caused her stomach to perform a small flip. It was still the smile Charlotte remembered, if not the Rafe she remembered. “I rather like it. Charlie. Why would anyone with the least sense wish to be called Charlotte?”
She silently acknowledged that he had a point. She hated her name, passed down to her from a great-aunt who’d been so kind as to establish a small dowry in exchange for the infant carrying on her name. Still…
“Everyone calls me Charlotte,” she informed Rafe tersely. “But you may address me as Miss Seavers.”
“The devil I will,” he told her, checking the state of his handkerchief and then, seeming satisfied with what he saw, returning the thing to his pocket. He looked at her again. “You grew up pretty enough, didn’t you? But then, you probably frightened all the men away. I know you frightened me.You must be all of what, two and twenty?”
“Not quite, Your Grace.”
“Then close enough,” Rafe said, taking the reins from her and turning once more toward Ashurst Hall, leaving her to either pick up his hat and follow him or just stand here in the drive looking like the sorriest looby in Creation. “I imagine you’ll be putting on your caps any day now, preparing to lead apes in Hell.”
Charlotte looked down at his fine, fancy hat and then raised her skirts slightly to employ one half boot to send the thing sailing off into the bushes. “Indeed no, Your Grace,” she said sweetly, catching up to him. “I’ve simply been waiting for you to return so that we could marry, for I have always loved you from afar. I would think that should be obvious.”
Ah! Now she had his complete attention. And all she’d had to do was tell the truth, shameful though it was. After all, it was the one thing she was confident Rafe would never believe.
“Zounds, I’m sliced to the bone with that cutting retort. You always were a funny little thing, weren’t you?” he said, smiling down at her. “But you’ve made your point, Charlie, and I apologize. It’s none of my business whether you are married or not. So, now that we’ve settled things between us, and I’m fairly well assured my wound isn’t fatal, why don’t you tell me why you were in such a hurry?”
Charlotte opened her mouth to answer him and then just as quickly shut it. The man had worries enough without learning that his sisters had made a May game out of them all for the past many months. “I…I was hurrying to get inside. I hadn’t realized how cold it is until after I’d left the house.”
He seemed to accept her answer.
“Do they know I’m coming?” he asked as they navigated a turn in the drive and Ashurst Hall was at last visible in the distance. “I wrote Emmaline from London, but I may have beaten the post.”
“Yes…about that,” Charlotte said, twisting her gloved hands together in front of her. “Emmaline isn’t here at the moment.” She looked at Rafe, wondering how much he actually did know. “She and her husband have gone to tour the Lake District as part of their honeymoon.”
Rafe nodded. “The Duke of Warrington, yes. I inquired about him in London. A good man, from all accounts. But then who is in charge of the twins?”
That’s a very good question, Charlotte whispered inside her head. “Why, I am, of course.”
“You are? But you’re barely more than a girl yourself.”
“A few moments ago you had me donning spinster caps and leading apes in Hell,” she reminded him, mentally adding to her list of Reasons To Murder The Twins—an already lengthy list. Now they’d made a liar out of her.
“Then you’re staying at Ashurst Hall, and not simply on your way there for a visit? You were merely out for a walk.”
“All right…” Charlotte agreed slowly, wondering how deep a hole she could dig for herself in protecting Nicole and Lydia before the sides toppled down on her head. “That is, I mean, yes. Out for a walk. Visiting my parents. Mama…Mama has taken a putrid cold, you understand.”
“Probably acquired after walking outside in the cold wearing an inadequate cloak,” Rafe said, grinning at her. “There may be a lesson there for you, Charlie.”
She ignored his teasing. “But I’m not the twins’only guardian,” she said, improvising rapidly. “Their governess, Mrs. Beasley, is of course in residence, as well as a household staff numbering more than forty. Nicole and Lydia have hardly been left to their own devices.” Devices, machinations, mischiefs—oh, they would pay for this, the both of them!
“And my mother?” Rafe asked, obviously believing her. After all, why would she lie to him? Emmaline was right; men truly were gullible. “Is she also in residence?”
Charlotte shook her head. “No, I’m afraid not. Your mother, now, as she reminds us quite often, the Dowager Duchess of Ashurst, traveled to London for the Small Season, and from there to a house party in Devon, I believe it is.”
“Is she really the Dowager Duchess? God, I suppose she is. That must have tickled her straight down to the ground.”
“Except for the dowager part, yes,” Charlotte said, smiling as she remembered Helen Daughtry’s struggle between clasping an exalted title to her bosom and being thought old enough to be mother to a duke. “I think she has settled for Lady Daughtry.”
“My mother never settles for anything, Charlie,” Rafe said as he stopped at the bottom of the circular drive that led to the enormous front doors of Ashurst Hall and looked at the building. “I still don’t believe this. I still feel like one of the beggars come to town.”
He turned to look at Charlotte with those soul-deep eyes of his, and her stomach did another of those small flips. Really, she should try harder to control herself. “Now you sound like your cousin George.”
“I suppose I do. They’re really dead? This hasn’t all just been some long waking dream, and I’m about to be shown to my usual small room near the nursery?”
“The duke’s suite of rooms has already been prepared for you, Your Grace,” she told him rather kindly, for she could now at last see traces of the old Rafe, the less-sure-of-himself Rafe in those sherry eyes. “Your aunt Emmaline saw to it.”
“It’s still difficult to believe he’s gone. And his sons…”
“May they rest in peace,” Charlotte said, still looking at Ashurst Hall, all four floors, dozen massive chimneys and thirty bedrooms of it. Somewhere inside those massive fieldstone walls two unsuspecting tricksters were about to find themselves firmly under the control of one Miss Charlotte Seavers.
“Well, that sounded a tad perfunctory,” Rafe said, and she could feel his eyes on her. “You didn’t care for George or Harold?”
Charlotte averted her head as she answered, shivering slightly, and not from the cold. “I really didn’t know them that well these last years, once they’d for the most part taken up residence in London.”
“Yes, the mansion in Grosvenor Square. I stopped there for a week before heading here. I thought my wardrobe needed replenishing. Bought this cloak, that hat.” He looked at her questioningly. “Where’s my hat, Charlie?”
She really had to stop feeling sorry for the man. “It’s Charlotte,
