“Gran,really.”
The dowager drew herself up until she was sitting tall and haughty as a queen. “I believe His Grace is on Imperium, which is the horse he rode at Waterloo. Forgive me if the sight leaves me feeling patriotic.”
“Is that what we’re calling it? Thank heavens Warrick sold his commission. If he ever wore regimentals, I’d have to draw you a cold bath.”
The dowager ignored her. “As for your question, I must tell you I’m hugely grateful Warrick agreed to spend the summer with us.”
“We don’tneed—”
“We most certainly do. This summer will be a trial, for both of us, and it never hurts to have a duke in one’s pocket.”
Charlotte bit back a reply.
The first time she’d met Warrick had been on a summer day three years ago, during her mother’s ghastly annual visit to Clare. The dowager had been napping upstairs, Julian had tromped off down to the river—ostensibly to fish but more likely to clench his jaw and gaze nobly out at the horizon, or whatever he did when he was pouting—and the only one who’d been lurking was Lady Margot.
Charlotte had tiptoed down the corridor toward the dowager’s sitting room, trying to win a few hours of peace, because Lady Margot never deigned to enter one of the dowager’s private rooms. Not when she so clearly considered it enemy territory.
“Charlotte?” a voice had called from somewhere near, deceptively soft, because Lady Margot didn’t yell and yet still somehow always managed to make herself heard. In fact, she didn’t have to open hermouth or change her expression by so much as a millimeter and Charlotte knew exactly what her mother was thinking.
Charlotte picked up her skirts and ran.
She was in full retreat and felt no shame about it. Then again, she had never understood men and their obsession with valor, which was simply stupidity dressed up in gentlemen’s clothing. Better by far to live to fight another day.
Or in her case, to face dinner.
Charlotte reached the sitting room and closed the door behind her, slumping back against it in sheer relief. Everyone seemed to believe they suffered through Lady Margot’s annual visit onheraccount. Yet each year, Charlotte felt like a stretch of contested land fought over by two mighty armies—her mother on one side, Gran and Julian on the other, their cannons booming back and forth.
Three more days, she’d thought darkly and flopped down on the settee, kicking off her slippers and staring up at the plaster palm leaves above. She was crushing her hair, which her mother would notice, and wrinkling her gown, which was sure to draw a remark, but at least she was on her own and notworkingso hard, laughing her head off when nothing was amusing, or trying for a quip that would distract the others from the slow grind of their war.
Why do you bother?asked a small, exhausted part of herself.
Charlotte had never been able to answer, nor could she find a way out. How did one teach a heart not to care?
When the door clicked open ten minutes later, Charlotte was halfway asleep.Go away, Julian!she thought groggily, and stretched her head back over the arm of the settee to tell him so.
Another man, an enormous one, filled her upside-down view. He had a head of messy, gleaming hair and eyes—were they black? GoodLord, could anything that dark beblue? Charlotte wasn’t sure, and anyway she was distracted by the man’s upside-down jawline, which looked as if it had been hewn with an axe, and then by his browbone, which jutted proudly from his forehead in a way that would have alarmed her because it seemed to promise opinions held too firmly, except that it was balanced by a rather staggered grin.
A brain built for ideas and a mouth made for laughter.
She grinned back at him even as she took in his truly dreadful clothes, made of what she saw at once was good fabric but sloppy and much too big, as if his tailor had cast a doubtful eye at the width of the man’s shoulders and given up, stitching the jacket together on a best guess and a prayer. Charlotte suddenly itched to measure him up herself, and yet as he leaned back against the doorjamb and crossed badly polished boot over badly polished boot, she had to admit that carelessness suited him.
He was the sort of man whooughtto have clothes he could shrug out of quickly.
“Who are you, sir?” she’d asked.
“Lord Wolfgang Latham,” he’d answered. Because he wasn’t the high and mighty Duke of Warrick, not then.
Charlotte offered to take him down to the river to find Julian, which they both knew was an excuse to stretch their conversation. It was also a tricky bit of maneuvering because it meant negotiating the hallway without getting caught by her mother, but soon they found themselves safely outside on the path beside Gran’s hedge garden.
Alone, together.
“I read about you in the papers.” Charlotte slanted her eyes up at him, falling into flirting to break the strange tension between them. “They said you smothered yourself in glory at Waterloo.”
He looked at her steadily. “It didn’t feel much like glory.”
“Oh. No, of course it wouldn’t.” Charlotte felt her cheeks heat. “I apologize, my lord.”
“What for?”
