Page 89 of Miss Beresford and the Beast

“He’s protective of you,” Magnus said. “I can’t blame him for it.” He again offered his arm. “Shall we walk on?”

Charlotte didn’t accept the courtesy this time. Not immediately. When they’d set out from the house, she’d done so because she’d believed it to be a sign of his continued affection for her. Now, however, she wondered if the gesture wasn’t inspired by something else altogether.

“I’m in no danger of falling into a hole you know,” she informed him, “whatever warnings about my health my father has given you.”

“I would feel better if you took my arm.”

“Because you care for me? Or because you’re eager to resume our walk so that it might be over all the sooner?”

“The former,” he said. “Obviously.”

Her heartbeat quickened in spite of herself. “Oh, very well.” She tucked her hand back in his arm with a disgruntled grumble. “Since you put it so eloquently.”

Magnus’s mouth hitched in a fleeting smile at her sarcasm.

Charlotte’s pulse again lost its rhythm. Too easily she remembered what it had felt like when he kissed her. The memory was such that it almost made her forget her distress at his and Papa’s autocratic tactics.

Almost.

She frowned to herself as they continued down the garden path. Heaps of dirt dotted the tangled landscape, marking the boundary of every hole that Magnus had dug in the search for his missing inheritance. He ably guided her around them, unfailingly steering her to the safest path.

“Your father will expect us back momentarily,” he reminded her. “We can’t linger overlong.”

“We’ve scarcely begun,” she said. “You still haven’t told me the whole of what transpired between you and my father.”

“There’s not a great deal to tell.”

“Aside from the fact that you promised not to see me again for six months?”

“Your father makes a compelling argument for it.”

A nameless anxiety settled in Charlotte’s breast. Despite her confidence in herself, and her own judgment. Despite what they’d been through together. She was still not entirely sure of his affections. “No one could persuade you to do something you didn’t already want to do in the first place,” she said.

“I want to do what’s right,” Magnus replied.

Some of the apprehension in Charlotte’s chest eased. A different sort of ache took its place. Of course he wanted to do what’s right. Given his past, observing proper decorum in their courtship—even at this belated date—must strike him as being of paramount importance.

“We’ve been much in each other’s company during a volatile period of time,” he said. “Your injury and memory loss. My return to Yorkshire to confront my past. It’s made us both vulnerable to emotions we might not have had if we’d met under other circumstances.”

She glanced at him in swift suspicion. “Are those my father’s words or yours?”

“His,” Magnus admitted. He brought them to a halt beneath the gnarled branches of an old ash tree. “I can’t argue with them.”

Charlotte gazed up at him as he turned to face her. Anguish and frustration warred within her. “It sounds as if you didn’t argue at all.”

“I was tempted to.”

“Then why⁠—”

“To what purpose? To rush you into a hasty alliance that you would only come to regret with the passage of time? Better you have a chance to clear your head and come to the decision sensibly than realize too late that marrying me was the greatest mistake of your⁠—”

“You forget,” Charlotte interrupted, “that we have already been married.”

Magnus’s solemn face betrayed another short-lived smile. The brief expression warmed her to her toes. “That was your idea of happiness, was it? Me snarling and scowling at you all day long?”

“You weren’t snarling and scowling on the day I left the manor with Miss Champion and the constable,” Charlotte reminded him. “Or when we were in the small parlor.”

“I expect I should apologize for that,” he said.