by May Burnett
Her new partner had bright red hair and freckles, and looked even younger than James. Charlotte had not quite caught his name but engaged him in light banter without difficulty. Despite his youth he proved to be an excellent dancer.
A waltz followed, and she had to stay by Lady Amberley, as she had not yet received permission to waltz. She saw James whirl over the floor with a dark-haired girl in pale pink, and felt an unreasonable stab of annoyance that he was not dancing the waltz with her. Good heavens, was she getting possessive about him? That was folly indeed, and completely unreasonable. He could be only a friend, and considering all that she was keeping from him, not even that in truth.
The strong candlelight, close air and heat of several hundred bodies pressed together in four, albeit large rooms were making Charlotte slightly dizzy. No wonder fashionable ladies always carried around smelling salts, she thought, as yet another sprig of the nobility led her out on the dancing floor. She would write to Belinda that she was not missing much – the less crowded assemblies in York had been more pleasant overall.
As she could not marry anyone, even had she been here under her own name, the young men she was presented to and danced with were only of limited interest to her. None of them was as attractive as James, anyway. She easily chatted and joked, not bothering to simulate the traditional shyness of an unmarried debutante. Most seemed to like her assured manner, and almost all asked for a second dance.
Lady Amberley was grudgingly satisfied. “You have not sat out a single dance except the waltz,” she noted, when Charlotte returned to her side yet again. “Very good for your first appearance. Already several people have asked me about your background and dowry.”
“What did you tell them?”
“Well, your birth is good enough, but we really must find out more about your fortune. I just let people think that you were amply provided for, without giving details. I hope Amberley can clear it up for us as soon as he returns.”
“So do I,” said Charlotte, not mentioning that James and she were already working on the problem.
“The next dance is the supper dance – here is James coming for you now. You really should have left it available for a more serious prospect. There were a couple of potential matches among your partners tonight.”
“No sense in rushing into anything, Aunt Millicent.” Charlotte smiled as she took James’s arm. “Now I am really famished, after all this dancing!”
“Fie, a real lady would not advertise this fact,” James admonished her with mock severity. “And there is still this last dance to get through before I can go into battle for you and secure you a meal at this crowed buffet.”
“Aren’t you hungry, yourself?”
“I usually have a small bite before setting out, because you never know if you’ll get fed at all.”
“Really?”
“Yes, sometimes they underestimate the crowd, and the buffet runs out before everyone has had their fill. I’ve seen it happen more than once. And occasionally the quality is so poor that you don’t want anything. From dreadful experience I have learnt not to touch any seafood that has sat out in the warm air too long.”
“Really, at these exclusive ton events? I find that hard to imagine.”
“The worst thing was an outdoor event two years ago – I won’t mention names – where the caterer had mixed up the dates, and two hundred guests were left without any food whatsoever. The hostess has not dared to show her face in the capital since then.”
Charlotte had to laugh at the idea of the disappointed and hungry guests, though she would not have found it so funny to be among them, she thought.
Talking about the pitfalls of entertaining they finished the dance close to the supper room, where James found a place for her at a small spindly table set for two, and went off to forage. She watched him from afar and was glad she herself did not have to brave the multitude around the buffet table. Whatever might be said about Lady Sefton’s ball, the food was plentiful and of excellent quality. The big silver platters of the buffet were being emptied as though by a herd of locusts, but at least ten footmen were quick to retire and immediately replace them with full ones.
A passing servant filled the two glasses on her table with sparkling wine. Four enormous chandeliers with many dozens of candles brilliantly lit the room. She tried to estimate the expense of the food, candles, drink and extra servants, but gave up when she reached an astronomical amount. The cost of this one ball, which most guests were enjoying in a lukewarm fashion at best, could have solved all her problems at Brinkley Manor.
Charlotte slowly looked around at the other small tables where guests were now starting to eat, taking mental notes for her letter to Belinda.
She was entirely unprepared for the shock she suddenly received, like a silent thunderbolt striking her down in the midst of the oblivious crowd. A gentleman sitting some ten feet away, with his back to her, was eerily familiar. She literally felt all the tiny hairs on her skin stand up.
Even from behind, she immediately knew him, although she had not set eyes on him, or heard from him for four and a half years. Peter, her faithless spouse, was also enjoying Lady Sefton’s hospitality.
Charlotte’s heart began to hammer frantically as she realised how precarious her position was. Peter knew her and Belinda well. He could expose her with a single word.
Would he, though? In the story of her life so far, he was the villain, and would have been treated as such had he dared to show his face back in their Yorkshire neighbourhood. Here in London, however, she was the outsider, and already in a false position due to her deception of her cousin’s relatives. Maybe he had not seen her. Maybe it was not him, just someone who looked like her husband from the back. The hollow feeling in her stomach told Charlotte that she was fooling herself. It was Peter all right.
“Here you are,” James said cheerfully, placing a brimming plate before her, and a somewhat less full one in his own place, before seating himself. He raised his glass to her: “May you enjoy the fruits of my battle!”
“Thank you, kind Sir.” She forced a smile, returned his toast, and took up her fork. The food he had selected looked and smelled delicious, but her appetite had completely disappeared.
Apparently she was not as good an actress as she had thought, for it did not take two minutes for James to notice her change of mood.
“Is anything the matter, cousin? You look worried, as though you had received bad news while I was away getting the food.”
“That would be unlikely, as I was just sitting there, and hardly anybody in London knows me as yet.”
“I find it hard to imagine a life with so few acquaintances.”
“Oh, I suppose I have the usual number, they just all tend to live in Yorkshire. It is not a desert, you know.”
He looked at her with an uncomfortably penetrating gaze. Had she really thought him a heedless popinjay just a few days ago?
“If you have run into any difficulty, let me know if I can do anything to help.”
This was one difficulty that she could not possibly admit to him. “You are very kind – but you are just imagining problems where there are none. Besides, you are already helping me greatly by your enquiries about the inheritance.”
That diverted James, and after discussing his findings so far, they agreed to visit the solicitors’ offices in Baker Street the day after next. Charlotte now felt even more urgency to bring her enquiries to a swift conclusion. Everyone expected her to spend several months in the bosom of the Amberley family, but she might only have days, or even less, if Peter denounced her. It was a depressing thought, and she looked much more serious than before as they finished their food. Surprisingly, she found her plate empty after all.
Charlotte had hoped that after supper they could go back to Mount Street and get some sleep, but was told there were at least two more hours to be endured. She was beginning to feel pity for these elegant but nocturnal creatures and even more for herself. At least her
new slippers were soft and comfortable.
Chapter 10
James was still concerned about his cousin. Her denials that something was wrong had not sounded convincing. He was developing a hyper-sensitivity where she was concerned, an awareness of her mood that he had never felt towards any other person before. Strange, but there it was.
He decided to keep an eye on her, now that his mother had sat down to play whist in the card room and entrusted her charge’s chaperonage to an acquaintance, Lady Morville. This lady, with two daughters of her own, had good-naturedly agreed to keep an eye on Belinda’s partners. She was a perfectly respectable member of their social circle, but James could not help feeling that his mother should have remained on guard duty herself. Not for the first time he wondered at her less than cordial attitude towards her niece and her dead sister. There was much he had not been told, he guessed.
He was torn out of his thoughts by a dark-haired man about ten years older than himself, who looked vaguely familiar.
“I say, aren’t you James Ellsworthy?”
“Yes – do I know you?”
“We met last year at a ball similar to this, but no wonder if you don’t remember. My name is Peter Conway. I wanted to ask you, who is the delightful blonde young lady whom you escorted at supper?”
“My cousin, Miss Yardley.” There was no point in not telling the man, James thought, as half the guests would have already known that much. But he sounded stiff to his own ears. He had told his cousin’s name to a dozen others that same night, so why did this simple question instinctively put his back up?
“Miss Yardley, is it?” The man smiled – not a pleasant smile. “Would you be so kind as to introduce me to your fair cousin?”
“Sorry - my mother alone decides who is to meet Miss Yardley. I advise you to apply to her.”
“Oh well, maybe I will do that, then.” The man smiled again, not visibly disappointed, and moved away. James followed him with his eyes, still not certain why he felt so uneasy about the brief encounter.
About an hour later, as James was just finishing an energetic waltz with Letty Cavendish, a happily married old friend, he was displeased to notice that Conway had apparently finagled an introduction to Belinda after all. Lady Morville was granting him permission to lead her out for the next dance, and they were walking away from the chaperon through the rooms, arm in arm, several minutes before that dance was due to start.
James watched as carefully as he could while still waltzing, and saw Conway pull his partner deftly through the open French window into the small garden of Sefton House. It was much too chilly outside for a lady’s thin evening garments – she could catch an ague. What was Conway up to?
James brought his partner back to her group as quickly as politeness allowed, glad he had not asked anyone for the next dance, and made his way to the French window. It was only opened a slit, and he slipped out unobserved. As he had expected, it was so cool in the empty garden that he was barely comfortable in his male attire. Only a brute would bring a lady out here. A very fine drizzle was beginning to fall.
The garden was not big. A fountain and rose arbour near the centre offered the most likely hiding place. Since Conway and Belinda were not visible, James quickly moved in that direction.
He soon heard their voices from behind the plants. From the sound of it, this was no amorous dalliance.
“You have much more to lose than I, Charlotte. I advise you to keep quiet, or you will be ruined faster than your head can spin.” Even apart from the shocking words, the tone of the voice clearly conveyed the threat.
Belinda did not seem easily cowed, however. “Maybe, but I am not going to stand by if I see you up to your old tricks! Have you some new victim in your sights already?”
“Never you mind, my dear ‘Belinda’. If I hear the slightest whisper or rumour about myself, a letter will be dispatched to Lady Amberley that tells her she is harbouring an adventuress and impostor in the bosom of her family. In fact, how is dear Belinda these days?”
“Leave my sister out of this! Don’t you feel the slightest shame for what you yourself have done to me, to our family? It was all about the money for you, wasn’t it?”
The man gave a contemptuous laugh. “Shame and regret are useless emotions. What used to be between us is best forgotten. You yourself don’t impress me as a tragic victim. In fact it would seem that you have fallen on your feet, Charlotte.”
“If I have, no thanks to you. Just how long did it take you to run through my dowry?”
“Not nearly long enough. I advise you to forget that we ever met. I am not married, and neither are you.”
“In that case, return the dowry to me.” Another scornful laugh was her only answer. Cautiously peering through the branches of a rosebush clinging to the trellis, James was not surprised to see her deal a magnificent slap to the man’s face. From what he had overheard, it was the least the scoundrel deserved. Conway did not hit back, but shook his head in feigned sorrow. “This slap is going to cost you dearly, Charlotte. Prepare for war.”
“Go to hell, Peter”, she replied tightly. The man shrugged and walked off, not looking in James’s direction. Belinda – no, Charlotte, it would seem – remained behind, breathing heavily.
After a few seconds, James stepped up to her. “What an interesting conversation I just overheard.”
She stared at him, her pallor visible even in the pale moonlight. She was shivering.
First things first. James took off his jacket – not easily, as the fashion was for tightness – and draped it over her bare shoulders. The cold air was uncomfortable, but they could not go back in just yet.
“Who exactly are you?” He willed her to be frank.
After a few deep breaths, she straightened her shoulders and gave him a direct, if bleak look. “I am your cousin Belinda’s half-sister, Charlotte Mercer, married five years ago to that fellow who just left. Mrs. Peter Conway, in fact.”
James tried to wrap his reeling mind about her revelation. “Mercer – Conway? And married? Then why are you here as Belinda?”
“She could not come herself, as she is nearly blind and newly married. In fact, I suspect she is already with child. It was her idea that I should come to London in her place.”
Apparently lunacy ran in the girl’s family. “But why, for God’s sake?”
“We urgently need her inheritance to keep up the Manor, and feed our workers and animals. The problems with the solicitor are very real. Our situation is getting quite desperate.”
“And why aren’t you living with your husband?”
“Well, you heard him. He left me within four months of our marriage, and I had not heard from him in years. I suspect he is married again, or hoping to marry again, some girl with a bigger dowry than my own five thousand pounds.”
They stared at each other. She broke their eye contact and shook her head, as though in a daze. “I will depart at once, but that leaves the inheritance still unsettled. Would you be willing to continue our enquiries, and write to Belinda if you can unblock her funds?”
“Not so fast.” James felt confused, but his overriding concern was to not let this woman get away. He stepped behind her, massaging her stiff shoulders through the fabric of his coat. “I must think this through, and find out more about your husband and his plans.” He dropped a small kiss on her left ear. “At least now I know why I never felt cousinly towards you.”
“James!” She leant back against him, but her voice sounded stifled and anxious. “Despite what you heard, I am a respectable woman. I have never had an affair, and I don’t intend to start now.”
“It seems to me”, he stated, placing a small kiss on her neck, “that you don’t owe that bastard any loyalty.”
“No, of course not – stop that! – It is rather that I need to think well of myself, not for his sake. I like you, maybe too much, but nothing can come of this attraction. Now you know why. Please take me back in.”
“At least
let me kiss you this once,” James growled, and took her firmly in his arms to do just that. After the first moment she responded, almost with abandon. James felt his head spinning. Now that he knew she was no sheltered innocent, he could not wait to get enough of her.
At length she tore herself out of his arms, winded. “James, if you are planning to use what you learnt about me to pressure me into an affair, tell me now. I will be away before the day has passed.”
He felt hurt at her accusation. “That is not what I want at all. You don’t feel the desire that is between us? It could be so good…”
“I do feel it, but it cannot go anywhere, James. I was an illegitimate child and suffered from this fact all my life. I am not going to risk bringing another bastard into this world.”
“No, I would hate that, too.”
“What else can come out of such kisses and embraces between us? I grant you that they are pleasant and distracting, but the risk is too high. I am not willing to pay the price.”
She struggled out of his jacket and held it out to him. “Let’s go back in before both of us catch a cold,” she said prosaically. He slipped the jacket back on and placed her hand on his arm. Wordlessly, they made their way back to the ballroom.
James spoke only a few more words to her, in the coach on their way back to Mount Street, telling her he would pick her up for a drive at eleven.
“That’s only some seven hours or so away”, Lady Amberley sleepily pointed out.
“I’ll be ready,” Charlotte said.
“Well, two o’clock, then,” James relented. Maybe the extra time would allow him to bring some order into his own chaotic thoughts and feelings.
Chapter 11
The next day dawned bright and fair. By the time his valet woke James up with the breakfast tray, the sun was standing near the zenith. Sleep had not brought any new insights, but James felt energetic and determined to solve all difficulties in his path.
Mentally he catalogued them. Item one - what to do about Charlotte? She was too inexperienced in society’s ways to realize the danger she was in, and the huge humiliation she could inflict on her hostess’s family. Somehow he would have to extricate everyone without provoking the all too likely scandal.