He could picture the young lady’s displeasure plastered to her face.
His mother further reassured her. “It is simply imperative we now return to London to complete our mission. I can think of two eligible marquises and three perfectly good earls who would more than suffice.”
“But . . . !” The lady tried again.
“There, there, Miss Mowry. I daresay you weren’t terribly enamored of living out here in Cumberland with my Roland, now were you? We shall find you a London husband instead, and if we leave tomorrow we’ll be back by week’s end, just in time for all the spring gallery openings.”
Wells snuck away, satisfied.Mamanwould leave and take Miss Mowry with her. He was certain the lady would find some titled, London husband more to her liking.
He crept back down the hall, aware he’d dodged a blow by not marrying Mowry. As, no doubt, had she.
“Charles!”
She heard Wells shout, closer this time. His lordship’s voice bellowed into the servant’s wing, ensuring the entire Abbey heard him.
“Miss Merrinan, you are to see me this instant! I know you are hiding, come out at once!”
Of course she was hiding; she’d not present him her neck. Charles would slip away after dark, visit Ellie and Father overnight, and then make off at dawn. So long as she avoided both his lordship and the Duchess all would be well. It would. It must.
She shut her eyes tight in the cramped broom closet, having shut herself into the nearest hiding space she could find as soon as she’d heard his shouting. Only she was not prepared to have the door wrenched open and Wellesley loom before her, his ability to softly tread floorboards surprising her for the last time, surely.
She blinked in his face before he yanked her out and dragged her down the hall to the next nearest room, slamming the door behind them.
“Why are you hiding from me?” he demanded.
“I should think that obvious, my lord.” Charles willed herself to remain calm.
He dismissed her answer with a snort. “Why did you not tell me who you are?”
“I did, sir. I gave you my name and you even met my family.” She did not understand his question.
“Why did you not tell me of our families’ connection?” he insisted. “The connection to your name?”
“What connection, my lord?” She was in truth now confused. “I met your father but once, as a child, and told you as much.”
“You are named after my Uncle Charles—Lord Carlton Wellesley—whose very pocket watch I gave you.” His eyes searched her face. “Your father was my uncle’s dearest friend on earth, my mother tells me, and saved my own father’s life in battle more than once. Do you honestly knownoneof this?”
Charles mirrored his lordship’s disbelief. “Youruncle?” she blurted. “I assumed my parents wished me born a boy, and named me so; there was no talk of Lord Carlton Wellesley or any such stories as these, sir, else I surely should have known.”
“And your mother?” Wells pressed. “Why did you not tell me she was the Earl of Denbigh’s daughter? Why not seek assistance from her family when your father fell ill? Why come to Cumberland and starve yourselves instead?”
His voice had risen in pitch, even as her own was quick to match.
“Why?” she fumed. “Why indeed, sir. Perhaps because our grandparents planned to have our father committed, that’s why, to the most notorious and worst of London’s heinous, inhuman asylums. We would neither doom him to that hell, nor remain their wards, pretending he’d died from grief. They gave us only that choice, so of course we fled. How could we not? And why should I tell you about my mother’s parents when they chose to disown us, wanting nothing further to do with us once we’d left, pretending we didn’t even exist? We are nothing to the Enrights, we are Merrinans only now, for Cumberland, at least, took us in,gave Father the position of headmaster when he could no longer manage as squire. Cumberland, my lord, accepted him as he was while revering him for the soldier and scholar he’d been.”
Charles steadied herself. “For ten years, Lord Wellesley, we have lived and breathed an honest life here, far from the stench of London’s treachery. You of all men, I should think, might understand this.”
***
Her eyes blazed at Wells with such intensity he was overcome with feeling, his body flooding with emotions he could not begin to name.
He took her hand tightly in his own. “Charles, I would have made the same choice myself if I’d been you, I do understand. Only why wait until now to tell me this? Why allow me to treat you as I did that night, humiliating you and your family by assuming you were a common thief, a village bumpkin, when all the while you?—”
“Allowyou?” She shook her head, wrenching back her hand. “Oh that is rich, sir, truly. As if I’d had any choice at all that night, any power whatsoever to sway you. Don’t you dare place blame on me now, my lord, for your own despicable actions. I was wrong to steal your chickens, I’ll admit, but you forced me into servitude and nothing I said that night or in the days that followed would have made you see me as aught but some impoverished, thieving chit.”
Her words struck daggers to his breast.
“And the truth, Lord Wellesley? Iwasthat chit! I’d become a lowly thief, just as you’d become a pirate, taking your every pleasure. Using your position as Lord of Almsdale Abbey to slake your base desires.”
