CHAPTER NINE

Before Charlotte was entirely ready the following day, the promenade hour was upon her.

She had spent considerable time preparing that morning, keenly aware that she mustn’t dress so poorly as to draw attention, yet determined to appear as dull as possible to dissuade Lord Kilby.

It seemed to matter little; the Earl of Kenthurst was interested in no one but himself. He had been talking nonstop for nearly ten minutes already. They strolled along the lengthy promenade in Hyde Park, the air around them alive with chatter. It was a fine day—the rhythmic clip-clop of equine hooves resonating alongside ladies and gentlemen strolling leisurely along the gravel path before her.

She could hear the faint crunch of Sarah’s footsteps behind them, wishing they were simply taking a stroll alone together, without the earl to interrupt them.

“My estate has seen a great deal of change of late,” Lord Kilby was saying, his arm supporting Charlotte’s hand as they made their way around the park. “Much of the rear gardens are being updated. They have been rather dilapidated since my father’s time.”

Charlotte nodded, feeling rather guilty that she was not paying closer attention. The man seemed to speak of nothing except money and how he spent it from dawn until dusk.

She wondered what the duke was up to this morning. The sun was shining brightly, and she imagined him sitting in his garden, perhaps with a cup of tea at his hand. She wondered if he thought of her and if the purchase of the books had played on his mind as it had on hers. She was determined to finish one of them before she saw him again and had been up until late trying to do just that.

“Have you ever been to Hertfordshire, Lady Wentworth?” Lord Kilby asked eventually. He had on a dark red coat today and wore a smart top hat, but the look was slightly spoiled by a rather ugly waistcoat of mustard yellow. Charlotte could not help comparing him to the duke’s immaculate appearance.

“I have not, my Lord,” she answered quietly. “Is that where your estate is situated?”

“Heavens no. My seat is in Derbyshire, but I have often wondered about purchasing a house in Hertfordshire. Do you enjoy walking and things of that nature? I suppose you have had little cause to go far afield over recent years.”

Charlotte pursed her lips as her hand tightened slightly on his arm.

“I do enjoy walking, my Lord, yes. It has been a pleasant pastime, particularly with the weather we have been having lately.”

No conversation she had had with the duke had been this meaningless. Everything she had discussed with the duke had a purpose or highlighted their shared interests. When Kilby was not speaking of his own endeavours, he would focus on the most mundane of topics.

Charlotte hated speaking of the weather and hoped he found her as much of a bore as she found him.

Eventually, and to Charlotte’s great relief, they had completed their circle of the park, and they made their way back to Lord Kilby’s carriage to return home. Once all three of them were seated, however, the earl continued to enthuse over his estate and how happy he was with the renovations that had taken place.

If he enjoys his estate so much, I am at a loss as to why he spends so much time in the city. Perhaps he will go back to it and not return for the remainder of the season.

“I have been rather furious at the loss of my cook of late,” Kilby continued. “She was the best of women but had grown too old to continue the job. I have been simply unable to find a suitable replacement. You will know yourself how invaluable a good cook can be.”

“Indeed, my Lord, our own—”

“The woman I got in to replace her is subpar to say the least. I shall have to seek out a new situation for her, perhaps at one of my smaller properties where I do not entertain so frequently.”

Charlotte could not understand why that comment caused her to feel uneasy, but it did. She wasn’t sure how wealthy Kilby was, only that he moved in the highest of circles about the ton. It felt as though he had not stopped speaking of the homes he had dotted about all over the country. She was hardly au fait with the business world, but it seemed an excessive number of dwellings for a single man of his age.

However, can he afford it all? She wondered.

As they walked into the entrance hall of their townhouse, Charlotte was just turning to bid Kilby a hasty farewell when her father appeared behind them. It was too quick to be a coincidence and Charlotte rather felt that he had been waiting for them to return.

“Lord Kilby, you will stay for supper, will you not?” her father asked.

“Most assuredly, my Lord, if it would not be inconvenient.”

“Not at all; come and have a glass with me before the event. It would be good to spend some time together.”

Her father’s eyes moved meaningfully to Charlotte, and she had to force herself not to stamp her foot in frustration. How dare he?

Once inside her chambers, Charlotte breathed a long sigh of relief as she leaned against the door. Sarah, who had preceded her into the room, removed her own gloves and turned with a grim expression to face her.

Sarah was always very measured and careful in her general countenance, but Charlotte could tell even she struggled to find any merit in the man.

“He must have spoken of those renovations for half an hour,” Charlotte said despairingly. “Whatever does Papa see in him besides his fortune?”

Sarah swallowed, looking rather awkward, but she shook her head. “I am not sure if I am honest. Lord Kilby seems utterly lacking in any sort of quality that would recommend him. But maybe there are hidden depths to his character. Some men can find promenading a rather nervous experience; perhaps he was simply speaking to fill the silence.”

Charlotte scoffed, removing her gloves as she walked to her closet to find something to wear to dinner.

“I cannot abide the man and will have to sit through an entire supper with him now. Papa seems to think him quite perfect.”

Charlotte selected two dresses and held them up as was their custom. Sarah cocked her head to the side with a gentle smile and pointed to the one on the right. It was a pale gown of pink, and something Charlotte wore rather often—she felt that Sarah might not wish for her to go out of her way to impress Lord Kilby either.

The two women tried to speak of other topics as Charlotte got ready, but as the time for the dinner bell drew closer, she became increasingly irritable. She could not bear the thought that she might be irrevocably bound to this man after so short a time in society.

As she walked down the stairs, she took a deep breath, steeling herself for the meal to come. When she entered the dining room, Lord Kilby and her father were already seated at the table, both of them rising as she entered the room.

Charlotte came up short at the smile on her father’s face. She had not seen him so relaxed or jovial for months.

This does not bode well.

As the starters were served, the two men conversed easily about matters of business, and Charlotte sat silently eating her food, thinking of the duke’s happy manners and how much she had enjoyed their time at the bookshop the day before.

“Once I have a new lady to tend to the house, of course, I would welcome her putting her stamp on the place,” Kilby said, his dark eyes moving to Charlotte.

“Charlotte has been running our country estate for the last three years as her mother’s illness progressed.”

Charlotte glared at her father with barely disguised fury as he explained her suitability to become Kilby’s wife. She fidgeted in her seat, taking a sip of her wine and unsure how to respond.

“That is a noble thing indeed,” Kilby said. “I was so sorry to hear of her passing. You must have been a great comfort to her in the final weeks of her life.”

“Thank you, my Lord,” Charlotte said tonelessly. “I was.”

Once again, the bitterness of her father’s absence in those last weeks cut her to the core. He had barely visited her mother before she died. At the time, Charlotte had felt it might be due to grief, but when her mother eventually lost the battle and faded away before Charlotte’s eyes in the early hours of a freezing cold morning in December, her father had seemed relieved if nothing else.

It had been an awful time, the worst in Charlotte’s life, yet her father had been unmoved.

Lord Kilby continued to speak of the work being done to his estate. Charlotte listened more carefully to the sheer number of properties the man listed and became increasingly confused about how he had acquired them all. It seemed strange that he should own so much. He was very well-connected, but he did not possess one of the greatest fortunes in society by any means.

She forced herself to smile and nod at appropriate intervals but felt increasingly suffocated by the company and the enthusiasm in her father’s eyes. Every word the earl spoke could have been laced with gold for all the attention her father paid to it.

Try as she might, there was little more she could do than sit there and listen. Both men were eager to hear their own voices and rarely included her in the discussion. She was very pleased when the interminable dinner ended, and she could retreat to her room and the pages of her journal.

Her heart ached as she read her entries from the days before.

The duke is so personable … he has such kind eyes when he is unaware, I am looking at him … his cousin Elizabeth is so friendly and pleasant.

Nothing about her interactions this evening had filled her with any joy; they had simply caused her dread and discomfort. As she wrote that evening’s entry, it seemed dull and lifeless in comparison to the day before.

A headache pounded between her ears, and she was exhausted and drained as she picked up her quill, writing feverishly, the words pouring forth, trying to untangle the thoughts in her mind and quiet them enough to drag her down into sleep.

***

The following morning, Colin paced restlessly in his study, the morning’s correspondence lying neglected on his desk. His thoughts were swirling with thoughts of Lady Wentworth and their time together.

He had tried to fathom throughout the night why he had felt compelled to buy her those books as a gift. He did not regret it, but he also did not understand it. It would no doubt have shown his feelings for her in some form, and those feelings were far more complex than he had first believed.

Indeed, he had barely been able to get her out of his mind for a full hour, and even his dreams had been plagued by images of her face. In the final dream she had stood holding reams of paper that fell endlessly from her fingers. Her face was turned toward him, her expression grave as the ink began to stain her hands and the folds of her dress.

He had woken in a cold sweat, the hoot of an owl sounding loudly outside his window and the first rays of light coming over the horizon.

Now, he paced in his study, thoughts of Charlotte and what his father had been dealing with filling his mind beyond everything else. He thought of his mother, of his tenants, of the many lives that were tied to his fortunes, and what might occur if he found them to be in peril.

Once more, he was beneath his father’s steady gaze, but increasingly, the anger he had tried to hold back was taking over, and he was feeling more and more resentment for him by the day. He stopped in the centre of the room, looking out at the bright clear sky, the sound of the London Street beneath him.

How can the world continue as though nothing is amiss when everything has been turned on its head?

Nothing was certain, and the darkness was creeping in. The only bright shining point in his existence was a woman he barely knew who had somehow given him the strength to face another day.

A sharp knock on the door threw him out of his reverie, and he bid them enter with a sharp tone that was most unlike his own.

Edward entered the room, his usual jovial and kind expression replaced with one of deep concern. Just as there had been in his dream, Edward held a stack of papers in his hand. True to his word, Colin had sent them to him to analyse, knowing Edward’s skill with things of this nature and valuing his opinion.

Colin’s stomach clenched with apprehension at his old friend’s expression, and Edward came forward as they both sat down.

“You were right to send them to me,” Edward said without preamble, brandishing the papers. “You were right about everything, including the investigation.” Edward leaned in, lowering his voice. “I've uncovered irregularities—funds slipping through gaps, hidden beneath a veil of lawful dealings.” He tapped the papers before him. “Old accounts simply don’t align; transactions masked as investments, but the sums vanish without a trace.”

It was as though the ground were opening beneath his feet. Colin had known that things were amiss, but somehow, hearing it from his friend’s lips was all the more difficult to bear. He had always hoped that perhaps he was misreading things, that his own anger at his father had tainted his investigation—but it was not to be.

Over the next hour, Edward took him through several documents that showed the underlying issues. Just as before, these strange investments kept rearing their heads. Alongside the business dealings that were stable and sure, his father seemed to have plucked other payments out of thin air—as though picking them on the roll of a dice. It simply made no sense!

“I am afraid there is something else I have discovered,” Edward said, his voice lowering further as though he were worried about them being overhead. Colin frowned at him, dreading what was to come next. “I have seen the name of The Marquess of Wensingdale in some of the documents.”

Colin sank into his chair, his fingers flexing against the arms, stopping him from crumpling to the floor in despair. The implications of this were even worse than he could have imagined.

What if the marquess is the third party? What if this is all somehow tangled together?

His thoughts turned instantly to Charlotte. That image from his dream now became something else entirely. Her face was no longer concerned; instead, tears ran down her cheeks as she recognized what he had done to her by associating with her. Their connection could destroy her reputation if the marquess was implicated—the one person he would wish to protect ruined forever.

How can I ever pursue a relationship with Lady Wentworth when her own father might be involved in my father’s past?

The divide between them seemed insurmountable, and Colin could see no path through the darkness that he had conjured in his mind.