“When did you start pickpocketing?”
“When I six.”
“What?” He swung his head around the doorway and looked into her room at her. “Six? Charlotte!”
“I did what I could to gain my father’s attention.”
He returned to his position against the wall. “So, this is all to gain his attention?”
“I think it has grown into a bigger monster,” she admitted. “I’m so angry with my parents. I do not care if they live or die. They are strangers to me, especially my mother. It has left this wide hole in my chest, which no one has been able to fill. Not even Preston.”
“Your father fooled me. He gained my trust by believing me.”
“Believing you about what?”
“The future, Charlotte. He believed me about where I came from.”
She let go of his hand and sat up straight, her spine off the wall. “How could you think my father was a good man when he hired someone to watch his daughter who believed he traveled back in time?”
“I did think it was odd,” he said, scooting around the doorway. “I still do.” He sat beneath the frame, now facing inside the room and in full view of her. “But I told him the truth. I don’t know why he believed me. I know it sounds crazy.”
He didn’t seem like the kind of man who lied much. Unless he was so good at it, as she was, that he could fool even her. But why would he?
“Tell me what you told him.” For this she wanted to look into his eyes. She scooted to the entryway and sat facing him.
He told her a mad tale about a man named Mr. Green, who Michael believed was involved in another “case” of a missing girl. He told her about the fourth floor Miss Lancaster’s friends claimed had disappeared, with her. He told her about the old brooch and the name Pendragon. How rubbing the brooch and saying the name cast some kind of spell because he ended up here in the eighteenth century. “Are you real?” he asked her quietly, reaching his hand out to her.
“Aye. I’m real.” She lifted her hand and touched it to his.
“What if you’re not? What if none of this is?” he asked, intertwining their fingers, looking at them.
She gave him a worried look. “Oh, but I must be real. I remember my life! I have scars and memories of how I got them!”
His decadent mouth curled into a half-smile. “All right. You’re real.”
She breathed a sigh of relief and then laughed softly with him.
“What in the world is this?” A woman’s voice from in the hall. Her mother.
Michael sprang to his feet.
Her mother’s tone changed. “Who are you and what are you doing in my daughter’s room and with her wearing nothing but a chemise?”
“Oh, please, Lizette,” Charlotte drawled, standing up while her mother lifted her violet veil off her face. “Do not shame yourself with such insincere concerns for my well-being. Did you just drag yourself home? Go to bed. You look horrid.”
She severed her gaze from her mother’s and settled it on Michael. She wanted to see his reaction, for Lady Lizette Whimsey was known as the most beautiful woman in England, even at the age of forty. She did not look horrid. Charlotte wondered if she ever did. She wore a close-bodied gown of violet damask with a pleated back and cool, full skirts of Indian cotton. Her hair was piled atop her head like a golden halo, and though securely pinned, some of her locks had come loose and fell around her shoulders beneath her veil. Her large violet eyes were surrounded by lush dark lashes that worked well with her coy smiles.
“Are you not going to introduce me to your friend, Charlie?”
Charlotte almost snarled at her. “If you must know, this is Investigator Pendridge. Father hired him to keep—”
“—to keep her safe,” Michael finished for her and gave her mother an unimpressed smile—which meant nothing since he was impressed with very little. Charlotte appreciated that he did not want her mother to know why he was here, in this house. To watch her.
Her mother gasped at Charlotte and then laughed, though it sounded more like a witch’s cackle to Charlotte’s ears. “It seems you are keeping her from Sutton, which will please her father.” Her gaze found her daughter’s and her laughter turned quickly into a pout. “The roads are so dangerous in Sutton, are they not, Charlie?”
“Aye,” Charlotte agreed, trying to calm her heart. How much did her mother know about the Horsemen? Then she asked, “Have you been drinking?”
Her mother’s expression changed to hot anger. “Of course not, darling. Have you been keeping yourself out of trouble?”
