Not Quite a Lady

by Loretta Chase

  He saw the same contradiction: the angelic beauty and the grimy belligerence.

  Coincidence. She must have thought so, too. What were the chances, after all?

  Yet when he returned to the house, the first thing Darius did was review the notes he’d made over the course of the last week, about Philip Ogden.

  He thought about it for the rest of the day.

  Even when he lay in bed, aggravating himself imagining the time when Lady Charlotte would be lying with him, in his arms, his mind reverted to the puzzle.

  By the time he fell asleep, he’d decided he must travel to Yorkshire and try to get to the bottom of this. But first he’d better talk to her.

  Tuesday 9 July

  Darius was adding notes to those he’d already made when Mrs. Endicott appeared in the doorway of his study. “If you please, sir, the ladies are here,” she said. “Lady Lithby wishes to speak to you.”

  He had not yet decided how to raise the subject of Pip with Charlotte. He knew he had no tact. He didn’t want to upset her. He needed to think. What he didn’t need was to have to make decisions about furnishings.

  “It isn’t about wall coverings, is it?” Darius said. “She does understand that I can’t be asked about wall coverings. Or curtains.”

  “I can’t say, sir,” said Mrs. Endicott said. “All I know is—”

  “Oh, come, Mr. Carsington, you are not afraid of curtains, I hope,” said a light, laughing voice.

  Mrs. Endicott hastily moved away from the door, and Lady Lithby sailed in, Lady Charlotte behind her, looking utterly angelic in a fluffy white dress.

  Darius remembered her sitting on the desk upstairs and pulling up her pristine skirts, unabashed, uninhibited.

  He took a calming breath and rose from his chair, casually pushing the papers under a ledger.

  “I am deeply afraid of curtains,” he said. “I say I want red curtains. You ask whether I mean crimson or scarlet. You ask whether I prefer brocade or embroidered. Fringed or unfringed. Then you ask about tassels,” he added darkly. “It is a quick route to dementia.”

  Lady Lithby laughed.

  “There’s nothing to be frightened of,” Lady Charlotte said. “It’s only about the laundry.”

  “I know nothing about laundry, either,” he said.

  “We refer to the building on your property where the washing used to be done,” Lady Lithby said patiently. “The dirty linen is accumulating there.”

  “I thought Goodbody sent my things out,” he said.

  “That may be, but a household requires household linens,” said Lady Lithby. “Bed linens. Kitchen linens. The servants’ smocks and aprons and such. As a single gentleman, you may feel it is more practical to send your laundry out or to have a wash maid come in once a week. However, if you plan any change in your circumstances…” She paused very briefly. “…or if you plan to entertain often, you may find it more convenient to hire live-in laundry maids.”

  Where the devil was he to find money to pay laundry maids? He needed money for Pip first.

  He must have looked panicked because Lady Charlotte said, “Your laundry needs almost no repair. We’ve had it cleaned. The maids can begin working as soon as you please.”

  “I have a great deal of business to see to,” he said. “I’ll stop and look at it as soon as I finish here. Then I’ll weigh the pros and cons on my way to the home farm.”

  “That seems a most logical and efficient use of your time,” Lady Charlotte said, looking mightily amused.

  “Indeed, I dare not keep Mr. Carsington any longer from his work,” Lady Lithby said. She turned away and left the room.

  Darius joined Lady Charlotte as she started after her stepmother. He touched her arm to slow her down. “Meet me at the laundry in half an hour,” he whispered.

  “What shall I tell her?” she said.

  “Anything but the truth,” he said.

  It took Charlotte more than half an hour to escape to the laundry because, naturally, this must be one of the days Molly accompanied her to Beechwood. The maid had plenty to do at home, tending to her mistress’s clothing and overseeing the servants who looked after Charlotte’s rooms. Like Lizzie’s maid, she had precious little time to spare for following her mistress about at Beechwood, where one certainly didn’t need her, with servants swarming about like flies.

  But Molly came today, and getting rid of her wasn’t easy. Finally, Charlotte sent the maid to consult with the housekeeper about a heap of Lady Margaret’s gowns they’d found stuffed into a window seat. The consultation would involve tea, Charlotte knew, because Mrs. Endicott would be eager to establish a good relationship with the upper servants of the great house next door. As lady’s maid to Lord Lithby’s daughter, Molly stood near the top of the female staff hierarchy, only a very little below Lizzie’s maid.

  Amid all the bustle—workmen and servants going to and fro, hammering, scraping, cleaning, and so on—it was easy enough to slip out of the house. Sneaking to the laundry was more difficult. It had been built farther away from the house than other service areas because it could be very smelly, especially in the old days, when lye was the main cleansing agent.

  Still, Charlotte knew the place well enough by now to work out a path that would keep her out of view for the most part. If caught, she could manufacture an excuse on the spur of the moment. She’d had plenty of practice lying.

  She didn’t have to lie to Mr. Carsington.

  No pretending. No concealing. Freedom, to be herself.

  The thought made her dizzy.

  Or maybe that was simply happiness.

  She came to the laundry at last and reached for the door handle. At the same instant, the door flew open and a large hand grabbed hers and pulled her inside.

  He shut the door and pulled her into his arms and kissed her.

  Her knees instantly gave way. She clutched the front of his coat and hung on and kissed him back as hard as she could. She didn’t know how to hold back, with him. She didn’t want to hold back. She only wanted to hold on.

  He smelled of outdoors. His coat held the sun’s warmth, and his kiss was warm, too, and so wonderfully familiar. She could have stayed forever like this, pressed against his big, hard body, letting her mind swirl, giddy as a girl’s, while they kissed, endlessly.

  But it ended as abruptly as it had begun. He broke the kiss and put her away from him.

  “We must talk,” he said.

  It was the tone, the serious tone that drained away the warmth, as much as the distance he’d made between them.

  Then it came back to her in a vivid flash of recollection: Geordie’s voice on that last day, so grave. We cannot see each other so often, he’d said. People will talk. I’d better go away for a time.

  “I may need to go away for a time,” Mr. Carsington said.

  She shook her head, unable to comprehend. Too much noise in her head, and too much noise in her pounding heart. Why had he kissed her, only to put her away from him and say he was going away?

  He frowned. “Are you ill?”

  “No,” she said. “No. Only tell me straight out. Don’t break it to me gently.”

  His frown deepened. “When have you ever known me to break anything gently? I scarcely know how. That’s the difficulty with…” He trailed off. “But tell me what’s troubling you.”

  “I don’t know,” she said. Be sensible, she told herself. This isn’t Geordie.

  “It’s your face,” she said. “You look so serious. I wondered if you’d changed your mind…about me.”

  “Would you mind very much if I changed my mind?” he said. He bent his head and peered into her eyes. “Would you mind very much if I set you free to marry a duke’s son, or an officer covered with medals or any other of those paragons your father’s chosen for his mating party?”

  She nodded. “I should mind very much. I think,” she began, and paused because she saw the smile then, so very faint, curving the corners of his mouth. She saw it more
distinctly, a glint in his eyes. “I think,” she said, taking heart, “I would choke you if you changed your mind. I have so looked forward to your courting me. Properly. As you promised.”

  “Properly?” He quirked an eyebrow. “I walked with you after church yesterday. How much more wooing do you want?”

  “More than that,” she said. “I was looking forward to a long, slow courtship. Instead, you barged into it. Though he’s much too discreet to say so, Papa has taken the hint already, I am quite sure.”

  “I should be vastly surprised if he hadn’t,” he said. “The village idiot has taken the hint, I daresay. I am not sure how I could have made my intentions plainer.”

  “Oh, you,” she said. She went to him again and butted her head against his chest. He brought his arms about her, and she looked up into his laughing eyes. “You cheated,” she said. “I thought you said the mating party would go on as planned, and you were going to persuade me of all your perfections and how unlivable my life will be without you.”

  “I said I’d participate,” he said. “I said I’d do a great many things, and I mean to. I never said I wouldn’t cheat.”

  “Very well,” she said. “You didn’t say that. What else didn’t you say that I ought to know about?”

  “Nothing,” he said. “At any rate, it isn’t cheating, precisely,” he said.

  “Then what is it, precisely?”

  “I’m simply stealing a march on my rivals,” he said. “Colonel Morrell will understand, certainly, though he won’t like it. I have no dashing uniform, no medals, no—”

  “Colonel Morrell?” Charlotte said. “How does he come into it?”

  “Ah, yes.” Mr. Carsington studied her face. “I’d forgotten. You have no idea. Not surprising. He isn’t at all obvious. In most cases, that would be a great disadvantage, but he’s no fool, and I’ll wager—”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “He wants you,” Mr. Carsington said.

  She would have laughed, but she could tell he wasn’t teasing her now. Uneasy, she said, “He doesn’t. He can’t. He’s a good friend, no more. I think you see a rival where there isn’t one. I know he’s been invited to join the house party, but that’s because he’s a neighbor.”

  “Colonel Morrell has spent most of his life in the military,” Mr. Carsington said. “He did not rise as rapidly as he did by being a fool. He has a strategy, you may be sure. I daresay he’s observed you as carefully as he might observe a town he means to capture. Having observed you, he must have decided that camouflage was in order.”

  What had Colonel Morrell seen? Charlotte wondered. And how had she failed to see?

  “I should have noticed,” she said.

  “Then what?”

  “Then I should have done something,” she said.

  “Such as?”

  “I should have got him to not marry me,” she said. “I’m quite good at not getting married.”

  “Are you, indeed?” he said. “I wondered how you managed it for so long. I shall be interested to hear your technique. The question has puzzled me no end.”

  She was more concerned with the other puzzle. “Colonel Morrell was in London during the Season,” she said. “He attended many of the same affairs. If he observed me so closely, he must have found me out. Still, I don’t—”

  “Don’t fret about him,” Mr. Carsington said. “He’ll understand my strategy easily enough. I’m the youngest of a nobleman’s five sons. I have no profession, no source of income apart from my father, and no assets except for a dilapidated estate. My main advantage is proximity to the object of desire. He can hardly blame me for exploiting the advantage. He would do the same in my place. Males will do whatever is necessary in these situations, and they are not overly scrupulous about their methods.”

  “You greatly underestimate yourself,” she said.

  “Not as a marital prospect,” he said. “I have considered the subject with ruthless objectivity.”

  “You have overlooked several other assets,” she said. “For instance, there is your considerable intelligence.”

  “Intellect is not necessarily an advantage,” he said. “Many women prefer men stupider than they are, because dolts are easier to manage.”

  “That’s true,” she said. “But remember, most women have a keen aesthetic sense, too, as well as a desire to produce strong, beautiful offspring. Consequently, they prefer men who are tall, strong, and attractive. We must add your prodigious good looks to your list of assets.”

  “That is not where a man wants most to be prodigious,” he said. “Good looks are common enough. We suitors will be more concerned about the prodigious size of our rival’s procreative organs.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” she said. “It’s not as though we can see them and make comparisons.”

  “Ridiculous or not,” he said, “it is true. We all behave as though this is something the average young lady, with limited or no experience of such matters, will take into consideration. As though the girls would take out their rulers or measuring tapes and make comparisons.”

  Instantly she saw her young cousins, innocents, all of them, with dressmaker’s tapes in hands, soberly assessing the gentlemen’s assets. She let out a whoop of laughter, and hastily covered her mouth.

  How on earth was she to behave herself for the next month, pretending to allow him to court her? Properly. She wondered if he knew what proper was.

  “You’ve made me forget what I meant to say,” he said. “We need to—” He broke off and clamped his hand over her mouth.

  Then she heard the voices outside.

  She didn’t have time to hear the conversation. Mr. Carsington pulled and pushed her into a far corner of the room, onto a heap of sheets. He picked up a large basket of laundry and dumped its contents onto her. “Don’t move,” he whispered. “Try not to breathe too much.”

  She heard him walk quickly away.

  Darius had hoped the voices belonged to servants, either coming to deliver more dirty linen or simply passing by. But as soon as he neared the door he recognized the stentorian tones of Mrs. Badgely and the lighter notes of Lady Lithby.

  Grimly he opened the door.

  “Ah, there you are,” said Mrs. Badgely. “This will not do, sir, you know.”

  He did not let his gaze stray to the heap of laundry at the other end of the room. He merely regarded the rector’s wife with an expression of polite inquiry.

  “He is a single gentleman, Mrs. Badgely,” Lady Lithby said. “Single gentlemen often find it simpler to send their things to one of the local laundresses.”

  “Mr. Carsington is not a single gentleman in lodgings in London,” Mrs. Badgely answered. She turned to him. “You are a gentleman of property, sir—a not-inconsiderable property. You will set a bad example, to leave your laundry standing vacant and unused. In doing so, you encourage immoral behavior among the servants. Their sneaking about the stables is difficult enough to suppress. When one leaves buildings unattended, one extends an open invitation to fornicate.”

  Let them, Darius thought. It was a natural instinct, and one of the two main pleasures the lower orders had in their lives: copulation and intoxication.

  Normally, he would have said as much, thereby enhancing his reputation for being aggravating. That was not the way to get rid of Mrs. Badgely in a hurry, though.

  The way to get rid of her was to use the Lithbys’ method: Appear to listen attentively, then do as one pleased.

  He said, “Those are excellent points, Mrs. Badgely. I shall certainly take them into consideration. If it is not too much trouble, perhaps you would look about you as you make your rounds of the parish, and advise me as to any superior candidates for the position. Mrs. Endicott is not familiar with the local families, and I’m sure she’ll be grateful to have the benefits of your knowledge.”

  “She would, indeed,” said Lady Lithby. “In fact, I wonder if I might prevail on you to help us determine what to do with some an
cient gowns of Lady Margaret’s we’ve found here. I think we might keep one or two for fancy dress. But what to do with the rest is the question. There is a great deal of usable cloth in the collection, yet I fear it is too fine for the servants, let alone the poor.”

  “Gowns, really?” Mrs. Badgely was intrigued. “I always heard that Lady Margaret was a leader of fashion in her day.”

  Mrs. Badgely might be a tiresome scold, but she was a woman, too, and Darius saw her eyes light up when Lady Lithby mentioned the gowns.

  In a moment, the two women were gone, the laundry forgotten. He waited until they were out of earshot, then closed the door.

  He hastened to the heap of dirty linen in the corner.

  An apron caught him in the face.

  He saw Lady Charlotte’s upflung hand before he saw the rest of her.

  The household linens and items of attire became a writhing mass as she struggled to extricate herself.

  She sat up, sputtering, a pair of his drawers on her head. “You,” she said. “You.”

  He bit his lip. He coughed. He snickered. And finally, he let it out, a great whoop of laughter.

  She scowled at him. “I was afraid to breathe,” she said. “Then my nose itched, and I dared not scratch it. Then—”

  She broke off, glaring at him—no doubt because he must be grinning like an idiot.

  “What?” she said. “What?”

  “On your head,” he said. “My drawers.”

  She looked up.

  “You have my drawers on your head,” he said.

  A pause.

  Then, “Oh, that,” she said. “Yes. I do that sometimes. Wear drawers on my head. It’s one of those interesting habits one gets to know about the other person as one gets to know the other person.”

  “I should not wear them outside if I were you,” he said.

  “Oh, very well.” She sighed. “I suppose you want them back.”

  “Well, they are mine.”

  She lifted them off with two fingers and threw them at him.

  Seeing her sprawled among rumpled bedclothes, he could easily picture a future involving pillow fights…and underwear flung hither and yon…