Marcus passed the night in the armchair beside Albin’s bed. Twice he thought she stopped breathing, twice he jerked to his feet and bent over her, and twice he discovered a pulse, heard a faint exhalation, and sat back in the chair, his heart thudding in his chest.
He read her letter again, skipping the beginning, concentrating on her reasons for becoming Miss Brown. You thought me bashful, but that wasn’t why I blushed and grew tongue-tied whenever you were close. It was a physical response that I had no control over. Each day it grew worse, and I knew that soon you would recognize it for what it was and dismiss me.
Marcus lowered the letter and looked at the motionless figure in the bed. Charlotte had rated his powers of observation too high.
He found his place again: . . . and dismiss me. I was most anxious to avoid that; working for you was better than anything I had dared hope for. I cannot imagine having an employer I liked and admired and respected more than you.
Marcus grimaced, and rubbed his brow. She placed him on a pedestal that he was ill-fitted to stand on. God knew he had enough flaws.
When I saw you at Gentleman Jackson’s my physical reaction to you almost overmastered me. I was desperate to be rid of it, so I decided to take your advice. I know it’s not advice you would have given to a female, but it was good advice. It worked.
He had a flash of memory: Miss Brown’s nervousness, her tension, her resolute expression, her voice saying, “It’s very important.”
He’d wondered what reason could be so imperative, so pressing, that she would put herself through such an ordeal. Me. I was her reason. Marcus grimaced again, rubbed his forehead again.
He turned the page, skimmed over Charlotte’s description of visiting the Pig and Whistle, the fight she’d narrowly avoided, and focused on her account of his second meeting with her.
I should have refused your request. That was my downfall. But how could I refuse when my actions had caused you distress? I could not be that selfish. And afterwards—after you’d been so kind and so gentle—how could I not love you?
Marcus lifted his gaze to her. Albin lay as still as a waxwork figure.
Had her breathing become irregular?
He jerked out of the armchair and leaned over her. Albin’s breath fluttered against his cheek, so faint he barely felt it, barely heard it. Inhalation. Exhalation. Even and regular.
Marcus sat again, his heart hammering against his sternum. He poured himself a cup of lukewarm tea and sipped, while his heartbeat slowed.
He picked up the letter and continued reading, seeing events unfold through Charlotte’s eyes—the Smiths’ attack at the Honest Sailor, the visit to Whitechapel, the growing sexual intimacy between himself and her. He halted when he came to why Charlotte had refused his carte-blanche and read the paragraph three times. I wanted to spend my life with you. As your secretary, I could do that. As your mistress, I couldn’t. You’ll marry again, and I will not be an adulteress.
The words made him feel shame—and they answered the question he’d asked himself two days ago. If he’d offered marriage instead of a carte-blanche, Charlotte would have said yes.
Marcus went back to the first page and reread the encounter with the Faerie, reread what the woman had said about metamorphosis. I asked her what the dangers were, and there was only one: I’ll miscarry if I change shape while pregnant. She did say that if I die, I’ll change back into my own shape, but I count that an awkward inconvenience, not a danger. Inconvenient for whoever finds me, that is. It won’t matter to me; I’ll be dead.
He grunted. Inconvenient, yes. He lifted his head and gazed at the motionless figure in the bed. What would he do if she died? If Albin became Charlotte? How did one explain the presence of a dead woman in one’s house?
Marcus read the letter through to its end again, caught between anger at her many deceptions and admiration for her courage. I’m sorry for the harm I have done you, she concluded. For pretending to be someone I was not, for lying to you, for abusing your trust. You need not worry that I shall take another person’s shape and try to enter your life again. I give you my word that I won’t—if you can bring yourself to believe it.
He could. He did.
Marcus refolded the letter and placed it in his breast pocket and looked at Albin. At Charlotte. He didn’t agree with all the choices she’d made, but he understood them. He could forgive them. As it had been with Barnaby, it wasn’t a conscious decision, wasn’t something he had control over. It was a choice his heart made: forgiveness.
He placed more coal on the fire and turned his attention to the seven diaries Charlotte had stolen for him. Reading them elicited quite different emotions. Revulsion. Fury. Guilt. He’d failed Lavinia. Failed to notice that Monkwood’s brotherly affection was in fact something warped and foul. Failed to rescue her.
Such ugliness, under his nose, and he’d been oblivious to it.
Marcus grimaced and turned a page. A paragraph jumped out at him: Today I received a letter from my beautiful Helen, asking for more sponges. She wants to reign for another Season, not grow fat with Cosgrove’s child. I shall purchase them tomorrow and take them down to Hazelbrook next week.
Rage flared in his chest. He might have had an heir if not for Lavinia’s vanity, if not for Monkwood’s connivance.
But some of the rage was directed at himself. A blind fool. That’s what he’d been: a blind fool. Too deeply in love to notice that his bride was taking precautions not to have his child.
Why had he not realized?
Why had Lavinia’s maid not realized?
Marcus lowered the diary. Lavinia’s maid must have known about the sponges, just as she must have been aware of the incest. For years, she must have known—and been complicit.
I should have spoken to Monkwood’s servants before I offered for Lavinia.
He glanced at Albin. What would the servants at Westcote Hall tell him about Charlotte? Was she the person he thought he knew—Albin, Miss Brown, the Charlotte of her letter—or did she have another face? A face he hadn’t yet seen.
A housemaid knocked before dawn. She smelled of furniture polish and coal dust. “Sir, Mr. Plaistow’s arrived from Hazelbrook. He says he needs to speak with you.”
“Plaistow?” What was his bailiff doing here? “Are you certain?”
“Yes, sir. He says it’s some’ut to do with Mr. Monkwood, sir.”
“Monkwood?” Marcus pushed to his feet. “Stay with Mr. Albin, please, Lucy.”
He took the stairs two at a time and found Mr. Plaistow in the study, huddled over a newly lit fire.
“Plaistow? What’s wrong?”
“Sir!” The bailiff wore travel-stained riding clothes and a distraught expression. “Something’s happened at Hazelbrook. Right terrible, it is.”
“Monkwood?”
“Yes, sir. He . . . He . . .” Plaistow’s face twisted. “He’s killed himself!”
“Ah . . .” It wasn’t distress Marcus felt unfurling in his chest. It was satisfaction. Satisfaction—and a prick of disappointment. I would have liked to have been the one to kill him.
He crossed to the decanters, poured a glass of brandy, and gave it to the bailiff. “Tell me.”
Plaistow took a large gulp. “Mr. Monkwood arrived yesterday, sir. Almost at dusk. He asked to be taken up to the roof, where her ladyship had fallen. Mr. Gough didn’t see no reason not to let him—he was her la’ship’s brother!”
“He jumped?”
“He jumped, sir. Right at the very spot her la’ship fell. Killed himself dead!”
“Did someone inform the magistrate?”
“Immediately, sir. And then I came straight here. I’d have got here sooner, sir, but the roads—”
“You did well.”
Plaistow turned the glass in his hands. His face twisted again. “Mr. Gough is right cut up about it—”
“No blame attaches to him,” Marcus said firmly. “Absolutely none.”
The only person to blame for Monkwood’s death was Monkwood himself. He’d seduced his own sister, and everything had spread outwards from that act.
Dr. Baillie visited at ten o’clock. “Good, good,” he said, clucking his tongue as he examined the wound. “No more bleeding, no infection, no fever. He’s doing well, sir. Very well.”
“But he hasn’t woken.”
“Give it time, sir. Give it time.” Baillie cast him a shrewd glance. “You look as if you could do with some rest.”
Marcus dismissed this with a shake of his head. “You think he’ll live?”
“I can’t say that, sir. Not categorically. But it looks hopeful. Very hopeful.” Baillie rebandaged the wound, his fingers deft. “Rest, Lord Cosgrove. Let someone else watch over him.”
Marcus rubbed eyes that were gritty with tiredness. “That injury was meant for me.”
Baillie pulled the covers up to Albin’s chin. “Depriving yourself of sleep won’t keep him alive, sir. Or make him heal any faster.”
I know.
But he didn’t take Baillie’s advice, didn’t send for one of the footmen to take his place, didn’t go to his bedchamber and strip off his clothes and crawl into bed.
If Charlotte died, if she changed back into herself . . . He couldn’t leave a footman to cope with that.
But that wasn’t the only reason that kept him here at her side, unable to sleep.
Charlotte loved him. And she might die. And he couldn’t leave her.
Dr. Baillie returned at six o’clock that evening. “Didn’t take my advice, I see, sir.”
Marcus grunted. He pushed up out of the armchair. His joints seemed to creak, as if he’d aged thirty years in the course of the day.
Baillie examined Albin. “No fever. No infection. I’d say he’s out of danger.”
“But he still hasn’t woken.”
“He will.” Baillie pulled the bedcovers up, smoothed them, then turned to face Marcus. He crossed his arms over his chest. “Do I have to get your servants to slip you some laudanum?”
Marcus’s lips twitched in a smile. “I’d like to see you try.”
Baillie laughed, a small harrumph of sound. “Sleep, or I will.” He turned towards the door.
“Mr. Albin will live?”
Baillie halted and looked back. “In my professional opinion, yes.”
Marcus stood motionless for several minutes after the doctor had left. Relief made him feel light-headed, or maybe it was exhaustion. He rang for Fellowes. “A trestle bed, set up in here.”
“For one of the footmen, sir?”
“For me.”
Marcus had intended to check on Charlotte every hour, but he fell asleep within seconds of his head touching the pillow and didn’t wake until the shutters were opened. Weak daylight streamed into the room.
He yawned and rubbed his face. Stubble rasped beneath his hands. “What’s the time?”
“Nine o’clock, sir.” The voice was Leggatt’s.
“Nine!” Marcus threw back the covers and hurried to the four-poster bed.
Albin had moved in the night. He no longer lay like a corpse, arms and legs straight. His head was turned to the side, one leg was bent, his left hand curled by his cheek. His breathing was even, peaceful.
Leggatt came to stand alongside him. “Looks like he’ll wake today, sir.”
“Yes.” And once Charlotte woke, what then?
Marcus reread Charlotte’s letter while he ate breakfast. When he’d finished, he was no closer to knowing what to do. Charlotte had deceived him, but her deceptions had been nothing like Lavinia’s, her motivations not vanity and greed and a desire to hurt him. On the contrary, she’d tried to protect him. Had risked her life for him more than once.
And she claimed to love him.
But so had Lavinia.
He rubbed his forehead, pressing skin against bone. What to do? The faces Charlotte had shown him were remarkably congruent with one another, but how could he know—truly know—that they were real and not an enticing façade?
A footman entered the breakfast parlor, carrying a silver teapot. “More tea, sir?”
“Thank you.”
Marcus watched the man pour, and thought about servants, and then took his steaming teacup to the library and looked up the Westcote baronetcy in Debrett’s Baronetage, Knightage, and Companionage. Near the village of Halstead, in Essex. He found Halstead on the map, and rang for Fellowes.
“Sir?”
“I’m going into Essex. To Halstead. Have my traveling carriage ready in an hour—no, make it a post-chaise.” He didn’t want to arrive at Halstead in a carriage with his arms blazoned on the door. “Someone is to stay with Mr. Albin every minute I’m away. If he takes a turn for the worse, send for Dr. Baillie and inform me immediately. I’ll be putting up at whatever inn Halstead has, under the name of Langford.”
“Yes, sir.” If Fellowes was surprised by this sudden journey, he didn’t show it.
“I expect to be gone three days. When Mr. Albin wakes, don’t let him leave this house. He’s to stay until I return.”
Marcus repeated the instructions to his valet, with one additional command: “Look after Mr. Albin as you would myself.”
“Of course, sir.” Leggatt briskly placed folded shirts in a valise, starched neckcloths, a change of collars. “Don’t worry about Mr. Albin. We’ll take good care of him.”