He blinked, then narrowed his eyes. “Miss Rare-Foure, I am not Jeffcoat’s nanny. What’s more, after he told me a sad story of treachery,” Lord Waverly added, seeming to weigh each word, “he needed some time alone. I think on top of it all, he felt slightly humiliated to have fallen at the hands of a shopkeeper’s daughter.”
“Waverly!” the duke scolded him. “I will ask you to hold your tongue. Recall my wife, please, is that same shopkeeper’s daughter, and you are in her home.”
Lord Waverly had the grace to look shamefaced at the duchess. “My apologies, Your Grace.”
As expected, Amity was all graciousness and light. “That’s quite all right. I know you are speaking out of great friendship for Lord Jeffcoat. But you must understand that this terribly sad and treacherous story you mentioned has befallen my sister, as well. And you must also know, if you don’t already, my sister is very much in love with your friend.”
“Is she?” he demanded, not ready to let go of someone to blame, or so it seemed to Charlotte.
“I can answer for myself,” she said. “I love Charles with all my heart. I was tricked into meeting an old ... acquaintance. He has fallen on difficult times and thought he could use my engagement as a windfall. I had just disabused him of such a notion when Charles showed up.”
Lord Waverly lifted his head, looking down his nose at her, one eyebrow raising and then the other. She knew it for an imperious stare, often given by the nobility she’d encountered. She didn’t let it bother her one bit but stared right back at him. After a few seconds, the man lowered his chin and openly considered her.
“You truly love Jeffcoat?”
“I do.” She started to lower her gaze at discussing something so personal with practically a stranger.
“No,” he said, “look at me right here. For I like to think I am a good judge of character, and most people’s show plainly in their eyes.”
“My sister doesn’t need to be interrogated by you,” Amity said. Her tone was soft but with a heart of pure iron. Unfamiliar as it was, Charlotte shivered.
“That’s all right. I can look Lord Waverly or anyone in the eyes and declare my love and my fidelity. Charles didn’t give me the chance, but I am determined he will.”
Another long moment, and then Lord Waverly nodded, looking satisfied. “I am at your service if I can help. But if I were you, I would wait until at least noon tomorrow before you seek him out. Otherwise you might find him at his worst, and nothing makes a man quicker to temper and poor judgment like a pounding head and a sour stomach.”
CHARLES SAT IN HIS study and considered his future. Waverly had tried to dissuade him from drinking too much. Naturally, he’d failed. Regardless, no matter how many glasses of brandy, Charles felt as sober as a priest. Eventually, he’d given up trying to drive Charlotte out of his heart with liquor and had headed home.
On the carriage ride, he’d realized what he needed to do. It was his turn to leave.
Not forever, but for the time being, until he didn’t feel ... anything. Not for Charlotte. He didn’t want to go to Pelham’s baby’s christening and see her there. He didn’t want to drop by Pelham’s house and run into her. He didn’t want to go into a restaurant and be offered a Rare Confectionery.
By the time he’d vacated his carriage — annoyingly realizing that even his own driver reminded him of Charlotte, or at least her maid — he’d decided to go for a tour of the Continent. He’d missed out on such a whimsical thing, what with studying to be a barrister and taking care of his father.
He grimaced into the glass of plain water he was now nursing so he wouldn’t ache all over in the morning. And he would drink at least two more before bed, a trick he’d learned while spending too many nights at one pub or another with Waverly when they were at school together. All the more helpful a trick when exams loomed the following day.
His father, who would abhor thinking he’d ever been “taken care of,” was the singular impediment. How could Charles up and leave him? Or he should say, how could he leave him too?
If he thought for one moment the earl would go with him, he would welcome him as a traveling companion, but his father had made his feelings quite clear on ever leaving the isle of Britain. “Not on your life.”
The few times Charles had been away, just for a week to France or Spain, he’d been with Waverly, always looking for women, or with Pelham, always searching out the best cup of coffee. Or with both.
Actually, he didn’t mind going alone. Charles would talk to the earl in the morning, making certain his father knew, despite his intent to stay away for an extended period, that it was temporary. At the end of that time, he would return as the dutiful son he’d always been. Tomorrow, he would turn over his court cases to one of his associates and then depart from the coast with all due haste.
And quite a bit of haste was due as far as he was concerned.
Before he weakened and changed his mind.
Before he gave in to the desire to see her face again and let her lie to him so sweetly.
To punish himself for such weakness, he dredged up the image of Charlotte moving into the circle of the stranger’s arms just before Charles had made his presence known to them. If he hadn’t, would he have had to watch her kiss another man?
Feeling his stomach turn, he drank down the water and lifted the glass to hurl it at the wall. His hand was trembling and his heart pounding. After a moment, he breathed a calm, steadying breath, set the glass down, and refilled it from the pitcher his butler had left. He had let her unexpected betrayal rob him of his civilized nature once that day. He wouldn’t let it happen again.
“DEPARTED?” CHARLOTTE repeated the word. The startling information had come from her mother’s lips, making it even stranger. “Lord Jeffcoat has departed? For where? And how do you know this?”
Charlotte had simply gone into work as usual, intending to go to Charles’s home later in the day, as Lord Waverly had advised. At that moment, she held a piece of lacy, cream-colored fabric, shot with small blue flowers in one hand and a peacock feather in the other, as they designed the curtains and the interior of the café.
As casually as possible, she’d said, “I’m sorry to say Lord Jeffcoat and I had a ... a falling out yesterday, but I intend to see him and sort it all out.” Armed with the knowledge from the duke, she thought she could get to the heart of the issue of Charles’s trust and make him understand she was not like his mother.
And then her mother had said those puzzling words indicating Charles would not be found at home. Felicity stared at her.
“Now that the police are holding Mr. Tufts in jail, your father wanted to discuss the lawsuit with Lord Jeffcoat. He went to Lincoln’s Inn this morning but was told your viscount had turned over all his cases, including ours, to other barristers and taken a leave of absence.”
It was already noon. “Why didn’t you tell me as soon as you came in?”
Her mother blinked. “Naturally, I thought you knew.”
Charlotte snapped her mouth closed. Of course her parents would assume she knew where he was going. But she didn’t. All she knew was he was no longer her betrothed, and if she didn’t hurry, he might slip away from her forever thinking she’d betrayed him.
“How can I find him?” she asked out loud, not caring what her mother thought of her youngest daughter’s carelessness in losing her brand-new fiancé.
“You could ask his father. If anyone knows, it will be the earl.”
NOT HALF AN HOUR LATER, Charlotte, with her mother at her side, stood in the cheerless parlor when the Earl of Bentley entered. He had agreed to see her immediately. In the next instant, she knew why.
“What have you done?” he demanded in lieu of a greeting, obviously prepared to berate her.
She took a step back at his intensity, and then realized his words were born from pain, dredged up from the past. Moreover, just as she was losing her heart’s desire, he feared he was losing his son, and by her actions.
“It was a terrible misunderstanding,” she began.
Charles’s father waved her words away. “That’s what my wife said at first, until there could be no misunderstanding anymore. Then there was only the sickening truth.”
“I am not that woman!” Charlotte declared, feeling her mother bristle at her side. Felicity had been clear she would not interfere, but Charlotte also knew her mother would not stay silent if her daughter were unjustly attacked.
“No, and you shall not be my son’s wife, either. He saw through you in time.”
“Please, my lord, there was nothing to see through. I love your son.”
“Do you?” he asked, his tone bitter.
“The question is, does your son love my daughter?” her mother asked, drawing the earl’s attention. “I think it rather unbecoming of him to turn tail at the first bump in the road.”
“Mother, please,” Charlotte began, but the earl drew himself up even taller than he already was.
“Are you disparaging my son?”
Felicity sniffed in a way she had that managed to convey a “take it as you will” message. Charlotte didn’t think it would go over well.
“Madam, how dare you?”
“How dare you to point fingers at my daughter without even knowing the facts. These young people should work it out for themselves without the ghost of your own past interfering. But they cannot do that when one of them has run away.”
“Run away!” the earl looked as though he were going to pop a button. “I’ll have you know, madam, that my son has worked hard all his life, even though he didn’t need to, while his peers were lazing about doing very little with their God-given talents. Charlie has earned the right to spend a year traipsing about the Continent.”
Charlotte gasped. A year! First Lionel and now Charles. She was beginning to think she drove men to cross the blasted Channel!
“He should be doing that on his wedding trip,” her mother pointed out.
The earl sighed as if he were deflating along with his anger. “It’s true that I do not know the details of their falling out,” he glanced at Charlotte with less anger, “but something severe occurred.”
“Honestly, my lord,” Charlotte spoke up before her mother could rile him again, “Charles misinterpreted something he saw because ... because — oh dear!” she didn’t want to say it.
“Because?” the earl prompted.
“Because he was so hurt by your countess — by his mother’s departure.”
Charles’s father paled, and he shook his head, looking lost in his own painful thoughts.
Charlotte reminded him, “Think of how hurt that young boy was, with a mother who didn’t want him.”
“Of course she wanted him!” the earl exclaimed. “But I wouldn’t let her have him. She would have taken him from me, and I had to punish her.”
Felicity grabbed hold of Charlotte’s hand as if someone were trying to separate them, so fierce was the older man’s tone.
“You punished your son along with your wife?” The words were in Charlotte’s heart, but they were spoken by her mother. “I understand you were the victim of a terrible betrayal,” Felicity continued. “And I can tell you loved the countess a great deal. However, when one becomes a parent, one must put the child first. You would have done better, sir, to make sure your son knew his mother was not a monster.”
The earl backed up a step at the notion, making it plain he hadn’t been able to be so generous.
“Did she try to contact him?” Charlotte asked, wishing her tone didn’t sound so small and sad, but her heart was breaking all over again.
The earl nodded. “I stopped her,” he admitted. “I blocked her every attempt and destroyed every letter.”
“Surely, when he was older you could have allowed it without fear of losing him,” Felicity said.
“The missives stopped years ago. She may be dead for all I know.”
Or care. The unspoken words hung in the air between the three of them.
“Don’t let him think I don’t love him. Don’t let him leave with such pain,” Charlotte begged. “Please tell me where he is going, and I will go after him.”
“Yes,” her mother agreed. “She will.”
Chapter Thirty-One
Charlotte could see his tall form over the heads of the others in the crowd at the Dover ferry dock. Charles was ascending the gangplank, about to steam out of her life. Tears were streaming down her cheeks, causing people to stare and, at the desperate look upon her face, to move out of her way as she fought to reach him through the throng of travelers.
Sailors were untying the lines holding the steamship to the dock. She would be too late. She’d spent the morning first at the harbormaster’s office and then at the Channel Steamship Company’s ticket office trying to determine the correct vessel, and thus, had almost missed him entirely.
“Charles,” she called out, but she knew at once it was pointless. There was a good breeze that in earlier years would have carried a ship swiftly, if perhaps choppily, across the Channel. Currently, it was sending her words uselessly in all directions except toward the man she most desperately wanted to touch again.
For a moment, he seemed to turn in her direction, perhaps taking a last look at England for the next year, but she couldn’t hope that he would notice her plain green hat in the sea of people milling about. Some waited for another steamship, some for a sailboat, and some surged forward to board the Empress with the man Charlotte loved.
Anguish, strong and terrifying, filled her and she nearly collapsed to her knees, carpetbag and all, but for the fear she would be trampled.
“Charles,” she yelled, causing a few people around her turn to stare. But he had already reached the ship’s railing and was speaking with someone at his elbow, whom she thought might be his valet.
Delia, by her side, as she had been for the past day and night, grabbed her by the waist to comfort her.
Without thinking how unladylike she would sound or how her mother would strongly disapprove, Charlotte whistled, long and loud. The shrill sound sliced through the blustery wind that whipped at her cape, and made those near her cringe. She didn’t care about any of that, only noticing that Charles lifted his head and glanced again over the throng on the dock.
A spark of hope lit in her.
Whistling again, she raised her arms, waving them wildly.
“I think he’s spotted you, miss,” Delia said.
While unable to see his delightful dimple from that distance, Charlotte hoped he was smiling. After all, he couldn’t doubt her love when she’d come after him all that way across the southeast of England.
Assuredly, he’d seen her for he started to lift his hand, a little hesitatingly. But to her amazement, he rested it back upon the railing and didn’t do anything more. He didn’t try to disembark or reach her, and her heart began to pound like a soldier’s drum.
“Don’t despair,” she said aloud to bolster herself. After all, at that moment, they were still within yards of each other, and he was finally within sight.
Continuing forward, she made little headway as she fought through the crowd continuing to board the vessel, as well as those who’d stayed to say farewell.
“Over there, miss,” Delia said, pointing to the ship’s bow. Another gangplank was in use by the hustling crew, carrying last-minute cargo and supplies, perhaps even mail heading to France.
Charlotte found it just as difficult at first to fight against the tide of people as to push through it. But after a few yards, she’d cleared the worst of the throng, and, suddenly, she had reached the gangplank.
About to set her foot on the rough wooden board, a sailor grabbed her arm. “Here, now, you can’t go that way. If you have a ticket, you have to board at the other end.”
“I don’t have a ticket,” she confessed, trying to wrench her arm free. “I need to speak to my fiancé. He’s already on board.”
“You can’t board without a tic
ket, miss. Move along.” He released her, then crossed his arms and blocked the gangplank.
Glancing up, she could see that Charles was now leaning over the railing, trying to discern what she was doing.
“You see,” she said, pointing up at him. “He’s right there.” She waved at him, but to her consternation, he didn’t wave back.
“He doesn’t look interested in seeing you, miss.”
“I just want to speak with him for a moment,” she persisted. “I promise I won’t cause you any trouble. If I could just dash up there and talk to him, then I’ll come right back down again. Just like the Grand Old Duke of York.”
“From the nursery rhyme, miss?” he asked, scratching his head.
“Yes indeed.” And it must have been her nervousness at how everything might go terribly wrong that caused Charlotte to start reciting:
“Oh, the grand old Duke of York,
He had ten thousand men.
He marched them up to the top of the hill,
And he marched them down again.”
The sailor was taken aback, and even Delia laughed nervously at her side.
“She just wants to see her fiancé,” her maid explained.
“Then her fiancé should have bought her a ticket.” He looked Charlotte up and down. “Maybe he can’t afford a wife, and you’d do better to look elsewhere. Pretty girl such as yourself.
“He’s a viscount,” Delia protested, obviously not appreciating the sailor’s forward manner with her charge. “And he’ll be most annoyed that she can’t get to him. You know how the nobility are. One minute you’re a seaman and the next, it’s off with your head.”
When Delia made a slicing motion across her throat to illustrate her meaning, Charlotte decided the stress must be getting to her maid, too. After all, Charles was hardly a ruthless tyrant.
Then inspiration struck her as it always did in the shop. “I have something for you,” she said, thinking perhaps the sailor didn’t have easy access to confectionery. “A tin of sweets if you will accept it.”
My Lady Marzipan (Rare Confectionery Book 3) Page 31