Page 38 of Every Rogue Has His Charm

“I—I can’t read this.” Fanny’s cheeks flushed with embarrassment. “It’s…not written in English.”

“It’s from the duke’s daughter-in-law. There was…an accident,” she explained, quickly translating.

“Oh, dear God,” Fanny said, when she had finished. “And the others?”

“All from his son, begging for her recognition, for a reconciliation.”

Fanny’s face settled into grim, knowing lines. “Which never came.” Her fingers danced over the piles of account books that now surrounded her. “Here. Here are the years.”

Together, they bent over the ledger, scouring its pages for any signpost that would lead to an answer of what had become of the poor young widow.

The first came in the form of a large sum paid to a physician named Allen. The second, the regular payment of tuition to Eton, beginning in the autumn of 1784. “That must, I think, be for the present duke?” Fanny said, her voice uncertain.

“Surely the old duke would’ve wanted his grandson educated in a manner befitting his future role,” Caro agreed.

“This is odd,” Fanny said a few pages later, underscoring a number with her thumbnail. “For the purchase of some property in…in Quebec? You don’t suppose—”

“Oh, dear God. He…he must have intended to send her away. Maxim’s mother.” She spoke his given name without hesitation, without thought.

“Did she go?”

She might, of course, have been an avaricious woman, eager to flee her present troubles. But Caro couldn’t reconcile such a description with the woman who had penned that letter. “I’m not sure. Perhaps she had no choice. He might’ve threatened her life. She must have been persuaded it was for the best.”

“Yes, I suppose. But why not send her back to France?”

“Too close?” Caro suggested. “Perhaps he wanted to make it difficult for her family to intervene. I wonder if—I wonder if he knew.” He, meaning Maxim. A desperately injured boy, his whole life ripped away from him in little more than an instant. Sobs threatened to choke her. “Oh, God. Th-the ship—” Heedless of the disorder she created, she tore through a previously discarded stack of legal documents. “This ship. It went down. He—he was reimbursed for the loss of c-c-cargo. It was bound for—”

“Canada,” Fanny breathed.

It was all the rankest speculation, hardly worthy of the pages of the most torrid tome in Donaldson’s library. Yet her heart sank in her chest beneath the weighty truth of it.

In her hands, she held the final fragments of the curse that had turned her husband into a monster.

Distantly, she heard the knocker on the front door fall, and then a shout and the hurry of footsteps. Her eyes flew to the clock on the mantel; more time had passed than she’d realized. “He’s home,” she said, and began stuffing papers back into the crate. “Hurry.”

The door swung open well before she was ready, and for a moment, her mind frantically engaged in concocting some excuse for prying into his private business, she did not register more than his presence.

“Your Grace,” Fanny exclaimed, leaping to her feet. “What has happened?”

“Just let,” he rasped out, “me catch…my breath.”

Finally Caro saw him, waving Fanny off as he staggered into the room, without hat or coat, shoes or stockings, fine silt clinging to his tattered clothes and his salt-stiffened hair, blood staining his knees and speckling his shirt.

“What happened to you?” Caro screeched, rushing toward him.

He let her wrap an arm around his waist and lead him to a small sofa. Through his damp clothes, she could feel his hard, sinewy body, cold as ice. “I t-took…a s-swim…after all. B-b-boat…sank,” he managed to stammer through blue-tinged lips.

“Fanny, fetch Dr. Trefrey,” she demanded, urging him to lie back, though the delicate piece of furniture was far too small for him to recline fully.

“Like hell,” he ground out as he tipped his head back onto the arm of the sofa, one leg propped partly on the cushions, the other foot still resting on the floor.

“Then fetch Mrs. Horn. Towels, blankets, hot water—go!” She draped him with the only cover the room afforded, her light woolen shawl, as Fanny ran from the room.

“B-b-be f-f-fine, now,” he mumbled, his eyes fluttering closed. “S-s-survived worse.”

Those words were perhaps the only ones that could have dragged her eyes from his face. She glanced over her shoulder toward the crate in the corner, its lid propped against the wall, its contents strewn about the floor. Proof that he had, indeed, survived far worse than she had previously understood.

Somehow, his bleary gaze must have followed hers. When she turned back, he was looking up at her, and the blazing fury she saw in his eyes seemed to have been strong enough to drive the Atlantic’s chill from his blood, at least temporarily.