Page 47 of Miss Beresford and the Beast

“Arabella Farr. That was her name.” Mrs. Goodenough clucked her tongue. “Had the misfortune of losing her heart to the old earl’s son. Lost her life as a result.”

Charlotte frowned. “But…how?”

“He ruined her, didn’t he?” Mrs. Goodenough said. “Strung her along, made her think he’d marry her, and then held her honor cheap as dirt.”

Charlotte shook her head. She couldn’t believe it.

Yet what did she really know of Magnus Sterling, Earl of Eversleigh? Nothing except the way he’d treated her.

“What was he like, Charlotte?” Lucy asked. Her face was lit with unwilling curiosity.

“Rude,” Charlotte replied frankly. “And consistently cross. But not cruel or inconsiderate. Indeed, he was kind to me.”

Mrs. Goodenough gave a cynical chuckle. “That sort always is at the beginning. You only have to look at the story of poor Miss Farr.”

“How did she die?” Charlotte asked.

Mrs. Goodenough busied herself with straightening Charlotte’s things. “Her older brother, Jeremiah, went to Moorcross Manor to call the beast to account,” she said. “There was a duel of some kind. Miss Farr was shot and killed, and young Mr. Farr was injured. He died of sepsis five days later.”

Both Charlotte and Lucy stared at the housekeeper in shock.

“Old Squire Farr passed too before long,” Mrs. Goodenough continued. “Of a broken heart some say. Spent his remaining years dwindling away to nothing, leaving his workers unpaid and his crops untended. Took years for the village to come right after he was gone. Many folks lost their livelihoods. Many folks went hungry.”

“The whole family dead?” Lucy echoed in dismay. “Not just the daughter?”

“All of them,” Mrs. Goodenough said with grim significance. She cast a look at Charlotte. “Didn’t I warn you, miss? I told you that if you didn’t change your ways an evil beast was going to follow you home. And now he has done.”

Charlotte’s brows notched. “But he didn’t follow me,” she said.

No.

When it had come to the point, Magnus had let her go.

Chapter Fifteen

Magnus had never tamed a feral dog before. Or any dog for that matter. He’d not been allowed pets as a child. His father had believed them to be sentimental distractions. Magnus’s own wishes on the subject had been irrelevant—if he’d ever had any particular wish to begin with. It was so long ago now he couldn’t recall.

Yet another reason to wish he’d never crossed paths with Charlotte Beresford. She was making him think too much about his past. Too much about his childhood, his father. Too much about bloody dogs.

“Talk to him, she said,” he muttered to himself as he set another dish of food at the foot of the wardrobe the day after her departure. “Is that what I must do? Engage in conversation with a cursed, encroaching mongrel?”

The little dog’s claws scrabbled against the hardwood floor as he rushed to the dish.

Chance, that’s what she’d named him.

Ridiculous.

“If not for you, I’d never have met her,” Magnus informed him. “I might even now be in possession of my fortune, away from this hateful village, and safely on a train to God knows where.”

Instead, he was here, with yet another burden thrust upon on his shoulders.

“If you don’t come out by tomorrow morning, I’m moving the wardrobe,” Magnus warned him. “You’ll learn to relieve yourself out of doors, by God, or I won’t be held responsible for my actions.”

Turner entered the room, his soiled collar open at the throat and his boots heavily caked with mud. “Any luck, my lord?”

“None whatsoever.” Magnus stood. He was in no better state than his valet. They were both of them in their shirtsleeves. Both filthy with dirt and perspiration, the evidence of another morning’s toil at their fruitless labors. “You?”

Turner scrubbed his brow with the back of one grimy sleeve. “I finished digging the plot by the apple tree, but not the ones farther out. My back’s playing up.”