by Лорен Уиллиг
“You don’t think that I and — good Gad, Medmenham!” Robert affected a hearty laugh. “Charlotte? I’m certainly very fond of her, but . . . no.”
“No?”
“No,” repeated Robert quite firmly. “She’s not the sort of girl one dallies with, is she?”
That much, at least, was quite true. Courted, yes; dallied, no.
“And I imagine her grandmother would have something to say about any man who came calling. She’s a dear girl, but not worth slaying dragons for, eh, Medmenham?”
“That,” said Medmenham, “would depend on the size of her dowry. A dragon’s hoard might be worth a certain amount of effort.”
“Not this dragon,” said Robert repressively. “What exactly was it that you wanted to see me about?”
“A suggestion I think will interest you. I have a little proposition to put to you . . .”
Charlotte danced her way down to the ballroom in the sort of perfect happiness that only occurs once in a lifetime.
This was the very apex of joy, the peak of happiness, the desired ending of every novel. Happily ever after had finally arrived and it was just as glorious as she had dreamt.
They would be married, of course. That went without saying. A spring wedding would be perfect, Charlotte thought, with all its promise of the world coming again into bloom. It had a rather nice symbolic resonance to it. On a more practical level, she was promised to Queen Charlotte — the real Queen Charlotte — to serve as one of her maids of honor from the middle of January to the end of April. Fortunately, her duties would be light and maids of honor were no longer so secluded as they had been in the past. Due to crowded conditions in the royal residences, the Queen had decided several years ago that it was no longer necessary for maids of honor to reside with the royal family during their tenure. While the royal household was in London, Charlotte would live at Dovedale House.
The Duke of Dovedale would presumably reside at Dovedale House as well.
In between her duties to the Queen, there would be plenty of time for walks in the park, afternoons in the library, evenings at the theatre, and — Charlotte went a happy pink — many long hours in convenient alcoves. Dovedale House was well furnished with those, although Charlotte had never had any need of them before. Lovely, deep alcoves, shaded with heavy velvet curtains.
Downstairs, champagne burbled from a specially constructed fountain in the hall, monitored by white-wigged footmen in the distinctive green and gold Dovedale livery. The ground floor was mobbed with the most elite of the fashionable world, all of whom had gone trotting out to Dovedale at the Duchess’s command. Charlotte threaded her way through the crowd towards the gallery, smiling and nodding, brimming with affection for the whole of mankind. Even Lord Vaughn and his haughty bride, of whom Charlotte had always been more than a little afraid, earned a beaming smile that left them both completely baffled.
For Charlotte, the enchantment, far from fading, appeared to have followed her down into the gallery. The entire assemblage glowed as though touched with fairy dust. Jewels glittered like pendant stars, silks ran rippling like rainbow streams, the very champagne in the glasses scintillated like condensed sunlight, conveying benefaction to whosesoever lips it touched. She had never seen so many beautiful people, so many brilliant costumes, so many graceful dancers. Even Turnip Fitzhugh had an exuberant charm about him that not even his appallingly high shirt points could mar.
In the midst of it all, Charlotte felt as though she were floating, borne on her own personal, gold-spangled cloud. Her feet barely touched the ground as she sparkled her way through the hall and down the long corridor into the gallery.
As one gnarled dowager shouted to another, “The little Lansdowne is in looks tonight, ain’t she?”
“With that sort of dowry,” bellowed the other, “who wouldn’t be?” And they both cackled happily over their own wit.
Charlotte found Henrietta at the far end of the gallery, on the side farthest from the musicians, chatting with the new Viscountess Pinchingdale, formerly Miss Letty Alsworthy, who had come up from London with her husband for the festivities.
It took only one look at Charlotte’s face for Henrietta to hastily detach herself from Letty and scoot Charlotte off into the most remote corner she could find, wedged between a shoulder-high cupid carrying candles and old Lady Featherstonehaugh, who had dozed off in her chair, her mouth open to reveal a truly impressive array of false teeth. Their remove offered only the illusion of privacy, but the din of the music and hundreds of voices chattering provided a far more secure safeguard.
After so many years of friendship, there were times when mere words were redundant. Henrietta grasped both of Charlotte’s hands in hers. “I don’t even need to ask. But I will. Well?”
Charlotte beamed. “Life can be better than fiction. Better than Evelina even!”
Henrietta’s hazel eyes widened. “This is serious.”
“Oh, Hen, it was splendid. We were up on the roof — ”
“The roof?”
“It was my idea.”
Henrietta shuddered. “He really must love you. It’s frigid out.”
“Neither of us wanted to come back inside. Even though our fingers were turning blue.”
Henrietta collapsed in a fit of choking. “So you’re frostbitten, but very much in love.”
Charlotte felt that that was an accurate summary. “Essentially.”
“Oh, darling, you are mad,” said Henrietta, and proceeded to give ample evidence of the same herself by laughing, crying, embracing, and generally bouncing around in place.
Fortunately, most of the guests were too involved in their own affairs to wonder why the granddaughter of the Dowager Duchess of Dovedale and the daughter of the Marquess of Uppington were engaging in their own private jig in the corner of the Gallery of Girdings.
“Where is your duke?” asked Henrietta, once the requisite jumping and squealing had been accomplished.
This time, Charlotte didn’t contest the appellation. “He’s supposed to meet me in here,” she said, standing on tiptoe to scan the crowd. Given that the gallery was crammed by hundreds of guests, most of them taller than she, it was not the most effective of gestures. Charlotte was nothing daunted. Love’s compass would guide Robert to her. Besides, being much taller, he could actually see over the crowd to find her. “I’ve promised him whatever dance he likes.”
“Oh, just a dance, is it?” teased Henrietta, making Charlotte blush. “Is it all settled between you, or do I need to make Miles demand his intentions? Miles does loom so well,” she said fondly, sparing a glance in the direction of her own husband, who was less looming than leaning, propped against the wall like a human replica of the Leaning Tower of Pisa as he engaged in a conversation with his old friend, Pinchingdale-Snipe.
“I believe we can spare Miles,” said Charlotte happily. “I can’t believe it was all this easy. I had always thought that the path of true love was supposed to be strewn with challenges and dangers. But Mr. Shakespeare seems to have got it entirely backwards. When it’s right, it is easy.”
“Some of the time,” said Henrietta, whose courtship had been anything but easy. “Is he going to speak to your grandmother?”
“I suppose so.” Charlotte’s face broke into a smile. “He can’t very well speak to himself. Can’t you just imagine that conversation?”
Henrietta grinned. “When he applies to himself for your hand?”
“I hope he grants it to himself!” exclaimed Charlotte. “Oh, Hen, I’m half afraid that if I pinch myself, this will all go away. I’ll wake up in my own bed and Robert will still be in India and all of this will have just been a particularly splendid dream.” Henrietta made a sympathetic face. “I dreamt about him before, you know. All those years that he was away. I used to imagine that he would come back from India riding on an elephant and sweep me up behind him and carry me away.”
“Squishing tenants and cottages in your way?” laughed Henrietta.
/>
“Well, I was only twelve,” said Charlotte sheepishly. “Or thirteen. It made sense at the time.”
“Many things do,” Henrietta agreed sagely.
“And it can’t even be my dowry that he wants. He gets nothing from me that wouldn’t come to him already.”
“Except your grandmother’s personal fortune,” Henrietta felt compelled to point out.
Charlotte wafted that aside without a qualm. “It’s nothing to what he’s already inherited. The entailed estate is far greater. And I just couldn’t see Robert gambling away his patrimony at cards or spending it all on — well, whatever gentlemen spend it on.”
“In Miles’s case, cravats,” said Henrietta cheerfully. “He must go through at least ten a morning. It drives his valet mad.”
They smiled at each other in perfect understanding, leaving Charlotte feeling as though she had just been admitted to membership in a private club she hadn’t even known existed, a secret society for happily settled women. She and Henrietta had always discussed all sorts of things — books and plays and the meaning of life and whether that yellow dress was really a good idea — but Henrietta did not, as a rule, share personal details of her husband’s habits.
It was a little disconcerting to realize that she didn’t have any personal details to share in return. At least, not yet. She didn’t know how many cravats Robert went through a morning, or whether he preferred to sleep with the window open or closed, or how many lumps of sugar he liked in his tea. But she did know that he was kind, and that he cared for her (even if the word “love” hadn’t yet made an appearance), and that she heard trumpets whenever he smiled — and shouldn’t that be enough? The rest could be learned by and by. Couldn’t it? That was what marriage was for. Charlotte glowed at the thought.
“Will you still be joining the Queen’s household?” Henrietta asked.
“It’s only for three months,” said Charlotte, “and Grandmama firmly believes that every Lansdowne woman must spend her time in the royal household to advance the interests of the family.”
The two women exchanged a skeptical glance. The days when personal attendance on the royal family led to power and influence were long since past, but if the Duchess had done it, by Gad, her granddaughter was going to do it, too.
“You can stay with us if your grandmother doesn’t want to come to town. I promise to be a very easygoing sort of chaperone.”
“That would be splendid.”
“I assume your duke will be coming to town, too?”
“I don’t know,” admitted Charlotte. “We didn’t discuss any of that.”
In fact, they hadn’t discussed much of anything at all, other than — what had they discussed? Charlotte found she couldn’t remember any of it at all. There had been silly trivia about her childhood games on the roof, a short discussion about the geography of Girdings, speculation about the antics in the ballroom in their absence, but nothing that might have any bearing on their future.
Charlotte craned her neck to peer around the ballroom. It was taking Robert an awfully long time to find her. Of course, he did have to stop and say hello to people and do his duty as nominal host. A newly returned duke was a novelty not to be ignored by the ton; there would be many who would want to detain him in conversation after his long time abroad. But she did hope he would appear soon. Their promised next dance had already become the next and the next and there was still no sign of him.
Henrietta was also craning to see through the crowd. “Look!”
Charlotte looked, fizzing with anticipation.
“There’s Penelope!” Henrietta finished, gesturing and waving. “I haven’t seen her since supper.”
A little of Charlotte’s fizz went out of her. It wasn’t that she wasn’t glad to see Penelope, but the longer Robert tarried, the more like a dream their interlude on the roof became.
“M’lady.” It was one of the liveried footmen, bearing a silver tray. Instead of a glass, the tray bore a folded note. There was no seal on the note and no address. “For you, m’lady.”
Puzzled, Charlotte lifted the small piece of paper and opened it. In a bold, scrawling hand were written all of two words. Forgive me.
For what?
“Who gave this to you?” Charlotte asked, trying very hard not to sound as anxious as she felt. There was a very unpleasant buzzing in her ears, like a whole horde of mosquitoes.
The footman stood, straight-backed, staring directly in front of him, as he had been trained. Charlotte had always found it distinctly disconcerting conversing with someone forbidden to look you in the eye; it felt doubly so now. “The Duke, my lady.”
“Did he have any further message for me?”
“He said to tell you that circumstances required him to depart Girdings, my lady, and he did not know when he was to return.”
“I see,” said Charlotte, although she didn’t see at all. Paper crackled between her fingers. “Thank you. That will be all.”
“He’s left?” demanded Henrietta. “Tonight?”
Charlotte couldn’t bring herself to look at Henrietta, but stared as straight ahead as the footman. “So it would appear.”
“But why? What does the note say?”
Charlotte held it up in nerveless fingers. Forgive me.
For leaving?
There had to be a logical excuse. An emergency. What else would necessitate so precipitate a departure in the middle of one’s own party? A friend might have been taken ill. He might have received an urgent summons from his old regiment. Charlotte’s mind churned out a multitude of soothing plausabilities. She would have preferred if Robert had made some indication of when he might return, but at least he had contacted her before he left. That had to count for something. With so haphazard a departure, there wouldn’t have been time to write anything more. In fact, she should consider herself honored that he had taken the time to write anything at all. It showed he had been thinking about her, that he cared about her, that he knew she would worry when he didn’t appear, that he wanted her forgiveness.
It all made her feel a great deal better. Charlotte rubbed her cold fingers against the velvet of her skirt, forcing the blood back into them.
Forgive me.
Of course, she would. It was all perfectly understandable — or would be, once he came back and explained the whole story.
“I don’t understand,” mourned Henrietta, brooding over the note.
“Understand what?” Penelope’s hair was mussed and her eyes were very bright. She looked, in fact, like someone who had just been soundly kissed.
Charlotte found herself seized with an anxious desire to find a mirror and make sure she didn’t look like that. Not that it was the same, of course. What she had with Robert was worlds away from Penelope’s casual encounters. It was happily ever after, she was sure of it. Even if Robert had mysteriously decamped.
Again.
Charlotte fought away a vague sense of unease.
“There’s nothing to understand,” she said, making the best of it as best she could. “Robert was unexpectedly called away.”
Penelope narrowed her tea-colored eyes. “Was he?”
“Sometimes these things just can’t be helped,” said Charlotte, as much for herself as Penelope.
“Oh, yes, they can.” Penelope folded her arms across her chest with the air of one girding herself for battle. “Would you like to know where your Sir Galahad has gone? He’s off with Sir Francis Medmenham, prospecting for greener pastures.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Pen — ”
Penelope shook off Henrietta’s hand. “Well, it’s true! I heard it myself. I heard your precious duke tell Sir Francis Medmenham that you weren’t the sort he’d be interested in dallying with. And then they went off together.”
Charlotte’s throat felt very dry. “When was this?”
“Upstairs, just about an hour ago. Sir Francis saw him near your room and commented on your both leaving the ball at the same time.”
/>
Charlotte’s lungs expanded with sheer relief. “That explains it, then. Robert was protecting my reputation.”
“He was protecting his own — ”
“Pen!”
“He wouldn’t want Sir Francis to know we were upstairs together,” explained Charlotte hastily, before open warfare could break out between her friends. “It all makes perfect sense. What else was he to tell him under the circumstances?”
“I can think of a few things,” said Penelope.
“Well, so can we all,” broke in Henrietta, in a conciliatory tone that made Penelope’s eyes narrow dangerously, “but he’s only a man, after all. And he was trying to protect Charlotte.”
“By leaving,” said Penelope flatly. “By going off to carouse with Medmenham.”
Charlotte shook her head so emphatically that a hairpin fell out. “If he left with Medmenham, it was only to distract him. He doesn’t like Medmenham. He’s told me so.”
“He’s told Medmenham the same about you.” Penelope rolled her eyes in frustration. “He left you, Lottie. He ran off without saying good-bye.”
Charlotte stiffened at the sound of the old nursery nickname. “He sent me a note.”
“Not much of one.” Penelope grabbed both of her hands. Charlotte could feel the crush of her fingers through both their pairs of gloves. “I just don’t want to see you make a mistake out of — romantic blindness! You can have him if you like, but don’t have him thinking that he’s something he isn’t.”
“He isn’t. I mean, I don’t.” Yanking her hands free of Penelope’s, Charlotte seized on a simpler point. “What were you doing upstairs?”
“The same thing you were,” said Penelope with a bluntness that made the color creep into Charlotte’s cheeks. She hadn’t thought of it in quite those terms before. It made her feel oddly unclean.
“Upstairs?” said Henrietta despairingly. To go off into alcoves was one thing, bedrooms quite another.
It gave Charlotte a slightly squirmy feeling in the pit of her stomach to realize how carelessly she had been dicing with her own reputation. If she and Robert had been discovered upstairs . . . No wonder Robert had blurted out whatever he had to Medmenham.