Page 40 of Miss Beresford and the Beast

“It doesn’t pay not to trust people,” she remarked to Chance. “Some of us are bad, I admit. But many of us aren’t. I’m certainly not. If you’d only have a little faith in me.”

She wished Magnus would do the same. Just have a smidgeon of trust in her, enough that he would tell her the truth about his past.

As it was, all Charlotte knew was that the scandal involved a young lady who had died. A Squire’s daughter named Miss Farr who was not Magnus’s sweetheart.

“Who was she, then?” Charlotte wondered aloud. “The sister of a friend? An acquaintance of Magnus’s father? Or one of Magnus’s siblings?” She paused, frowning. “Does he have siblings?”

And how did Miss Farr figure into the scandal? What had Magnus done to her, or been accused of doing? And if those accusations were credible, why had he not been arrested?

“Gossip is insidious,” Charlotte informed Chance. “It finds a home in even the best of villages. And Bead’s Hollow isn’t the best of villages, is it? The people aren’t very nice here. Not to dogs. And not to sons of earls either, it seems.”

A sharp knock at the door was all the warning she received before Magnus opened it.

He looked even worse than he had in the drawing room. His expression was drawn, his scarred face harshly shadowed. “The constable is back,” he said. “Along with your friend. You had better get dressed and come down before she succumbs to the vapors.”

Charlotte inwardly groaned. Poor Lucy! She would never forgive Charlotte for making her enter the place she was more afraid of than hell itself.

“I’m still dressed.” Charlotte pulled back the coverlet, revealing her egregiously rumpled dress. She slowly swung her legs over the side of the bed, careful not to excite another wave of dizziness.

Magnus crossed to the bedstead. He took her by the elbow with one large hand. His other hand spanned the small of her back as he assisted her up. “Not too fast,” he advised.

“I really am much better,” she said as she stood. “I don’t know why I must be plagued by these wretched dizzy spells.”

“It’s no great mystery. You cracked your skull open not forty-eight hours ago.”

She smiled. “All in a good cause.”

He made a disparaging noise, ill-tempered as usual. Yet, his hands remained on her, longer than she required them.

Charlotte found that she wasn’t opposed to his touch. Standing with him this way, feeling the heat of his body, the commanding presence of his size, the intensity of his gray gaze. It was rather like an embrace. Something she’d only ever experienced with a gentleman when dancing the waltz.

It made her pulse quiver in the most thrilling way. As though she was on the precipice of a great adventure. It was the very way she’d felt when she reached the top of the stone wall, an instant before her fall.

Except now, it wasn’t only her on that precipice. There was someone else, holding her safe.

Charlotte looked up at him as he loomed over her. Their gazes held for a perilous moment. Her chest tightened and her smile dimmed. “You’re not really angry at me, are you, Magnus?”

“I’m not angry at you,” he said gruffly.

His deep voice sent a tremor of warmth through her. “I’m glad,” she told him. “I shouldn’t like us to be enemies.”

“We’re not.”

“Even if you do snap and growl at me, and occasionally point pistols at me.”

“Charlotte…”

“I’m grateful for all you’ve done,” she said.

His black brows snapped together at her choice of words. “I’ve done nothing. And I don’t require your gratitude—” He broke off abruptly as Charlotte lifted a tentative hand to the scarred side of his face.

Her heart beat hard. “It’s not only gratitude, I confess.” She brushed her fingers over his cheek, gently, carefully. “I’d like us to be friends.”

He didn’t move. Didn’t seem to breathe. “I don’t need friends.”

Her smile briefly returned. “Nonsense. Everybody needs a friend.” She lowered her hand, directing a look at the wardrobe. “I’ve been trying to convince Chance of that fact. If only he’d come out from under there, he might learn to believe it.”

Magnus cast a distracted glance at the dog’s hiding place. He frowned, seeming to recollect himself. “I’ll have to move the wardrobe,” he said. “Once the little blackguard has no place to hide, I can put a lead on him and stuff him in a cabbage crate.”