutches. Pass them over, if you please.”
“Don’t,” Rafe warned the approaching footman. “I wouldn’t want them close enough for my friend here to use to beat me into flinders when I say what must be said. I only sent for your crutches, Fitz, so you’d stop shouting for them to be brought to you. Grayson, see that the crutches are well hidden and Captain Fitzgerald is carried upstairs to one of the bedchambers.”
“Damn and blast you to the far corners of hell, Rafe Daughtry! I won’t be carried!”
“Fine,” Rafe said. “Then you’ll be dragged. But, one way or another, you’re going upstairs.”
“The devil I will! I—Pardon me, Charlotte,” Fitz said, quickly inclining his head in her direction.
“Oh, don’t mind me, Fitz,” Charlotte assured him, smiling with what Rafe believed was unholy glee. “It has been a while since I’ve heard a good argument.”
Rafe hoped his friend would at last listen to reason. “Fitz, you know what the man said. I would have left you in London if you hadn’t sworn on your mother’s head that you’d follow his orders the moment we arrived.”
“Then aren’t you the fool for believing me. I won’t do it, Rafe. Lie mouldering in a bed for two full months? A man could go mad.”
Rafe signaled to the footmen, now numbering four, he noticed. “Take him, please.”
“No! Rafe, I’m warning you! Let me go, you miserable—”
Rafe watched as the servants carried Fitz up the winding staircase, shaking his head as Fitz alternated between cursing him and cursing the footmen…and then going silent as the pain from his injured leg forced him to give in to the inevitable.
“Poor man,” Charlotte said. “What happened to him?”
“I could let Fitz tell you, I suppose. He’s been working on a fine story this past week. I believe the latest version has something to do with how he was injured saving a child—no, two children, and their nurse—from a runaway cart. Quite the hero, our fine captain.”
“But that’s not true?”
Rafe took her arm once more, thinking to return to the main saloon, but then he remembered that his sisters were there and steered her toward the back of the house instead. “He was in such a hurry to step foot on solid ground again after a fairly stormy voyage that he ran down the gangplank and lost his footing on something slick on the dock. Went hell over lampposts into a stack of sea chests.”
“Oh, dear, how ignominious. Well, his secret is safe with me. Um, don’t you want to return to the main saloon?”
“I’d prefer to return to Elba and relative boredom, actually,” Rafe said honestly. “I feel like an interloper here. And my sisters, quite frankly, scare me spitless. I shouldn’t admit this, but I’m rather nervous around females after so many years as distant from polite society as a person can be without traveling to the far side of the moon.”
“Do I make you nervous, Rafe?” Charlotte asked as he pushed open a door and they entered his late uncle’s private study. Now his private study. Although he’d had to fight down the feeling that he should first knock on that door and request entry.
“Do you make me nervous? Truthfully, I think everything and everyone here makes me want nothing more than to go find myself a good war.”
“Sorry, there are no wars here. I’ll give you a few moments to yourself, to look around,” Charlotte said quietly. “Nothing’s really changed very much.”
He followed her with his eyes as she pretended an interest in a row of books on one of the bookshelves, seeing the young girl who had chased after him and George and Harold sometimes, and gone out of her way to ignore them at others. She’d been such a funny creature, he remembered. Tall for a girl, and rack-thin, all arms and long legs and too much hair that he’d more than once had to untangle from a branch when she got caught up chasing after them as they cut through the woods to the village.
A pest. She’d been a pest. Eight years younger than George, half a dozen years younger than Harold, four years Rafe’s junior. And female into the bargain. A child, really; fifteen to his nineteen the day he’d gone off to take up his commission.
He hadn’t recognized her out there on the drive. She was still tall, still thin, he supposed, but also nicely rounded. Her unruly mop of sable-brown hair seemed at least fairly tamed, most of it ruthlessly pulled back from her face to hang in loose curls partway down her back. Her hair looked…touchable.
Her warm brown eyes hadn’t changed, hadn’t aged…unlike his, which sometimes startled him with their haunted intensity when he caught a glimpse of them in his shaving mirror. He liked her nose, straight and yet somehow pert, and her wide mouth was full-lipped, and slightly vulnerable.
It was, in point of fact, only when she opened that mouth that the Charlie he remembered actually appeared. Charlie said what was on her mind, always, and never dressed her comments up in fine linen. He’d liked that about her, he remembered, even when he was thinking up ways to avoid her.
He had no inclination to avoid her now. Quite the opposite.
She’d believed herself in love with him, half a dozen years ago. Did that embarrass her now? She’d joked about it, out there on the drive, but there was no way he could be sure. How did he appear to her now? He wasn’t the raw youth he’d been then, and very much doubted he looked lovable.
What happened to the innocence of young love, and to youthful stupidity, once the persons involved had moved on through the years? Was he really the duke now, with the Rafe he’d been banished to the past? Was she really Charlotte now, all grown up, and Charlie left behind in her childhood?
They were strangers now. Strangers who once believed they knew each other very well…
“Rafe? I asked you a question,” Charlotte said as he stood in the center of the large, darkly paneled room that had been the scene of many a dressing-down from his uncle, who’d worried that Rafe’s character might be tainted by resembling that of his flighty mother.
“I’m sorry, Charlotte,” he said, giving a slight shake of his head as he quickly improvised a reason for his silence. “I was remembering the day I’d knocked George down for calling my mother a well-dressed trollop. Uncle Charlton warned me that I might be taller than George or Harold, stronger—even smarter—but I would never be more than who I was, so I should remember my place. I’m half expecting Uncle Charlton to come blustering in here at any moment, ordering me out of his private sanctuary.”
Charlotte settled herself into one of the large leather chairs flanking the fireplace. “But he’s gone, Rafe, they’re all gone, the three of them, and you’re exactly where no one ever thought you would be. Do you feel vindicated at all, Rafe, or overwhelmed?”
Yes, that was his Charlie. No one else would dare to ask him that question, ask the fourteenth Duke of Ashurst if his title sat uncomfortably on his shoulders. Even Grayson, whose opinion of Rafe had never been one of unmitigated admiration, wouldn’t have dared to broach such a question.
Rafe approached his uncle’s desk and perched himself on one of its corners as he smiled at Charlotte. “How do I look to you, Charlie? Do I look at all ducal?”
She shook her head. “I can’t tell. Sit in his chair behind the desk, Rafe. Sit in your chair. It is yours, you know. Yours, and someday your son’s, and then his son’s. You are the Duke of Ashurst.”
“Uncle Charlton must have thought much the same thing about his sons,” Rafe said as he circled the large desk and gingerly sat himself in the great leather chair. “George and Harold never went to war, never risked life and limb for our King. And yet I’m here, and they’re gone. Is it fate, do you think, Charlie? Or am I simply the accidental duke?”
Charlotte leaned forward in her chair, clasping her hands together on her knees. “May I tell you something?” she asked quietly.
“Please,” he said, daring to lean back in the chair, happy to believe he was not sharing it with his uncle’s ghost.
“You’re an ass, Rafe,” Charlotte said, sitting back once more.
Rafe laughed in spite of himself. “Such language! I beg your pardon.”
“And so you should. You’re the duke. The title is yours, all the titles are yours. You’ve had several long months to become used to that unalterable fact. This room is yours, this great hulking house is yours, the lands and farms and forestry and mills and all the rest of it are yours. George’s yacht would have been yours, as well, except it sank. Oh, and the wealth is yours. Considerable wealth, more than considerable wealth. So don’t you think it’s more than time you stopped playing at grateful pensioner or undeserving interloper—and began behaving as the duke?”
“Well, I—”
“You don’t tease with Grayson, or else risk giving him the upper hand,” she went on as if he hadn’t tried to speak. “I know your arrival was unexpected, but you’ve been home above an hour now, and still Grayson has not assembled the staff in the entrance hall to welcome you.”
“I don’t need—”
“Yes, you do! The staff has been answering to Grayson for eight long months, and Grayson has been answering to no one. Begin as you plan to go on, Rafe. Take charge. You were a captain in the King’s army, surely you know how to order men about, make them do your bidding. You sent them into battle, by God, to fight and perhaps die for you.”
“Running a household is scarcely akin to—”
“You think that? Oh, you poor deluded man. Grayson has been all but browbeating Mrs. Piggle—your housekeeper, Rafe—and the servants have aligned themselves with either one or the other. Ashurst Hall has been an armed camp since your uncle’s death, I swear it. You need to put your foot down, today, or else prepare for a mutiny.”
“You’re serious, aren’t you? Emmaline was in charge, surely. I can’t imagine Grayson or anyone else riding roughshod over her.”
Charlotte’s eyes, so steadily boring into his, shifted slightly, hidden behind her lowered eyelids. “She…Your aunt was in mourning.”
“Yes, of course. And then she was married. I can see why she wouldn’t have been paying too much attention to domestic matters.”
“Exactly!” she exclaimed, almost as if she was pouncing on his words. “Uh…yes, that’s exactly it. In any event, what should concern you is what steps you need to take to set things to rights. After all, Emmaline won’t be returning here, not now that she’s the Duchess of Warrington, and soon to present His Grace with an heir.”
Rafe looked at her in surprise. “She is? She never said any such thing in her letters to me.”
“No…ah…she wouldn’t have, would she.” Again Charlotte averted her gaze. “Perhaps she didn’t wish to speak of anything so private with a man? I received a post from her just today, apprising me of the coming happy event. Not even the twins know.” She lowered her chin slightly. “The twins most especially do not know.”
“Yes, and we’re back to the twins. My not quite grown, yet no longer quite children either sisters. You’re going to tell me I handled that badly, as well?”
“It could have gone better,” Charlotte said, shrugging. “I would have liked if Lydia could have been more animated. And Nicole a little less so. Lydia will give you no problems, Rafe.”
“But Nicole will?”
Charlotte sighed audibly. “As long as you’re aware, you should be able to handle her.”
“Really? How do you handle her, seeing as how Emmaline put you in charge of them?”
“I simply try to think of everything Nicole shouldn’t do, and then assume that she will. A plan not without its flaws, I’m afraid, as I find my mind is not half so devious as hers.”
“Now that’s unnerving, as I seem to recall that there was little you wouldn’t attempt. You were always either in a scrape or escaping one by the skin of your teeth. There were times I thought you headed for complete disaster, as I remember.”
“So I’ve been told,” Charlotte said rather tightly as she got to her feet, clearly cutting off that line of conversation. “Shall I ring for Grayson? You do need to put the man back in his place, and delaying that moment only undermines you more.”
“I’ll do it,” Rafe said, also rising. “Although I probably should change my clothes before I walk the length of the line, my hands clasped behind my back, solemnly accepting the bows and curtsies of my staff. God, Charlie, you know I’m going to laugh at some point, and make a total cake of myself.”
“Hide a straight pin in those clasped hands, and when you feel an undukely giggle coming on, simply stick yourself with it,” she suggested, already heading for the door.
“A straight pin. Of course. What would I do without you, Charlie?”
She hesitated as she got to the doorway, and then turned to face him for a moment, her smile finally back after what he’d been sure was an awkward moment, although he didn’t know why it had been awkward. “Keep calling me Charlie, Your Grace, and you might just find out!”
Rafe laughed out loud, watching her leave after having landed the perfect parting shot, and then shook his head, wondering why he suddenly felt so alone again.
He waited a few moments before following after her, hoping Phineas had ordered a bath prepared and unpacked at least one change of clothes for him by now.
As he mounted the stairs he continued to visually inspect his new home, the one he had run tame in often over the years, but only as his father’s son, the poor relation abandoned, yet again, by his flighty mother.
He’d be all right, he’d be fine in a few days. His new circumstances just needed some getting used to, that’s all.
Thank God he’d had the luck to stumble over good old Charlie—no, Charlotte. With Fitz out of commission, she was the only friend he had.
Chapter Three
CHARLOTTE’S PACE increased as she neared the top of the staircase and turned down the hallway to her right, heading for Nicole’s bedchamber. Once again, firmly blocking thoughts of Rafe from her mind, she was a woman on a mission.
When she reached the door, she didn’t knock, but simply threw it open, stepped inside, slammed the thing behind her and declared, “You.”
Lady Nicole Daughtry smiled into the vanity mirror as she continued to comb her long dark hair. “Hello again, Charlotte. My congratulations.”
Charlotte stomped across the large pink-and-white bedchamber, her footsteps maddeningly muffled by the succession of priceless Aubusson carpets. “Your congratulations for what, Nicole? Not strangling you earlier?”
“Of course. Oh, and about that,” Nicole said, turning on her satin-topped bench. “How did you discover our small deception? I knew the moment I first saw you that you knew. I slipped up somewhere, didn’t I? Was it something my brother said to you? I can’t imagine how else you could have known.”
“And I can’t imagine how you got away with such a dastardly deception all this time,” Charlotte admitted, taking the silver-backed brush from Nicole’s hand and dragging it none too gently through the girl’s hair. “Not only fooling your aunt and brother, but me, as well.”
“It’s that last part that rankles, doesn’t it?” Nicole said, wincing as the brush encountered a knot.
“Considering that I was the only one here, actually reading the letters, yes, it rankles. Why didn’t you tell me what you were about? I would have helped you.”
The moment Charlotte said the words she realized that, indeed, she would have aided Nicole and Lydia in their grand deception. After all, Emmaline deserved her happiness and peace of mind, and Rafe had clearly wished to continue on as he had been before his uncle’s death, escorting Bonaparte into exile and being a part of his guard. It wasn’t as if the twins had been left unchaperoned in a cave somewhere.
Nicole tipped back her head and grinned up at Charlotte. “Yes, I thought you would have, but Lydia couldn’t be convinced.”
Charlotte pushed Nicole’s head forward once more. “Liar. Lydia, as we both know, can be convinced of anything when you’re the one weaving fantastic stories. Admit it, Nicole, it was you who decided not to share this adventure with me. You must have spent hours and hours composing those bogus letters. I could have helped. And I most certainly could have improved upon your abysmal spelling.”
“In that case, I apologize most profoundly. Lydia, stubborn as she can be sometimes, would only agree to the scheme if I didn’t make her have anything to do with the actual composition of the letters. You’re not going to tell Aunt Emmaline?”
“No, I can’t. She wrote to me in this morning’s post. She’s increasing. She and the duke are already returned to his estate, and she won’t be traveling again until the child is born. It would do no good to upset her.”
