NOW, INSTEAD OF RIDING over from Rose Cottage several times a week to check on the twins and meet with John Cummings on estate matters, as had been her practice since Emmaline married, Charlotte made use of the path through the woods to visit her parents, and then escape back to Ashurst Hall.
She hated that word: escape. But she was honest enough to acknowledge that she was behaving very unlike a loving, dutiful daughter.
Was she shallow, selfish, or both? An unnatural child? She knew she might very well be all of those things.
At the same time, she was also avoiding Rafe except for those times they all gathered for meals, or in the main saloon in the evening. Not that he often returned to the main saloon, choosing instead to keep his friend Fitz company.
Anyone would think the man was avoiding her.
Which, Charlotte thought as she bustled along the path she’d traveled the day she’d quite unexpectedly run into Rafe, made it easier for her to avoid him.
She knew what he was doing. He was giving her time before he came at her again with his questions. She was aware of what she was doing. She was taking that time, gratefully.
Since he was almost always on horseback, she kept to the path when she visited her parents.
Since he rose early to breakfast in the morning room before heading out with John Cummings, she took her morning chocolate in her bedchamber.
Since she knew he still longed to ask her about Harold, she chattered about inanities with Nicole and Lydia whenever there was a lull in dinnertime conversation, knowing listening to “female talk” made him uncomfortable and anxious to leave the table.
Even as one of the girls was saying something, Charlotte was searching her brain for the next topic of conversation, and the next. Which was why only last evening she’d ended up giving her permission for the twins to begin planning their London wardrobes.
Charlotte frowned as she made her way along the path, remembering the near bellow that had come from the head of the table when Nicole had clapped her hands in delight and crowed, “See, Rafe, Charlotte agrees we should accompany you to London when you and Captain Fitzgerald travel there in March. She agrees that we can’t be left here to moulder.”
“I didn’t say that!” Charlotte had protested, and then realized she probably had. “You have to go to London in the spring, Rafe,” she told him, knowing he was trying, in his inept, male way, to find a way to be closer to his sisters. “The twins have never been off the estate as far as I know. It seems rather cruel to deny them a short trip to the city.”
“Yes, Rafe,” Nicole had said gleefully. “Cruel, that’s what it would be. Not to mention how dangerous it would be to leave us here to our own devices. You have no idea the trouble Lydia can get herself embroiled in when she’s of a mind to do mischief.”
“Nicole!” the always quiet, well-behaved Lydia exclaimed in embarrassment.
Charlotte smiled into her serviette. Nicole certainly knew how to toss the cat in with the pigeons when she wished to get her own way. Rather like her brother.
“Please, Rafe?” Nicole implored, pressing her palms together as if in prayer as she looked up the table at him. “It’s just as Charlette said. We’ve never been anywhere.”
Charlotte had expected Rafe to put his foot down, firmly, but after his initial outburst, he had mostly been looking at her, his eyelids narrowed as if he was deep in thought. And then he’d smiled, quite evilly, she thought.
“Only if Charlotte agrees to accompany the pair of you and keep you out of trouble. Charlotte?”
“That wouldn’t be proper,” Charlotte had said quickly. “Not to mention most probably impossible, at least for the latter part.”
“Ah, but there you’d be wrong, Charlie, because it would be possible. Even probable. I’ve had a note from my mother, you know, in which she informed me that she will be joining me in residence in Grosvenor Square for the Season, so having you there won’t be considered improper. Besides, it’s the only way I’ll agree to any of this.”
So now Charlotte was going to return to London, this time to reside in the Grosvenor Square mansion of a duke, not a narrow rented house in Half Moon Street, which had been all her parents could afford for the single Season she’d had four years ago.
Although the twins would not officially be out, Rafe would be inundated with invitations to balls and routs, the duke’s private box at the theater, perhaps a voucher to Almack’s. Not that she expected to be included in those invitations, but it was possible. After all, she would be in the residence with the duke, and for all outward indications a guest of his mother; it would be difficult to ignore her.
And she’d be miles and miles from Rose Cottage and all the unhappiness there that she so longed to escape.
Mostly, there would be Rafe. Rafe would be in London.
“Clearly I’m out of my mind, believing anything will come of that, not once he realizes just how important he is now, as the duke,” she muttered as she stepped over an exposed tree root, only to have the hood of her cloak catch on a low-hanging branch she knew was there and always took care to avoid.
She stood still as she attempted to reach behind her and free the hood from the branch, and realized that the woods were almost unnaturally quiet. She heard no birdsong, no soft rustlings of small creatures scampering through the undergrowth. “Drat, everyone’s gone to roost. It’s going to rain, and with me stuck to this stupid tree,” she grumbled to herself as she tugged at the hood with more urgency.
The sun, usually reaching the ground more fully at this time of year with many of the leaves already fallen free of their branches, had slipped behind a sky that had somehow become one huge, dark cloud when she wasn’t noticing, so that it seemed more like dusk than noon.
And then, as if obeying some silent command, the wind began to blow from the southwest. Not a breeze that would make the leaves skitter along the ground at her feet, but a real wind. The sort that howled through the treetops, bending them low even as it picked up fallen leaves and even loose dirt and small stones, whipping everything into the air and dancing it all about to some discordant melody.
The temperature seemed to drop all at once, as if Nature had thrown open a window on winter, and Charlotte shivered, her fingers trembling as she struggled to free her hood from the branch that seemed to pull away from her now, until she was forced to untie her cloak or risk choking on the strings.
Her heart was pounding as she fought to wrest the cloak free, even as her mind sought a reason for this sudden violence. She’d seen many late-November storms in her nearly two and twenty years, but she was certain there had never before been one like this, a storm so abrupt, with so little warning.
She’d read about just such a storm, however. She imagined everyone had either heard the stories or, as she had done, read Daniel Defoe’s The Storm, which chronicled the devastation of more than a century ago that had swept across England. Over seven hundred ships had been sunk in the Channel, an equal number in the Thames. From Bournemouth to London, and beyond, the destruction had been terrible, with fields flooded, houses destroyed, trees downed and thousands of people dead.
How many of those unlucky thousands had been caught out-of-doors in the first blasts of the storm?
That storm had come suddenly, too, without warning, and by the time it had blown itself out two days later, much of lower England had been changed forever.
“Stop that! It’s just a storm!” she warned herself, her warning swept away by the wind.
Wrenching her hood free at last, Charlotte fought to wrap herself in the cloak once more. She drew the hood close around her head, covering her face as dust threatened her mouth and eyes. She turned about, putting her back to the wind, and nearly pitched forward onto the path from the force of it.
She was in danger here, with trees all around her, any of which could snap at any moment and come crashing down on her. She had to get to shelter, and quickly.
Considerably closer to Ashurst Hall than Rose Cottage, Charlotte debated no more than a split second before turning into the wind once more and heading toward Rose Cottage.
Ashurst Hall was huge, made of stone, and could probably withstand any storm. But Rose Cottage was half-brick, its upper floor constructed with stucco and timber, its roof thatch, and completely in the open on all sides.
And then there was her mama’s beloved greenhouse, with all its glass panes everywhere: its sides, its entire roof.
When she’d left Rose Cottage, it was knowing that her papa had just an hour earlier taken the pony cart to the village to replenish her mother’s medicine at the apothecary’s…and her mother had been in the greenhouse, repotting some plants. Her mother, who was blessedly oblivious to the majority of what occurred around her.
“Oh, God, please…” Charlotte prayed fervently as she made progress slowly, fighting the wind, moving from tree trunk to tree trunk, her cloak billowing behind her, catching the wind and slowing her progress.
She untied the strings and the cloak immediately soared up over her head and was gone into the treetops, leaving her clad in only her thin muslin morning gown.
The rain came then, a near wall of water that began all at once, hitting Charlotte full in the face as it fell almost sideways. She was instantly drenched to the skin, barely able to keep her eyes open against the sharp sting of rain turned to small daggers by the force of the wind, even finding it difficult to breathe.
Behind her, she heard a terrible ripping sound, and turned about to see the dead tree she’d just taken refuge behind a few moments earlier seemingly being wrested from the ground by its roots. It fell halfway across the path, its uppermost branches tangled in the branches of other trees.
She wanted to weep in her very reasonable terror. She wanted to find the sturdiest tree she could find and hide herself behind it, out of the dangerous gale. She wanted to curl herself into a little ball and cover her ears to keep out the sound of the wind.
Charlotte kept moving. With blowing rain nearly blinding her, with smaller trees down everywhere now, disguising the path she knew so well, she was afraid she might wander off it, get lost in the woods. But she kept moving. To remain where she was couldn’t be considered an option.
And then, in front of her, she saw Rafe charging toward her along the path. She squeezed her eyes shut, disbelieving what she’d seen, and then opened them again, certain he’d be gone.
But he wasn’t.
His head bare, his dark hair plastered against it, and dressed only in his hacking jacket and buckskins, his fine riding boots sinking into the muddy swamp that the path had become, he half ran, half stumbled toward her, was blown toward her by the wind.
His arms closed around her and she sobbed his name against his chest.
“Thank God!” he shouted against the top of her head, raining kisses down her hair and cheek. “Thank God.” He grabbed her at the shoulders and pushed her slightly away from him. “Are you all right? Can you walk?” he asked, still shouting, but even this close to him she was having trouble hearing his words.
She nodded, and then shivered uncontrollably as she looked up at him, her savior.
He kissed her full on the mouth, and she clung to him, giving her terror to him, taking his strength in return. She had much to fear from such intimacy, but the storm had at least for the moment robbed her of those particular nightmares.
“Jesus!” Rafe put his arm around her shoulders, drawing her close against his side as he headed them both back the way he’d come, this time moving into the wind. Turned half-sideways, he tried to shelter her body as best he could, but Charlotte knew they were both still at the mercy of the storm.
As if nature didn’t believe she had sufficiently gotten the point, the ground shook as a streak of lightning struck close enough to burn its brightness into her eyes. Somewhere close by a tree exploded halfway down its trunk, and she could smell burning wood.
“Rafe! What…what’s happening?” she shouted to him. “Is it the end of the world?”
“Don’t talk,” he yelled into her ear. “Don’t open your mouth—you’ll drown.” And then, his wet hair slapping across his cheeks and forehead, his face running with rain, the man smiled at her. Grinned at her. “Buck up, Charlie! This is no time to be a girl!”
Which, stupidly, caused Charlotte to begin crying in earnest. Just like a female.
Her face burrowed into his armpit, she gave up thinking, gave up worrying that a tree might come crashing down on them at any instant, and concentrated on the enormous effort of putting one foot in front of the other.
She’d lost one of her half boots already to the sucking mud, and the other slipped off her foot as they neared the end of the path. Charlotte didn’t notice.
Free of the trees, the wind and rain were even worse, and Rafe staggered slightly before steadying the two of them and pushing on up the slight incline toward the rear prospect of Rose Cottage.
“Jesus-God.” Rafe stopped pushing forward, if anything, his arm tightening even more around her.
With a real effort of will, Charlotte raised her head and looked toward her home.
Rose Cottage had several brick chimneys, two of them at either end of the house, rising above the roof by a good fifteen feet. At least there had been two of them this morning. Now there was one still standing over the partially destroyed thatched roof, the second having toppled in the wind, to crash through the glass-paned roof of the greenhouse.
What was left of the greenhouse. There could not possibly be a single pane of glass left unbroken, and the entire structure, bereft of much of its support with the loss of the glass panes, looked less like a building and more like a jumble of twisted sticks that had been blown almost sideways by the wind.
“Mama!” Charlotte struggled to break free of Rafe’s tight grip, but he held on, redirecting her to the front of the house and the main entrance. He pulled her up the slippery marble steps and pushed her into the deep embrasure even as he grabbed the brass knocker and beat on the door with all of his might.
It was no use. The servants had to be hiding in the cellars by now, and the sound of the storm would have muffled the banging of the knocker in any case.
“Stay…here!” Rafe ordered.
Charlotte could only nod before, with her back to the door, she slowly slid down it onto her haunches, too exhausted to lodge a protest. It was so good to be out of the wind, the rain. She could stay here forever and ever, and never know what horror might lay behind that door.
She watched almost disinterestedly as Rafe pushed his wet hair out of his face with both hands and looked out into the storm from the relative respite offered by the door embrasure. He gazed left and right, and then plunged into the storm once more, coming back to her a few moments later, carrying the cast-iron boot scraper in the shape of a hunting hound.
How on earth had he freed it from the foot-long spike holding it into the ground? One look at his face gave her the answer. Rafael Daughtry was clearly a man determined to find a way inside Rose Cottage, no matter what it took.
“Charlie! Cover your head with your skirts!” he shouted to her even as he raised the cast-iron piece like a weapon. Charlotte struggled with her clinging wet skirts to do what he said, turning her body away from the door constructed of thick dark oak pierced by a half-dozen leaded stained-glass windowpanes.
It took several tries, but at last one of the panes broke under Rafe’s assault, and then the others quickly followed.
Charlotte got to her feet to watch as the spike on the bottom of the boot scraper was then used to break out the framework, once more marveling at Rafe’s strength as he brought the heavy cast iron against the obstacle again and again and again. He must have been a fierce soldier.
At last he tossed the scraper to the ground and reached an arm inside the broken door, searching for the heavy brass latch.
She heard his low curse.
“It doesn’t open? Someone must have used the key to lock it against the storm! Now what do we do? Rafe, I have to get inside! Mama—Rafe! What are you doing? Rafe, stop it!”
He’d reached down and grabbed the sodden hem of her gown and petticoats and was pulling all of it up around her.
“Don’t fight me, Charlie. I’m too big to get through, so you have to do it. Raise your arms above your head. That’s a good girl. Get inside, fetch the key. This is just in case you rub up against any of the remaining glass in the opening. Wouldn’t want to scratch that pretty face, now would we?” he said just before he pulled the gown completely over her head, shrouding her in it.
Then, before she could protest, he picked her up by wrapping his strong arms around her cotton-pantaloon-clad thighs, and shoved her headfirst through the opening in the door. Rather like a human battering ram laying siege to a castle, she thought wildly. At least he’d been gentlemanly enough to break the glass first; she probably should be grateful.
She screamed as she felt herself bending at the waist in midair, her scream muffled by the material now hanging down over her head and arms, blindly waving those arms as she searched for, prayed for the flagstone floor of the foyer to come up and meet her.
Then she was rolling head over heels, landing on her back in a thud, all her breath knocked out of her and small shiny silver stars swimming in front of her eyes as she struggled to gulp down air.
“You going to rest there all day?”
Charlotte dragged the heavy wet skirt and petticoats off her face. She tipped back her head and saw Rafe’s face leaning half-inside the opening, and realized that if her skirts were still all above her waist, then below her waist there was nothing but her wet and clinging cotton pantaloons that ended above her knees, and her bare legs and feet.
Rafe seemed to realize that, as well, and she watched as he openly raked her with his laughing brown eyes. “Yes, I’d noticed. Very nice, Charlie,” he yelled above the sounds of the storm. “Almost as fetching as your round bottom as it passed by me a moment ago. And yet, much as I’d enjoy standing here with the wrath of Nature at my back, admiring the view—go find the damned key!”
She scrambled to her feet, slapping down her skirts as best she could, and raced to the small table just inside the doorway, pulling open the drawer with enough force to separate it from the table. If not for her grip on the handle, it would have fallen on her bare toes. As it was, the contents of the drawer clattered to the flagstone floor and scattered everywhere.
“Send a woman to do a man’s job—”
“Shut up!” Charlotte shouted at him, dropping to her knees to pick up the large metal key. A moment later the lock was undone and Rafe had stepped inside, slamming the door behind him.
“For all the good that does us if the wind changes,” he said as he turned away from the door. “Come on, Charlie, let’s go find your parents.”
“My mother,” she said, steadied slightly by the feel of his strong hand clasping hers as they headed deeper into the cottage. “My father drove in to the village before I left to return to Ashurst Hall. Please God, he’s still there, and safe. But Mama was in the greenhouse when I said goodbye to her. The storm came up so quickly, Rafe. If she was still out there when the chimney fell—”
“I’m sure she wasn’t,” Rafe assured her as they hastened down the hallway that led to the kitchens, slowing only to glance quickly into the rooms they passed along the way. By the time they’d turned into the short hallway that led to the kitchens, Charlotte was calling for her mother’s maid, the cook, anyone who might answer her.
The kitchens were empty, the fire in the grate smothered by the tumble of bricks and soot that had come racing down the chimney as it toppled.
“We have to check the greenhouse.”
“No, not yet, sweetheart. It’s too dangerous out there, and no one will be upstairs, not with the roof about to come off. The cellars first,” Rafe said as Charlotte tugged on his hand, intent on heading for the morning room, and the entrance to the greenhouse. “They’re bound to have taken shelter in the cellars. Especially after that chimney came down. They wouldn’t have stayed upstairs.”
But the only person they found crouching in a corner of the cellars was young Bettyann, the Seaverses’ maid of all work, her knees knocking together as she rocked back and forth, her eyes wide and wild and staring at nothing.
Rafe stepped forward to question the girl, but Charlotte had already turned and run back up the stairs, leaving him no choice but to follow her. “Charlie! You can’t go out there!” He grabbed her by the arm and pushed her into a chair in the morning room. “Damn it, Charlie, I mean it! Stay here, or I’ll tie you to the chair!”
She nodded, agreeing with him because it was easier. “Find her, Rafe. Please.”
He squeezed her hand. “I’ll find her.”
She could see the wreckage of the greenhouse through the French doors that, miraculously, had not yet shattered. Waiting just until Rafe had pulled them open and disappeared from sight, she tiptoed after him, stopping only when she remembered that her feet were bare. The broken glass would cut them to ribbons.
She raced back to the kitchens, to the rack of cloaks and the boots lined up on the floor below them. She stepped quickly into a pair of her father’s heavy-soled boots and clumped back to the morning room.
Rafe was standing there, waiting for her. His eyes were unreadable, but she saw his jaw muscles working as he kept his mouth firmly shut, his lips a tight line.
“She’s not out there?”
“I need something to—” He cast his gaze around the room, definitely searching for something. Then he walked to one of the tall windows and, with a mighty pull, tore down the heavy brocade drapes.
“Rafe? What are you doing? Whatever it is, I’m doing it with you. She’s out there, isn’t she? Mama’s out there, and she’s hurt. You can’t stop me from going to her, Rafe, you can’t.”
He hesitated, looking down at her feet, and then nodded. “She’s alive, Charlie,” he said, stepping close enough to touch her arm. “She’s alive, but…” He took a breath, let it out in a rush. “Look, I don’t want you to see this, all right? I’ll bring her to you, but you have to stay here. Promise?”
Again, she agreed. She’d agree to anything, if he’d just bring her mother to her.
Bunching up the draperies, he headed back out into the storm, the horrific sound of the wind and rain intensifying as he opened the French doors again, and then closed them firmly behind him.
Charlotte counted to six, unable to wait until she’d reached ten, and followed after him.
She could barely push the door open against the wind, and only managed to squeeze through the narrow opening before the wind, swirling madly inside the ruined greenhouse, shifted again. The door was ripped from her hands, the topmost hinge twisting loose so that she had no choice but to abandon any effort to close it again.
Still, with the greenhouse being on the leeward side of the storm, the wind was only half as fierce as it had been as they’d approached the cottage.
It took some moments for Charlotte to get her bearings, as overturned tables that had held her mother’s precious plants and flowers prevented her from moving straight ahead inside the long, narrow structure. There were bricks everywhere, as if the chimney had hit the roof of the greenhouse and then exploded through it, showering the interior—and anyone inside the structure—with deadly debris.
Charlotte continued to pick her way forward.
“Charlie, get back! Damn it, don’t come any—Oh, Christ!”
She’d nearly stepped on her.
Martha Grimsley’s body lay half-hidden under a fallen tower of redbrick, only her lower torso visible. What had the cook been doing out here, in the greenhouse? There could be only one reason: when the storm had struck, Georgianna Seavers had refused to leave her precious flowers. And Martha, who had been the Seaverses’ cook for thirty years, would never leave her mistress.
Charlotte stared at the lifeless body, unable to tear her gaze away until Rafe staggered toward her. She saw her mother cradled in his arms, one of the brocade draperies wrapped about her protectively.
“Mama!”
“She’s alive, Charlie,” Rafe shouted. “We have to get back to the—Christ! Charlie, move!”
She looked up, as Rafe had done, and saw that the twisted framework of the ruined building had begun to lean even more ominously. She stepped slightly to Rafe’s right and peered deeper into the greenhouse. If Martha had been out here, then her mother’s maid wouldn’t have been anywhere else. “Ruth? Where’s Ruth?”
Rafe shook his head. “We can’t help either of them. And we need to get your mother inside. Now, Charlie—the sky is falling!”
She hurried ahead of Rafe, not stopping until she was back inside the morning room. He ran past her, as the morning room was now open to the elements and no place for her injured mother.
“The cellars, Charlie. We have to get her to the cellars.”
Charlotte followed, stopping in the doorway to look back one more time, stupidly reluctant to leave the bodies of the two loyal servants to the storm, only to slap her hands to her ears as a horrible, unidentifiable sound seemed to shake the entire house.
The greenhouse, its metal and wood solidly bolted to the far wall of the morning room, gave up its fight against the storm and collapsed, taking most of the wall of French doors with it as Charlotte watched in disbelieving horror. Was the entire house about to come down on their heads? Rose Cottage had stood for more than one hundred years. It didn’t seem possible. Nothing that had happened in the past hour seemed possible….
“Charlie!”
Not knowing what else to do, Charlotte pulled the heavy oaken pocket doors shut, leaving that terrible vision of hell on earth behind her as she rushed to Rafe and her mother.