Mrs. Perry snapped the letter from her husband’s quivering hand, skimmed the address, then tossed it aside. “No such person here. Send it right back where it came from.”
Twist, twist, went the vicar’s hands. “This cannot be. I knew if we allowed—but there, it is done. But it should never have been done!”
“What’s done?” Maggie picked up the fallen letter. “Who is Charlotte Pearl? Did they spell Aunt Charlotte’s name incorrectly?”
“I am sure it’s an accident,” Charlotte said in a careful voice. “The names are not so dissimilar. Someone must have written my name ill, that is all.”
But she knew this was not the case. No one knew Charlotte Perry was also Charlotte Pearl except for her parents and Edward Selwyn. And Edward was pompous, but he did not have a bad heart. He was not cruel enough to expose her secret.
“Who brought this letter into the house?” she asked.
“Barrett fetched the post,” quaked the reverend. “As usual. It was . . . there. As though it belonged.”
“It doesn’t belong,” Charlotte murmured. She had more questions: Was it handled in the village? Did anyone there know of the London courtesan, gone missing a month ago? But the more she asked, the more attention she would draw. Maggie studied it still, brow creased, hair unruly about her face.
I never yet plaited it with silk ribbons, Charlotte realized.
She felt distant, unreal, as though she were watching a theatrical performance. The Secretive Courtesan’s Most Secret of Family Secrets. With an epilogue of more secrets.
She pressed a hand over her mouth, forcing back a wild giggle.
Benedict leaned in and whispered in her ear, “Some letter, I gather. Is it bad? Ought I to do something, or just stand here like a statue?”
“A statue . . . please. Please don’t leave.” She couldn’t hold his hand now, but she liked having him near.
“Let me see it, dearest,” she said, and Maggie handed it over readily enough. Charlotte turned it over to check the seal. The origin from which it had been posted.
“It’s franked,” she realized. The letter had required no postage, meaning it was sent by a member of Parliament or a peer.
And then she knew who it was from.
The Marquess of Randolph, whose heart was as shriveled as a walnut.
“I’m sure it’s nothing,” she said again, though this time she knew it was a lie. “Excuse me, Papa. I’m sorry that your lessons were interrupted, Mama. Maggie.”
“Lypámai.” Maggie looked pleased with herself. “That’s the way people apologize in Greek.”
“That might be how some people get out of a difficult situation,” Benedict said. “But not the people who hang about the ports.”
“You must teach me some of their vocabulary,” said Mrs. Perry. The vicar closed his eyes.
Charlotte began to sidle past them all, making her way through the corridor. She hardly knew where. The first empty room she encountered. She would open the letter and see what it said. She did not want to open the letter. She had to open the letter.
With a light touch on her shoulder, Benedict caught up to her. “Would you like me to bear you company while you read your post?”
There was so little he did not know about her now. “Yes. Yes, I would. It is addressed to my”—she lowered her voice—“London name.”
He cursed. “All right. The dining room. Anyone in there?”
No, the small chamber was empty. She leaned against the wall in the far corner, wishing she could disappear into the paper. A heavy maze of vines and acanthus that looked like nothing anywhere in England.
Benedict stood next to her, seeming relaxed, but with a coiled awareness that made his body hum in harmony with hers. “I would read it for you if I could.”
“I know. I thank you.” With a deep breath, she added, “Best done at once.”
She cracked the seal—and almost laughed at the brevity of the message.
Pearl,
I do not excuse you from our arrangement. If you return to your quarters in London before the end of the week, all will be forgiven.
Randolph
“A man of few words, in or out of the bedchamber,” she muttered, refolding the letter and stuffing it into a pocket of her dress.
She told Benedict what it said. “He is mistaken, though. All will not be forgiven.”
“By him, maybe, but it takes two to forgive. And who is Randolph?”
How best to sum up the man? Handsome at first glance. Dark and cutting. Wealthy, of course, and so she had agreed to take him as a protector.
She had not known then that he was a slave to his desire to triumph at any cost. Or that he was cruel, liking to cause pain—but only if it was not wanted or welcomed.
“Randolph is a marquess. And the reason I fled London.”
Benedict stretched out a hand, finding the wall beside Charlotte. He made of himself a cradle about her, arm and body like the sweep of a shell. “And he wrote to you here. Damn.”
“You felt the scar on my face,” she said. “It is—not an old wound. Randolph cut me. When I told him I no longer wanted him as a protector, he slashed my face. He said he’d never let me go, and that he’d make me unfit for anyone else.”
“Well, he failed spectacularly. But this is the reason you carry a knife? Good God. I am sorry.”
“Do not pity me. I got away from him, at least for a while. Besides which, you carry a knife, too. Or did.”
“Yes, well. I’m a big strong man who also happens to be blind. I have to protect myself in case anyone decides I’d be a good person to fight with.” Somehow he always knew the right thing to say. The right place to touch—right there, on the line of her scar, before his hand dropped again. “Where did the letter come from? London?”
She checked the post stamp. “Cheshire. One of his estates.”
His mouth screwed up in calculation. “Three, four dozen miles? He is less than a day away, then.”
“He might be here.” Had not Miss Day mentioned Edward arriving in a crested carriage? Such as was owned by a nobleman? Oh, Edward, you fool.
Benedict reached back, found the corner of the table, and boosted himself up onto its top as a seat. “Let’s solve this, then. Who knows you are Charlotte Pearl and Charlotte Perry?”
“My parents. You. Me. Edward Selwyn.”
“Edward Selwyn.” He swung his feet, knocking them into the leg of the table. “I keep hearing that name.”
“One does, in Strawfield.”
The silence lingered, the only sound the hollow conk of Benedict’s boot heel against the dining room table’s leg.
He didn’t ask for more information, which was why she could tell him. Always, he left it up to her. “He is Maggie’s father. He painted me, and . . . well, things happened.”
“I should have been a painter.” Benedict sighed. “I suppose it’s too late now.”
She choked. “You do well enough without a paintbrush in your hands.”
He gave a modest shrug, then asked, “Does Selwyn know the truth about Maggie’s parentage?”
“Yes. But he has said nothing of it publicly, and I hope he never will. Maggie’s life now is as a legitimate child. If it were to become known that she was a bastard . . .”
Not unless one were fathered by a royal duke could one hope for a place in society. Other illegitimate children could look forward only to the most blighted of futures.
“This damned country,” he said. “Right. I know. So after things happened—including Maggie—you went to London and he kept right on painting you.”
“That’s the shape of it, yes. Save for the moment when I told him I was with child and he declined to marry me. He had higher aspirations than a vicar’s daughter.”
Benedict’s curse was both calm and eloquent.
“Well put. That marked the end of our affair, too.”
“I imagine it has a chilling effect on the passions, being told one is not good enough to wed
.”
“Indeed.” She ran a forefinger along the wallpaper, tracing the winding lines of a curling vine. As a girl, she had always thought this paper oppressive and old-fashioned. “Though as it turned out, he was correct that he could do better for himself. His fame as a painter won him the eye of an earl’s daughter.”
“You won him the eye of an earl’s daughter.” Benedict slid from his seat atop the table. “The world is a strange place sometimes, Charlotte Perry Pearl. I have only this to say: he might have won the hand of a richer woman than you, but it would not be possible for her to be a better one.”
All she could say, in a small voice, was oh.
“If Edward Selwyn knew your two names, it seems he’s been telling tales. And he’s due an interview. Wouldn’t you say?”
His confidence was contagious. She lifted her chin. “Interview sounds so polite compared to what I would like to do to him.”
“True. But you are elegant and refined, despite the fact that you are a knife-wielding terror, and so you shall call tomorrow during proper hours. Er . . . whatever those are.”
“I could visit just after luncheon.” The hours before then seemed endless, yet too short.
“Good. There is your plan.” He placed a steadying hand on her shoulder. “Now. I always find that when I receive an unexpected and vaguely threatening note from a rejected former lover, I need some comfort. Are you the same way?”
“I . . .” She shook her head, a smile beginning to tug at her lips.
“I thought so. Let us visit the kitchen.”
“I don’t go to the kitchen,” she said, bewildered.
“Why not?”
“Because it isn’t done by daughters of the house.”
“Ah. And you never do anything but what’s precisely proper.” His hand slid from her shoulder. “How silly of me. I should have recalled that about you, since it is a defining characteristic of your personality.”
She caught his fingers, tightening hers around them—and then she laughed and let his hand go. “You are right. Take me to the kitchen, Benedict Frost, and show me some comfort.”
* * *
If Benedict had not gotten into the habit of escaping from his parents’ bookshop to the kitchen, he would certainly have developed a love for it after losing his sight. A kitchen was far more sound and smell than a place of wondrous things to see.
This one bubbled with savory, spicy, meaty smells. Then the clang of the iron oven door against brick, and out wafted the hot scent of fresh bread. Even if he had just eaten a full meal, the smell would be enough to make Benedict’s stomach growl.
Colleen, the kitchen maid, greeted him cheerily, then gasped. “Oh. Cook! Is the butter supposed to look like that?”
Cook began a scold, the housemaid Barrett stepped through with quick strides and a set of instructions for dinner, and during the whisk of voices, Benedict eased Charlotte into a chair next to the worktable.
“Nice and calm,” he said. “Breathe it in. Ah. Food. Warm things.”
She brushed him with the back of her hand, which was, he thought, the gestural equivalent of a smile.
“Miss Perry!” Barrett was the first to notice her. “Is everything all right?”
“Everything’s fine,” Benedict assured her. “I told Miss Perry what a fine time I had visiting you all in the kitchen, and she wanted to see if she could wheedle a few biscuits from you.”
“No, indeed,” Charlotte said, the edge of a laugh in her voice. “Mr. Frost is teasing you all. The truth is far more sober.” She paused. “I was actually hoping for a slab of bread.”
Cook clucked. “Meals put back to all hours, first for the vicar to pay his calls, then the missus, lost in her work! I don’t wonder you’re hungry, Miss Perry. Colleen, fetch the butter.”
“But it’s . . .”
“Right, right.” Cook cut her off. “Jam, then.”
A pot clunked onto the wide worktable, and Colleen brought over a breadboard and knife. “Sit with us,” said Benedict. “Have a slice. It smells good enough to make a sailor give up his rum ration.”
“Oh, I can’t,” said the maid in her soft brogue. “You can’t imagine what I’ve done to the butter, and I’ve got to try to fix it.”
She crossed the kitchen again, footsteps echoing more quietly.
“What did she do to the butter?” he whispered to Charlotte.
“I really can’t imagine,” she said just as quietly. “But it’s gone a sort of orange color.”
“All settled?” Barrett paused in her click-click movements about the kitchen. “I’ll take some of that bread for the reverend’s tea, now.”
When she left the kitchen, Benedict smiled. “Accent thick as a Yorkshire pudding, isn’t it?”
“That’s how I always thought of it, too.” Charlotte scraped a knife across the top of the jam pot. “We see her the same way. Or . . . that is . . .”
“It’s all right. I know what you mean.” He placed his hands atop the smooth-worn wood of the worktable. “In my dreams sometimes I can see. Then when I open my eyes, ready for morning light, and there is nothing but blank, I wish I had not awoken. I wish it had never happened, that my life had never taken such a turn.”
She took one of his hands—then flipped it over and placed a slice of warm bread on his palm. “What do you do, then?”
“I get up and try to make my life take another turn. The alternative is passing time; wasting it. Waiting for death.” He lifted the bread to his lips. “That seems a terrible waste of such a handsome man who has learned so much.”
“Indeed it does,” she agreed. “And so modest! A true paragon.”
He took a huge bite. Hot, fresh bread, dense and satisfying, slathered with plum jam that was both tart and sweet at once.
“If I hadn’t lost my sight,” he said after he swallowed that blessed bite, “I wouldn’t be here in this kitchen, eating this bread. So some turns are quite nice.”
“Would you have kept your commission if you had never fallen ill?”
“What if is a poor exchange for certainty.” He smiled. “Which doesn’t keep me from wondering. I think I’d have liked to keep sailing—but it’s possible I would have been purged in peacetime, unable to sell my commission. Without a pension or half pay.”
Her hands were moving over the table, tiny vibrations as though she were rolling crumbs about. “Would you have wanted to marry?”
What if. What if. “What I’ve wanted has never changed. But I can’t marry or I lose my post as a Naval Knight—and if I lose that, I lose my half pay, too.”
“They really have you tied up in a box,” she mused.
“They really do,” he said. “But I’m used to it. What is a ship but a box that floats around?”
“What is a mansion in Mayfair but a large and elegant box?”
He had not thought of that, but—as he took another huge bite of bread—he decided it made sense. Any place could be a cage. And maybe, with the right person, any place could be a home.
He had blamed all of England for the trapped gloom he felt upon returning—but really, it wasn’t England’s fault. It was the bookshop that should have been a home, but was nothing but a cage for him. A place where love was conditional and disappointment eternal. Benedict, the wayward son, who could read if he just tried harder. If he loved them enough to try harder.
Outside of the bookshop, though, there were ports and streets and parks. London stretched outside of it, great and unknown. He didn’t have to sail the world to find somewhere new to lay his head.
He’d been too used to leaving. Leaving his family, his country. Once he became blind, he allowed the Naval Knights to support him, but he left them, too. They asked him to live in another cage, this one in Windsor Castle.
But they granted him a leave of absence to travel. They didn’t make him stay, day in and day out.
At the moment, he was where he wanted to be, and he could think of no better company. And the only what if on
his mind was: “What if I accompany you tomorrow when you call on Edward Selwyn?”
* * *
The first post of the day came early to Frost’s Bookshop, Paternoster Row. Cousin Mary tried to put down baby Johnny to fetch it, but he cried. Just as he had cried all night, sobs bleeding through the thin walls and waking Georgette along with his parents.
“Teething, poor mite.” Cousin Mary looked exhausted, her dark hair straggling from its pins. “Georgette, go pay the postman, and keep note of what it cost.”
Georgette would have met the night-soil man if it meant escaping the wailing baby for a few minutes. She darted downstairs, grabbed a few coins from the till, and paid the amounts due. Some post was local: a catalog about an auction of the Earl of Wendover’s library; Cousin Harry would like that. A few books bound up in brown paper.
And a letter for Georgette, her name written ruler-straight. The lines were flattened at the bottom, the t’s left uncrossed. She knew this hand, reshaped by the noctograph on which the missive had been written.
“Benedict. Finally.” She hadn’t received so much as a word from her brother since he’d been traveling in France.
After relocking the bookshop door, she slipped the letter into her pocket and mounted the stairs. “New books and a catalog, Cousin Mary. Where would you like them?”
“Me open it!” The two-year-old, Eliza, loved to tear open parcels.
Mary tucked another lank lock of hair behind her ear, bouncing the crying Johnny on her hip. “I don’t know. I haven’t time to look at them before the shop opens in half an hour.”
“I’ll set the catalog on the table for Cousin Harry.” To do so, Georgette had to clear the remains of breakfast. Likely the housemaid was changing a nappy, or washing one, or performing some chore to do with some substance that had come out of some small person’s body.
The main living room above stairs was small and cramped, as full of books as the shop below. Adding to the clutter were the unmistakable signs of a house full of children: wet nappies drying before a fire, a few well-loved toys, some chewed-on books. Mary and Harry Fundament had four children aged four years and under. Privately, Georgette was not surprised Cousin Harry spent so much time traveling away from London to buy books from country house libraries. The place of neglectful peace in which Georgette had been raised was now full of sobs and chatter.
Fortune Favors the Wicked Page 16