Free Heir to Rowanlea by Sally James Page A

being unloaded of innumerable boxes and trunks, and they forgot everything else.
    “What the devil?” Harry exclaimed. “I did not know anyone was coming to stay, did you?”
    All animosity forgotten, Charlotte shook her head.
    “No one is expected, or mama would have told me,” she replied. “Who in the world can it be? Jack’s mother is the only one I could imagine coming without letting us know, and she would never travel with so much baggage. There’s enough there for a household!”
    “Come on,” he urged, and they skirted the garden to halt behind the coach.
    Harry’s groom, recovered from the assault by James, apart from some bruising round his eyes, was standing with the coachman. He saw them and ran across to take the horses, and without waiting for Harry to help her Charlotte slipped from the saddle.
    “Who is it, Pritchard?” Harry asked in a low voice, but the groom shook his head in bewilderment.
    “I ‘eard as it were Lord Claude, ‘ooever ‘e is,” he replied, and Harry, looking puzzled, nodded and followed Charlotte up the steps and into the hall.
    This was littered with luggage, and a somewhat bewildered looking Rivers was endeavoring to restore order from the chaos while having his efforts considerably hindered by a voluble small lady. She, attired in an elegant pale blue pelisse and matching bonnet that caused Charlotte to gasp in admiration, was standing in the midst of the disorder and insisting in a shrill voice, heavily accented, that nothing more must be done until the portmanteau containing her jewels had been discovered.
    Charlotte halted in surprise, Harry just behind her, as they took in the sight of a girl who looked like a maid, and a small man, clearly a valet, searching through the baggage and spreading it around the hall even further. Their startled gaze took in the fact that Lady Weare, almost as dazed as they were themselves, stood in the doorway of the small saloon to the right of the front door, and a tall, florid gentleman dressed in a traveling cloak stood behind her. As they looked, this gentleman turned and spoke to someone in the room behind him, then bent to say something to Lady Weare, but what it was Charlotte could not tell for the confused noise in the hall.
    Then Lady Weare saw them, and a look of mingled relief and apprehension crossed her face. She started towards them.
    “Charlotte! Harry! How fortunate you have returned, for I’m afraid Henry has gone out. Come, my dears, in here. Ah, Claudine, you have it, so now you can leave everything to the servants and come and sit down.”
    She shepherded them into the room and firmly closed the door, though privately Charlotte thought the servants were so confused they would not have been able to understand anything they might have overheard. Standing by the mantlepiece was a slender young man, his height accentuated by the cloak which was hanging from his shoulders and thrown open to reveal a dark green, tightly fitting coat, pale biscuit-colored buckskins, and a somewhat vividly colored floral patterned waistcoat. His cravat was tied in the fashionable waterfall, and a large diamond pin gleamed from within its folds. One elegantly shod foot rested negligently on the firedogs, and he was swinging a gold-handled quizzing glass slowly back and forth at the end of a delicate length of gold chain. He surveyed Charlotte and Harry with a hint of mockery in his eyes as they looked, puzzled, at him.
    Lady Weare took a deep breath and turned to Charlotte and Harry.
    “Such a surprise! A delightful, unexpected surprise. Here are my daughter Charlotte, and nephew Harry. Of course you knew them before, but it is so many years ago, and they have all grown so much in that time! This, my dears, is your Aunt Claudine, Lady Norville, and Claude, the cousin we feared might be dead. And Monsieur de Vauban, your aunt’s brother, who has accompanied them from France. I scarcely recognized you, Claudine, let alone