LITMIR.BIZ

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barely dented. Lucky, lucky me. Perhaps you believe I should be thanking you.”

      “There’s no need for rudeness, sir,” Charlotte told him, knowing that there was probably every need. She’d unhorsed the man, for goodness’ sakes, ruining his fine clothes, which were apparently very dear to him. She probably also shouldn’t point out that if he hadn’t sawed so on the reins, his mount, which seemed a placid sort, may not have reared at all. No, she probably shouldn’t mention that, either. “I didn’t mean to unhorse you, you know. It was an accident.”

      “An accident, of course. I believe the fool who touched off the Great London Fire attempted the same sorry excuse. You ran into the roadway, madam. Next you’ll probably say it was all my fault for having been on the drive in the first place.”

      “Don’t be ridiculous,” Charlotte said tartly, beginning to lose patience with the man. “You had every right to be here.” Then she frowned. “And why are you here?”

      The hat was all but ripped from her hand as the man finally got to his feet. But when he slammed the thing back on his head he uttered a quick curse and quickly removed it once more; it dropped, unnoticed, onto the drive.

      She went up on her tiptoes. Goodness, he was a large man. Quite imposing. “What is it? What’s wrong? Is it your head? I don’t see anything.” But, then, how could she? He was very tall. Charlotte was rather impressed; she’d known few men who stood a full head and shoulders above her not inconsiderable height. He actually made her feel small.

      “Damn,” he said, touching the back of his head and then bringing his hand forward once more, looking at the blood on his fingers. “Six years of war all but unscathed, and I take a head wound not a mile from home. Inflicted by a woman, no less.”

      Home. He’d said that. She’d heard him. He’d said home. Charlotte’s eyes went so wide she was amazed they didn’t pop straight out of her head.

      While he fished in his pocket for a handkerchief to press against his wound, Charlotte eyed Rafael Daughtry, whom she’d last seen in the flesh the day he rode off to war, and only in her foolish, maidenly dreams in the intervening years.

      He didn’t look at all as she remembered him.

      This man seemed to be twice the Rafe she remembered, or perhaps that was only because he weighed a good three stone more than the gangly youth whose wide, unaffected smile had always had the ability to make her knees buckle. The hair?Yes, that was the same coal-dark hair she remembered, if longer than she remembered.

      But his features seemed sharper, more mature, and his skin was tanned from the sun in the way that the farm laborers were tanned…years and years of exposure to the elements that toughened the skin, made for small crinkles around the edges of his eyes.

      She looked at him again, examining him.

      These weren’t Rafe’s eyes. They were the same color, a warm, rich brown, almost sherry. But they were hard eyes, centuries-old eyes, not the laughing eyes of the boy she’d known. These eyes had seen things she could never imagine.

      Charlotte suppressed a small shiver, one born of vague nervousness coupled with a definite curiosity. Why had she never realized that he would be changed by war, changed by his six long years away from Ashurst Hall?

      “Rafe?”

      He still held the handkerchief pressed to the back of his head. “Pardon me?” he asked, looking at her. Finally looking at her. Was that interest in his eyes? “I’m afraid you have the advantage of me, madam.”

      “If I do, Your Grace, it would be the first time,” Charlotte said, dropping into a fairly mocking curtsy. But she couldn’t seem to curb her tongue. “Perhaps I should have thought to unhorse you six years ago. Perhaps on the day you and George and Harold saw nothing out of the ordinary in speaking freely around me about the charms of the new barmaid in the village, just as if I wasn’t there at all.”

      “Again, madam, I don’t believe I—” Rafe blinked and leaned closer, looking intensely into her face. “Charlie? By God, it is you. And still wreaking havoc all over Ashurst Hall, I see. I should have realized at once. Maybe you should have thrown another apple at my head. I would have remembered then. You always were a bit of a menace.”

      Charlotte fought down the urge to go up on tiptoe again and box the man’s ears. “While you, Your Grace, always were a bit of an insensitive beast. And it’s Charlotte. Not Charlie. I detest Charlie.”

      “Really?” His quick, unaffected smile 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

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