Page 8 of To Seduce a Stranger

“The West Indies. Where I was employed variously as an errand boy, a shipping clerk, and most recently as the manager of a sugar plantation,” he added, before she could ask.

“An overseer, you mean. A driver of slaves.” Her English was better than she had led him to believe. She seemed to know the terrible burden those words carried, at least. “Are their lives really as bad as one reads about?”

Debates and discussions about abolition had begun to circulate in English drawing rooms, he knew, but he had imagined them occurring out of the earshot of servants. “I do not know what you have been reading, Miss Blake. But the vast majority live and die in conditions far worse than you, in all likelihood, can imagine.” He certainly had not come back to defend slavery and the planters’ way of life.

He might have separated himself from the implications of his statement. After all, he had worked for most of those same years to improve the conditions of the slaves under his supervision as best he could. But he had not come back to England to defend himself, either.

A long silence hung between them, filled by the noises of the public room. “Where do you go now?” she asked at last. One of the two men at the next table shot a glance her way and murmured something to his companion, who craned his head around.

All at once, Edward realized it was not her muddy clothes or disheveled hair that kept attracting their notice. Not even, perhaps, her accent. No, their heads had been turned by her large dark eyes, high cheekbones, and full lips.

Hers was a beauty perhaps not currently in fashion in England, and not the sort to which he himself had typically been drawn, but he could hardly deny there was something attractive—in the magnetic, irresistible sense—about Miss Charlotte Blake. Even her dowdy, ill-fitting dress did not disguise it. Had some lord’s head been turned by his wife’s maid, with or without the maid’s encouragement? If so, his lady could not be blamed for seeking to remove the temptation.

But how careless, how callous simply to throw that temptation into another man’s path.

“Gloucestershire,” he replied to her almost-forgotten question. The answer seemed to satisfy her. He might have said nothing more. Yet recklessly he added details to his story. Details that brushed against the truth. “I have a long-standing arrangement with a gentleman regarding the management of his estates. He will, I hope, be glad to see that I am at last able to assume my responsibilities on his behalf.”

“A clerk. A slave driver. Now a steward for a man of property,” she said, ticking off each title on her gloved fingertips. “I believe I have my answer, then. You are not a gentleman.”

Edward chose to laugh. “I fear many will agree with you, Miss Blake.”

Convincing them otherwise would be more than enough to be going on with. He needed no additional challenges. Certainly, he should be grateful Charlotte Blake had refused his assistance. Right now, he ought to rise, drop a coin or two, and be on his way.

Before he could move, however, she sucked in her breath and dropped her gaze to the table, murmuring words he could not catch, perhaps in French. He thought for a moment that her reaction was embarrassment, inspired by her sudden awareness of the young men’s interest. But they were not seated so as to be visible to her when she looked at him. Or rather, past him.

Twisting in his chair, he swept his gaze around the public room. The crowds had thinned once the east-bound stage had come and gone. Here and there, a few travelers lingered. Near the doorway, an older man in a dark coat stood speaking earnestly with the innkeeper, who listened with his arms crossed over his chest before shaking his bewigged head.

When Edward returned his attention to Charlotte, he discovered she had moved her chair away from the fire, shifting closer to him. With her back to the room, she pulled up the hood of her cloak, drawing it securely around her face.

Who or what she had seen remained a mystery to him, but it required no great feat of penetration to understand that behind him lay something she wanted desperately to avoid.

“Mr. Cary,” she whispered, her voice muffled, “I find I must accept your offer of assistance, after all.”

“Of course. Let me pay your way on the morning stage to London.”

An almost imperceptible shake of her head. “I must leave now. Just—please, will you take me with you?”

“To Gloucestershire?” Picking up his hat with one hand, he brushed away what he could of the partially dried mud with the other. “What would you have to do there?”

She studied her gloved fingers where they lay curled in her lap. “I am willing to work, Mr. Cary. Perhaps your employer will have need of a servant? I will repay your trouble,” she insisted.

“I cannot promise . . . That is, the gentleman who owns the estate is . . .” Prone to misconduct where serving girls are concerned? An understatement, surely.

“Not in residence?” she supplied. “I suppose a wealthy gentleman of property would prefer to be in town for the Season.” There was a certain wild eagerness in her eye when it met his. “So much the better.”

She was afraid. Afraid of being seen. Afraid of being recognized.

Had any part of the story she’d told him been true?

“Please,” she urged, glancing from beneath her hood toward the door. “May we go?”

Undoubtedly, spending two-thirds of his life in Antigua had affected him, shaped him. People would make assumptions about the sort of man he had become in such a place, and they might not always be wrong. But he had never been the sort of man who could ignore the plight of a woman in danger. His life experiences had not changed who he was.

From birth: Edward Cary, Viscount Ravenswood.

And when his father’s hard heart at last calcified to the point at which it no longer beat, he would be the Earl of Beckley.

Whether anyone would accept him as such after all these years was another question entirely.