by Лорен Уиллиг
Rolling out of the bed trailing the bedclothes along with her, Charlotte squinted shortsightedly at the china clock on the mantelpiece. Eleven o’clock! Henrietta must have left orders she wasn’t to be disturbed. Either that, or the entire staff was still engaged in laundering the flotilla of handkerchiefs she had gone through last night, while Henrietta patted her arm and repeated “but I don’t understand” until Charlotte didn’t know whether to hug her or kick her in the ankle; Miles hovered just outside the drawing room door with the air of a man who would like to be helpful but doesn’t know how, popping in from time to time with bloodthirsty and unhelpful solutions like keelhauling, horse-whipping, and light braising in boiling oil, which at least had the benefit of making Charlotte hiccup through her handkerchief with snotty gasps of laughter in between bouts of concerted sobbing.
At least the keelhauling had been preferable to Henrietta’s determined incomprehension. “But he seemed so devoted!” didn’t do anyone the least bit of good, no matter how well Henrietta meant by it.
Hopping in her haste, Charlotte kicked off a bit of sheet that was unaccountably clinging to her ankle and shimmied into her chemise, managing to get it wrong way round on the first go. The maid must have come while she was sleeping and cleared up the discarded debris of her court dress. Not so much as a crushed egret feather remained on the floor as a reminder of the night before. Someone had even removed the broken quill she had left lying next to her diary and replaced the stained blotter. Her poor diary had taken quite a beating the night before.
But that was all done with. Charlotte defiantly donned a bright red spencer over her white muslin dress. The Queen liked red, after all. And she wasn’t going to skulk around in mourning just because her fairy tale had turned out to be nothing but an extended fit of self-delusion.
But she wasn’t supposed to be thinking about that, was she?
Grabbing up her reticule, Charlotte hurried down the front stairs, dodging a length of drapery that someone had unaccountably left hanging from the banister. Henrietta was in the process of redecorating Loring House from the ground up, so one had to be alert for ladders, lengths of fabric, and bits of miscellaneous masonry. Not only Henrietta and Miles but the entire staff of Loring House had been lovely about adopting her as a surrogate daughter of the house. Fortunately, the servants seemed to find her habit of leaving books open on odd surfaces more endearing than annoying.
As Charlotte made her way to the door, buttoning her gloves and expertly navigating around three chairs that usually lived in the south drawing room, a carefully calculated cough brought her up short. Miles’s butler Stwyth had mastered the art of exhalations that, at the same time, managed to be both unassuming and yet resonate through an entire room. It was a most impressive talent.
“There is a gentleman to see you, Lady Charlotte,” he intoned. Stwyth’s displeasure at this social irregularity was displayed only in the quivering tufts of hair above either ear, which served as a fairly reliable barometer of the old retainer’s moods. “I have taken the liberty of showing him into the morning room.”
A gentleman, was it? Sir Francis Medmenham must have made good his promise to call. It was rather flattering that he had been quite so prompt. Charlotte doubted Lovelace would ever have hauled himself from his bed before noon, just to pursue Clarissa.
“Thank you, Stwyth,” she said with a smile that made Stwyth thaw ever so slightly. “Good morning — Robert?”
If she had tufts of hair like Stwyth’s, they would have been quivering for England.
“Charlotte,” he acknowledged, turning away from his perusal of the French porcelain on the mantel to greet her. The morning light wasn’t kind to him. Fatigue — or more likely dissipation, Charlotte reminded herself — had riven deep purple patches beneath his eyes. “I take it you were expecting someone else?”
“I certainly wasn’t expecting you,” blurted out Charlotte, jolted into honestly. “I thought our paths weren’t to cross.”
“Consider this more of a brief and necessary uncrossing.”
It was like looking at a stranger, but a stranger wearing a loved one’s face. It wasn’t fair, Charlotte thought furiously, for him to look so familiar and yet be so strange. It was one thing to know that the man she thought she saw wasn’t the man she was seeing; it was another thing to teach her heart to believe it. Even now, part of her still wanted to coo and flutter at him.
Charlotte crossed her arms tight across her chest, a makeshift sort of armor against an insidious enemy. “To what do I owe this uncrossing, then?”
Robert pushed abruptly away from the mantelpiece, very rudely presenting her with his back as he stalked with jerky movements towards the window. All the practiced gallantry he had displayed at Girdings seemed to have disappeared along with his pretended affections. But it wasn’t his gallantries that Charlotte missed the most; it was those moments when he was at his most matter-of-fact, too plainspoken to be anything but sincere. It had been an excellent act.
Robert braced his hands on the windowsill, staring fixedly into the square. It would be a pretty view in summer, with the park in the middle of the square, but now the trees were black and barren, as knobby as witches’ knees, and the only pedestrians promenading were white-capped nannies and their heavily bundled charges.
“Sir Francis Medmenham intends to ask you riding,” he said to the windowsill.
Charlotte stared at his back in wide-eyed disgust. “And he sends you as emissary?”
It was one thing not to want her himself, but to so coolly pass her along to a friend, to turn from lover to pander within the space of a month. . . . Bile rose in Charlotte’s throat. Even Lovelace wouldn’t have behaved so.
“No!” Robert jerked around to glower at her. “He isn’t aware I’ve come to see you.”
“How shocking.” Relief made Charlotte acid. “I hadn’t thought you went anywhere without him.”
Her bolt hit home. Robert’s knuckles whitened around the windowsill. “I have come to request that you decline Medmenham’s invitation.”
“Oh, have you?”
“Yes,” Robert said stiffly.
Charlotte might not have wanted to go riding with Medmenham before, but she did now. Despite having grown up in the country, she had never been much of a rider. Horses tended to realize when you were thinking about something else entirely and had a tendency to use those moments to dump you in the nearest hedge. But she wouldn’t miss this ride for the world.
“Do you think I can’t keep my seat?”
Robert’s blue eyes darkened. “Not on a ride such as this.”
“Don’t worry,” said Charlotte flippantly. “If I take a tumble, I won’t come crying to you.”
Robert’s lips moved, but no sound came out. She appeared to have rendered him incapable of speech.
Charlotte had never seen outrage quite so profound, and all because she had made a comment about falling off her horse, which didn’t seem like it ought to be the sort of thing to make a man start breathing gusts of flame.
As she watched Robert’s face move from tan to crimson, it belatedly occurred to Charlotte that tumble might, just might, have more than one meaning.
Charlotte went pink straight to the tips of her ears. Oh, no. He couldn’t think . . .
He clearly did.
“I meant off my horse!” she all but shouted.
“I know that,” Robert snapped.
“That’s not what you were thinking,” she muttered.
Could a duke blush? This one seemed to be coloring up nicely. “You don’t know what I was thinking,” he gritted out.
“No, we’ve established that, haven’t we?” said Charlotte brittlely. “Several times.”
“Then I’ll make myself very plain this time.” Robert spoke very slowly and clearly, as though to the village half-wit. He was still breathing heavily through his nose. He might not want her for himself, but the notion of her dallying elsewhere clearly discommoded him.
&n
bsp; Charlotte lifted her chin and regarded him haughtily, in her best imitation of her grandmother squishing the peasantry. “And what are your pronouncements, O Master?”
Enunciating every syllable, Robert pronounced, “If Sir Francis Medmenham asks you to marry him, don’t.”
Charlotte blinked. She had missed a vital link there. So, as far as she could tell, had Robert. Since when had a ride in the park become a euphemism for matrimony?
Charlotte abandoned her duchess impression to wrinkle her nose at her erstwhile lover, who had clearly gone utterly mad. Or maybe he had always been utterly mad and she just hadn’t realized. Much more of this and she would go utterly mad.
Madness must be in the air.
“He hasn’t even asked me to go riding yet. I only have your word on it. And we both know what that is worth.”
“Well, if he does, don’t.”
“Go riding with him or marry him?” Taunting Robert was actually rather fun, once one got into the swing of it. Poking him with little sticks would probably be fun, too, but there weren’t any to hand. Too bad.
“Either.” If Robert gritted his teeth any more, they were going to fall out. Charlotte watched the process with fascination and no little satisfaction. Serve him right to be a toothless wonder. That would put a spoke in his future seduction plans.
“I don’t see by what right you tell me to do — or not to do — anything.”
“By my right as the head of the family.”
“Oh, naturally!” Charlotte wafted her arms in the air. “The same right you exercised oh so diligently all those years while you were away in India. The same right you employed with such stunning” — Charlotte ground to a stop, momentarily at a loss for a suitably scathing noun — “conscientiousness by running away.”
A wry expression settled across Robert’s face, painfully reminiscent of the man she had known at Girdings. “Which time?”
“Either,” Charlotte shot his own word back at him. “You needn’t pretend you have the slightest concern, however minuscule, for my well-being or happiness. You just don’t want your little friend being diverted by matrimony.”
If she hadn’t know better, she might have thought that he looked . . . sad. That was nonsense, of course. “Right. Naturally. You’ve hit it entirely,” he said tonelessly. “Will you grant me my request?”
“No.” Some inner devil prompted Charlotte to add, “I haven’t so many suitors than I can afford to lose one. Even if he is yet another piece of rotten fruit.” She let that sink in before continuing, “But at least he makes no pretense about it. He’s never pretended to be anything else. Now may we consider this interview at a close?”
It would have been a very impressive speech if her voice hadn’t cracked at the end. With a flourish, she gestured towards the open door into the hall, where, she had no doubt, Stwyth and at least two under housemaids would be busy dusting the wainscoting along the side of the door.
Robert briefly closed his eyes, in a gesture indicative of unspeakable weariness. Without moving, he said, “I’m sorry I hurt you. If you believe nothing else I say, believe that.”
“You’re right,” Charlotte said, and waited deliberately, cruelly, before adding, “I don’t believe anything you say.”
Plunking her nose firmly in the air, she turned on her heel and swept out, nearly tripping over a crouching maid in the process.
Robert didn’t make any attempt to pursue. She could see him reflected in a vast Baroque mirror propped against the wall awaiting rehanging. He didn’t move. His expression didn’t change. He just stood there in Henrietta’s blue and white morning room, watching her walk away.
She should have felt triumphant. She had said all the sorts of things she had always intended to say, but never actually did. And it had been easy. They had just come pouring out. But instead of feeling victorious, she just felt drained. And very, very confused. How could he say he hadn’t meant to hurt her when he had? Why come and bedevil her when he had made it very clear he hadn’t wanted anything to do with her? Charlotte’s gloved hands curled into fists at her sides. It just plain wasn’t right.
Tripping down the front steps, Charlotte took a deep breath before letting a groom hand her up into Henrietta’s carriage. She just needed to put it all behind her. It was all over. Nothing Robert said had any power to move her. If she repeated it to herself often enough, she might even begin to believe it. Grimacing, Charlotte sank back against the blue satin cushions.
At least it would be peaceful at the Queen’s House.
At the Queen’s House, all was havoc.
The Queen’s pages greeted her with wide, frightened eyes as she passed down the halls. One of Princess Mary’s ladies stumbled past, crying, her handkerchief over her eyes. Apprehension quickened Charlotte’s steps until she was all but running, her slippers padding against the varnished wooden floors.
In the Warm Room, so called because it boasted one of the only carpets in the palace, Princess Sophia was pacing maniacally back and forth, her butter-blond curls sticking out at odd angles from their bandeau. On seeing Charlotte, she turned a tear-ridden face her direction. “Oh, Lansy,” she moaned. “It’s happened again.”
“What has?” Charlotte asked breathlessly, fearing that she knew very well what.
“Papa! He’s gone . . . well, you know.”
Charlotte sagged heavily against the back of a gilded chair. “Oh, dear.”
Princess Sophia cast a nasty look in the direction of her mother’s dressing room, “She drove the darling to it, I have no doubt. You’d best go in to her. She is having her own hysterics. As if she really cared!”
Princess Sophia’s tone implied that the Queen had no right to any hysterics, much less hysterics of her own. The animosity Princess Sophia bore for her mother only seemed to intensify with every day Charlotte had spent at the Palace.
That, however, was no business of Charlotte’s. Releasing her death grip on the chair, she resolutely shook out her skirts. “I’ll see what I can do,” she promised.
“You’re an angel, really,” said Princess Sophia. “Not that she deserves it.”
Charlotte smiled fleetingly and was gone, through the door into the Queen’s dressing room. If the Queen had had hysterics, she wasn’t anymore. She drooped in her chair, still wearing her dressing gown. Her face was so gray that it seemed as though the crimson walls had drained all the life out of her. Next to her hovered Princesses Mary and Elizabeth. Above her head, six portrait miniatures of Charles I gazed mournfully down from their case on the wall in sad commentary on the perils of bearing the crown.
Princess Mary, always so calm, was as disarrayed as her mother, her fair face flushed and her usually immaculately arranged hair straggling in wisps around her face. Dropping her mother’s hand, she made her way to Charlotte.
“You’ve heard, I take it?” she asked, in a low voice, as the Princess Elizabeth continued to hover over her mother’s shoulder, patting her arm and making soothing noises.
“Princess Sophia just told me.”
“It’s dreadful,” said Princess Mary heavily. “Just dreadful. Worse than last time, even. It was so sudden.”
Charlotte thought of what she had seen the night before, but held her tongue. There could be no use in mentioning it now.
“They won’t let Mama in to see him,” Princess Mary continued despairingly. “Papa has dismissed all his pages and his Lords of the Bedchamber. At least, they say it’s by his own wishes.”
Charlotte’s eyes widened. “Surely, the doctor — ” she began.
“They have appointed a new doctor,” said Princess Mary. “They say Papa doesn’t want the Willises anymore, not after the way they treated him last time. They wouldn’t allow Mama’s physician in to see him.”
“They?”
“He, rather,” Princess Mary corrected herself, with a shrug to show the futility of syntax at such a time. “My brother’s man, Colonel McMahon.”
“Oh,” said Charlott
e. And then again, “Oh.”
The Prince of Wales had apparently lost no time in securing his hold over the household.
“Mama is frantic for lack of news. And,” the princess admitted, “so are we. Poor Papa!”
“Have you sent to the Prince of Wales?” asked Charlotte tentatively.
“He is probably too busy celebrating to take any notice,” said Princess Mary, who was usually quite fond of her brother, bitterly. “Why must this happen again and again? Papa is so good. Why must he be afflicted so? Why must we be afflicted so?”
“Is there anything at all I can do?” asked Charlotte. “Any assistance I might render?”
Princess Mary sighed. “Unless you can persuade my brother to lift his ban . . .” With a shrug at the futility of it, she suggested, without much enthusiasm, “Perhaps you might read to Mama. Mama?”
“I should not do the listening justice.” The Queen’s voice was hoarse and cracked, as frail as her skin. “Not now.”
It was enough to make anyone think decidedly nasty thoughts about the Prince of Wales. How he could he be so abandoned to filial feeling, much less common human decency? He had done the same before, grabbing charge of the King’s household and forbidding his mother and sisters access to the King. It was said that on those previous occasions, the Prince had done everything possible to arrest the King’s recovery in the hopes that if his father’s mind remained deranged, he would be granted all the powers of a regency.
The notion that someone would be willing to sabotage his own parent’s sanity for personal gain made Charlotte’s skin crawl.
Looking at the pathetic figure of the Queen, a germ of an idea fluttered through Charlotte’s brain. “The King’s bedchamber is next to the Great Library!” she blurted out.
The two Princesses looked at her as though she were the one to have run mad.
“Yes,” said the Princess Elizabeth. “Where it has been these thirty years.”