stairs. “Says his horse is getting cold.”
Ethan gave her shoulders a last squeeze and released her. “Don’t you worry now.” He picked up her bag as if it weighed nothing. Dazed, Lucy followed him down the steps. She felt even more dejected. Whatever happened, she was unlikely to see Ethan Trask again.
Twelve
Charlotte hunched in the shabby armchair in her old bedchamber, oblivious to the chill of the fireless room. She had the worst headache of her life and felt sick, but her real hurts weren’t physical. Sir Alexander had sat there and let that man accuse her of murder. The doubt in his eyes when she’d asked him if he believed it… She drew up her knees and curled into an aching ball. It had raked her soul, sent her flying out of his house without a cloak, with barely enough in her pocket to pay for a cab, and nowhere to go but the place where she’d been desperately unhappy. That fit, at least, she thought.
She’d ejected the men stationed here with a fierceness that clearly startled them, and a note to Lucy to pack her things and follow. She couldn’t remember if she’d told Ethan that when she fled. She’d locked the door and collapsed in this chair to… wallow. Charlotte released her knees and slowly straightened. All right. Yes, she was indulging in self-pity. Didn’t she have reason enough? Wasn’t she permitted a little regret? But if she’d learned one thing since leaving her childhood home it was this: feeling sorry for yourself would eat you alive, if you let it.
Charlotte stared at the ugly wallpaper and clenched her fists. How dared he believe that odious little man? She’d lived in Sir Alexander’s house, talked with him, sat at dinner with him. How could he imagine…? And she’d kissed him! Charlotte rested her pounding head in her hands. Why had she kissed him?
A hint of the bubbling exhilaration of that moment came back to her. She’d been buzzing from the evening’s freedom, from the taste of society and gaiety after an arid, desolate year. And then there he was—unexpected, crackling with emotion, unbearably attractive. It had seemed so natural, so necessary to fling her arms around him and pull his lips down to hers. A shiver went through her at the memory of that amazing sensation. Even now, when she despised him, she longed to feel it again.
But she wouldn’t.
Charlotte raised her head. Because she would never—never—forgive Sir Alexander Wylde. Not if he crawled on his knees from his oh-so-fashionable neighborhood to her reviled one, not if he announced to the world that he was an idiot, not if he begged, hat in hand. If she saw him in the street, she would cut him dead. Not that she’d encounter him, living out here in the hinterlands, as the high-nosed ton saw it. But it was the principle of the thing. Yes. That was settled; nothing could be clearer. Sir Alexander Wylde was out of her life.
If only the pounding in her head… no, it wasn’t the headache. Someone was knocking on the front door. Charlotte got up and moved quietly down the stairs.
“Miss Charlotte,” Lucy called. “Miss Charlotte, it’s me.” Charlotte undid the locks, and Lucy rushed in. “Oh, Miss Charlotte, whatever happened? Why did you run off?”
Charlotte said nothing. She could not tell even Lucy about being accused of murder. She closed the front door and relocked it.
“What a to-do. Miss Anne and Miss Lizzy wanting to know why you’d gone, and Sir Alexander mean as a bear with a sore head.”
“We quarreled,” she replied tersely. “My things?”
“Susan promised to make sure they were all sent. I didn’t want to wait, miss, and leave you here alone.”
“Thank you, Lucy.” The sympathy in her maid’s face threatened to erode her anger, and Charlotte blinked back tears. She was very grateful for Lucy, her staunch companion through so much, but she couldn’t answer the questions in her eyes right now. “We’ll need to hire some staff,” she said to divert her.
“We’re staying then?” Lucy sounded more resigned than surprised.
“Yes. Nobody has come back to rob the place in all this time. I’m sure it’s safe.” She hardly cared. “We can’t afford many—a cook, perhaps a housemaid, though I think it would be wiser to have a manservant.”
“Yes, miss.”
Her spurt of angry energy was ebbing. Her room, the armchair, solitude, beckoned. “I don’t know just how…”
“E… some of the staff over at Sir Alexander’s house might have some…