Once Upon a Christmas Wedding

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Once Upon a Christmas Wedding Page 155

by Scarlett Scott


  “What a cosy little nest you’ve made yourself here,” he remarked after a cursory nod in greeting. “My cousin does love his domestic comforts, it appears. The crossing was not kind to him, my father tells me. But then, no one fared well. It was a very rough crossing. May I?” He indicated the chair against the far wall upon which he lowered himself without waiting for a response from Charity.

  She, in the meantime, had swung her legs over the side of the bed and was staring at him in outrage.

  “Madame said I’d find you here,” he said. “Now! Down to business. Hugo tried to send you money but my father suspected as much and is diverting his wages and paying only his necessary in day to day expenses. Sorry.” He smiled, clearly not sorry in the least.

  “Which means you will need to find a means of survival, won’t you?”

  Charity’s throat went dry. She’d truly not expected this. Not something so utterly dire. She felt the sting of tears at the back of her eyes and tried to speak.

  Cyril held up his hand. “I can see that you are overset so just let me speak. I’ve been thinking of you a great deal, Charity my dear, and I would like to help you.”

  “Profit by my misery, you mean. Trade on my vulnerability.”

  He nodded, quite equably, as he pulled a large envelope from his satchel. “Dry your tears, Charity. They won’t do you any good, but these should make you happy. At least it proves your Hugo was thinking of you, even if he wasn’t able to provide for you.”

  The joy at seeing nearly two dozen drawings and paintings spill onto the bed made her cry out. And there were letters, too! She picked one up and began to read but Cyril snatched it away. “There’ll be time enough for that later. In the meantime, I want to talk to you. Who is your father?”

  Charity put her head on one side. “Why is it of any concern to you?”

  “If you’re so reluctant to petition him, then I will do it.” A crafty grin split his face. “I rather thought that I could fashion a very appealing little spiel whereby his honour or his pride might be jeopardised if he wasn’t forthcoming with a little succour for his needy daughter.” Looking very satisfied, he added, “And I might claim a portion of that.”

  “Of course there had to be something in it for you.” Charity paused in the midst of a wonderful poem Hugo had composed during a couple of days spent ashore.

  “I’m a businessman. Unlike your dreamy Hugo, I’m finding a practical means of solving your immediate problems. Now, what’s his name?”

  “I’m not telling you that.”

  “It’s not Edwin Riverdale, by any chance?”

  “How did you —?”

  Cyril burst out laughing at her tone of shocked horror. “Because I see you have addressed an envelope to a gentleman of that name and, since you’re desperate, this would be a likely bet.”

  “I wasn’t going to send it.”

  “I think you might have to, if push came to shove. Ah, my poor girl. He will be a tough nut to crack and I suspect you’d have gone about the matter with a touch too much desperation. But I do like a challenge and am a better negotiator than you.” He rose and turned for the door, reaching over to pat Charity’s shoulder as he passed. “Leave matters with me. You shall hear something in the next couple of days, I promise. I feel sure there’s a way we can all benefit from this mutually interesting connection. And, by the way, who was the stunner in Madame’s study as I passed? I nearly fell over when I thought Lady Margaret Ponsonby was being interviewed by our most esteemed brothel-keeper. But I heard Madame call her Arabella as she slammed the door. Dead ringer for the earl’s daughter, I thought I must be losing my mind.”

  Charity blinked in surprise and nearly spoke unwisely before she shook her head. “I don’t know.

  “Well, it was dark and perhaps Lady Margaret just happened to be on my mind, being such a bosom buddy of my own sweet Miss Mabel, whom you will soon help me to woo. Because you will have to compromise your stubbornly held principles, my dear Charity, and start dealing with me a little more kindly if you’re to save yourself from having to deal with the world’s sordid problems on your back.”

  Chapter 11

  “Spring is here!” Rosetta looked blooming as she blew into the breakfast room and took a seat in front of a pile of steaming crumpets. “Madame must be in a good mood!”

  “Her daughter is home and Madame has high hopes for her,” Emily said, spearing one of the rare delicacies that were usually Madame’s preserve but which cook had said were for everyone, today.

  “Did anyone ever see her daughter?” Agnes asked, her mouth full and her eyes still bleary from lack of sleep. Many girls who’d not normally make the effort to be up before noon had made an exception when they’d heard there was a table laden with good, hot food other than the usual sparse fare.

  Everyone shook their heads.

  “I suppose Madame doesn’t want her tainted. She thinks she can set her up as better than the rest of us.”

  Charity blinked in surprise and nearly spoke unwisely before she shook her head in corroboration of knowing nothing.

  She wondered where Arabella was now living as she reflected on Cyril’s words of a few nights before. Perhaps Madame really was working behind the scenes to concoct some form of respectability for her daughter in order to see her elevated in society.

  The reflection put her own sorry situation into stark relief. How was any successful kind of future to be fashioned if a girl was a bastard as she and Madame Chambon’s daughter surely were? Society was unforgiving of those who transgressed.

  Charity had no hope of rising above the detritus of life. She’d fallen to the lowest rung of the ladder. No one could get her out of the swamp. The best for which she could hope, quite simply, was that she’d not starve.

  But Madame had connections and, clearly, her daughter Arabella was a beauty. A proud, enterprising beauty. Enterprising…unlike Charity.

  “You’re looking very gloomy, Charity, my dear.” Madame’s entrance brought a hush to the table and a guilty look to Rosetta’s face as she held a half-eaten muffin in mid-air.

  “Please, help yourselves, girls! Cook told you, I hope, that I’d ordered them as a special treat for you! Things are looking up, as they say.” She pursed her lips into a smile that gave her heavily painted face a very prune-like look. But as her mood was clearly genial, Charity — and no doubt the rest of the girls — were relieved.

  Silently they waited for her to elaborate. One didn’t question Madame directly if one could help it. Charity wondered if perhaps she’d had some success on her daughter’s behalf. If Madame’s daughter was as beautiful and well-educated, Madame was cunning enough to pull strings in the background to set her up in a way she’d not do for the girls who made her money.

  Clearly, something had pleased Madame who was only ever ebullient if business was good.

  Perhaps there was a new girl arriving for whom she had high hopes.

  “All of us here have felt sympathy for Charity’s plight and the fact she’s heard nothing from her young man in nearly four months — is that not so, Charity? Living like a scullery maid must be hard.”

  Charity looked around the table where the twelve girls currently working for Madame were seated. Each one of them sent her looks of sympathy. And their sentiments were genuine. A pang of gratitude swept through her. These were her true friends. Girls who had offered kind words — words of hope — when she needed them most.

  Others, like Rosetta and Emily, had gone out of their way to try and effect a plan that would bring Charity the loving reunion with Hugo that she was beginning to accept was just a pipe dream.

  She blinked as a wave of shame swept through her. These girls were like her in that they, too, were on society’s lowest rung. They survived the only way they could — yet they could still laugh and offer mutual friendship and support.

  Charity had never had to sell herself as they did every night. What right did she have to sink herself in misery and decry her lot
in life?

  “But now Charity, matters have become dire. Your young man has not been able to send you the maintenance he promised. I have been generous and offered you a roof over your head with little demand in return.” Madame paused. “But I am not a charity, and I do apologise for the unintended pun. I, too, have rent to pay and food which must go to those who are prepared to work for it.”

  Charity bowed her head. Her time was up and Madame was making a public announcement of it in the least sympathetic way she knew how. It was impossible to look at the faces ranged about the table.

  “So, Charity, this evening you will see a gentleman who has shown a particular interest in you.”

  “Not Hugo’s cousin!”

  Madame shook her head. “Do you really think I would be so cruel?” She made a tutting sound, as if she really did wonder that Charity could ask her such a question. “No, Mr Cyril Adams will be seeing Rosetta this evening.”

  A collective gasp of outrage went around the table before Madame banged on the table top for silence.

  “I, in fact, suggested Rosetta since this young gentleman evinced a particular desire to be tutored by someone who would show him what would please a woman between the sheets. Apparently, he intends that Charity should help him with his penmanship, or rather, his way with words. Thanks to this unlikely quarter with what he terms his desired rehabilitation, he believes he will be a better husband than he might otherwise be were he not to gain some understanding of the potentially curious desires of his future wife.”

  Emily let out a derisive snort and the other girls giggled. Madame held up her hand for silence once more. “Does any girl here have a complaint against Mr Adams that I should know about?” She glanced at Rosetta. “You know I do not tolerate violence of any kind in my establishment.”

  “He’s a selfish lover,” said Emily.

  “And he’s parsimonious,” said Ghislaine.

  “And he’s a cheat,” muttered Molly.

  Madame nodded as she silently digested this. “But he’s never shown tendencies of a vicious nature? No? Well, that’s all I need to know. The fact is, he seems to recognise that he is in need of a little tutoring, so we shall hope Rosetta can transform our Mr Adams from selfish lover to winsome bridegroom in just a few weeks.”

  She nodded decisively while Charity waited in trepidation for Madame to elaborate on the details of her own situation.

  The time had come at last, she thought dully. Why had she not gone ahead and found an alternative situation before it was too late? She’d always been too passive. A bold, fiery girl with gumption would have found a way to survive without having to sell her body.

  She stood up suddenly. “I’m not entertaining a strange gentleman. One day Hugo will come back! Whether that’s in two years or five, he will find me still waiting. And I will have been true to him. I shall leave this house today, Madame. I’ll find some other employment. But I will not entertain any gentleman who is not my Hugo.”

  Madame nodded. “Very well. No one is a prisoner here. I shall inform Mr Riverdale that you will not meet him for dinner at Claridges Hotel, after all.” She pursed her lips and lifted an eyebrow. “He’ll be disappointed, of course. Emily, it appears Charity will no longer be needing to borrow the new gold and cream striped gown I had made for you, after all.”

  If Hugo had been here, he’d have squeezed her hand, told her she couldn’t fail to entrance him, and then he’d have borne her company to the secluded corner table between two luxuriant potted palms.

  But Hugo wasn’t here and Charity had only herself to rely upon.

  It was a weighty responsibility. She needed to win over her father. She needed to strike the right note so that he’d not think her grasping. She had to hope he’d be overcome with fond memories of her mother, or even guilt at his abandonment of them.

  What she must not do was appear desperate and needy.

  At least, that’s what Emily had counselled. “Be proud. Walk in with an air of assurance so that the hotel staff think you’re gentry. But the moment you sit down, you must look like you’re deferring to him. Be appreciative. Grateful, but not cow-towing. Respectful. A little bit in awe yet still bright and winning. Do you think you can do that?”

  Charity didn’t think she could at all but the moment she’d been deposited at the table by the respectable woman Madame had employed to chaperone her to such a public place, she found that, strangely, all the lessons she’d unconsciously learned about how to behave, came back to her.

  “Good lord, but you’re the spitting image of your mother!” the tall, handsome bewhiskered man opposite her exclaimed as he rose to greet her. And, yes, he was indeed her father. There was no mistaking the roguish look in his eye and the square-cut chin and angular nose that had first struck her when she’d been eight years old.

  The fact that he said she looked like her mother sent shards of joy shooting through her. She’d heard it before but never expected to hear it again in such circumstances.

  “And what a pleasure it is to finally make your acquaintance as an adult. My only child,” he added, regarding her with his head on one side as a waiter handed him a menu. “Strange, but I never imagined us meeting like this. It was a shock to learn of your existence when I unexpectedly bumped into your mother all those years ago. It was on a staircase. You’d not remember it, of course, being only a little girl at the time, but…” A shadow crossed his face. “I was newly married at the time. Nevertheless, I was terribly affected by our reunion. And the knowledge I had a child.”

  It was not the speech she’d been expecting, though in truth Charity didn’t know what she’d expected.

  She didn’t know what to say.

  He cleared his throat. “I told your mother I’d never forgotten her. That I’d look after her. Look after you both.”

  Charity hadn’t remembered that. But then, she’d not heard the conversation that had caused her mother to cry.

  “Then…why didn’t you?” she asked, resentment swelling inside.

  “Your mother was too proud to become my mistress, I suppose.” Her father shrugged. “Though she wavered. She nearly came with me that day. I was sorry she didn’t. Of course, you’d remember nothing of this.”

  Charity remembered everything. Why had her mother made such a fateful decision. It hadn’t brought her any joy. Charity had happily become Hugo’s mistress and they’d enjoyed a deep and abiding love for nearly two years.

  She felt the tears sting the back of her eyelids. Even if she had her time again she’d never wish for respectability and virtue over what she’d had with Hugo.

  Her father had resumed talking. “Then, a few days ago, your friend, Mr Adams, contacted me out of the blue, told me that my daughter was in a spot of difficulty and, just as a reminder as to your identity, brandished a very competent pen and ink drawing which, he said, captured your image brilliantly. As I must say, it does.”

  Charity nodded in acknowledgement as she plucked at her skirts beneath the table, barely able to concentrate when the waitress came to take their order. What could she say to that? She’d expected him to deny paternity. She’d been expecting resistance. It’s why she’d never had the courage to contact him before.

  “I think my mother was always in love with you.” Charity looked him in the eye. “Why did you leave her the first time? She said you’d promised to marry her.”

  Mr Riverdale — for he’d given her no direction as to what she should call him — stroked his moustache as he gave the matter thought. “I was not the marrying kind — at the time. Quite frankly, I lied to her. I’m not proud of it.” Then he smiled and Charity could see the devastating effect he must have had on her mother all those years ago. For his smile transformed him into a strikingly handsome man who seemed to have eyes only for the one upon whom he bestowed his smile. Yes, he was charming.

  Dangerously so, and here was all the reason Charity had not to trust him as her mother had. Despite her high hopes, he’d bring her n
othing but disappointment.

  “You broke my mother’s heart,” Charity whispered, unable to look him in the eye and very glad that their soup had arrived.

  “I’m led to believe I broke the hearts of quite a few hopeful young ladies.” He picked up his soup spoon and began to eat. “However, you are, to my knowledge, my only child. My wife died last year and I’ve not yet been inclined to remarry though that will no doubt happen at some stage. In the meantime, it is rather a novelty to know I have a daughter. Especially such a beautiful one. Indeed, one who has garnered a good deal of novelty over the past couple of months.”

  Charity’s tried to turn an unladylike snort into a delicate cough. “How can that be? I’ve barely left the house.” She gathered her courage and asked, “Do you know where I live?”

  “Mr Adams wouldn’t tell me and, quite frankly, I don’t want to know. I’m not interested in your sorry tale of penny-pinching and poverty but I am interested in what can be of benefit to both of us.” He dabbed at his moustache with his napkin. “Excellent soup this. Do you like leek and cauliflower? Good. But yes, apparently your painting has garnered a reputation as a point of discussion for the young men who pass a certain hoarding on a busy street corner in Soho. Not just the men, either, I’m told.”

  Charity frowned, not understanding him but not interrupting as he went on, “Usually the posters are removed or plastered over but this one — and the poster of the lovely young lady touting the benefits of her electric corset — have proved especially popular and have remained.”

  “What on earth can you mean? A poster on a hoarding? An electric corset?” Charity felt her face burning.

  Her father leaned back in his chair and grinned, a gold eyetooth in evidence. He looked prosperous and at ease. Yet what suffering he’d caused her mother. She reigned in her resentment because she had no other choice. Only her father could save her now, it seemed.

  “Yes, Mr Adams took me there and while I was admiring your excellent likeness, I was informed of these facts I’ve just told you by a number of the gentlemen — and some ladies, too — many of whom evinced wonder and admiration when I told them I was acquainted with the young lady. A young lady, I informed them, who was gaining quite a reputation for her piquant looks and shapely dimensions.”

 

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