Chapter Thirteen

C harles stirred from his uneasy doze to hear the outside door opening behind him. He shifted and groaned. He was too tall to sleep in a chair – and a hard chair at that.

“Sir Charles?” Meg stood on the threshold, carrying one of the lanterns from his curricle. She looked windswept and tired, but unharmed, thank God.

“Miss Meg,” he said, standing up, buttoning his coat.

“Where’s Aunt Sally?”

“Asleep in the next room.” He checked his watch. It was nearly eleven o’clock. “Where the devil have you been?”

“I got… Oh, there you are, Aunt Sally.”

“Are you all right, Meg?” she asked, coming through from the room where she and Charles had made love.

After all that had happened between them, seeing Sally felt like a punch to the solar plexus. On a wave of bitter misery, the events of the night rushed toward him. The wonder of having her in his arms, the sweetness of her surrender, followed by those devastating words that pulverized his every hope.

His hungry eyes ate up the sight of her. She’d put on her pelisse and found enough pins to tidy her hair. She looked almost respectable. But her lovely face was pallid and drawn, and the thickness in her voice revealed that she’d been crying.

Hell, he hated that he’d made her cry. His hands clenched into useless fists at his sides as if he prepared to fight some unnamed foe. Although the tragic truth was that when it came to his battle to win this exquisite woman, the dragons had emerged victorious.

“Yes, I’m fine,” the girl said, coming fully inside and shutting the heavy door behind her.

“Then you have no excuse for not coming back to get us,” Sally said coldly. “Leaving us here was wicked and irresponsible, but to stay away long enough to threaten to bring a scandal down on our heads is unforgivable.”

The rebuke clearly startled Meg. “I only intended to be a little while.”

“Even that was reprehensible enough. So why were you so long?”

“I…I got lost.” Meg, who became less chirpy with every second, placed the lantern on a side table. The hand carrying it had shown an increasing tendency to shake.

Charles couldn’t find the heart to be angry with her. “Meg, I warned you that the estate was isolated and hard to find.”

She cast him an apologetic glance. “I know you did. I meant to call on Perdita, then come back. But the lanes around here are a maze. I couldn’t find Perdita’s house, and it’s only good luck that I found my way back here at all.”

“We should be thankful for small mercies, then,” Sally said. “I’ve been worried sick that you’d been attacked or injured.”

“I’m sorry, Aunt,” Meg said in a subdued voice. She cast a glance at Charles, but he shook his head, wishing to heaven that her tricks had resulted in a different outcome. “I’d hoped if you had a chance to be alone, you’d reach an understanding.”

He waited for Sally to flare up, but her voice remained calm. Unnaturally calm, he couldn’t help thinking. “The only understanding we’ve come to is that I have a rattle-pate niece, unfit for polite society.”

“I thought…”

Sally didn’t let her finish. “You’ll have plenty of time for thinking back under your father’s roof, my girl.”

Meg looked aghast. “You can’t send me home.”

“I can and I will.” When she folded her arms, Sally looked as implacable as a stone statue. “Just be grateful that for my sake as well as yours, I won’t tell your father the disgraceful truth.”

“It’s not fair to send me away.” Meg suddenly sounded so young, Charles almost felt sorry for her.

“Miss Meg, I know you meant well today, but perhaps this is for the best,” he said gently.

“You’ve proven yourself unworthy of my trust. You’ve acted in a way that imperiled yourself, not to mention endangered my reputation and Sir Charles’s good name. I just pray we all get out of this without becoming the talk of the Town.”

Sally still spoke in that even, unemotional voice that somehow was worse than if she lost her temper. She’d spoken in just such a tone when she’d dashed all his hopes for happiness. Meg seemed to shrink under every measured, critical word.

“There’s absolutely no need for anybody else to know about this,” he reminded Sally.

“I hope not.” Sally didn’t look at him. “Now tell me you haven’t damaged Sir Charles’s rig or horses.”

The implied insult to her driving skills made Meg fire up. “Of course I didn’t. I’d never injure a horse.”

“It’s a pity you don’t devote some of your care for horses to people, Meg.” Sally sounded deathly tired and sad and defeated.

He’d sell his soul for the right to comfort her, but he was the last person she’d turn to. His gut cramped with stabbing regret. He loathed the desolation he heard in her voice. A desolation he knew that he, not Meg, had caused, however disappointed she was in her niece.

“Apologize to Sir Charles, then for pity’s sake, let us leave this place. With any luck, they’ll still have our rooms at the Angel.”

The picture of remorse, Meg turned to Charles. “I’m dreadfully sorry, Sir Charles. I hope you can forgive me.”

How could he bear a grudge? In her harebrained fashion, she’d tried to help him. It wasn’t her fault everything had come to ruin and despair. He nodded and summoned up a smile. “Of course I forgive you, Miss Meg.”

“You’re too good,” Meg said in a choked voice.

“At least you’re not hurt,” Charles said. “We were worried about you.”

“He is too good,” Sally said, casting him a narrow-eyed glance before she faced Meg again. “I hope you know how you’ve let me down, and you’ll learn from this debacle never to interfere again in matters you’re too young to understand.”

With a pleading expression, Meg stepped toward her aunt. “I am so very, very sorry, Aunt Sally.” The tears she’d been bravely fighting started to pour down her cheeks. “If I’ve hurt you in any way, I’ll…I’ll go into a convent and never speak to anyone ever again.”

The extravagant claim at last pierced Sally’s severe manner. To Charles’s relief, her lips quirked in a frail imitation of her usual brilliant smile. She’d been holding herself so stiffly that he’d feared she must break. At least now she looked human and not like a marble deity.

“There’s no need to go overboard. If we ban you from the stables for a year, that should be punishment enough.”

“Ban me from…” Meg’s face brightened with relief. “You’re having a joke.”

“I am.” She opened her arms to her niece. “Now come and give me a hug, you dreadful child.”

Meg stumbled forward to sob a litany of promises and apologies into her aunt’s shoulder. When she pulled away, she was sniffing and breathing unsteadily. “I’m so, so sorry.”

Sally’s smile was so disconsolate, Charles wanted to smash something. She dug in her pocket for a handkerchief which she passed to her niece. “We’ll say no more about it.”

Meg choked out, “What about the scandal?”

“We’ll deal with that if we must,” Charles said firmly. At the moment, gossip was the least of his worries. “At those big coaching inns, travelers come and go at all hours. If we three turn up past midnight, I doubt questions will be asked.”

Meg wiped her face and looked a little more cheerful. She shot her aunt a glance under her lashes. “So if there’s no scandal, can I stay with you in London?”

“I’m sorry, Meg.” Sally shook her head. Charles hated to see her return to looking like the figure of justice carved on a courthouse. “You’ve shown I can’t trust you. You’re safer with your father and mother.”

Meg’s face fell. “Aunt…”

Charles bit back the impulse to interfere. He had no right to ask Sally to relent. He had no rights where Sally was concerned at all, blast it all to hell.

“My mind is made up.” Sally turned away to find her bonnet. She tied it on, then opened the door, letting the moonlight flood in. “Shall we go?”

Feeling like he bore the weight of the world on his shoulders, Charles collected his hat. He’d experienced such extremes of emotion since he’d come into this house. Right now, he hoped to God he never saw the lovely little hunting box again. He had a bloody good mind to demolish it, so it lay in ruins along with his every hope of happiness.

With the grim awareness that once they left Sans Souci , Sally was lost to him forever, he lifted the lantern. As Sally headed outside, he offered his arm to Meg.

“Sir Charles, I wanted…” Meg muttered under her breath, as she hooked her hand around his bent elbow.

“So did I, Meg,” he said in a bleak voice. “But I made a complete mess of everything.”

She looked up at him hopefully. “But surely you can fix it?”

He watched Sally trudge across the gravel to the carriage. She usually rushed at life with a verve he found irresistible. But tonight he couldn’t mistake the slump of her shoulders and the way every step seemed an effort.

“No,” he said in a flat voice that concealed the rage and devastation in his heart. “No, some things are broken forever.”