Page 84 of Miss Beresford and the Beast

But it wasn’t a villager.

It was an impeccably dressed and indisputably aristocratic older blond gentleman. A shorter fellow was at his left, carrying a leather briefcase and wearing the nondescript attire of a clerk. And at his right…

Magnus’s chest constricted.

It was Charlotte. She too was dressed in elegant style, wearing a fetching mulberry-colored frock, with a ruffled skirt that gathered at the back in a fashionable cascade of fabric and a bodice that emphasized the narrow curve of her waist. Her hand was set on the older gentleman’s arm. “Lord Eversleigh?” she said before any of the men could speak. “Allow me to present my father, Viscount St. Clare. He arrived but two days ago, rather unexpectedly. Papa, this is Lord Eversleigh.”

Time ground to a halt.

Magnus felt it in his blood and in his bones. The harsh echo of the past.

He hadn’t been the one to welcome Jeremaih Farr into the house eleven years ago. A servant had already put him in the small parlor when Magnus had come to face him. The similarities between that confrontation and this one were, nevertheless, too striking to ignore. A young lady wronged and a gentleman come to call Magnus to account.

Though, admittedly, this gentleman didn’t appear to be carrying a loaded pistol.

“Lord Eversleigh.” Viscount St. Clare inclined his head to Magnus in a glacial approximation of a bow.

He wasn’t very like Charlotte. Not on the surface. Indeed, outwardly, they differed in nearly every regard. She was warm to his cold, her blue eyes and auburn tresses standing in marked contrast to his ice gray gaze and golden-wheat shaded hair. Yet there was something in the turn of their countenance—a certain depth of confidence—that made their relationship plain.

“Lord St. Clare.” Magnus returned the viscount’s stiff salute. “Miss Beresford.”

“And this is my secretary, Mr. Tate,” Lord St. Clare said. “He always accompanies me on matters of business.”

Ah.

So, it wasn’t a pistol, then.

Charlotte’s father, it seemed, had different weapons in his arsenal. Which would he employ today, Magnus wondered. Money? Power? Influence? To the average gentleman of reputation and breeding, any one of them would be sufficient to do harm.

Unlike those good and honorable men, however, Magnus had very little left to lose.

He stepped back to admit them. “You’re welcome to come in,” he said. “But I warn you, the house isn’t fit for receiving company.”

Chance retreated to the foot of the staircase behind Magnus. He eyed the visitors warily as they entered, ready to bolt up the steps at the first sign of danger.

Charlotte caught Magnus’s gaze as she came into the hall. There was a distinct glint of apology in her own. It suggested that this visit had not been her idea. “My father doesn’t mind,” she said brightly. “He never judges on appearances.”

Magnus gave her a wry look. Was she referring to the house? Or to him?

He suspected the latter.

Unlike her and her father, Magnus was neither elegantly, nor suitably dressed. He’d been working in the house since dawn and was still clad in his shirtsleeves. Add to that, the ink stains on his fingers from his letter writing, his unpomaded hair, and the shadows on his face from lack of sleep, and he likely appeared every bit the coarse and ill-mannered brute people said he was.

That he’d opened the front door himself rather than relegating the office to a servant did nothing to diminish this unfortunate picture. God only knew where Turner was at the moment. The kitchen very probably, indulging in another of his endless cups of tea. Like Chance, the valet had been making the most of their newly acquired surplus.

Charlotte looked past Magnus’s shoulder, her face transformed by a smile. “There he is, Papa! That’s the new dog I was telling you about.”

Breaking free of her father, she went to greet the little canine. She sank down in front of him in a pool of ruffled skirts in order to stroke the dog’s ears with both of her gloved hands.

Lord St. Clare remained where he stood, his expression inscrutable. His secretary stayed beside him, equally impassive.

Magnus looked steadily back at them. The situation was volatile, that was evident. Magnus had compromised this gentleman’s daughter. And here Magnus was receiving him, not in a lavish estate, but a ruin.

There was no question in Magnus’s mind that Charlotte’s father believed him to be some variety of fortune hunter. A man to be ruthlessly dispatched.

“My lord?” Turner materialized at the door to the servants’ stair to goggle at the visitors. “Begging your pardon. Shall I⁠—”

“You may show my guests to the drawing room,” Magnus said.