“Charity, I’m ruined.” He closed his eyes briefly before fixing his gaze upon Charity. “There, I’ve been unable to put the truth so bluntly to anyone else, but that’s the truth. Everyone has been in a state of quiet uproar because of my stupidity, and now I’m to be punished. I have to go away. My father has found me a position in the company in India.” His mouth twisted.
“Ruined? You have to go to India?” Charity scrambled onto her knees and twined her arms around Hugo’s neck. “How? Why?”
He stiffened. “Because I was a fool like I have never been before. I gambled away our future on the roll of the dice because I believed it would ensure we could be together forever. Always.” He turned and cupped her face, his expression infinitely tender. “But I was burned. Just like my dreams of a future with you. Nothing but ashes.”
“Oh, Hugo.” Charity didn’t know what else to say. Hugo deplored gambling. What had induced him to do such a thing? And yet she didn’t say it aloud. Hugo was suffering enough as it was.
He gripped her fingers. “I’d intended telling you this before I took you in my arms and we…went to bed.” His tone was full of self-loathing. “But your greeting was so sweet, and just holding you seemed to give me the strength to face what I must — when I’ve wondered, these past days, how I’m going to manage to do that.” His voice cracked. “Lord knows, it’s hard enough to consider a position in India which would take me away from you for months. But to live there for up to two years?” He swallowed with difficulty. “My father’s business interests in steel are prospering. His company is extending the railway line from Madras and he has decided that, as my punishment, I must oversee the project.” A nerve twitched at the corner of his mouth. Otherwise, he was utterly composed. Only the tightness of his voice indicated his distress. “So, that is what I must do. I have no choice in the matter. The money my aunt left me, and which has enabled me to keep you while I enjoy a modicum of independence free of my father when he has such different plans for me — it’s all gone. I am to accompany my Uncle Septimus.” He closed his eyes, adding in a whisper, “Apparently, this will be my salvation.”
“India?” Charity repeated. She could barely take it in. The future she’d dreamed of with the man she loved above all others had just been snatched away. But then, how could she ever have believed it was more than a dream? Girls like her had no right to believe in happiness.
Hugo stroked her face as he nodded. “God knows, I could face anything if I had you by my side. But it’s impossible. I depart Southampton for Madras in less than a fortnight. My uncle, who was, I’m told, going to induct my cousin Cyril into the family firm, will instead be taking me under his wing.”
Charity didn’t miss the sarcasm. There was little love between Hugo and his forbidding uncle, or the cousin who was only a few months older than he.
“Couldn’t I find a way to…to join you on the ship? To be wherever you are, Hugo?”
Hugo shook his head. “For the first few months, there’ll be a great deal of travel around the country. It’s no place for a woman, I’m told. Not that I could see you, anyway, as I’ll be living with my uncle,” he muttered.
The aching silence between them seemed to stretch forever; punctuated by the muted bumps and thumps from the other rooms.
“Oh Hugo, I…I don’t know how I can part with you, my love.” Charity hesitated. “Unless you wanted it.”
“I will never be parted from you. Not forever. Not while I have free will!” With uncharacteristic fierceness, he gathered her in his arms. “I want you with me, always. I need you, Charity.” He kissed her brow. “You make me whole, you make me feel alive. Only you do that.” When he put her away from him, his sensitive face was taut with pain. “When you’re with me, I can do anything; I’m the man I want to be. And I can paint. You’re my magic.”
“But your father has decreed that you go away. And…I can’t go with you!” The shock was beginning to abate. Desolation was taking its place.
“You know my plan is to marry you as soon as I come into my inheritance.”
“That’s two years away, Hugo. Oh, my love, I don’t know how I can bear it.” The lump in Charity’s throat was making it difficult for her to speak. Yes, Hugo had made it clear, right from the start of their relationship, that an honest, legal union between them was his goal the moment he was financially independent. His grandfather’s fortune was to be split between him and Cyril upon their respective twenty-fifth birthdays. An aunt’s modest bequest had enabled Hugo to keep Charity exclusively in the meantime.
But he’d lost that now. He was wholly dependent upon his father. And his father had no intention of his only son marrying a lowly, common creature like Charity. Even if it was he who had inadvertently been responsible for Charity and Hugo meeting after he’d forced his boy over the threshold of Madame Chambon’s House of Assignation when he’d learned he was a virgin.
Like Charity had been.
Hugo gave a short laugh. “I never get tired of hearing you say that. Of calling me your love, your darling. My parents weren’t exactly well-disposed to each other. No one calls anyone their love.” His face clouded over again. “Except for grandmother, and that’s because she was common. Besides, she’s dead now. And Grandfather made all his money after he married her so she no longer has a place in the Adams’ Family Lore.”
Charity knew the story. Hugo’s grandfather, a man of shrewdness and cunning, had made an unlikely fortune in the steel trade after starting life as a blacksmith. It was only natural each successive generation would marry up. Hugo’s father had been courting a baronet’s daughter when he’d been forced to marry the lowly solicitor’s daughter he’d made pregnant. Hugo’s mother.
A generation later and with even more coin in the family coffers, Hugo was to infiltrate the aristocracy. A penniless peer’s daughter trading family lineage for Hugo’s pocketbook was the plan.
Not an illegitimate governess’s daughter living in a brothel.
Smiling, Hugo ran his fingers through her hair. “I didn’t know what love was until I met you.”
A wave of emotion threatened to engulf Charity. “Oh, Hugo, I wish I really was worthy of you!” she cried, hugging him tightly before drawing back.
“You mean, in my father’s eyes.” He traced her lips with his fingertips. “For I wouldn’t change a thing about you, Charity, my love; only... my father holds the purse strings now.” A muscle worked at the corner of his mouth. “And I sail in two weeks.”
“Two weeks...” Charity felt the sting of tears, and the pain radiate throughout her body as if she’d been physically beaten by the news. “Two weeks and then I’ll never see you again? Oh, Hugo, is there no other way?”
“I’d grasp it with both hands and the gratitude of a lifetime if only one could be found. But you will see me again.” Getting to his feet, Hugo stood, naked and vulnerable by the bed where, once a week for the past eighteen months, Charity had experienced the only real love in her life. But there was no doubting his sincerity as he took her in his arms, kissed her gently on the lips and whispered, “I want you more than anything in the world, Charity.”
And Charity believed he meant it when he vowed, “I swear that two years from now, on a wintry December morning, with the carollers warbling about peace on earth and mercy mild, I will marry you.”
“And you will make me the happiest girl alive,” Charity whispered.
Even though she knew such happily-ever-afters did not happen to girls like her.
Chapter 2
Feeling dull-eyed and hollow, Charity lowered herself onto the only remaining chair at Madame’s crowded breakfast table and tried to eat.
She’d not been able to make the effort the previous day, but now her stomach felt hollow and she thought she would faint from lack of food.
Breakfast was habitually laid out at noon, and those girls too weary from the night before risked going hungry if they didn’t present themselves. Madame wasn’t inclined to indulge an
yone. Except herself, of course. A pile of steaming, buttered crumpets piled onto a plate in front of her sent off an enticing aroma that would have made Charity’s belly rumble with longing on any other day. Such treats were rarely for the girls, however. Plain bread and drippings were the mainstays of this first meal, but the fact that it was supplemented with porridge and eggs on an ad hoc basis was enough to draw most of the household’s occupants downstairs.
“Hugo couldn’t have been up to scratch with that long face, Charity,” teased Emily. “Smile! You’re the one who gives us hope in our own happily-ever-afters.”
There were a few corroborating sighs at this. But Emily’s remark was particularly painful this morning.
Unable to meet her eye, Charity slanted a glance at Madame. However, the steaming crumpets rather than Charity’s response were occupying the complete attention of their benefactress.
Feeling sick with nerves, Charity decided this was as good an opportunity as any to speak the truth of her situation. If Madame was filling her belly with rich food, she might be more inclined towards leniency than otherwise.
“Hugo has to go away.” She’d not meant to sound pathetic and lovelorn. Her voice was so soft, she wasn’t even sure anyone heard her response, but suddenly all eyes were on her and a great many voices were asking, “What’s happened, Charity? What do you mean, Hugo has to go away?”
Charity’s throat felt swollen, like her eyes from the copious tears she’d shed the previous day and all night.
“But Hugo was never going to leave you. He’s the one true faithful man who comes here. He can’t do this to you! Why is he doing this to you?”
It was Rosetta, her voice growing shrill. Charity closed her eyes and wished the girl would calm down. It wasn’t as if Hugo had left her.
“He lost heavily at the gaming table.” There was no way to soften the truth. Charity sounded as bitter as she felt though she’d done her best to forgive Hugo.
“Oh, Charity, what will you do?”
Again, it was Rosetta, weeping, now, as if her heart might break. Charity supposed she should feel more charitable towards her, knowing how badly treated she’d been by one of her clients in the past. She was damaged, her emotions always at the surface.
“Young Mr Adams has left you?” Only now did Madame raise her head and seem to take notice of the conversation.
In the light from the sun that slanted through the windows, Charity could see a droplet of honey clinging to an errant hair upon the woman’s chin.
“He’s said nothing to me, my girl.”
“It was very sudden, Madame.” Charity dropped her eyes as she waited for Madame to digest the implications. For her. For everyone. Charity no longer had a generous protector. Hugo was no longer able to pay for Charity’s exclusive services as he had done for nearly two years.
Now, Madame would throw her to the wolves. She would make Charity available to all of her so-called discerning clients; and discerning depended on the fatness of their pocketbook.
She shuddered. Charity was about to become like Madame’s other girls. She might be well fed and dressed but she’d have no choice as to whom she would sleep with any given night.
When she’d arrived, desperate and homeless, on Madame’s doorstep, she’d had no idea such women even existed.
How much she’d learned since then.
And how miraculous to have escaped their fate.
Or, so she’d thought.
To her surprise, Madame spoke up, her voice thick with something that sounded more suspicious and thoughtful than the brusque dismissal that reminded Charity she could not expect to be treated with any special consideration.
“Perhaps that was the reason a certain Mr Cyril Adams darkened our doorstep with a request for your services last night, Charity.” Madame dabbed delicately at her lips as she speared Charity with an incisive look. “I don’t suppose you know him.”
Charity drew in a quick breath but Patience, one of the older girls, let out a harsh laugh before saying with heavy irony, “What a charming piece that fellow is. Vain, selfish, and parsimonious, he is. Or, so I’ve heard.”
“And also, Hugo’s cousin,” Charity said in a soft voice.
“I thought there was something havey-cavey going on,” muttered Madame, tucking into another muffin before she’d finished her last mouthful of the first. “Though, of course, I had no idea your young Mr Adams had just given you up.”
“He was going to marry me,” Charity said softly. “Properly!” she added, before realising her error and casting an anguished look at her friend, Violet.
Violet, one of the most poised and beautiful young women at Madame Chambon’s — in Charity’s opinion — was about to embark on a sham marriage to a young lord. In fact, Charity herself would be present at the church as one of the witnesses.
Charity didn’t miss the spasm of pain that crossed her friend’s face. Quickly hidden, of course. Violet didn’t reveal her feelings, though Charity knew Violet was deeply in love with young Lord Belvedere, an unlikely customer. A very dashing and charming one, too.
But a sham marriage was all it would be.
Violet patted Charity on the shoulder. “Please don’t feel bad on my account. I never expected a proper marriage...but you were promised it and, knowing Mr Adams so well, as we all do, now, we had expected it.”
“Indeed! It’s not uncommon for true love to blossom under my roof — but for it to lead to legal marriage is a fine thing.” Madame looked remarkably fiery as she pushed out her impressive bosom and stared down the table at the six girls gathered there. “I gave that cousin of Mr Hugo’s short shrift, I can tell you.” She shook her head, taking another mouthful as she added sorrowfully, “But now Mr Hugo has let you down, I don’t know what will be done.”
Charity didn’t know either. Clearly, Madame would come up with something. She waited, holding her breath.
“You need not fear, Charity. I shall not sacrifice you to the first stranger who seeks your services. Not so soon after your terrible let-down. I have some compassion.”
But you’d happily sacrifice me to the second within the week if his offer was good enough, Charity thought with more terror than bitterness.
The moment’s silence suggested the other girls thought the same.
Until Rosetta said tentatively, “It would appear we are not the only ones who think poorly of Mr Adams.”
As she was not one to voice opinions, the girls looked at her with surprise.
“Well, girl, you don’t make remarks like that without backing them up,” Madame barked.
Charity tried not to roll her eyes. This was not the approach to take with Rosetta if one wished for elaboration.
It was Violet who put her hand on Rosetta’s arm and said gently, “What can you tell us about Mr Adams? Perhaps it’s important in view of him poking his nose around here so soon after Charity’s terrible disappointment.” She sent Madame a significant look and Charity smiled gratefully. Violet was so calm and agreeable. She always knew what to say.
“The gentleman I entertained two nights ago said one of the few men in London he’d not game with was Mr Cyril Adams.” She blushed and looked down. “But perhaps it’s nothing. One can’t believe everything a gentleman says.”
“One certainly can’t,” Violet agreed. “But it is an interesting observation. Perhaps more than just a coincidence. What do you think, Charity?”
Charity nodded. Violet sounded so cultured yet she’d never divulged the real reasons she’d landed on Madame’s doorstep several years before with nothing but a carpetbag of belongings yet looking and sounding every inch the well-heeled young lady. Violet had declared that she wanted to work as one of Madame’s girls as if she’d really meant it and Charity, who’d been making her way along the passage, had been brought up short as she’d heard her declaration to Madame through Madame’s half open study door.
“Hugo said his cousin had plied him with drink then pressured him to play at di
ce.” Charity could barely summon the energy to sit straight in her chair. “Hugo never plays. And he doesn’t like his cousin. Oh lord, what would he do if he knew his cousin had come asking for me?” She managed to choke down the sob. “Is Mr Adams really that dreadful?” She shuddered at the thought of having to do with anyone what she’d done with Hugo. “I know they’re competitive but — ”
“Mr Adams is held in the highest disregard.” It was Emily, now, adding her tuppence worth. “I heard from one of my fellers that Mr Adams palms cards and that’s why he’d never play him.”
“Mr Adams obviously cheated your Hugo!” Rosetta said but Charity shook her head. “Hugo rolled the dice with everyone watching him.”
“The dice could have been loaded,” Violet said.
“It is possible, Violet, to make dies that favours particular numbers.” Rosetta glanced between Violet and Lizzie. “Perhaps you might make a few discreet inquiries amongst your gentlemen as to what else they know about Mr Adams and his enthusiasm for gaming.” She looked over to Charity. “Perhaps we can uncover some misdeeds that will reverse Hugo’s situation.”
Charity’s smile lacked conviction. With no independent funds, Hugo was in an impossible situation if his father was determined to send him out of the country.
Could she be the real reason? she wondered.
Could it be that she wasn’t good enough for Mr Adams’ son, and never would be?
As she tried to pay attention and be grateful for all the suggestions her friends were bandying around, the terrible thought kept running around her head: If Hugo hadn’t lost his independence at the gaming table, would his father have found another means of separating them?
In which case, what hope was there for them to ever be together?
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