The Last Rogue. Deborah Simmons

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       Chapter Two

      Charlotte stood beside her husband as they watched the coach travel into the distance. It was one of their own since Raleigh had arrived in a hired conveyance, but easily spared. Her dear papa often said that Wycliffe had more horseflesh than the entire village. He did seem to possess an excess of both steeds and vehicles, but now Charlotte was glad that she could provide a little something toward her sister’s comfort.

      Charlotte had felt a nagging disquiet ever since she had risen, but had put it down to worry about the twins. When she heard the maid scream, she had raced upstairs, filled with terror, only to know a certain relief that no one was dead or injured.

      Only compromised.

      Charlotte sighed. Although she had seen no other possible course, she had definite misgivings about the match. Raleigh was rather frivolous, while Jane was so serious. Charlotte had never known the viscount to rusticate for long, yet Jane, disdaining London, knew little else. “Do you think we did the right thing?” she asked her husband softly.

      “We had no choice,” Max said, and Charlotte took some comfort from his words. Yet she knew there were always options, and if Jane had been adamant or Raleigh unsuitable, she would not have pushed for the marriage.

      “Was Raleigh very unhappy?” she asked, remembering the usually carefree viscount’s glum countenance.

      “He will soon discover his good fortune,” Max said, and Charlotte could not help but note that her husband had avoided answering her directly. Before she could protest, he added, “Jane is a lovely girl, well-mannered and kindhearted.”

      Charlotte nodded. “I know, but she is so accustomed to being the plain one that she cannot see she has grown into an attractive young woman.”

      “Anyone would suffer being compared to you,” Max said loyally as he put his arm around her.

      Charlotte smiled, but her heart remained heavy. “And so much was made of how I resembled Mama that I fear Jane cannot recognize any other type of beauty.”

      “Raleigh has no such prejudices, and he will soon have her decked out in the latest of gowns, if he can manage it,” Max said.

      The viscount was definitely a tulip of fashion, Charlotte silently agreed, but she was not sure whether he could bring Jane around to his viewpoint. Still, Jane could hardly go about in society without more—and better—clothing. “Surely you do not think Jane will refuse to dress appropriately?” she asked with some concern.

      “No,” Max said wryly. “I mean that our Raleigh is never very flush in the pocket.”

      Charlotte felt a chill despite the warm breeze. “But he always has fine garments and horses, that town house…” Her words trailed off as her uneasiness grew.

      “The town house belongs to his father, who has always kept Raleigh on very tight purse strings. Of course, the family seat is entailed, so it will someday be Raleigh’s, but I have no idea how much money is tied up with the estate itself.”

      Charlotte straightened, disliking the turn of the conversation. “What are you saying?” she asked.

      Max frowned as he gazed off into the distance. “As far as I know, Raleigh hasn’t a feather to fly with.”

      Charlotte groaned. “Oh, Max! How could you let them marry?”

      “His situation is not that uncommon, Charlotte. And he’s not in a bad way…yet.”

      Charlotte was afraid to look at him, fearful of the serious tone of his voice, and the nagging feeling she had known all day blossomed into full-blown alarm. “Yet?” she whispered.

      Max drew her close, and Charlotte braced herself for what could only be ill news. “The earl is a bit of a stickler, as is his wife.” Max paused. “Although I pray it won’t come to that, if Raleigh’s parents are displeased with Jane, there is always the possibility that he may be cut off without a cent.”

      With a low gasp, Charlotte leaned against her husband’s chest, heedless of the eyes of any guests who lingered on the grounds. Although she had grown up in a loving household, she had learned the vagaries of the London elite, and in her experience most of the ton were vultures waiting to feed off their next victim. And poor Jane, fresh from the country, would be ripe for the pecking. Turning wide eyes on her husband, Charlotte cried aloud in guilt and panic. “Oh, Max, what have we done?”

      Raleigh leaned back against the soft cushions and closed his eyes, relishing the return of something akin to reasonable health. Ever since casting up his accounts this morning, he had begun to feel better. Charlotte had filled him with some odious tea to get him through the ceremony, and he had hoped to recover fully after a nap in the coach. But now that his head and stomach were improved, Raleigh found himself more keenly aware of his situation, so much so that sleep eluded him.

      This time he had really done it.

      He had been in scrapes before—running up debts, gambling and even overturning a mail coach that he had driven on a dare in his youth. Yet all other incidents paled in comparison to his current predicament. How the devil had he got himself into it? Raleigh groaned.

      One too many bottles, he suspected. Odd that the more one consumed, the more one had to drink to reach the same level of blissful ignorance. And the longer it took to recover from a bad bout. His head had been pounding so hard this morning that he would have agreed to anything just to stop Wycliffe from shouting. And Wycliffe never raised his voice. Feeling wretched and vaguely guilty, Raleigh had gone along with it all, but now that he was not so ill, he felt something else entirely.

      Resentment, a rather alien emotion, simmered in Raleigh’s breast. It was hard to blame Wycliffe and Charlotte, whom he knew and liked, for his present circumstances—far easier to blame Jane, whom he barely knew and didn’t like. Lifting his head, Raleigh dared a glance at the female across from him. She was sitting rigidly straight upon the seat, her hands clasped tightly in her lap and her face resolutely turned toward the window in a deliberate effort to avoid him even within the close confines of the vehicle. Raleigh was not surprised. She had not looked at him with any equanimity all day, or indeed, for as long as he could remember.

      He had seen her before, of course, having been to Casterleigh many times since Wycliffe’s marriage. He had always been vastly entertained by Charlotte’s numerous siblings, but Jane tended to fade into the background among the more lively brothers and sisters. A grubby urchin, she was always digging in the garden or buried in a book. Quiet, serious and bespectacled, she was the type who either bored him to tears with her lack of animation or irritated him by scolding the little ones.

      Lud, he had known her since she СКАЧАТЬ