Page 2 of To Seduce a Stranger

“Dear God in Heaven! Do you mean—?”

“I mean that if left to his own devices, my husband will raise his son in his image. So now, while I can, I intervene. His mother’s influence may be the only stay against a violent nature.”

A violent nature? Did Mama believe he was fated to turn out like Father? People seemed to delight in telling him how he took after the man. In looks, certainly—he was big for his age, and dark where his mother was fair. Mr. Cummings insisted that must be where his quickness came from, too. Neither Latin nor algebra required much effort. But what if—the boy glanced down at the soldier still clutched in his hand—what if that is not all I have inherited?

“When he’s sent to school, however,” Mama continued, “I will leave. A visit to my sister’s—an extended holiday, we shall say.” He had never heard his mother use that tone of voice. It was something more than angry, more than stubborn.

“Oh, my lady.” Mrs. Henderson clucked her tongue. “But in the meantime . . . ?”

Mama rose to her feet and crossed to the door, opening it wide. The sudden gust of air through the room swirled the dust on the floor at his feet. A sneeze threatened, tickling deep in his nostrils, but he pinched the bridge of his nose to keep it at bay. “It was kind of you to call, Mrs. Henderson.”

The sofa protested once more as the vicar’s wife stood, and he heard her shuffle into a curtsy. “I am at your service, your ladyship.”

They left, and the boy was alone again in the dusty silence. He rubbed his thumb back and forth over the figure he held, as if it were some sort of talisman. When the other boys had teased little Molly Keating about her freckles, Mr. Cummings had told him it was a gentleman’s duty to protect a lady. How he wished he were a pirate captain! What wouldn’t he do then to keep his mother safe? He would whisk her away across the seven seas, take her somewhere his father could not harm her again.

Alas, he had no ship, no cannon, not even a cutlass. He shoved angrily, impotently at the sewing basket, which plowed into the soldiers lining the shore, breaking their ranks. She could leave when he did, she had said. But he would not be going away to school for more than two years. Terrible things might happen in that time. If only it were in his power to leave now.

He studied the pirate’s painted face. Father was fond of saying that every Bristol merchant was a pirate at heart. And they had ships, the boy knew. He had seen them once when Mama had taken him to the harbor on an outing. If there were pirates so near as Bristol, he could run away and join them. He supposed Mama would worry about what had become of him. Mothers did worry, he knew. But she would forgive him if she were able to leave this place.

Away from his mother’s gentle guidance, he risked becoming more like his father. But what choice did he have?

His shoulders rounded under the weight of his decision, the boy began to pack up his soldiers. Perhaps his father had been right all along, for he suddenly felt far too old for such playthings. At the least, he would try very hard to be grown-up enough not to long for the day when he could come home.

Chapter 1

Bath, May 1797

Despite a gift for spinning stories and building castles in the clouds, Charlotte Blakemore had never gone so far as to imagine that her late husband would leave her a fortune.

It soon became clear that her stepson had not imagined it either.

Robert, the new Duke of Langerton, stepped forward and twitched the will from the bespectacled solicitor’s hands, as if he suspected the man of fabricating. Neither of them actually said anything, however.

The incredulous squeak—“Vraiment?”—could have passed only Charlotte’s lips.

“Yes, truly,” said Langerton, lowering the parchment and fixing her with a hard stare.

It was not as if Langerton had been left nothing. As heir to the dukedom, with all its properties and a considerable income attached, Langerton was now one of the wealthiest men in England. Still, it was quite clear he objected to the fact that his father’s substantial private fortune—whatever was not entailed or otherwise bequeathed—was to be divided among him, his sisters, and Charlotte. And not equally, either. Charlotte was to receive half.

Without saying anything more, Langerton returned the will to the solicitor and resumed his seat. A feeble ray of morning sun poked between the dark curtains covering the library window and picked out a few silver threads in his dark hair. Although he was not yet forty, the strain of the past few weeks, beginning with his vocal disapproval of his father’s second bride, had aged him.

The remainder of the will’s terms—gifts to the servants, sundry personal effects to those who would treasure them—passed by without comment. Charlotte hardly heard them. Sitting stiffly beside her, Langerton no doubt imagined she was calculating the interest on her inheritance. The thoughts flitting through her head were actually closer to a disjointed prayer of thanksgiving, however.

Thank God she would not have to return to her aunt.

Not that her father’s sister, Baroness Penhurst, had been cruel, exactly. But no one who knew the woman would call her kind. Bad enough that James had to sow his wild oats with a Frenchwoman, Charlotte had overheard her lamenting more than once. Did he have to saddle me with the baggage? “The Earl of Belmont’s natural daughter,” people called her when they were inclined to be polite. Which they rarely were.

“That’s far more than you would be entitled to receive by dower rights alone.” Langerton’s voice broke through her ruminations. The solicitor was stuffing papers into his worn leather case. “You must be pleased.”

Charlotte drew herself up. “Nothing about your dear father’s death has brought me pleasure, Robert.”

His lip curled. Did he really expect her to address her stepson as Your Grace?

“Next you’ll claim you were madly in love with him.”

George Blakemore, fifth Duke of Langerton, had been gentle and caring, and Charlotte might honestly have answered yes. She had loved him, in the way one loves a sweet, grandfatherly man—fitting, since she was just four-and-twenty and he had been well past seventy when he had proposed. No one had been more taken aback by his offer than Charlotte, not even her aunt, who had done her best to dissuade her old friend from this act of madness—kindness, he had corrected when he and Charlotte were alone.

Lady Penhurst always was a right dragon, George had told her with a laugh. No need for you to live under her thumb forever, Lottie.