by Лорен Уиллиг
“Why wouldn’t I?”
The more appropriate question was why would he. They did not exactly move within the same circles.
Charlotte looked to Henrietta, but Henrietta only widened her eyes in a silent protestation of innocence.
Charlotte was not convinced. “You didn’t invite him, did you?” Charlotte asked suspiciously.
“No.” Miles seemed genuinely surprised by the question. But, then, Miles always seemed vaguely surprised. By everything. “He’s making one of Medmenham’s party.”
Medmenham. Always Medmenham. Charlotte was sick unto death of Sir Francis Medmenham, whose fingers were far too busy in any number of pies, attaching himself to Robert, recommending new doctors for the King. In fact, when she searched for the base of all the sources of confusion in her life, it always seemed to come back to Medmenham.
Despite herself, Charlotte found herself turning towards Medmenham’s box, peering myopically at the confusion of gentlemen who were sorting themselves out among the small gilt chairs. One box over, she could see the blur of Penelope’s red head, in company with her soon-to-be husband, her mother, who was positively molting feathers, and her father, who was only visible as a long pair of legs and a tilted program covering his face. Staines leaned over the partition to speak to someone in Medmenham’s box and the configuration shifted, revealing Robert at the very back. Even blurry, he looked somewhat grim. Or maybe that was just the effect of his stark black-and-white evening clothes.
“I wonder why Dovedale didn’t use the Dovedale box,” Henrietta was saying to Miles over Charlotte’s head.
“I expect he didn’t know he had it,” said Miles matter-of-factly.
Charlotte cocked her head at him. “What do you mean?”
Miles shrugged awkwardly. “Well, it’s not exactly as though the Dowager is relinquishing anything, is it? I put him up for my club, but he refused,” he added as an afterthought. “Said he didn’t have the blunt to pay the fees.”
“But — ” Charlotte began, and broke off.
Miles looked at her quizzically, but Charlotte just shook her head, the words she had been about to say all jumbled in a lump at the back of her throat.
But of course he has the funds, she had been about to say. It was all his. The opera box, the houses, the horses, Girdings, everything, down to the very honey in the beehives. Only it wasn’t, was it? Not while her grandmother held the keys. By law, it had been all Robert’s for over a decade, but he hadn’t had any use of it, of any of it.
“He isn’t even living at Dovedale House, is he?” Henrietta asked curiously, as if it were a matter of purely academic interest.
Charlotte knew the answer to that one. “Bachelor lodgings,” she croaked. She wasn’t quite sure why her throat had suddenly gone so dry. “He told me he took bachelor lodgings in the Albany.”
As if he didn’t intend to stay. Or, she realized, with a sinking feeling, as if he never felt like he could stay in the first place.
Charlotte looked across the way, at the bustling box where Medmenham’s cronies were amusing themselves with ribald jokes and scurrilous stories. Medmenham presided with quizzing glass in hand, entirely at home among the velvet and gilt. Robert, in contrast, kept to the back of the box, to the shadows, as though primed for a quick retreat. As he had retreated from Girdings all those years ago?
Her grandmother certainly hadn’t done anything to make him welcome.
And she was just as bad. Charlotte could feel her cheeks burn with two bright flags of color. What had she done to make him feel at home in his own home? She had never stopped to think of how strange it might be for him, any of it, of how big and daunting Girdings might seem, or how utterly alien the code of behavior that governed the small world of the ton. She hadn’t thought about him at all; she had simply used him for her own purposes, first as playmate and then as a repository for her romantic fancies.
Old anger wrestled with new guilt in a writhing mass of undigestible emotion. To have kissed her and then fled wasn’t the act of a gentleman — but what had her part been in that?
He had tried to tell her. Charlotte’s restless hands crushed the lace edge of her fan as she remembered their conversation in the dining room on Twelfth Night, and how she had brushed away his tentative admissions about his own inadequacies as Duke, too preoccupied with wondering what he thought of her, only concerned with how whatever he said related to her. In retrospect, her own behavior struck her as embarrassingly childish and more than a little selfish.
“I wonder if it is all very strange for him,” she said tentatively, half hoping that Miles would say no. “Coming back to all this, I mean.”
“I can’t think how it wouldn’t be,” said Miles, casually heaping coals of fire on her head. “And your grandmother has been known to make grown men jump out of drawing room windows.”
“It was a ballroom window,” said Charlotte defensively. “And I don’t think Percy Ponsonby really counts as a grown man.”
“Fair enough,” said Miles equably. “But you can’t deny that the Dowager tends to inspire the urge to emigrate. I used to think I wanted to run away and join the army,” he added reminiscently.
“You also thought you wanted to be a woodcutter,” reminded Henrietta caustically.
“I like chopping things down,” said Miles cheerfully.
“He chopped down mother’s favorite rosebush,” said Henrietta to Charlotte.
“It wasn’t her favorite,” Miles protested. “And it grew back.”
Their familiar bickering faded into a blur in the background. Charlotte feigned interest in the stage, but she did not see the brightly costumed actors any more than she heard Miles and Henrietta’s banter. Instead, she was busily realigning the past few weeks within her head, worrying at them, turning bits and pieces upside down to create an entirely new picture of events. Maybe Robert wasn’t a Lovelace, or an Orville, either, but something entirely different. For once, Charlotte could think of no literary counterpart into which she could slot Robert’s behavior.
Girdings and the town house were both his. He would have been well within his rights to dispossess both her and her grandmother. Her grandmother had her dower property and a comfortable allowance of her own. Nobody would have condemned him for it, or even thought anything of it. It was the way the world worked.
Instead, he had behaved as though he were the interloper, rather than they, attending the house party at Girdings more as guest than host, never indicating by word or deed that he minded the usurpation of his rightful place. The only liberty he had taken was in kissing her. And as for that . . . Charlotte’s hands tightened on her fan as it all began to make a very unpleasant sort of sense. After being made to feel like the rankest of interlopers, it must have been terribly tempting to find himself the object of adoration of the not-entirely-ill-favored daughter of the house. Add a windswept parapet, a sky full of stars, and a good deal of wine at dinner, and she didn’t wonder that he had kissed her.
Or that he had thought better of it afterwards. She knew her own limitations.
Charlotte was jarred out of that unpleasant line of thought as Henrietta’s chair bumped against hers as its occupant scrambled to stand.
“Penelope!” Henrietta exclaimed, leaping from her seat and hurrying to the back of the box.
Dropping her mangled fan, Charlotte saw that they had visitors. Penelope pushed into the box, tugging her fiancé along behind her like a dog on a leash. Inevitably as the night follows the day, Medmenham, Innes, and Frobisher followed along behind him, although Charlotte noticed that Frobisher had the good sense to stay to the back of the group, well away from Henrietta and Miles. Was Robert there, too? In the confusion of coats and cravats, gleaming quizzing glasses and frothing linen, it was difficult to tell.
For the first time, Charlotte thought she could see why Robert might have attached himself so strongly to Medmenham. For a man who had been abroad so long, shunned by his own family, Medmenham’s company p
rovided an instant fraternity of his fellows. A rather frightful fraternity, but a fraternity none the less. When was the last time she had gone anywhere without either Henrietta or Penelope in tow?
Lord Freddy stumbled as Penelope let go of him, catching at a chair back for balance.
Penelope regarded her fiancé with a jaundiced eye. “Really, Freddy. How much have you had?”
Even bloated with claret, there was something undeniably winning about Staines’s smile. His were classic British good looks, ruddy cheeked, with that unique dark blond shade of hair peculiar to the British Isles. “Can’t a gentleman have a drink?”
“Not if he can’t hold it without being foxed,” said Penelope rudely.
Staines caught her around the waist. His color was high as he yanked her close in a grasp too intimate for a public place. “A fine thing for my affianced bride to say.”
Penelope gave him a light shove. “We’re not married yet.”
“Are you promising to descend into docility once that blessed day arrives, Miss Deveraux?” drawled Medmenham, baring his teeth at Penelope as though she were the star attraction in a bear baiting. His tone was as gently needling as a pointy stick.
“I shall mend my ways,” said Penelope sweetly, “when Freddy mends his.”
Medmenham affected a bow. “A very pattern for matrimony.”
Not liking the way the conversation was going, or the dangerous glint in Penelope’s eye, Charlotte asked hastily, “When do you leave for India?”
“A week Thursday.” If Penelope had any trepidation about traveling halfway around the world, she certainly didn’t show it. She might have been referring to a trip to Almack’s. “Two days after the wedding.”
“I wish I could come,” Charlotte said wistfully. “You’ll have to be sure to write regularly.”
For a moment, Penelope’s face softened. “By every packet,” she promised. “You can bring them to Henrietta and laugh over my misadventures.”
“Or exult over your triumphs,” Charlotte amended gently. “I’m sure you’ll have maharajas bringing you rubies as big as your palm and besotted British officers leaving leopard skins at your feet.”
“I should hope not,” scoffed Penelope. “The skins would probably smell.”
Charlotte squeezed her hands. “It will be an adventure,” she said softly. “You’ll see.”
Penelope shrugged. “Perhaps.”
Her own troubles momentarily paled into insignificance beside Penelope, off to a strange continent with no one for comfort but her husband. No matter how well Penelope hid it, she had to be nervous. Charlotte knew she would be.
It might, thought Charlotte hopefully, be the making of Penelope’s marriage. Charlotte glanced back over her shoulder to where Freddy Staines was passing a silver flask back and forth with Henry Innes. Penelope had noticed, too. Her eyes were narrowed in an expression of mingled condescension and irritation.
Maybe not.
“I could come with you,” Charlotte suggested, only half joking. “You could be my chaperone.”
Penelope laughed raggedly. “And ruin you, too? I don’t think so. But — thank you.”
Before Charlotte could say anything else, Penelope swept up the train of her skirt, a catlike smile curving the corners of her lips. “I’d best be removing myself,” she said meaningfully. “You’ll have company enough without me.”
“Pen?” Charlotte rose to follow her and bumped smack into a dark suit of evening clothes.
There was a man within the evening clothes, a man tall enough that her eyes were on a level with the stickpin in his cravat. There were no pearls or diamonds or rubies for him, none of the ostentatious decoration affected by the other gentlemen in the box. The stickpin was a plain gold oval, a familiar family crest incised into the metal. The lines of the crest were worn with age, but Charlotte would have known it anywhere: a dove in flight with a sprig of rosemary in its mouth. Rosemary for remembrance. Charlotte had never been entirely sure whether the dove was flying towards home or away.
Charlotte backed up a few paces, catching at the railing of the balcony before she found herself flying into the pit. In the light of the thousand chandeliers, his face seemed as bright as the golden oval, but it was considerably harder to read.
What had become of his promise not to come until she called? Perversely, she was more pleased than not that he had disobeyed.
Charlotte abruptly squashed down that thought. There was no future there. That dove had flown.
“Robert,” said Charlotte, struggling to keep her tone light. “I hadn’t thought to see you here.”
“I could disappear again,” he offered.
“Yes, you do that very well,” said Charlotte without thinking. Flushing, she amended, “I didn’t mean — ”
“Of course, you did,” said Robert lightly, as though they were talking about nothing more meaningful than the movements on the stage. He bared his teeth in a polished social smile. “And I deserved it.”
Charlotte pleated the folds of her fan. “Most of it,” she mumbled. “You were not entirely without assistance.”
Looking up from her fan, she found him watching her, his expression intent and curiously vulnerable.
Shifting from one foot to the other, he said in a rapid undertone, “If I were to call on you tomorrow afternoon, would you receive me?”
Charlotte didn’t know what to say. There was a tightening in the back of her throat, not of anticipation, but of dread.
“It is your choice,” he added levelly. “If you tell me to stay away, I will. Although I very much hope you won’t. I should like — well, to talk to you.”
That could only mean one thing.
Charlotte let her gaze drop to her mangled fan. What a fool she was. She should be glad that he wanted to make amends, to be — oh, what a lackluster word! — friends. They could put all of her silliness and all of his missteps behind them and start over again, as they should have in the first place.
It was all for the best, she assured herself. But right now she wasn’t sure she wanted to sit through an explanation of what a lovely person she was and how very sorry he was to have kissed her. The very thought of it made her chest tighten in silent protest.
“If I’m not at the Palace,” she prevaricated.
He didn’t seem all that thrilled with her response, but he accepted it as a deserved rebuke. “I will await your pleasure,” he said quietly.
It was an exceedingly unfortunate choice of phrase. Charlotte experienced an intense urge to stamp her foot and shout, It’s not my pleasure! But ladies didn’t do that sort of thing, especially not Lansdowne ones, so instead, she inclined her head in a genteel nod, while her insides churned in silent rebellion.
Was he really that thick? Didn’t he realize there were few conversations she would less rather have? That no matter how much she tried to convince herself otherwise, she was still ridiculously, childishly infatuated with the very idea of him?
And not just the idea — it would be easier if it were just the idea of him. She was ridiculously, childishly infatuated with the actuality of him, too. It was there in the way he leaned just that little bit forwards when he spoke to her; the way his lips turned up on one side and not the other when he smiled; the way he was looking at her right now, as though he actually cared what she thought or felt. It was absurd that in a theatre loud with the din of singing, dancing, and talking, she could hear the rustle of his sleeve as he stirred; that in the midst of burning beeswax, orange peel, gingerbread, and a dozen different perfumes, she could still distinguish the particular smell of him, all clean linen and sandalwood and just a hint of saddle leather. There was no play, no party, no pit below. The entire world was narrowed to the span between her body and his, bounded by the curve of his arm on the balcony.
“Dovedale!” The word careened into their kingdom like a cannon-ball, shattering the strange silence that bound her to Robert.
Sir Francis Medmenham strolled over like
Charles II favoring a pair of fortunate courtiers with his presence. Charlotte practically expected to see spaniels nipping at his heels, instead of just Frobisher and Innes.
“Do stop monopolizing your little cousin, Dovedale,” he casually commanded. “It’s unfair on the rest of company.”
And then Robert did something very curious.
Instead of standing aside to allow Medmenham to pass, he turned so that his body was ranged between Charlotte and Medmenham, and said, very deliberately, “We are scarcely cousins. The connection is a very distant one. Isn’t it, Charlotte?”
“Through half siblings more than a hundred years ago,” Charlotte confirmed. “You see, our great-great-grandfather married six times,” she began, but Medmenham did not seem to be paying attention to the intricacies of the Lansdowne family tree. Which was a pity, because Charlotte had always found the story of their great-great-grandfather and his multiple marital misfortunes a singularly diverting one.
Smiling charmingly, Medmenham said, “In that case, Dovedale, all the more reason for you to step aside.”
Robert drew himself up in a way that made Charlotte think of knights and gauntlets and the clash of swords on shields. She could practically hear the trumpets sounding in the background. The two men were roughly of a height, but Robert was broader, his muscles honed with years of marches and physical work, while Medmenham was as lean and rangy as a kitchen cat.
“I still have a responsibility as the head of my house,” Robert said pleasantly, but there was a bite beneath it.
Beneath his genial mask, Charlotte was suddenly quite, quite sure that Robert’s feelings for Medmenham were anything but cordial. Then why was he playing at being his friend?
Medmenham had games of his own to play. “Are you sure that’s all it is, Dovedale?” he asked, smiling faintly as though there was something he knew that Robert didn’t. Whatever it was, it pleased him mightily. He looked like Penelope right after a jaunt to a balcony.
“And what would that be to you, Medmenham?”
“That,” said Medmenham lightly, “remains to be seen.”