The Lady of the Lakes

by Josi S. Kilpack

  At least Mrs. Nicholson had stopped asking after the kiss. Charlotte had hated trying to explain why the timing hadn’t been right those first few nights. Tonight, however, she was certain it would happen. She would be alone in the garden with Walter, and they had had so many wonderful conversations that surely they would run out of things to talk about and have to find something else to fill the time.

  The idea made her nervous. She’d never been kissed before and wasn’t sure how to go about it. She could not help but wonder if Walter had kissed Mina during their five-year courtship. The thought made her jealous, and yet eager to meet the same level of intimacy Walter had shared with her. It would plant both women equally in that respect.

  “I am excited to see Romeo and Juliet again,” Charlotte said as they entered the garden. “Might we have dinner at the pub first?”

  Walter gave her a sidelong look. “Are you sure you want to? It will be just as it was last night.”

  “You mean complete with voluptuous barmaids and bitter ale?”

  Walter laughed. “Exactly.”

  “I might try another version of their beer this time,” she said. “And perhaps choose roast beef over bangers, but I enjoyed the meal.”

  “How I adore you,” he said, patting her hand at his elbow.

  “Eh,” she said with a shrug, trying to hide how much she enjoyed his declaration. “Bangers and ale, a good marriage does not make.”

  “But it is a better start than some,” Walter said.

  She smiled, and they walked in silence for a little while.

  “I wonder if I might ask you a question, Charlotte.”

  “Of course,” she said, inclining her head slightly.

  “What happened to your parents?”

  She hadn’t expected the question and felt her steps hitch in reaction. Though they talked of a great many things, they had skirted heavier topics. Charlotte’s parents were certainly heavy topics for her.

  “If it is uncomfortable,” Walter said quickly, “you may ignore the request.”

  “No, we agreed to be open and honest with one another,” she said, trying to ignore her discomfort. She took a deep breath. “They are both dead,” she said, wishing she could leave it there.

  “How did they die? Did you know them?”

  She looked at him, surprised to realize how little he knew of her history. But how could he know what she had not told him?

  He said nothing but the way he held her eyes reminded her of how safe he was, how trustworthy. If they married, their histories would mingle together. Charlotte knew a good deal about his family and heritage. Did she not owe him the same consideration?

  She swallowed and gathered her confidence. “Papa worked for the government before the Revolution, but we lived in Lyon until I was nine years old and my brother and I were sent to London.”

  “Your parents did not come with you?”

  Be brave, she told herself. It is not your sin. “My mother had run off with her lover—a man from Wales—the year before. Papa was heartbroken and struggling with his health enough that caring for us had become difficult.”

  She paused, remembering a conversation she’d overheard a few months after she’d arrived in London. Lord Downshire had been explaining their situation to a friend, and the friend had said he wouldn’t keep a fallen woman’s brats underfoot either. Lord Downshire had assured his friend that was not the motive for their father to send them abroad, but Charlotte had harbored a secret fear of it ever since. She wasn’t ready to tell that to anyone, however. Not even Walter.

  “Papa was nearly twenty years older than Mama, nearing sixty when she left us. He told me about his friend in England, a Marquess with no family of his own who had offered to help us make a new life there. Papa explained that John and I would go first, and he would follow after he finished business in Paris. We sailed in June. Papa died in September.”

  “I am sorry,” Walter said.

  Charlotte looked at the path in front of them. She had not cried for her father in years and would not do so now even if Walter’s sympathy cracked open that dark corner of her heart. “After Papa died, Lord Downshire became our legal guardian. He sent me back to France to be educated, and John went away to a school in England. Meanwhile, Lord Downshire sought out my mother. When I returned to England, she had rooms in Mayfair, and although I never lived with her again, she came to the London house every day and played out her role as mother as best she could.” Charlotte shook her head. “I said that poorly. She was our mama again, as much as she could be with us both away at school. She taught me the tings that daughters need to learn from their mothers and tried to make up for what she had done.”

  “But Lord Downshire remained your legal guardian?”

  “I don’t understand why we were not returned to her. Perhaps it was a promise made to my father. Perhaps she was unable to support us.” She shook her head. “I learned to not ask too many questions and simply be grateful for her companionship, which I was. She died when I was eighteen. The same year John joined the East India Company.”

  “That must have been a difficult time.”

  Charlotte nodded. Her formal education ended, her mother died, and John went to India all in the same year. Excruciating.

  “Were these circumstances what you meant when you mentioned that romance was not the only cause of heartbreak in life? That night at the hotel fire in Gilsland?”

  Charlotte nodded again but said nothing. She was feeling very conspicuous after having revealed so many personal details—details she told no one but that everyone around her always seemed to know anyway. Would he judge her by her parents? Did she judge herself by them sometimes?

  “Does marriage frighten you?” Walter asked, taking her off guard again with another unexpected question.

  She pulled her eyebrows together.

  “Because your parents did not have a happy one,” Walter explained. “Does it make you fearful of matrimony?”

  Charlotte considered that for the first time. Had she feared marriage because of how unhappy it had made both of her parents? “I want to say that their unhappiness has no effect. But when I tink on it, I realize that perhaps I have been afraid. Not of marriage itself, I don’t tink, but of an unhappy one.” She thought harder. “There was a man in London who offered for me last year. We had sat next to one another for only one dinner, and he was at least twenty years older than I, and he had five children.”

  “You refused him?”

  “Yes,” Charlotte said. “But not out of hand. We went to the opera and that one evening was enough. He did not care for me; he only wanted a wife.”

  Walter was quiet. “And that is why you refused him?”

  “His age and situation were factors, too,” Charlotte said. “But he made it quite clear that his interests in me were for his benefit. I shan’t embarrass you by providing details.”

  “I can imagine them just the same,” Walter said. “And I am sorry on principal for those men who can be so trifling.”

  Charlotte smiled as she kicked at a pebble. “I felt sure he was my last chance to have a family, but I could not marry a man who did not love me.”

  “And yet you say you are not a romantic,” Walter said with a teasing lilt, lightening the mood.

  She laughed. “I tink loving and being loved by your partner a practical decision. After all, I believe that two people who love each other can better navigate the difficulties of life together.”

  “You do not believe that love grows over time in a marriage?”

  “Of course I do,” Charlotte said. “But I tink that a marriage must start with love that can grow. To start with respect seems as though you would grow respect. Regard will grow regard.”

  “And resentment will grow resentment,” Walter added.

  “It seems a reasonable expectation,” she sai
d with a shrug. “Therefore the best chance is to enter a marriage with someone you love and who loves you in return.”

  “Even that is not a guarantee of happiness.”

  “No, but it is a good indication.” She looked at him. “What of your parents? Have they a happy match?”

  Walter smiled. “The Scott family is known for having good marriages,” he said proudly. “Generation after generation has made wise choices and enjoyed happy relationships. Not that we are without difficulty. My parents have buried seven children—six in infancy and my oldest brother who died in the king’s service. And my father is not always an easy man, I don’t think. But my parents love one another, and they love their children.”

  “Perhaps that is why you have always been so eager to find a wife.” She watched him carefully, curious as to how he would react to her subtle mention of Mina.

  His smile only faltered a bit. “Perhaps.”

  They walked in silence, and Charlotte realized they had looped around to the entrance again. She slowed her step, not wanting to bring their time together to an end. She had thought before that she felt more like herself with Walter than she did with any other person, and the last few days had proved it. She found herself wanting more time with him no matter how many hours she shared in his company. “You say that your family makes good marriages. I assume those marriages are all with Scottish women, no?”

  Walter said nothing, which she took as assent. “What would they tink of me, Walter?” she asked in a soft voice. “Will I become a mar on their heritage, a break in a long-held tradition?”

  Walter took both of her hands and looked at her with a serious expression. “If I love you, and you love me, they will love us both.”

  “I know you want that to be true, but wanting does not make it so.”

  Walter pulled on her hands, drawing her closer to him. She kept her eyes on his, surprised at his action until she realized what he intended to do.

  There was barely time to react before Walter lowered his head so his lips met hers. They both paused, and then he released her hands and moved his arms around her back.

  Charlotte didn’t know what to do. Her hands were still pressed up against his chest, and an unexpected fear gripped her. Her instinct was to push him away. Mrs. Nicholson had said she should kiss him so she might know the level of their physical attraction to each other, but she found herself frozen. What was she supposed to feel?

  He pulled back after only a moment, and she recognized the vulnerability in his expression. She smiled—it was not forced, but neither was it because the kiss had been some triumphant confirmation. She wanted to love this man, and she wanted to be loved by him in return, and yet the kiss had only been . . . a kiss. It was not disagreeable, but neither had it caused her breath to catch or her toes to tingle. It had created nothing like she had seen take place on the stage.

  “Mrs. Nicholson shall be appeased,” Charlotte said, fumbling for something to say.

  Walter’s eyebrows came together a bit, but then he, too, forced a polite smile.

  “We should return inside,” she said, turning toward the Manor. Walter fell in step beside her, and they walked silently back to the house.

  It took hours for Walter to fall asleep, and then he was awakened by a thunderclap early in the morning. Wrapping himself in his plaid, he moved to the window to see that the fine weather they had enjoyed all week had turned. Near the time he would usually have left the hotel to meet Charlotte for their morning ride, he received a knock at the door. A boy handed him a note.

  Dear Walter,

  I deeply regret that we shall not be able to enjoy our morning ride, however, the Nicholsons are attending a chamber concert this evening and have asked that you join us. It is at the concert hall at eight o’clock. I hope you shall be able to attend.

  Yours truly,

  Charlotte

  Walter penned his acceptance—of course he would accept—then returned to his bed in a dark mood. It was bad enough that the rain had ruined their morning ride, but that their time together would be in a concert hall only added to his misery. Walter had no ear for it the way other people did. To sit in a chair for hours and listen to what was little more than organized noise was the very definition of a poor evening in his opinion. Yet he looked forward to any time spent with Charlotte.

  He thought back to the kiss from the night before, and his mood darkened further. He had been invigorated by the intimacy, but it had not been as rapturous as Walter had expected it would be. He tried not to make a comparison, but it was impossible to ignore how different it was from the first kiss he had shared with Mina.

  That kiss had taken place in the corner of a library they had met in during a dinner party. The excitement of sneaking away from watchful eyes and sharing such a token had sustained him for months—years. The kiss with Charlotte had been . . . flat. Plain. Practical?

  He closed his eyes, not wanting to think that, not wanting to admit how disappointing the moment had been after having been so eager to create it. Was the flatness an indication that he and Charlotte did not have the attraction necessary to be happy with one another in an intimate way? Were the feelings he felt when he was with her not an indication of passionate feeling between them? No matter the accord they might share, Walter could not imagine a marriage without passion. Was Charlotte too practical for such a thing? Had he, after all the forethought and attempts to mitigate heartbreak, invested upon a losing hope yet again? Or had Mina taken his own ability to feel such depth away from him? Was he a ruined man, unable to feel the sizzling draw he had once felt to his very bones?

  The rain tapered off around two o’clock, and Walter took a long walk he hoped would refresh his courage and clear his mind. He returned to the hotel with muddy shoes and a growling stomach. There was just enough time to take supper at the pub and change into his evening clothes before leaving to meet Charlotte and the Nicholsons at the concert hall.

  He put on a smile he hoped looked sincere as he greeted the Nicholsons, who arrived in a fine carriage. He was relieved that his smile was genuine when he greeted Charlotte. Her hair was woven into a crown braid, and she wore a gold-colored gown that caught the light beautifully. Flat kiss or no, he was glad to see her and felt his blood warm at the sight of her.

  “Good evening, Miss Carpenter,” he said, holding out his arm. “You look enchanting—and don’t roll your eyes at my saying so.”

  “Dank you, Mr. Scott.” She laughed and took his arm as easily as if she’d done it every day for years and years.

  How could they be so comfortable with one another and yet have shared such an awkward kiss? Was it the heavy topic of their conversation that had ruined the moment? He wanted another chance, but there would be no chance to attempt again tonight, not while he tried to keep from covering his ears in the concert hall.

  They followed the Nicholsons into the concert hall and took their seats. Charlotte and Walter sat on the end of the row, affording them some privacy, but not enough to do anything but exchange small talk regarding their ruined mornings. Walter did not admit that he’d taken to his bed, beset by blue devils and feeling sorry for himself. Instead he talked of his walk through the moors and how wonderful the heather smelled following the storm.

  The sounds of instruments tuning announced that the concert was ready to begin, and Walter bravely faced forward, though he clenched his teeth. He feared that being seated beside Charlotte would be the only part of the evening he would enjoy.

  The music began, and, in part to distract himself, he turned his attention to Charlotte though he did not look at her directly. She was sitting demurely, her satin-gloved hands in her lap as she watched the performance. She did not seem as moved by the music as she had been during Romeo and Juliet, but she seemed to be enjoying herself all the same.

  His eyes focused on her hands, and he thought back to the one occasio
n when she had taken his bare hand in hers. That had been invigorating. He’d been aware of the intimacy and warmed by her touch. Could he recreate that moment?

  He reached his hand across the armrest between them, slowly so that Jane—who sat on Charlotte’s other side—would not notice. He touched Charlotte’s bare arm just above her elbow, where her glove ended, and felt her startle. But she did not withdraw or give him a warning look. Instead she shifted toward him, as though further blocking Jane’s view.

  Walter took her movement as encouragement and curled his fingers under the fabric of her glove, the skin underneath as soft and smooth as the satin above. He paused, and when she did not protest, he began to slowly roll down her glove. First he revealed her elbow, then her forearm and finally her graceful wrist, pausing a moment to run his fingers from wrist to elbow and causing her to shiver slightly. He then pulled at the thumb of her glove, and she shifted again, her body turned toward him even more while her eyes stayed on the entertainment. Walter used his other hand to help him remove the glove one finger at a time, her breath becoming more shallow and the air between them increasing in warmth—the same warmth he felt within.

  When their eyes met in the dim room, Walter’s breath caught. She was lovely in the dim light, her golden gown sparkling like her eyes. Once her hand was bare, he fit his warm palm against hers, and wove his fingers with hers—watching her eyes the whole time.

  She swallowed and her lips parted—filling him with such longing to kiss her that it was only a lifetime of good manners that kept him from doing so in this public place. She let out one more shuddering breath that made him feel sure she felt as he did, and then she squeezed his hand before facing forward again. She did not take her hand from his as he attempted to concentrate on the music. The connection only deepened his longing and enflamed his desire to make right what had gone wrong the night before.

  The musicians continued on stage, but it seemed all he could hear was the music of his own heart and the rhythm of her heartbeat as it pulsed in her wrist. He relished the feel of her hand in his, warm and soft and strong, and he basked in the overwhelming tension pulsing between them.