Page 5 of A Perilous Passion

Chapter Three

Mercifully, Charlotte’s mother, Mrs. Lucinda Allston, had been out visiting when Charlotte and Aunt Flora returned to the house after yesterday’s adventures. This morning, however, it soon became clear that neither had escaped the hook.

When Charlotte came down to breakfast, her mother was standing in the middle of the parlor, the water-stained gown in her hands. “What,” she asked ominously, “is this?”

“An accident,” Charlotte answered, assuming an air of innocence. “I slipped into the rill on my way down to the beach.”

Her mama immediately turned to her younger sister. “Flora Hartington! You let her go to the beach? You should have known better! You must understand by now how much Charlotte loves to mope by the sea, having silly daydreams and imagining herself in love with inappropriate scoundrels. I’ve a good mind to make you visit the Emburys, to punish you for your folly.”

“Oh no, Lucinda, I beg you!” Aunt Flora protested. “Last time I went, their baby was sick all over my new paisley shawl. Please don’t make me go—you’re so much better with poor folk than I am!”

Charlotte could see what her mother could not. Flora, for some unknown reason, was very distressed. There were dark shadows beneath her eyes as if she hadn’t slept, and her hair had been scraped up severely into her matronly cap so that not one strand fell about her face to soften it. She looked like an errant nun doing penance.

Stepping in front of her aunt, Charlotte said, “Mama, it’s not her fault. I went to the beach without her permission but came back as soon as I fell over. I realized I was being foolish.”

Aunt Flora cleared her throat and said enthusiastically, “My attention was taken by a quack doctor on the green crying his wares in a most convincing manner. Dr. L. E. Campaign, he’s called, and he had an excellent water to cure the summer rheum. You know, when the flowers are all out and make people sneeze—”

“Enough! Don’t tell me you were slack-witted enough to buy some?”

Aunt Flora, who was dressed to go out, shifted nervously, and her reticule emitted a faint clink.

“Not one, but two bottles?” Mama inquired in frosty tones.

“But if you bought one, the second came at only two shillings,” Aunt Flora explained.

“I’m sure Aunt would be the last person to squander money unwisely,” Charlotte broke in. “Now do please sit down, Mama. Your face is quite red. You know it’s bad for you to get overwrought.” Whether or not this was true was immaterial. It was the only way Charlotte had ever discovered to successfully interrupt one of her mother’s rants.

With a quiet nod of thanks, Aunt Flora hastened out the front door while Mama subsided into a chair and put her hands up to her face. “You two will be the talk of the village.” She sighed. “Whatever am I to do with you?”

Anxious to avoid further confrontation, Charlotte promised to clean the gown immediately after breakfast.

So, in less than half an hour, she was sitting on a bench in the August sunshine with a bowl of soapy water beside her, dabbing and scrubbing at her silt-stained muslin.

If truth be told, she, too, had had a sleepless night, pondering over yesterday’s perplexing encounter. Even now, she couldn’t stop thinking about the brown-eyed stranger and the peculiar effect he’d had on her. Why hadn’t she had the sense to ask his name? Madman or no, he was the most interesting person she’d met since arriving in Portland. And the most fascinating man she’d ever encountered—apart from Justin, of course.

Too bad the stranger had been such a pill about the lace. Although nothing had been said outright, they both knew where the flounce of lace had come from, and by what nefarious means it had made its way to the English coast.

What would he say if he knew that she came from a smuggling family?

She couldn’t expect sympathy from any quarter. She hadn’t even told Justin the truth about her background. Who could possibly approve of her father’s choice of business? He was the notorious Abraham Cutler, who’d made a fortune running a string of ale houses in East Anglia, which acted as the perfect front for distributing smuggled goods from across the North Sea. But he’d made sure that Charlotte and her mother had never been involved in any of his dealings. If the hammer was ever to fall, he’d wanted it to fall upon him only.

Gazing up at the gulls circling on the wind, she reminded herself how fickle Fate could be.

Just one year ago, Papa had been taken seriously ill with a lung fever but had recovered. His brush with death, and doubtless some robust conversations with Mama, had convinced him to turn King’s Evidence—to give up the names of his associates and be rewarded with a Royal Pardon.

This proved his undoing. Before he could complete his confession, someone discovered—by fair means or foul—what he was doing, and put an end to his plan, and his life, with a garrote.

A hot tear fell on her wrist, and then slid down into the washing bowl. No wonder she’d sought solace with Justin. It had all been so utterly awful, having to grab what little they could carry and flee in the middle of the night, lest the infuriated free traders come to silence Cutler’s family, too. Mama changed their name to Allston, after a distant ancestor.

The memory of that time still made Charlotte shudder, and it was the experience of living through it that had made Mama into the termagant she was today.

She wrung out the gown and held it up to the light. Not clean yet. Knuckling the moisture from her eyes, she let her thoughts run to more recent times.

Fortunately, Mama’s younger sister, Flora, possessed a comfortable cottage in Dorset, bequeathed to her by a fiancé who’d died at sea. Charlotte and Mama had invaded her, destroyed her peace, and cluttered her simple living space with all manner of gewgaws covertly rescued from their old home. Aunt Flora now dwelled uncertainly in the midst of them, desperately trying to please her sister—and inevitably failing—but grateful, nonetheless, for a share in the monthly allowance generated by a trust fund set up by Charlotte’s father just days before his death.

Getting used to their more austere existence would have been hard, had Charlotte not met Justin Jessop.

Ah, Justin! His image was instantly before her—a pale-faced, blond young man with long, elegant fingers and an eagerness to please. He’d captured her heart with his beautiful piano playing, forlorn blue eyes, and the pocket edition of Milton’s poetry he always carried close to his heart.