Page 7 of Miss Beresford and the Beast

“Called me ten varieties of liar, and accused me of playing a foul prank. ‘Another injured girl at the Manor?’ she says. ‘What was I, born yesterday?’”

Magnus expelled a frustrated breath. He ran a hand through his hair. “Wonderful.”

“I kept telling her that there was a girl here, maybe hurt bad. But she never heard nothing about any village girls gone missing today. Which made me think, sir, what if this ain’t a village girl?”

“Your powers of deduction astound me.”

“Might have come here on a passing coach, I says to myself. Got off the stage in Bead’s Hollow and wandered along the road when she came to your estate. Happen she had something with her that might identify her.”

Magnus folded his arms. His attention returned to the young lady, her slim figure dwarfed by the monstrous size of the great mahogany bed. But for her pallor, she might have been sleeping.

An unnerving notion on multiple levels. To see her, amid the tangle of his sheets and the very pillows where he’d rested his own head the last several nights. As if she’d made herself perfectly at home there. It gave Magnus a sudden sympathy for the bear in the fairytale who had discovered a girl sleeping in his bed. So too must he have felt to find an intruder in such a private place.

Except this young lady’s hair was more like spun silk than burnished gold. Dark and glimmering with threads of reddish-brown fire.

“Her pockets are empty,” he said. “I checked.”

Turner came forward. “No need of that, my lord. I’ve already discovered her particulars.”

Magnus’s gaze jerked back to Turner with immediate alertness.

Turner waved the folded paper. “Found this letter in the shrubbery, didn’t I? She must have dropped it when she fell. Tells us exactly who—and what—she is.”

Magnus frowned at his valet’s cryptic choice of words. “What in blazes is that supposed to mean?”

“Charlotte, she calls herself, the brazen hussy. Engaged to a fella back home, and fixing to meet another fella by the bridge this very morning in some secret assignation.”

Magnus blinked. “She says that?”

“Oh aye. Writing to her sister, she was. Telling all her shameful secrets.” Turner glanced down at the letter. “Says she staying at a hall somewhere, with a family name of Champion.”

“That’s it?” Magnus’s frown deepened. “There’s no return address? No surname?”

“There was no envelope. No other details neither, except…” Turner hesitated before continuing. “She does spread some vile gossip about you and the village. The curse and all, and about you being an evil gentleman who did terrible things.” He offered Magnus the note. “You can read it yourself if you like.”

Magnus took a reflexive step back. The hell he would. He had no desire to hear the young lady’s ignorant account of his scandalous history. And he certainly had no interest in prying into her own sordid affairs.

Engaged to one man and having an assignation with another? And she had the temerity to call him someone who did terrible things?

A muscle clenched in his cheek. Infuriating as the whole situation was becoming, he couldn’t afford to lose sight of the matter at hand. One way or another, he had to get this female out of his house before nightfall. And he had to do it without alerting the entire population of North Yorkshire that the notorious son of the equally notorious Earl of Eversleigh was temporarily back in residence.

“I don’t need to read her blasted letter,” Magnus gritted out. “What I need is for you to go back into the village and make inquiries—discreet inquiries—into where we can find these Champion people.”

Turner’s face fell. “Back to the village, sir? But I only just come from there. It’s a half dozen miles both ways, and I ain’t as young as I⁠—”

“Do you have a better suggestion?”

Turner shrugged. “Thought you might know the folks.”

Magnus had never heard of them before. It was doubtless some family that had taken up residence during his absence. As for the Hall… It could be any number of houses within ten miles. “I don’t wish to know them,” he said.

“Well, then…” Turner scrunched his face. “What about this fella she was meeting at the bridge?”

“What about him?”

“Happen I could go to the bridge myself, tell him what’s occurred, and persuade him to come fetch her?”

By some miracle, Magnus kept his countenance. “Bring the girl’s secret lover to collect her from my bed?”