by Fox, Georgia
Elinor Charming sat at a small, round table, looking out on the wintering, walled garden while she ate her kippers. Twisting around in her chair, she summoned Brandon closer with one languid wave of her arm and a flutter of lacy frills danced from the sleeve of her day gown.
"So you return at last. Come, stand in the light so I can see."
He stepped cautiously over her carpet and the footman backed out, closing the door with a quiet click. "Grandmama. How pleasant to see you again." Reaching for the hand she offered, he bowed over it and kissed her knuckles. Her skin was soft, almost powdery, wrinkled like crepe paper. Oddly enough, he never remembered it any other way.
"Don't lie, Brandon. I'm sure you're not particularly pleased to find me still living. Most people are waiting for me to die."
When Elinor Charming admitted it, she was eighty five and not quite five foot tall. What she lacked in stature and youth, she made up for in presence and sheer bossiness.
"You're larger than I recall," she exclaimed.
"Well, it has been more than twenty years."
She motioned to a chair across the table and he sat.
"Whatever you think, grandmama, I am happy to see you. I have missed our weekly talks all these years."
"Yes, well," she waved her hand again, weak winter sunlight made bolder and brighter as it sparkled on her rings and the bracelet she wore, "that's enough of that foolishness." She sat back in her Hepplewhite chair and took him in with two stern eyes that were still surprisingly clear and not, he suspected, in the least short-sighted. "Have you seen the boy yet?"
"I have."
"What do you think of him?"
Brandon scratched his cheek. "He's young, of course. Much to learn."
"You mean he's a naughty, mischievous little chit who gets away with too much, too oft."
He smiled slowly. "I suppose so, grandmama."
"All your fault."
"Mine?"
"Your father was always very strict with you and when he saw how you turned out, he used opposite tactics with Nicholas. Only to achieve the same result. The man's a milksop fool, of course. I told my daughter that when she married him, but was I listened to? Oh, no." She lifted the tall silver pot by her plate. "Coffee?"
"No hot chocolate, grandmama?" Since it was the drink upon which the roots of their vast fortune had begun, he remembered practically being force fed with hot chocolate every morning as a child.
"Good lord, no. I never could stand the damnable stuff." She shuddered elegantly.
"Isn't that sacrilege?" he teased.
"More than likely. I've become rather good at blasphemy and irreverence over the years. Why should you men have all the fun in life?"
He chuckled. At her age, she could get away with a great deal, but she'd always been outspoken, so even if she claimed it was a recent development he knew otherwise.
"My grandfather, Elijah Charming, began selling hot chocolate in his tea room simply because he thought it was a perfect alternative to alcohol," she muttered, pouring out her coffee. "He was a Quaker, as you know, and believed liquor was the gateway to ruined morals and poverty, thus to Hell. Chocolate, therefore, would save the world."
"It certainly saved him from poverty," Brandon remarked dryly.
"Curiously, it did not save his family from alcohol however, or the gates of Hell. Every generation since has heartily enjoyed the Devil's beverage." She shot him a look that curled the tips of his collar. "And your son is no exception."
Brandon nodded. He'd seen the jaundiced color of his son's eyes yesterday. The boy was heading for a slippery slope, as he was once too. Oddly enough the scandal of the century had actually saved him from the descent he was embarked upon in youth and set him on a new track. When he left the country and his family, he had to learn to fend for himself. He sobered up pretty quickly—even if it wasn't a complete reformation.
"Now what do you think of this matchmaking business?" she demanded.
"Nick is too young to marry." He thought of Drusilla Kent—as he had done at least once every half hour since yesterday. It was clear that his son encouraged Captain Wilder to hire her because he wanted to get under her petticoats. Nothing to do with wanting a wife at all. She was going along with it for the money. Brandon was sure they'd met; whatever she said, his son was far too keen for their rendezvous yesterday and too disappointed when it was thwarted. He couldn't blame Nick for that; he'd be furious if someone spoiled his plans with that woman too.
"I do not agree that he is too young," his grandmother replied, after some consideration. "But what he needs is a strong woman to keep him in line. Once again, naturally, my opinion is overlooked and your father must hire this ...woman...this Mrs. Kent...to find a bride for Nicholas, when I might have done the service for free." She sipped her coffee. "Marriage might be a very good thing for the young man, make him settle and put his mind to more worthwhile pursuits."
Brandon frowned. "I thought you wanted me here to stop the matchmaking, grandmama? I thought you didn't approve of Nick marrying yet. Isn't that why you wrote to me after all these years?"
"I wanted you back, Brandon Amadeo Charming Wilder, because you have been too long absent. You should be here, in England, and stop this wandering gypsy lifestyle you've taken up."
"But I have no plans to remain here. I have business in—"
"Your business, young man, is here.
"Grandmama, I can't—"
"It is time you settled down and took over your rightful place at Charming's Chocolate." Reaching one bony arm across the table, she rang the little silver bell to summon her footman. "I'm changing my will again. I've decided to leave everything to you."
"What?" Her words, uttered so casually, almost knocked him out of his chair.
She shrugged. "I am old and tired, Brandon. I can't wait for that boy to grow up. It takes too long. You, finally, have become someone in which I might be proud. I've followed your progress, read about your successes abroad in business. Charming's Chocolates will be safe in your hands and I can stop worrying."
The breakfast room door opened and the footmen came silently across the carpet to collect her tray.
She waited until he was gone out again, before she said, "And I know you took the blame for a child that is not yours."
Brandon stood swiftly and walked to the window. Rain drops studded the square panes and dripped down. He remembered how, whenever he was shut in his room for some misbehavior, he used to sit with his chin in his hand and watch the raindrops race one another down his window. During his years away, in sunnier climes, he'd forgotten how low the sky could get here, how he felt closed in.
"Charlotte wrote to me last Christmas," his grandmother added. "Apparently she had an attack of conscience. Why did you not tell me?"
He replied tersely, "We both promised never to reveal that fact."
"Well, she's ill—a tumor of some sort. I skimmed the ghastly details, which, for some unearthly reason, she decided to share with me. At my time of life, one does not want to be reminded of all the many ways in which a body can be struck down. Hearing of younger folk being claimed by the Grim Reaper, rather makes a person of my age wonder if they've been overlooked." She sniffed. "In any case, facing her own mortality has caused Charlotte Parker—lady in title only—to confess that you are not the father of her child."
Brandon closed his eyes briefly, then opened them again and watched a robin perched in the ivy by the window. "It's a pity if she won't come back and see Nick, before it's too late."
His grandmother was pragmatic, as always. "I don't know what good it would do. She is evidently not the maternal type and he wouldn't know her from a gin shop slattern. But she did what she could in the end and told me the truth. As you should have done."
Still looking out at the frosty garden, he shook his head. "No one else needs to know, grandmama."
He would have married Charlotte, to salvage some part of her reputation and save the child from illegitimacy. Then,
a few weeks before the wedding, she told him she couldn't go through with it. Between them they agreed that he would leave. After all, he had no reputation left to ruin and yet Charlotte—as a woman wronged—might still have a chance, however slim, to pick up the pieces. Brandon thought, at the time, she must have been given some sign of hope from the child's real father, or her husband had agreed to take her back. He imagined that was why she freed him from their bargain. Whether that was true or not, much later, when he was in Brazil, he heard that she'd had a boy and dumped the child on Elinor Charming's doorstep. Quite literally—in a wicker picnic basket. Naturally, she'd chosen the richest of all Brandon's relatives, expecting the baby to be taken care of, at least financially.
Charlotte wrote to him. It was a short, brusque letter claiming she was in a state of distress, unprepared for motherhood. I decided your family could do more for our son than I ever can. Conveniently for her it seemed, when she wanted rid of her burden, she forgot that Brandon was not the father of her child. Meanwhile, Charlotte, in her great "state of distress" skipped off to the South of France with a new lover.
"Why would you continue to take the blame for that aimless boy?" Elinor exclaimed.
"Because someone has to," he snapped.
"That doesn't sound like a very good reason, Brandon."
He tried to calm his temper. There was a time when he would have shouted at her and stormed out. But he waited. Counted to ten. Took a deep breath. "Nick has grown up as my son." In a sense, he mused, he'd grown up while he was that boy's father too, even if he had been absent from the country. Nick was always in his thoughts and he'd written as often as his travels allowed. "I won't abandon him now."
"You abandoned him before he was born."
Brandon clenched his fists at his sides. Another breath, then another. His heart beat steadied, found a more even keel. "I made my mistakes. Now I'm trying to amend them. Like Charlotte with her letter to you."
There was a lengthy pause, Finally his grandmother said, "Well, if that's the way you feel about it."
"So no one else need know that I'm not the boy's father," he repeated firmly.
Behind him she sighed. "Perhaps."
He spun around on his heel and glared. "Grandmama."
She looked down, patting the back of her grey curls with one hand. "If you should decide to stay here and settle down...I may decide to keep your secret."
In all honesty he didn't want the Charming fortune, but if agreeing with Elinor kept her quiet about Nick's parentage, he'd go along with it for now. As she assured him sorrowfully, she would not live forever.
"You might as well let me have some happiness before I shuffle off the mortal coil."
He grunted. "I thought you said they'd forgotten about you." As if anyone ever could.
"I'm sure the oversight will be remedied one day soon."
"Grandpapa Charming must be up there, waiting for you."
She gave a loud snort. "Down there, is more likely." Elinor tapped the carpet with her foot.
Brandon laughed softly. "I've a feeling grandmama that wherever you end up, you'll soon take over the management." She'd also probably continue managing the family business from her grave. Whomever she left it to in her will, she'd make sure they never made a move without her approval.
* * * *
After writing a few important letters at her bureau, Drusilla was enjoying a peaceful morning in her parlor, reading the newspaper and listening to the soft beat of rain, when the doorbell shattered the tranquility. Since Polly was busy in the kitchen and Martha had taken her letters to the post office, she went out into the hall and answered the door herself, in her black gown and apron.
"Where were you yesterday?" Nicholas demanded, not waiting for an invite, but stepping over the doormat.
She could land his father in trouble—tell the boy that his plans were scuppered deliberately. But the two men had plenty to sort out without her sticking her nose in. And, silly as it might be, foolish as it might make her, she'd been daydreaming about Brandon Wilder all night and all morning. She didn't want to get him in hot water with his son.
"Why don't you come in and have some ginger tea?" She led him into the parlor. "This might be a good moment to begin our lessons."
"Lessons?" It didn't look as if he liked that idea at all.
She smiled tightly. "Do take off your hat and sit down, Master Nicholas."
Belatedly he removed his hat. "I don't need any lessons."
"You most certainly do," she replied, chillingly polite. "If I'm to introduce you to ladies of society."
"I told you, I don't want—"
"Your grandfather is paying me to find you a suitable wife." Before he could argue again, she added, "The Duchess of Wynthorne is having a Christmas ball. You will attend."
He scoffed at that idea. "I'll never be invited. Wynthorne is a stuffed goose who looks down on anyone who can't trace the family roots as far back as the Norman conquest."
Ah, but she had a way to get under the skin of "Dear Artie's" stuffed goose. Hiding her smile, Drusilla folded the newspaper she'd been reading. "You will attend, because I will arrange it. As I will arrange for a very special young lady to meet you there."
"If you can get me an invite to the Wynthorne ball, you truly are a miracle worker," he muttered, sinking into a chinz chair by the fire.
"Indeed I am."
The parlor door swung open and Polly entered with ginger tea and biscuits—Drusilla's usual mid-morning snack.
"Aha! Elevenses. Thank you, Polly."
The maid took one glance at Nicholas and walked by to place the tray before her mistress. "Will that be all ma'am?"
"Yes. Thank you, Polly."
She left the room again and Nicholas was too busy studying his boots to pay the girl any attention. He was the sort who never took notice of a servant unless they happened to get in his way.
"Now." Drusilla sat very straight. "First, Master Nicholas, a gentleman does not drop into a chair as if his marionette strings were suddenly cut."
He glowered at her.
"A gentleman," she added, "once invited to sit, lowers himself to the edge of a seat, slowly and without any sound. Then he waits until the conversation is on more casual footing, before he finds a pose further in the chair. He certainly never sits back until the lady does so."
"Sounds like a lot of fuss about nothing."
"On the contrary. Every move you make will be noted by the lady and her chaperon. Every mistake will be a mark against you."
"What do I care?" He grinned. "I only want you."
"That's all very nice." She snapped a biscuit in half. "But I don't want you."
His lips parted. A dash of color rose in his cheeks.
"Perhaps I was not clear enough before. I'm sure this will try the limits of your belief, but I am not attracted to you, Master Nicholas. If you were twenty years older I would still not be attracted to you. I am thirty five, widowed and quite happily settled in my situation. I don't want a relationship with you, beyond this business arrangement. If you choose not to partake in your grandfather's scheme, I'm afraid we must go our separate ways. I am only in your company now, because of that. Not for any other reason."
"I don't believe you," he exclaimed, churlish.
A short laugh sputtered out of her. "I'm sure you don't. It must be very difficult to believe a woman in this world exists who does not find you attractive. But," she looked at him with pity, "I am not the only one you will ever encounter. You are still young. Life has yet to throw its hardest cricket balls at you, I fear." She nibbled on her biscuit, while he stared, tapping his damp hat on his knee. "As life gets tougher, Master Nicholas, I can assure you it will be far better to have me as a friend than an enemy. So let's continue with our lesson, shall we?"
The boy had no idea what to say to that. After a moment he stopped tapping his hat and some of the hauteur went out of his expression, as the air of bravado went out of his lungs.
"I
'm not going to have to bloody dance, am I?" he grumbled.
Nine in the Morning
November 30th
Polly's lessons moved along much smoother. The girl learned quickly because she enjoyed herself and wanted to know all the whys and wherefores. She had an eager curiosity about the world, very different to Nicholas Wilder's jaded view.
Drusilla taught her everything, from how to greet a gentleman in the street, to exiting and entering a carriage; from how to choose the right fork at dinner, to the complex manipulations of a fan when one must also hold a glass of champagne. Every morning she read articles to Polly from the newspaper and later asked her questions to ensure she'd absorbed the information. Together they studied the globe, history books, science papers and Society's bible—Burke's Peerage. Polly soon knew how every soul she was likely to meet should be addressed. They also rehearsed a detailed story to fill in Polly's past. The girl was exotic enough in looks to pass as any combination. It was no great challenge to scrape clean the slate and compose an entirely new life.
It was all going splendidly.
Just one little problem.
Brandon Wilder sent her a note the day after their meeting. He wanted to see her again. She tore it up and threw it in the fire. No distractions. The sex, the fantasy and everything was really very nice and a pleasant afternoon's diversion, but Drusilla was accustomed now to a measure of independence. She liked the joy of coming and going much as she liked, answering to no one, handling her own finances and her own business. Under no circumstances would she give that up just to become some man's plaything again. Even if he was once her adolescent infatuation.
Following the letter he sent her chocolates and expensive, hothouse flowers. She rolled her eyes. The Princes of Charming apparently had a distinct lack of originality in their methods.
One morning, leaving her dressmaker after a fitting, she found him waiting for her in the street.