Harold slapped both large hands onto his head, resting them there for a moment, before hissing out a sigh and dropping them back down. “Damn. I wasn’t supposed to say that. Madame didn’t want you to worry. It was only a few letters here and there from some religious lot. They threatened to set fire to the school. So that we may all properly burn in hell, where we belong.”
“I assure you, it is they who shall burn if they so much as touch Madame. For heaven’s sake, Harold, where else could she be? We must try to be rational and not jump to any conclusions.” She paused for a moment. “Is there somewhere else she would need to be? Try to think.”
“I…don’t know. With her granddaughter?” Harold offered with obvious uncertainty.
The chambermaid fitted the corset around Charlotte and commenced lacing her into it, yanking at her torso. Charlotte turned and grabbed hold of the bedpost to steady herself as the maid continued yanking at the laces. “Yes. Good. You’re right,” she insisted from over her shoulder, back at him. “That forwarding address she gave me, you know the one where I always send all of her letters that I get for the school? Is that where Madame resides along with her granddaughter?”
“Yes,” Harold said.
Well, at least he knew that much. “Good. I will go immediately. Someone has to know where she is. Her granddaughter, her servants. Someone. If she isn’t at home and no one there knows a thing about her whereabouts, then I’m going straight to an investigator. In the meantime, Harold, I want you to send all the students home. Though whatever you do, don’t alarm them. Madame would never forgive us. Inform them to await word as to whether class will resume on the morrow. In the meantime, wait for her in the classroom. She may eventually return.”
After twisting the doorbell of Madame de Maitenon’s residence twice and still receiving no answer, Charlotte used the knocker. Several times.
She leaned back and eyed the curtained windows above, trying to quell the growing hysteria within her.
To her surprise, the door before her slowly opened. A tall, balding man dressed in gray livery eyed her.
Charlotte stepped toward the butler, refraining from grabbing the man’s lapels and shaking him. “Is Madame de Maitenon at home? I am Lady Chartwell. The conductor of admissions for her school. Please. I must know of her whereabouts. She was not in class today and sent no word as to where she would be.”
The butler leaned out the door, then offered in a hushed tone, “Madame is here. But she is not taking any visitors.”
Relief soared through her, exhausting her into a sense of calmness. She glanced upward, toward the dull, gray sky that did not reflect the summer, and quietly thanked her mother. She was safe.
She sighed. “Forgive me, sir, I did not bring any of my cards.” She didn’t have any cards printed, as she never made outings, but that was beside the point. “Could you please be so kind as to announce to Madame that I am here? I’m certain she’ll see me. We are friends.”
The butler grimaced and glanced at the street, clearly aware that the longer she continued to stand on the doorstep, the ruder he appeared. He opened the door and ushered her quickly inside.
Closing the door after her, he scooted her into the corner beside the door, in the direction of the hat rack.
“What in—”
“Shhh.” He glanced toward the stairwell behind him, then whispered down at her, “I apologize, but I am disobeying strict orders by even speaking to you. Madame’s granddaughter is not allowing anyone to call on her. Especially those from the school.”
Her granddaughter? Maybelle? What? Was she holding her grandmother against her will? None of this made any sense.
“I don’t care what her granddaughter says,” Charlotte snapped, trying her best to confine her growing agitation. “All of her students were left waiting for over an hour, and none of us received any word as to why. I am rightfully concerned and demand to see Madame. Now.”
The butler impatiently tapped a gloved finger to his lips in a desperate effort to quiet her. “Madame collapsed at a soirée last night. The doctors believe she suffered from apoplexy, but that is all I am allowed to say. I’ll inform Madame of your visit when she is well enough, but right now, she needs her rest.”
He quickly strode toward the door, then yanked it open and waited with his hand outstretched pointing to the street outside.
Charlotte swallowed, unable to comprehend the horrible words he had just spoken. After all, her own mother had died from the very same thing. When Charlotte had been able to finally rush to her side, her mother could not even hold her hand, let alone speak. She had become naught but a shell of the woman she once knew and loved. For the apoplexy had ravaged her. Completely.
Charlotte fisted her hands until they throbbed with the same thundering pulse that matched her heart. Madame de Maitenon was going to leave her, after all. How eerily fitting that it would end this way.
“I…please,” she urgently whispered, trying to keep her voice steady. “I need to see her. If even for a moment. It would mean so much to me. I’d never be able to forgive myself if something were to happen to her.”
The butler hurried over to her, grabbed her gloved hand, and patted it affectionately as he forcefully led her out through the front door. “Madame is much stronger than that, My Lady. All she truly needs is rest. She will send word when she is ready to see you.”
He feebly smiled, then retreated and gently shut the door, leaving her alone on the doorstep.
Charlotte turned and watched as people and carriages bustled by before her. Everything blurred as tears flooded her eyes. Yes. Her mother had been strong, too. And yet, she had died.
Feeling as though the world were visually slowing, Charlotte grasped the iron railing. One heavy step at a time, she made her way down the set of stairs and onto the pavement. Ignoring the hackney awaiting her, she turned in the opposite direction and walked. She needed time to mourn for Madame in her own way. The only way she knew how. By breaking every single conventional rule.
Lesson Twenty
One cannot fight what is meant to be.
It would be like forcing the English to survive without their sugar and their tea.
—The School of Gallantry
Hyde Park, Rotten Row
hours later
Alexander tightened his gloved hold on the leather reins of his horse and veered closer toward Caroline, who quietly rode on her own horse beside him. Like him, she hadn’t breathed a single word since they had left the townhouse for their morning ride. Truth be told, he didn’t know who was more miserable. Caroline or him.
“Good morning, Lord Hawksford! So lovely to see you out and about.” An older lady, whose name he knew but which eluded him at the moment, waved her lilac silk handkerchief in his direction from her polished barouche as they caught up to his moving horse. A young girl stiffly sat beside the woman, adorned in a bright pink embroidered muslin morning gown with full upper sleeves and ruffles. The girl’s oversized matching pleated bonnet framed a long and miserable plain face and blond curls.
“This is my beautiful and only daughter, Lady Cornelia.” The older lady gestured with the handkerchief toward the young girl. “Tis her first Season. And it has been a good one, at that. So many offers.”
How he bloody wished the ton would simply all hang themselves. By their pennants, as Caroline had once so brilliantly stated. It was due to these sorts that he was mindlessly miserable and would continue to be miserable for at least another eight years. Until all his sisters had been married off.
Alexander gave a curt nod in the direction of the young Lady Cornelia, whose cheeks were now almost the exact color of her gown. And though the girl desperately tried to smile up at him from beneath the shade of her bonnet, it appeared as if she were painfully straining into a chamber pot.
Yes, well, and on that note…
“It was a pleasure. Good day to you both.” He then nudged his heels into the sides of his horse, to quicken the horse’s str
ide, and moved on. As far away from their barouche as possible and into the crowd of other moving horses and carriages.
Caroline urged her horse forward to keep up with him, the long white silk veil that was attached to her black top hat flapping out behind her. She glanced over at him. “Why, Brother dearest,” she teased, lowering her voice, “I do believe you just let your future wife ride away. Society certainly doesn’t get any more nice and respectable than that.”
He grunted. “I’m not in the mood to entertain marriage-minded petticoats.”
She sighed. “You’ve been in a foul mood ever since that night in the cottage. And what is worse, you barely say anything anymore. You’re not still angry with me, are you?”
“No. Of course not.” He simply didn’t feel like talking. For he feared he’d eventually end up on the subject of the one person he didn’t want to think about: Charlotte.
His sister was quiet for a long moment, the thudding hooves of both their horses and all the others filling the air around them. She sighed. “Mary hates all the new gowns you’re forcing her to wear. Last week, she officially stopped eating to prove that point and intends to start planning her own funeral.”
Leave it to Mary to resort to morbid tantrums. “I doubt she’ll resort to starvation. She hasn’t missed a meal, or a second helping, since she was six.”
Caroline muttered something then finally veered her horse dangerously close to his. She leaned toward him from her sidesaddle position and quietly hissed out, “Alex, how can you force Mary to be something ashe isn’t? Or turn me into something I am not? I understand the need for appearances and respect them, believe me I do, but our home is the one place where we can be ourselves. The only place.”
He stared straight ahead of them, glancing at the scattering of trees lining the road where various people stood off to the side watching them pass. “I thought the purpose of this ride was to take in air. Not words.”
Although he tried to remain indifferent to Caroline’s statement, helplessness choked him. It was the very same helplessness he felt every time he thought about Charlotte.
“I don’t like the person you’ve become,” Caroline went on, lowering her voice just enough to appease him. “None of us do. And I know for a fact that Father would have never approved. It appears you are one of them now. Censoring everything and everyone around you for your own purposes.” Caroline veered her horse back to its respectable distance and said nothing more.
Alexander shifted his jaw. For the truth was, they were born unto the ultimate privilege with the ultimate form of responsibility. There were consequences for not following the rules. As Caroline was seeing firsthand. And by not establishing some of those rules inside the house, one could not readily establish the discipline needed to survive outside of the house.
They quietly continued on the designated dirt path, the clattering of hooves, the endless din of male and female voices, and the chirping of birds whirling all around them. All of it meaningless.
“What on earth is that woman doing?” Caroline shifted on her horse, staring out somewhere down the road. “Fresh from the country, you suppose? Or is she riding on an invisible horse?”
“An invisible…what?”
A shout and the whinny of several horses on the riding path before them summoned his focus. Up ahead, through the throng of endless carriages and people on their horses, he glimpsed a woman marching along the edge of the carriage path, ignoring the shouts flung at her and the passing horses and barouches that veered to get around her.
Although the woman’s back faced him and she wore a bonnet that covered her hair, her fitted bombazine gown, her slender physique, and petite height told him without question who it was.
Charlotte.
Alexander yanked his horse to a complete halt in utter disbelief. His stomach flipped. By God. What the devil was she doing? Aside from causing an uproar for walking on the path the ton very much preferred to designate for themselves, she was likely to get herself trampled.
And though his pride urged him to simply let her march straight into the Thames for all he cared, a much larger part of him roared at him to do something. Immediately.
“Follow me,” Alexander snapped at Caroline, affixing his top hat more firmly onto his head. “And be sure to keep up.”
Caroline squinted at him. “Keep up? What—”
Without further explanation, he nudged his heels into his horse and steered himself straight between two carriages. He galloped forward, moving swiftly left and right between tight spaces. All the while, his eyes were trained on Charlotte as she continued to march down the side of Rotten Row.
Why was it that no matter how bloody hard he tried to remove her from his thoughts and from his life, she always managed to reappear?
Glancing over his shoulder, he rushed his horse into a small space alongside the road before another set of carriages and horses came upon him. He gritted his teeth and urged his horse in Charlotte’s direction. Her slender back was still to him, her skirts dragging behind her on the path.
Alexander looked behind him again to ensure there were no oncoming carriages. He galloped forward. When she was a mere few feet away, he slowed his horse down to a walk. Then pulled up right alongside her.
Charlotte marched steadily on as if he and his horse weren’t even there. And oddly enough, she was muttering something to herself.
He leaned down toward her and brought his horse to a complete stop. “Charlotte. What are you doing?” She jerked to a halt, snapping her head up at him. Her dark eyes, which were shaded by the wide brim of her bonnet, snapped up to his face. She stared up at him, clearly stunned. Her pale face now flooded with a burst of color.
Her full lips parted into a hesitant smile. “Alexander,” she whispered up at him in disbelief. “How…what are you…”
Seeing her beautiful face again not only made him realize how much he had truly missed her, but also how much he had suffered since he had last seen her. And he couldn’t help but wonder: Had she even thought about him? At all? Had she missed him? At all?
She set her chin. “I apologize, Lord Hawksford,” she firmly announced, “but fury compels me on. I bid you a good-day.”
She turned away, gathered up her skirts from around her feet, and started marching down Rotten Row again. But at a much more pronounced pace.
What the devil was she even talking about? He was the one who had the right to be compelled by fury. Not her!
“Charlotte!” He moved his horse after her, bringing himself alongside her once again. “You aren’t supposed to be on this path. You do know that, don’t you?”
She marched on, steadily staring straight ahead. “I know full well that I am not supposed to be on it. Which is exactly why I am on it. What I have come to understand in these past few hours is that there is absolutely no point in following the rules anymore. We all die in the end anyway.”
And he thought he’d been a loose fish since they’d gone their separate ways. Alexander straightened in his saddle and scanned their surroundings both in front of them and in back of them.
Men and women were craning their necks to look at him and Charlotte as they all clattered by. Some slowed their carriages or their horses so as to get a better view, raising eyebrows and lowering chins.
He might as well wave, for he was officially embroiled in a full-fledged scandal. Which meant, hell, he might as well finish it off with complete panache and put himself out of his own misery.
Alexander tightened his reins and galloped forward, then settled his horse at a slow trot beside her. He leaned down toward her again. “Charlotte. I’m going to dismount. The moment I do, I want you to take my horse and ride it back to wherever you are going. Do you understand?”
“Please stop talking to me. You’re making a scene.”
“I’m making a scene?” he growled out. “I’m not the one pretending to be a horse.”
Caroline drew her steed alongside him, slowing her pace, and eye
d him. “Alex?” She glanced at all the passing spectators who were gawking, then mockingly raised both brows and lowered her chin in his direction. “You do realize that engaging an unchaperoned lady in public, and on the Row, of all things, is not something respectable men do, yes?”
If helping a woman and keeping her from harm was not respectable, then damn them all, he supposed he was going to burn in hell for it and have to let his sisters rely on their substantial fortunes rather than a pristine reputation. For he’d had enough!
If Charlotte wasn’t going to cooperate on her own volition, he was going to damn well make her.
After jerking his horse to a complete halt, he threw his leg over the other side and hopped down, landing firmly on the ground with a thud. Striding toward Charlotte, he reached out, grabbed her from behind by her corseted waist, and scooped her up into his arms. Charlotte let out a shocked yelp as he hooked her knees around one of his arms, careful not to expose her legs for everyone to see, and forced the rest of her body against his chest.
Alexander turned and marched them back to his horse, ignoring the fact that people around them were gasping and murmuring at their expense.
Charlotte frantically looked around them, her bonnet bumping his chin repeatedly. “Alexander!” She grabbed hold of his jacket and waistcoat and yanked on it. Repeatedly. “What are you…Are you crazed?”
“Yes. And I have you to thank for it. Though take heart, as it appears we are equally matched.”
He stopped right beside his horse, plopping her back down onto her feet, and glared down at her. The building frustration he felt within him constricted his chest.
“We’ll discuss this later,” he gritted out, grabbing hold of her waist in order to hoist her up onto the horse.
She shoved his hands away and quickly maneuvered around him. “Oh, no. I am not joining this parade.”
“My apologies, but you’ve already joined it.” He grabbed her waist again, yanked her back toward himself, and popped her up into the air and into the saddle, settling her sideways. He arranged her skirts around her legs, then rounded the horse and pointed at Caroline. “Take her straight to the house. Serve her tea and let her rest until I return. Above all, do not let her out of your sight, and do not let her leave the house until then.”
Lord of Pleasure Page 19