Page 82 of To Seduce a Stranger

Feeling the first stirrings of pity, she waved him toward the only chair in the room, into which he settled with a sigh of gratitude. The faint light coming through the window made it easier for her to take in his weather-beaten appearance, his hair flecked with silver. The places to which he had traveled over these last twenty-five years had not treated him kindly. Though she knew he could not be much older than fifty, no one who saw him now would believe it. His adventures, as he called them, combined with the shock of his recent discoveries, had left him rather the worse for wear.

Absently, she reached for her mother’s book, her last connection to the woman who had brought her into the world before leaving it herself. “Yes, I was raised by my mother’s brother in Rouen. He was . . . never kind,” she whispered, tracing one finger across the book’s battered cover. “He never let me forget what had become of my mother. What becomes of the sort of woman who acts with her heart and not her head.”

The sort of woman she had become, despite her best efforts to the contrary.

“We were impulsive,” her father acknowledged, sounding chagrined. “Marrying though we had known each other such a little time. But—”

The book nearly slipped from her hands to the floor. “Y-you were m-married?”

“Oh, yes. I persuaded her to elope with me to Guernsey. By marrying in the Church of England, I hoped to ensure that our union would be recognized here. When we returned to Paris, we planned to wed again, according to the rites of her church. I wanted there to be no objection, on any score. But we could find no priest sympathetic to our plight.”

“My uncle always claimed there was no marriage of any sort.”

Her father’s face settled into harder lines. “From the first, her brother tried to convince her I had played her a wretched trick. She showed him her copy of our marriage lines, but he insisted they were forged. Afterward, I urged her to put them in a safe place, so that he would not try to destroy them. So that if anything happened to me, she would be able to prove she was my wife. I watched her—” His eyes fell on the book resting against Charlotte’s thigh. “Is that—? Did that book once belong to your mother?”

With an uncertain nod, she held it out to him, and he took it reverently with both hands. “Ah, my darling,” he breathed, whispering to a ghost. Lifting the cover with his thumb, he traced over the flyleaf with the fingers of the other hand, as Charlotte herself had often done, though the intricate, inked design had been smudged beyond legibility long before she had been able to decipher it. “You see,” he said, displaying the page to her. “S.C.W.—Simone le Clerq Winstead. My wife.”

“By itself, that proves very little.”

“Yes, but . . .” He opened the book wider; she winced at the cracking sound. Into the narrow channel between the bound edge of the pages and the brittle leather spine, he slipped one finger, withdrew a carefully folded sheet of paper, and handed it to Charlotte. “This, I think, will attest to the truth of my story—the truth of yours, as well.”

Carefully, she unfolded the yellowed parchment and saw, in formal script, the record of her parents’ marriage.

Once more, she leaned heavily against the quilt-covered mattress, overwhelmed at the discovery. By joy, yes, because one scourge had been lifted. But also by sorrow. Sorrow at the loss of her mother. At the indignities Charlotte had suffered all her life because she was believed—wrongly, as it turned out—to be illegitimate.

“I will not ask for your forgiveness, daughter,” he said, holding out the book. “I have done nothing to earn it—as yet. But I mean to try.”

With a shaking hand she took the book from him, uncertain what else she might be willing to accept. Her father’s return might mean another chance to build a family, another chance to be loved. Or it might mean more heartache.

Despite the difficulty posed by her trembling fingers, she managed to fold the parchment and slip it between the pages of the book. “May I ask why you returned?”

“At some point, a man grows tired of adventure. I decided it was time to come home.”

It was, she sensed, a partial explanation. But she did not blame him. Nor did she press him for more than he was able to give. What would Edward’s reply have been if she had asked him the same question?

“When I arrived in England a fortnight ago,” her father continued, “I went first to my sister. It was she who informed me of the misunderstanding under which I had been laboring all these years. You were alive, she said, and recently married to the Duke of Langerton. By the time I arrived in Bath and tracked down his place of residence, however, he had died. I came to find you, to offer what comfort I could, but the servants told me you’d left, gone back to London. I followed you to this very inn, glimpsed you from a distance, and then . . . why, it was as if you simply vanished.”

“I thought you were a spy, sent by my stepson. I fled into the country. To Gloucestershire.”

“Alone?”

She hesitated. “Not exactly.”

“Ah.” He nodded his understanding. “The young man who barged in here to rescue you?”

“Edward—that is, the Earl of Beckley. Yes. Also recently returned after many years abroad. When he saw me in distress that day, he offered his assistance. It is his way.”

Wrinkles formed at the corners of his eyes as he narrowed his gaze, trying to read her expression by the fading light. “I . . . see. Well, I went on to London, hoping to discover where you might have gone. I heard nothing but the vilest gossip. Then this morning, as I was attempting to speak once more with the duke, I saw that young man and another on the doorstep of Blakemore House, also looking for you. The butler told him you were traveling west. You planned to meet here, I suppose?”

Edward had gone to London? To Robert? “No.”

The faintest frown notched his brow, then disappeared. But she knew disbelief when she saw it. “Aunt Penhurst has told you, I suppose, that I am . . . prone to invention. A liar.”

“She would not dare to say as much to me, daughter.” Charlotte could not entirely contain her incredulous huff. “But if she had,” he continued, “I would have told her that your mother was also a teller of tales. Lovely tales, in verse that sang like the stars in the night sky. Those are her poems,” he explained, gesturing toward the book. “Did you know? I had them printed and bound—for her, I claimed, though really, I had more selfish reasons. I wanted to be able to hold her precious gift in my hands.”

Turning the aged volume, she felt as if she were seeing it for the first time. And to think, just a moment ago, she had imagined the book of little real value to her, now that the banknotes had been removed. Slowly, she rose, took three small steps toward him, and laid the book in his lap. Before she could let go, he caught her hand along with it, and held her there, looking not at the book, but at her. “I am so sorry, my daughter. And also glad. So very glad. That does not make much sense, I suppose, but—”

“I understand.” Without extracting her hand from his grasp, she knelt beside the chair. His free hand reached up, as if he would touch her cheek, though he did not. So she tipped her head toward his palm, closing the distance between them. “Tell me about her.”