Sir Charles. He’d always looked at her strangely, ever since she was a child and he’d introduced himself as an old friend of her mother’s, but since her death those looks seemed to have become more intense than ever. He’d gone abroad for a few months after the funeral, but since he’d come back, around the same time she’d returned from Bournemouth, he seemed to be always around Percy, always there, always watching her. There seemed to be no escaping him these days. She was tired of resisting, tired of trying to hide. And if Percy owed him money...surely it was her duty to help repay the debt, no matter what the cost to herself?
‘This must be Rillington.’ Percy leapt up as the train slowed to a halt. ‘I’m going to get a newspaper. All this arguing is giving me a headache.’
‘Wait!’ She grabbed his hand as he passed by, making one last desperate appeal. ‘There’s just something about him. I can’t explain it...’
‘Well, whatever it is, it shouldn’t bother you for long. Charles must be fifty at least.’
‘Percy!’ She dropped his hand at once. ‘You shouldn’t say such things! Someone might hear you.’
‘Oh, I can’t win!’ He flung the compartment door open and jumped out. ‘I won’t be long. Just promise me that you’ll think about it and be sensible.’
‘If I do, will you promise to tell me the truth from now on?’
‘Of course!’ He was already striding away. ‘Just remember, thirty years! You’ll be a rich widow soon enough.’
Ianthe glared after him, seized with the impulse to follow, to grab her bag, leap down onto the platform and run away. But where would she go? Percy and her aunt were the only relatives she had left and now it seemed even they were conspiring against her. She fell back against her seat, watching her brother’s retreating back, silently resenting his freedom. He never worried about how he behaved or how indiscreet he sounded. He never worried about censure at all. How could the rules for men and women be so different? At least no one else had been around to overhear his last remark.
She gave a sudden guilty start, sitting bolt upright again as she met the steely gaze of the man sitting opposite. He hadn’t moved, hadn’t so much as lifted his head, but he was wide awake now, looking straight at her with an expression of brooding, almost ferocious intensity. This time there was no mistaking the frown on his stern features. He looked furious.
‘You’re awake.’ She found herself stating the obvious.
‘As you can see.’
She blinked, taken aback by the scathing tone of his deep, northern-accented voice. He was leaning back in his seat without making even the slightest attempt to sit up, as if she were so far beneath his contempt that there was no need for propriety, the look in his eyes even more insulting than his manner. She felt her mouth turn dry. Besides Sir Charles, no man had looked at her so intently for a long time. In her new, drab garb she’d started to think herself almost invisible to the opposite sex, but now this stranger’s pale gaze seemed to bore straight through her.
Quickly, she glanced out of the window, but there was no sign of Percy. Typical of him to be indiscreet and then leave her to clear up the mess! Clearly this man had overheard some, if not all, of their conversation after all. Now it looked as though he were about to rebuke her for it. Well, she was in no mind for a lecture, especially not today.
‘Sir.’ She lifted her chin up defensively. ‘I beg you to forget anything you might have overheard. It was a private conversation.’
‘Then perhaps you ought not to have held it in a public carriage.’
‘A gentleman ought not to eavesdrop.’
‘I could hardly help it. I should think the whole locomotive could hear your brother’s voice.’
She felt her cheeks flush scarlet with mortification. Even if that were true, which she was afraid it might be, he ought not to mention it. What kind of a gentleman was he?
‘My brother shouldn’t have been so indiscreet. But as you doubtless heard, I already reprimanded him.’
‘Was that a reprimand?’ Grey eyes regarded her mockingly. ‘It sounded as if you were more afraid of having your little scheme overheard.’
Scheme? She opened her mouth to protest and then closed it again. Now that she thought of it, she’d only told Percy to be quiet. She hadn’t contradicted him at all. No wonder this man assumed the worst, though he still had no right to chastise her. They hadn’t been introduced and she was a lady sitting on her own. They shouldn’t even be talking, let alone arguing.
She folded her hands primly in her lap. ‘I do not have a scheme, sir.’
‘Except to marry a man you dislike for his money and then wish for his imminent demise. What would you call that but a scheme?’
‘I’d say you know nothing about it. And since you care so little for good manners, I might add that appearances can be deceptive. You, for example, look like a gentleman, yet you very clearly are not.’
‘Perhaps not, though I’ve been called far worse, I assure you.’
‘I don’t doubt it. But my affairs are none of your business.’
‘On the contrary.’ A shadow darkened his face. ‘I think it every man’s business to know that women like you exist.’
‘Women like me?’ An icy chill raced down her spine. What did that mean? How could he know what kind of woman she was? How could he possibly tell?
‘Schemers. Deceivers. Women who say one thing to a man’s face and another behind his back.’ He let his gaze drop contemptuously, as if he were studying her from head to toe and finding her wanting. ‘You don’t even have the decency to speak well of your quarry. At least I know what I am. You still think yourself a lady, I suppose?’
He turned his face away, staring out of the window as she gazed into thin air, speechless with shock. How was it possible? After everything she’d done to alter her appearance, to alter herself, how could he still look at her and call her a schemer?
She caught her breath, struggling against the old familiar feelings of shame and self-loathing. She’d been called a schemer once before, had tried to plead her innocence then, too, not that it had made any difference. Was everything they’d said about her in Bournemouth true, then? Was there something so bad, so inherently corrupt in her nature that even a stranger could see it?
No! Her mind resisted the idea. And even if there was, it wasn’t intentional. She wasn’t the one scheming against Sir Charles. She didn’t want anything to do with him at all. He was the one scheming against her! And how dare this stranger speak to her so abominably, as if she were the most shame-faced fortune-hunter he’d ever laid eyes on. Whoever he was, he had no right to judge!
‘Yes,’ she began angrily, ‘I do call myself a lady. At least as much as you’re a gentleman. And if you’d been paying closer attention or given me the slightest benefit of the doubt, you’d know that I have no desire and certainly no intention of marrying Sir Charles!’
‘Sir Charles?’ The stranger turned his head sharply at the end of her speech, having continued to stare out of the window for most of it. ‘You mean Charles Lester?’
Ianthe
