“It is the most impertinent, outrageous thing I have ever heard! How dare the Prince, and Aunt Odele for that matter, treat Charlotte as if she was a piece of merchandise to be bought over the counter.”
“That is naturally what I think too,” Shane echoed in a low voice.
Charlotte made a cry like that of a small animal caught in a trap.
“It’s – horrible! Wicked!” she sobbed. “But I just knew – when Mama – read me the letter that she was – delighted.”
“Perhaps your father – ” Shane began hesitatingly.
“There is no hope there,” the Viscount interrupted. “I feel sure Papa does not like the Prince as a man, but he is terribly impressed by his horses. Who would not be?”
“I will not – marry him – and nothing will – make me!” Charlotte cried.
Her brother and Shane O’Derry did not speak. They looked at each other and they were both thinking that Charlotte would have little choice in the matter.
She was only just eighteen, so her parents could force her to marry anybody they wished and there would be no appeal against their decision.
“What can we do?” Shane asked and his voice seemed strangled in his throat.
“It’s intolerable!” the Viscount declared, throwing down the letter and getting up to walk across the room and back again.
“Your aunt seems to think that he might become interested in somebody else if you don’t act speedily,” Shane said hesitatingly. “Suppose Charlotte was ill and then could not stay at Charl Castle on the eighteenth?”
“Aunt Odele will not let her off the hook so easily,” the Viscount replied bitterly. “And her behaviour is all the more surprising in this matter when you and I both know that she and the Prince – ”
He stopped suddenly as if he realised he was being indiscreet.
Charlotte raised her head from Shane’s shoulder to ask,
“What about Aunt Odele and the Prince?”
“They are – old friends, she says so in the letter,” her brother said hastily.
“You mean – something more than that – do you not?”
There was silence and then Charlotte asked,
“Can their – relationship be the – same as that of the Prince of Wales and the beautiful – Mrs. Langtry?”
She looked from her brother to Shane and then added,
“B-but Aunt Odele is quite – old!”
“Their relationship has nothing to do with your marrying the Prince,” the Viscount said testily.
“It has!” Charlotte objected. “If she is – in love with him and he with her, how can I be – made to – marry him? It is wicked, as I said – really wicked!”
Nobody spoke for a moment.
Then the Viscount said furiously,
“Charlotte is right, it is wicked. We should do something about it.”
“What can we do,” Shane asked helplessly, “except provide him with someone he might prefer to Charlotte?”
“It’s not even a case of preferring. He demands someone pure, innocent and noble. I am surprised that he has not asked for the goods he requires to be marked down at half-price!”
The Viscount spoke angrily as he walked to the window and opened it to draw in some fresh air.
Then, with his back to Shane and Charlotte, he said,
“What I would like to do is pay him back by making him look a fool, but God knows how we could ever do that.”
“Perhaps Wilbram could help us,” Shane suggested.
“Wilbram?” the Viscount asked, walking back from the window to the fireplace.
“How could he help?”
Then, before Shane could answer, he exclaimed,
“I know what you are thinking of, that bet he won.”
“What – bet?” Charlotte enquired, looking helplessly at her brother.
Her eyes were still full of tears and she looked so pathetic that Shane sat down beside her in the big armchair to hold her even closer in his arms.
“He is a friend of ours,” Shane explained, “and he was so annoyed with the Marchioness of Carlisle, who he said was a snob, that he got a woman invited to one of her parties and passed her off as the Grand Duchess of Melkinstein, or some such place, whereas in reality she was nothing but – ”
The Viscount coughed warningly and Shane changed what he had been about to say to ‘a ballet dancer’.
“And everybody was taken in?” Charlotte asked.
“They were, but, of course, Wilbram and his friends dressed her to look the part.”
Charlotte looked appealingly at her brother.
“Could we not do – something like that?”
“We would never get away with it,” the Viscount answered. “There is no one with more experience of women than the Prince.”
“We could if we found the right girl for the part,” Shane proposed, “and the Prince liked her more than Charlotte.”
“I could make myself look ugly,” Charlotte said eagerly, “and be rude and disagreeable so that he would tell Aunt Odele he had no wish to marry me.”
Again the two men’s eyes met.
“I am sure that Aunt Odele has thought this up and the Prince will marry whomever she chooses,” the Viscount said after a moment.
“But we could – try,” Charlotte said desperately, “please – let’s – try.”
The Viscount was watching his sister and he reflected for the first time in his life that arranged marriages were sheer undiluted cruelty.
He had never thought of it seriously before, taking it as a matter of course that noble families should marry into noble families because it was in their best interests.
But he had never thought that anyone as inexperienced and childish as Charlotte could be married to somebody as sophisticated as the Prince and he knew that marriage for her, especially as she was in love with Shane, would be a misery beyond words.
As a sportsman, he admired the Prince, as did all his friends and they followed his prowess on the turf with the greatest interest.
He had, of course, from time to time met him casually at parties and had seen him in White’s Club where he had recently been elected a member.
But, although the Prince moved in a very much higher stratum of Society than anything that he and Shane aspired to, he was well aware of the gossip about the handsome Russian.
In fact he had not been particularly surprised when he learnt that his latest inamorata was none other than his Aunt Odele herself.
The Storrs as a family did not approve of Lady Odele, her publicity horrified them and they thought it vulgar that photographs of her could be bought in the stationery shops.
Yet, despite the fact that they had a great many criticisms to make privately about her behaviour, as long as Lady Odele was persona grata at Marlborough House and both the Prince of Wales and the Princess admitted her to their friendship, there was really nothing they could do about it.
But what his aunt did, the Viscount thought, was a very different thing from involving his sister with a man who he was quite certain would make an extremely unsuitable husband and who she would be desperately unhappy with.
Besides he had always believed that somehow eventually Charlotte would marry Shane and they would all three continue to be happy together as they had been ever since they were children.
Every instinct in the Viscount’s mind told him that he must do something to save his sister.
The difficulty was what it could be.
“If Wilbram got away with it, I don’t see why we should not,” Shane was saying, not very optimistically.
“Wilbram only had to find a woman to act a part for Carlisle for one evening,” the Viscount replied, “and a party at Carlisle House is rather different from one at Charl Castle.”
As if he refused to accept defeat, Shane turned to Charlotte,
“Think of your friends, dearest. What about that pretty girl who stayed here a fortnight ago?”
“Alice Bracknell?�
� Charlotte asked. “But she is so stupid. I don’t believe that any man would be interested in her for more than five minutes. Besides her mother has already determined that she shall marry Lord Dare.”
“That reminds me,” the Viscount chipped in, “when I was in Church about a month ago I saw the prettiest girl I have ever seen in my life. I meant to ask you who she was, but it slipped my mind.”
“What were you doing in Church?” Shane queried.
“It was when you were in Ireland,” he explained, “and it was my father and mother’s twenty-fifth Wedding Anniversary.”
“Then, of course, you had to go,” Shane replied. “Now what about this girl?”
“I know who you mean,” Charlotte exclaimed. “It was Alana. She is very pretty.”
“She had a mass of children with her,” the Viscount added.
“They are the Vicar’s children. Alana is helping Mrs. Bredon to look after them.”
“Is she really lovely?” Shane asked.
“I thought her absolutely beautiful,” the Viscount replied. “She took my mind off the Vicar’s sermon, which went on for far too long, so that Papa was fidgeting about and pulling out his watch long before the end.”
“We were talking about a girl,” Shane persisted, as if he wanted to keep to the point.
“You are not suggesting – ” the Viscount began.
“Why not?” Shane asked. “I would suggest anything and snatch at any straw if it would save Charlotte.”
“I want to – marry you, Shane,” Charlotte wailed. “You promised we would be married eventually even if we – had to – wait.”
“I know, dearest, but if I went to your father now, I hardly think he would listen to me.”
“You need not waste your breath,” the Viscount interposed. “Papa may not like Prince Ivan, because he hates all foreigners, but if Mama and Aunt Odele think it a good marriage, anything he has to say on the matter will be swept to one side and Charlotte will be pushed up the aisle as quickly as her feet can carry her!”
Charlotte put her hand up to her eyes and started to cry again.
“Dammit, we have to do something!” he went on. “Do you suppose we could get this girl to help us? Bribe her into taking the Prince’s attention away from Charlotte?”
His sister had stopped crying and was gazing at him with widening eyes.
“Are you really suggesting that we might take – Alana with us to – Charl?”
“Not as herself,” the Viscount said. “Supposing we pretended that she was someone smart and noble. That would please the Prince and it might take his mind off you at least for a little while.”
“The only alternative,” Shane said, “would be for us to run away now at once.”
“Papa would come after you.”
“He might not find us and then what could he do about it?”
There was a poignant silence while the Viscount looked at his friend and saw the expression of despair in his eyes.
“If only this had not happened so quickly,” Charlotte said. “You know when I am twenty-one I come into the money my Godmother left me.”
“I had forgotten about that,” her brother replied. “How much is it?”
“I think it is only about two hundred or three hundred pounds a year, but Papa said something about it accumulating and that it would be more by the time I came of age.”
“We have discussed this,” Shane said apologetically, “and I know my father would give us a house on the estate. I could breed horses or something. We would be able to manage.”
“Of course we would,” Charlotte agreed. “And we would be so happy, so very – very happy.”
She looked up into Shane's eyes as she spoke and for a moment they forgot everything but themselves.
“There is no chance of you waiting until Charlotte is twenty-one,” the Viscount commented sharply. “It’s a question of acting now if we are to get her away from the Prince.”
Charlotte looked at her brother and asked,
“Are you really – thinking of – Alana?”
“Tell me about her. She is certainly very pretty.”
“She is lovely and very sweet.”
“How do you know her?”
“She is Mr. Wickham’s daughter.”
“Wickham?”
“My music teacher. You must have met him. He came here three times a week for years.”
“Of course, I remember now. A tall, rather good-looking man.”
“I always thought him very handsome,” Charlotte admitted, “and absolutely charming. Of course Mama treated him as she treated all my teachers, as if he was dirt beneath her feet, but actually he was a gentleman, although she would not have thought so.”
“How do you know?” the Viscount asked.
“He told me once that his family were well known in the North and his father had been a famous conductor.”
Her brother gave a short laugh.
“Mama would not think that qualified him as a gentleman.”
“I know,” Charlotte agreed, “but he was and I loved my music lessons with him, although I shall never be able to play as well as him or Alana.”
“So that is how you met her.”
“She came here first because Mr. Wickham and I played duets together on our violins and Alana accompanied us on the piano. She could play the violin too. I would have liked to have her as a friend, but, of course, Mama would not have heard of such a thing.”
“Of course not,” her brother smiled. “But you still see her?”
“Only in Church now. When her father died, the servants told me she had been left with no money. Then, while I was plucking up the courage to ask Mama if I could be kind to her, I heard that she had moved to the Vicarage to help Mrs. Bredon with all those children.”
“I should think that would be a dog’s life,” the Viscount remarked.
“Mrs. Bredon is kind, but there are five children.”
“I should think that in the circumstances,” Shane pointed out, “she would be delighted to get away from them for a bit and stay at somewhere like Charl Castle.”
“Do you really mean that?” Charlotte asked.
The Viscount was thinking.
“I cannot believe that we would find a prettier girl if we searched the whole County, and if, as Charlotte says, her father was a gentleman, she will know how to behave.”
Charlotte looked from one to the other.
“Oh, Richard, this is a wonderful idea! If I ask Alana to come for my sake, I am sure she would. I think she was really fond of me and actually I have missed seeing her since her father died.”
The Viscount looked at his friend.
“Shall we give it a try, Shane? It really would be a jest if we could pull the Prince’s leg and deceive him into being fooled by a girl who is nothing but a mother’s helper at the Vicarage.”
“I think it depends on whether she is as attractive as you say she is,” Shane said, “and also if she can act the part of a grand lady.”
“We also have to get her into Charl Castle somehow. We can hardly appear and tell the Prince that we have brought the Queen of Sheba with us because she thought that she would like to see his house.”
“I could say that she was staying with me,” Charlotte suggested. “As neither Mama nor Papa is coming with me, there is no reason for Aunt Odele to be suspicious. She does not know any of my friends anyway.”
“We might get away with it,” the Viscount ruminated doubtfully and then he gave a cry.
“I have it! I have a splendid idea!”
“What is it?” Charlotte asked breathlessly.
“If you can get this girl to agree to come with us, we will say that she is Shane’s sister, Lady Alana O’Derry!”
“My sister?” Shane exclaimed. “I have two of them, but the eldest is only fifteen.”
“How is the Prince to know that?”
“Aunt Odele might know,” Charlotte commented.
“As a matte
r of fact, there are lots of O’Derrys in Ireland,” Shane replied. “I think it would be better if she was my cousin, Papa’s brother, from whom he inherited the title, had several daughters.”
“Then she is your first cousin,” the Viscount agreed. “She has arrived unexpectedly from Ireland to stay with us and so we could do nothing but bring her with us to Charl Castle. Does that sound plausible?”
“It sounds perfect,” Charlotte cried. “But I have to get Alana to – agree.”
“We could pay her to come. I am sure she could do with twenty pounds or more if she insists.”
“I have a feeling,” Charlotte responded, “that to offer her money would be a mistake. Mr. Wickham was very proud and I am sure that Alana is too. I think it would be better if I told her the truth and asked her to help me.”
“Do you think she would?”
“I hope she would. She is very idealistic and I am sure that she would be shocked at my being pushed into marriage with a man I have never even seen – especially as I love Shane.”
“Well, you persuade her any way you like,” the Viscount said, “as long as she agrees.”
“I can only try my best.”
“We will tell Mama that we are going driving tomorrow morning. We will leave you at the Vicarage and pick you up again about an hour later.”
“That is a good idea,” Charlotte replied. “I might have seen Alana in that way before now if I had thought of it, but you know what Mama has always been like about our mixing with anyone in the village.”
They all knew that this was true.
The Earl and Countess of Storrington always kept themselves very much apart from what they called ‘the locals’.
Once a year the Vicar and Mrs. Bredon were invited to dinner with the doctor and his wife and one or two other people who lived on the Earl’s vast estates but were not considered important enough to be on intimate terms with those who lived in the Big House.
Their real friends included all the important County families who lived within driving distance and those who came from London for several weeks’ rest in the country during the summer or for shooting, hunting and grand balls in the winter.
Charlotte had not been allowed to take part in such activities, being still in the schoolroom, but it did not worry her because when Richard was at home, Shane was nearly always with him and she had no wish to see anyone else.
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