Page 32 of Miss Beresford and the Beast

Magnus scowled. “Don’t be dramatic.”

She folded her arms. Her head was throbbing worse than ever, but it would have to fall off her neck entirely for her to desist in this quarrel. She may not remember everything, but she knew that she was in the right. “Is that your defense?” she inquired with awful civility. “Name calling?”

“I require no defense when protecting my privacy on my own property,” he shot back. “You’ve no idea what I’ve had to put up with here. The villagers. The law. My father. The history of this place⁠—”

“None of that’s any excuse.”

“I’m well aware.” He pushed a hand through his hair. “If you require an apology⁠—”

“Chance would be a fine thing!”

“I am sorry, by the way,” he added gruffly.

He meant it, Charlotte could tell. She recognized the signs. The vague droop in his broad shoulders. The deep husk in his voice.

He was in over his head.

Gentleman often found themselves so when attempting to make a course correction. She knew that first hand. She had, after all, been raised with two scapegrace older brothers.

Nick and Arthur.

Their names had been mentioned in her letter to Agatha, but Charlotte hadn’t recollected them properly until now. Like the rest of her memories, they came back inch by inch—dark silhouettes edging slowly into the light.

But Magnus wasn’t exactly like a brother, was he?

Some of her outrage receded. “If I was only looking for my dog, and not attempting to spy on you, then you’re the cause of all this confusion.” She gave him a scolding look. “Not to mention the fact that you didn’t deny that you were my husband.”

Magnus exhaled a frustrated breath. “You may set that blame squarely on Turner’s shoulders.”

“What has your valet to do with it?”

“He assured me, on his mother’s grave, that disabusing an amnesiac of their delusions was a surefire way to send them into fits. He said we had to humor you.”

Another surge of heat rose in Charlotte’s face, remembering how Magnus had undressed her last night. How gently, almost reverently, he’d removed her gown, her crinolette, her corset. “May I say, sir, that you take humoring rather too far.”

A corresponding flush of red crept above the line of Magnus’s collar. “It was either that or risk your health.”

“And my health was your only concern?”

His black brows lowered. For the first time, she caught a genuine flare of anger in his gaze. “It may have escaped you in your weakened condition, madam, but this bedchamber is hardly equipped for seduction.”

Seduction.

Charlotte wished he hadn’t used the word. It thawed her cool demeanor still further, replacing it with something worse—an unsettling and completely unfamiliar tremor of warmth.

Yet, he wasn’t wrong.

She cast her gaze over the room in an effort to compose herself. To think she’d imagined herself to blame for all this neglect! “You know,” she said, “you should really hire a housekeeper.”

“Perhaps that’s escaped your notice as well.”

Her eyes returned to his. “Your housekeeper?”

“There’s no housekeeper, Charlotte. No one in thirty miles would set foot inside this place. No servant, no tradesman, no bloody doctor. We summoned the blackguard yesterday morning. He never materialized. Why the devil do you think I was obliged to treat your wounds myself?”

Charlotte couldn’t believe it. “The doctor refused to come?”

“That’s how deep prejudice runs against my family in these parts. They’d sooner leave me and anyone else within these walls to rot.”