by Sara Reinke
Chapter Two
“Good morning, Charlotte,” Una said as she drew back the heavy draperies and allowed a sudden, searing spill of sunlight into Charlotte’s bedchamber at Darton Hall. “Time to rise.”
The relentless, bright light snapped Charlotte almost immediately from asleep to awake, and she groaned, opening her eyes a squinted half-mast to blink at Una. “It cannot possibly be,” she mumbled, her hand pawing clumsily for a pillow. She drew the pillow atop her head, dampening the incessant glare, and burrowed beneath the dark sanctuary of her blankets.
“It most certainly is and well beyond,” Una said, and Charlotte heard the rustling snap of more draperies drawn wide. “It is nearly ten o’clock. Up now, Charlotte.”
She felt Una’s hand hook against the pillow, trying to ease it away from her head, and she clutched it fervently. “I have been victimized,” she moaned. “Leave me be. I am entitled to sleep in.”
Una laughed as she snatched the pillow away, leaving Charlotte bathed and cringing in the sunshine. “Victimized,” Una said, shaking her head and laughing again. “I was more concerned for the poor highwayman you verbally accosted than I ever was for your well-being.” She slapped her hand against the swell of Charlotte’s rump. “Up with you, Charlotte. Your mother and father are waiting, and you have guests.”
“Guests?” Charlotte asked as Una walked away from the bed. Charlotte sat up, blinking dazedly, her long, blond hair drooping into her face. She shoved it back with her hands and glanced toward Una’s daughter, Meghan, who stood patiently at the end of the bed. “What guests?”
“Your sister, Lady Harlow has arrived,” Meghan said, to which Charlotte’s shoulders hunched and she groaned aloud. “And Lord Roding has been here since well before the dawn.”
Charlotte stared at Meghan in desperate implore. “Run me through,” she said. “I beg you. Right this moment. Take that iron poker by the hearth and jab me with it.”
“Now you stop that,” Una scolded. She was standing before Charlotte’s opened wardrobe, drawing out a cream-colored dress dappled with large, printed roses. “They are both worried for you. Lord Roding was nearly frantic when he arrived.”
“How did he know to be frantic?” Charlotte asked. James Houghton, Baron Roding, was older brother to Lady Margaret, whose forthcoming wedding was the pretense for Charlotte’s return to Epping parish from London. James had tried so long and so futilely to claim Charlotte’s hand in marriage, his efforts bordered on pathetic.
“His man, Mr. Cheadle—the coach driver—seems to have recovered from his rapped head,” Una replied, draping the dress over the crook of her arm and collecting petticoats from the wardrobe. “Meghan said he remained here at Darton less than an hour upon our arrival last night before heading northward for Dunmow.”
Charlotte walked over to the porcelain washbasin. She cupped her hands together and let water pool into her palms. She splashed her face, gasping softly as the cold dousing wiped the last cobwebs of grogginess from her mind.
“How did my sister know?” she asked, glancing over her shoulder at Una as she reached for a linen. “Mother did not send her word, did she? She should not do that; she knows Caroline gets all excited about such things and with the baby so near…”
Charlotte’s older sister, Caroline Prescott, the Viscountess Harlow, was in her ninth month of pregnancy. The occasion of a first grandchild for Charlotte’s parents had not brought the reprieve from their scrutiny that Charlotte had anticipated. If anything, it had only seemed to bolster Lady Epping’s resolve that Charlotte should soon find everything that Caroline possessed but of which she was bereft: a suitable husband of status and title, a home, and a soon-to-be family.
“Lady Harlow would have heard of it whether your mother sent word or not,” Una said, trundling the heavy load of Charlotte’s clothing toward the bed. The mountainous pile of dress and crinolines rose to nearly obscure her head from view.
This was true. Caroline, ever the proper aristocratic wife, kept her fingertips pressed to the pulse of the rumor mill. Even though her pregnancy had left her swollen and hobbling, Caroline had continued her rounds of social engagements—and occasions to gossip— with a determination that was nearly admirable.
“Breakfast has been served and the tea poured already,” Una said. “Come, Charlotte, before it is all cold.”
Charlotte braced herself as Una and Meghan helped wrestle her into her corset. She curled her hands about the bedpost and grunted breathlessly as they jerked the ties to excruciating tautness, cinching her already slim margin of waistline to an even slighter circumference. “Are you all right, Una?” she asked, grimacing as Una wrenched against the stay ribbons and fettered them fast to keep her breasts shoved upward toward her chin, her stomach shoved inward toward her spine and her waist pinched to miniscule proportions.
“Yes, lamb,” Una said, turning her about and tugging against the front to affect the appropriately stylish, solitary, lumped-bosom look. “None the worse for wear. And you?”
“My hand hurts,” Charlotte said, looking down at her knuckles. They were somewhat swollen and discolored; no real bruising, only a distant hint, but there was soreness nonetheless. “I suppose Mother will scold me when I tell her what happened. Ladies are not supposed to throw punches.”
“Your mother has already heard an account of things,” Una said, turning Charlotte around once more. Charlotte glanced over her shoulder, her brow raised inquisitively. “Lord Roding has spoken at some length of it.”
“How would James know what had happened?” Charlotte asked. “He was not even there.”
“I would assume that Mr. Cheadle relayed events to him,” Una replied as she and Meghan overlapped buoyant layers of crinolines atop the bowing circumference of Charlotte’s pannier.
“Mr. Cheadle was unconscious,” Charlotte said. It took her a moment before she realized, and she looked at Una, groaning. “What role have I been relegated to in his account? Tell me not the hysterical girl quivering against the carriage belly, weeping and sniveling.”
“Not precisely,” Meghan said. She genuflected beside Charlotte, helping her mother settle and fluff each petticoat atop the other. “I do believe you were the complacent female, wide-eyed with fright and offering no resistance as the highwaymen accosted you.”
“Splendid,” Charlotte muttered, rolling her eyes. “And the lump on Mr. Cheadle’s head?”
“The result of a beating received as he engaged the three bandits at once, and was overpowered,” Una said.
“The brooch incident?”
“A shocking display of perversion as the thief plunged his hand down your bodice and groped you,” Meghan told her, as she fussed with the arrangement of Charlotte’s jupe underskirt atop the crinolines.
Charlotte laughed. “Obviously Mr. Cheadle has never tried to plunge his hand down the front of a corset.”
“As Mr. Cheadle has already offered his account, it is probably best to keep to that version,” Una said, reaching around Charlotte’s torso to settle her embroidered stomacher in place against her corset. Her hands moved to the ties against Charlotte’s back, and again, she tugged. “Lady Epping is already distraught enough, and as you said, if you tell her it was you swinging punches and cursing like a landsman…”
Charlotte understood her meaning. “She will throttle me.”
“Precisely,” Una said.
Charlotte shrugged her shoulders as Una helped her settle the bodice and skirt of her dress into place atop her underpinnings and jupe. She stood patiently as Una jerked and tugged to fasten the back of the dress closed, and Meghan turned back the sleeve cuffs to tie her ruffled engageantes into place just below her elbows. She lifted her chin as Una drew a slim ribbon about her throat, tying it in a bow beneath the angle of her jaw. “Sit down,” she murmured, tilting Charlotte’s head again to be positive the bow was in proper place. “I will bundle your hair.”
“What should I do with this?” Meghan asked while Charlo
tte settled herself comfortably against an upholstered stool and Una ran a brush through the waist- length measure of her hair. Charlotte glanced toward her bed and found Meghan holding the highwayman’s black greatcoat pinched in her fingertips, her nose wrinkled slightly, as if she had stumbled across a dead mouse. “Shall I burn it?” Meghan asked, looking toward Charlotte.
“No, Meghan,” Charlotte said, shaking her head. “No, just drape it against the foot of the bed, if you will.” Meghan raised her brows in surprise. “I should like to keep it, I think,” Charlotte said. “A souvenir of sorts.”
When Charlotte’s hair was arranged, Una and Meghan stepped briefly from the room. Charlotte stood and walked over to her bed, looking down at the highwayman’s coat. She reached out and brushed her fingertips against the heavy wool. She picked it up and drew the broad lapel flap toward her face. She could smell his fragrance lingering in the wool. Why this would please her as it seemed to; why it stoked some unfamiliar yet pleasant warmth within her, Charlotte could not say, but she smiled softly and despite herself.
She draped the coat against the bed again and studied it for a moment. She patted her hands against the deep outer pockets, and blinked in surprise when she felt something within one. She drew out a silver snuffbox and turned it over between her palms. The top had been engraved, a pair of initials set into the silver: W.S.
It is likely nothing, she told herself. The Black Trio had made eight robberies, including her own. The snuffbox might simply be a keepsake from another heist, something functional enough that the thief had decided against pawning it. “Or it could belong to you,” she whispered, trailing her fingertip against the inscribed initials. “Who are you, W.S.?”