Page 10 of Miss Beresford and the Beast

Returning her head to the pillow, he surged to his feet. He didn’t know where he was going, only that it seemed a wise idea to put some space between them. He made it as far as the window.

The view through the glass was obscured by years of grease and soot. Magnus could make out but little of the tangled garden below. In his youth, it had been one of the finest rose gardens in Yorkshire, courtesy of the fleet of gardeners employed by his father. But no more. All that had ended when Magnus had brought ruin upon them.

He chanced a wary look over his shoulder. Charlotte was still staring at him. Still confused. “Do you remember anything else?” he asked.

An elegant crease marred her brow. “There was a pistol, I think.”

Magnus concealed a flinch.

“And…” Charlotte hesitated. “A dog.”

“Your dog. Quite,” Magnus said promptly, grateful for anything that would take her mind off him having threatened her with his revolver. “He was injured, I believe?”

“I don’t know. I can’t⁠—”

“Don’t overtax yourself. Turner will find him.”

“Turner?” she echoed weakly.

“My valet. The one who’s fetching your tea.”

“I can’t remember him,” she confessed.

“I wouldn’t expect you to,” Magnus said. “However you did recall your dog. I count that as progress.”

Her lids were growing heavy, her voice fading. Still, her gaze held his. “I wish I could remember you.”

“Most people would be wishing the opposite,” he said.

She didn’t reply. Eyes drifting shut, she mercifully slid back into sleep.

Chapter Four

Magnus trudged through the tangled garden. By rights, it should be Turner who was trying to find Charlotte’s missing lapdog. Magnus had certainly ordered him to. But Turner had claimed to need a respite before making a second walk into the village.

“My arthritis, your lordship,” he’d reminded Magnus. “You know how it plays up.”

Magnus had cursed and grumbled, but he’d ultimately given in, agreeing to find the dog himself. Turner was the only servant he had. And Magnus was not, after all, a monster.

Though he did have his moments.

This was beginning to feel like one of them.

His patience had already been at its limits when he’d left the house. Now, after having circled the garden once with no result, he was in danger of losing it—and his temper—altogether. If his make-believe-wife’s dog was still on the grounds, it was doing an excellent job of hiding itself.

“Is nothing in this benighted place where it’s supposed to be?” Magnus swiped at the undergrowth with one of the broken branches he’d picked up during his initial turn around the garden. “First my missing inheritance, now a missing dog. What next?”

Perhaps the Manor really was cursed.

Its every appearance supported the fact. What had once been the showplace of the county, with its famous rose gardens, priceless paper hangings and paneling, and furnishings that would have bankrupted a lesser noble, was now an utter ruin. As if an evil witch had cast a devastating spell over the place. An enchantment that had destroyed everything in its path, withering it away to rot and to dust.

The thought brought Magnus no comfort. He had to believe he might yet discover where his father had concealed his vast fortune. That it was here someplace on the grounds, carefully hidden. For it had to be somewhere. It certainly wasn’t in the bank.

“The late Lord Eversleigh wasn’t overfond of banks at the end,” his father’s solicitor had told Magnus when they’d met in his law office on Magnus’s arrival in Dover. “He preferred his fortune remain in his own keeping.”

“He took his money out of the bank?” Magnus had asked in disbelief.

“Every farthing,” the solicitor had said. “He also took the late countess’s jewelry. It has not been accounted for since.”