Page 31 of To Seduce a Stranger

Charlotte stepped into the clearing and moved closer. “I’m sorry for disturbing you,” she said, trying her best to mask her accent. “I . . .” When had simple introductions become so complicated? Every name at her disposal felt like a lie. Except the one she settled upon, improper though it might be. “I’m Charlotte. The cat—your cat, I suppose—led me here, but I did not imagine . . .”

“Pleased to meet you, Charlotte,” the woman said, in a voice that was not at all frail, despite her appearance. From this distance, Charlotte could see that the woman was not as old as she had first assumed, despite the streak of white in her hair. Her careful movements came from another cause. Her features were blurred, misshapen by scars, and any sign of youthfulness had been erased by whatever long-ago injury, illness, or accident had caused them. With her good eye, she looked Charlotte up and down, but she did not curtsy or hold out her hand—perhaps either gesture was simply too painful. “People call me Tessie.”

The woman’s equally unconventional introduction made Charlotte feel as if she was hiding something, too, but at least that was common ground on which they might stand. At a wave of Tessie’s arm, Charlotte entered the rustic cottage.

Once inside, the woman sat down heavily, fatigued by the effort of greeting her guest. Noir leapt into her lap and curled into a ball, evidently a familiar and welcome visitor. Although a second chair sat facing the first, Charlotte did not take it, uncertain whether she had been invited to do so.

“I was just out for a walk when I stumbled upon your . . .” A glance at the cottage’s rough interior confirmed her suspicion that the building had never been intended for human habitation. But Tessie had managed to make it her own with a few furnishings, neatly kept.

While working on the garden, Garrick had explained to her and Mari that almost everyone who had had the means to leave Ravenswood and Little Norbury had done so many years ago, when an outbreak of smallpox, or at least the rumor of one, had swept through the village. Perhaps Tessie really had been afflicted with the disease and had sought out the empty folly as a place to hide, to recover, to die. Perhaps she simply had nowhere else to go.

“Does anyone know you’re here?”

“Some do.” One corner of Tessie’s mouth lifted in a crooked smile; scars rendered the other side of her face immobile. “Some don’t.”

“Oh.”

What lay outside Ravenswood Manor seemed no less mysterious than what lay within it.

“It is pleasant to have company, though,” Tessie said, stroking Noir’s glossy fur with one claw-like hand. “The cat is a fine listener, but our conversations are always rather one-sided.”

Charlotte only smiled. To allow her lips to part, to laugh, would have been to release one of those nervous giggles that tormented her at moments like this. Not that she had ever experienced a moment quite like this.

“You are new to Little Norbury?”

“Yes.” Charlotte nodded. “I—my husband is the newly appointed steward at Ravenswood Manor.”

Tessie’s knobby fingers paused in midair. “Is Lord Beckley returned to Ravenswood, then?”

Charlotte did not think she could be imagining the note of anxiety in the woman’s voice. Did she fear being discovered in this little cottage and turned away from her makeshift home? “Oh, no,” she said. “He is in London. I have heard nothing about him coming here.”

“Still . . .” Tessie murmured, clearly not reassured.

“You have nothing to fear, ma’am. My husband’s concern is entirely for the farms.” That, at least, was the truth.

Those words seemed to offer some comfort. “You will not tell him I am here?”

The question felt oddly like a test. How many secrets could Charlotte keep? “Not if you do not wish it.” She could see no harm in allowing a frail, lonely woman one little corner of a great estate.

If only Langerton could be persuaded to do as much for her.

“Shall I—shall I come and visit another day?” she offered impulsively. At the very least, she might find a way to share some of Mari’s fine cooking.

“Please do,” Tessie replied with a gracious dip of her head. There was something so unexpectedly proper in her bearing that Charlotte dipped a curtsy as she took her leave; her own elevated rank seemed a thing from another world entirely. Apparently feeling his duty had already been done, Noir showed no signs of departing with her. He did not even lift his head from Tessie’s lap.

Back outside, Charlotte blinked against the brightness of the afternoon sun. The little cottage—a hut, really, although she could not bring herself to call it that—was a place out of time: cool and dark and entirely apart from this warm spring day. It was just the sort of hideaway she had once envisioned for herself.

Somewhere she would not be recognized. Somewhere she could be alone.

But when she considered Tessie’s situation, the idea of being alone lost some of its appeal.

Startled by a flash of movement in the trees ahead, Charlotte realized her feet had already carried her almost to the Rookery. Not wishing to be caught spying once more, this time she stepped boldly toward the house, expecting to see Mari or perhaps Garrick employed on some errand.

Edward, who had been bent over the pump handle, straightened as she approached, but not because he saw or heard her. Water still trickled from the pump onto the stones beneath. Stripped to the waist, he scrubbed his hands over his face to wash up, to cool off, or both. A thin, silvery-white scar snaked over the top of one shoulder. His arms and chest were tanned and layered with muscle—as she had known they would be, based on the strength and agility he had displayed in rescuing her.

But knowing a thing, and seeing it, were quite different. She could not seem to keep her eyes from traveling along those curves of muscle dusted with dark hair, down the flat plane of his abdomen, to the place where the hair formed a thicker line that disappeared beneath the band of his breeches.

It was not as if she had no familiarity with male anatomy. She had diapered her uncle’s children, and she had once come unexpectedly upon her cousin Roderick in his smallclothes.