“Ah.” Charlotte took another sip so that she didn’t have to say anything else. What could she say? What did men say to each other in situations like this? Bloody hell, Charlotte didn’t even know what women said to each other in situations like this.

“Are you a virgin, Beaumont?” Rutledge asked, his grey eyes almost silver in the low light.

“What?” The heat in her cheeks turned into an uncontrollable inferno, even as she tried to reason that Charlie Beaumont would probably not be embarrassed by the question. In the next heartbeat, Charlotte felt the color leach from her face as quickly as it had risen as a new possibility occurred to her. Holy gods above. Surely Rutledge was not going to propose a night of debauchery? A visit to a brothel? That aside from an apologetic cup of tea, he had taken it in his head to introduce Charlie Beaumont to the delights of the fairer sex while banishing the unpleasant memory of his mistress?

“No,” she blurted before she caught herself. “No,” she said again, this time trying to achieve the casual flippancy that she imagined Charlie Beaumont would display. Even as Charlotte Beaumont spoke a truth that, until this moment, no one else in the world knew. There was a liberating irony in that.

Though Charlotte wasn’t entirely sure how much a single afternoon counted against Rutledge’s apparent experience. An afternoon when Allan, the bookseller’s son, had led her deep into the Aysgarth dales and, in the privacy of a sun-dappled clearing, kissed her until she was dizzy. And then his hands had come to rest nervously against the ties of her dress, asking permission. Young and drunk on the idea of love, she had nodded, undoing the first knot herself.

“You’re not married, are you?” Rutledge asked, interrupting her reverie and looking as though he found that possibility absurd. He wouldn’t be the first, Charlotte thought, though not for the reasons he thought. Allan had shyly asked her to wait for him to return from the wars, and Charlotte had agreed to that too. He’d been killed in Vitoria two months later.

No one had asked since then. For her hand in marriage or otherwise.

She shook her head. “No.”

“You have a girl waiting on you somewhere?”

“No.” She didn’t have anyone waiting on her. Anywhere.

“You’re better off, you know,” Rutledge muttered. “Women can’t be trusted.”

Charlotte felt her brows shoot upward. “That’s a little unfair, don’t you think?”

“You’re right.” Rutledge stared darkly into his tea. “Rich, titled women can’t be trusted,” he amended. “For they are all conniving, duplicitous creatures.”