“I am bitter, my lord. I was not married when Charlotte was conceived. You will hear the talk, if you haven’t already heard it from your sister.”
Lady Margaret glanced at him over her shoulder, her expression half defiant, half uncertain. Marcus remained seated, which, strictly speaking, was poor manners on his part. He sensed that her ladyship would rather he stay in a fixed location, while she went about chasing off the darkness.
His office, with its comfortable furniture and business clutter, was nonetheless a quiet room, and when its only illumination was candlelight, the space took on a confessional quality.
Lady Margaret’s guarded, proud gaze put a question to him, about tolerance or appearances—he wasn’t sure exactly what—so he replied with a recitation of facts.
“Lady Elizabeth was not at home,” he said. “Her aunt by marriage agreed to bide here tonight, and just because you anticipated your vows with the dashing major doesn’t mean you are a disgrace to your gender. Most couples do likewise. My parents certainly did.”
She shook the spill, dousing the flame. “They did? A marquess’s heir anticipated his vows?”
“With an earl’s daughter. Simon was born six months after the wedding. Papa and Mama joked about it frequently, always adding that Simon was a great strapping baby.”
How ironic that the great strapping baby, who’d become a robust man, had been eventually felled by influenza, while the younger son had spent years at war and come home without a visible scratch.
Her ladyship put the smoking spill back in the jar, an economy Marcus would never have thought to practice. “But your sainted brother was legitimate,” she said, watching the smoke rise in the gloom. “Charlotte is not.”
She could have told Marcus that the Regent had been seen running naked through Hyde Park, and Marcus would have been less shocked.
“I beg your pardon?”
“I’m supposed to beg yours, also God’s, Society’s, my brother’s… I became engaged when Peter was home on winter leave. We anticipated our vows, as you put it. Peter went back to soldiering, and some weeks later, I realized I was increasing. I wrote to him, I begged him, I wrote again, and finally wrote to his commanding officer, who informed me by return post that a man could not be granted leave he hadn’t asked for. By that time, the situation was impossible to hide.”
She rearranged the tools in the hearth stand so they stood in order of height. “I wrote in desperation to Peter’s father, and he demanded that Peter get back to England to marry me. My best guess is that Mr. Entwhistle Senior was loath to incur the wrath of a titled family. He’s comfortably well-off, as many of the gentry are.”
And where was Charlotte’s comfortably well-off grandfather when the girl had no proper governess? “Major Entwhistle returned to England,” Marcus said, “but Charlotte arrived before he did.”
Lady Margaret might profess to be bitter, but Marcus had never seen a sadder smile.
“Charlotte was six weeks old on my wedding day. We had her christened that afternoon. I expected that Peter would bide with us through the winter, but he was bound for Spain within a week. I kept busy that first Christmas by decorating Webberly Hall as if Father Christmas himself dwelled there.”
Far too many men enlisted to escape the consequences of irresponsible procreation. In the army, the fellow had a wage, a uniform, food and drink for the most part, the hope of advancement and the occasional spoils of war.
“I am sorry,” Marcus said, rising and crossing to the glass breakfront that held a trio of decanters. “The recruiters specifically pander to men longing to turn their backs on their own progeny. The sergeants paint a picture of adventure, camaraderie, and freedom, while casting fatherhood as a drudgery no fellow should have to endure. I find this aspect of military life distasteful.” He’d received those politely desperate letters from ruined young women, and where he could, he’d directed that half the man’s pay be sent to the child’s mother.
“You are sorry. Most people who learn of my circumstances are dismayed. I was certainly dismayed. Charlotte does not yet know how her situation will be viewed by the larger world, but the day approaches when I cannot keep it from her.”
Marcus poured two brandies and passed one to Lady Margaret. “What did Major Entwhistle say when you asked him why he didn’t come home?”
She accepted the brandy without any ladylike demurrals regarding taking spirits.
“I needed two years to gather my courage before I put the question to him. His reply was nearly scornful: Didn’t I know he had a war to win?” She took a whiff of her brandy. “A major in Wellington’s army wasn’t free to come and go, and what had I thought would happen when I decided to throw myself at my fiancé? He was a red-blooded male, after all. I was supposed to know how to prevent these sorts of things.” She sipped her drink. “We were engaged. I had no idea how to throw myself at a man, nor any idea how to refuse Peter without angering him. I’d thought to prevent illegitimacy by speaking my vows. Silly me.”
Her recitation provoked a welter of conflicting emotions. Resentment because Entwhistle’s betrayal of honor was none of Marcus’s business, shame because no officer should have behaved as Peter Entwhistle had, and admiration.
For Lady Margaret, for her fortitude.
“And now,” Marcus said, “you will make my humble abode fit for Father Christmas himself, because that is how you take your revenge on a man who should never have been a father to anybody.”
She saluted with her drink. “You understand. I also earn my living by decorating other people’s houses. The holidays are my busiest time, but families new to London or the occasional nabob need assistance setting up their households. The work is honorable and not too scandalous.”
Lady Margaret also apparently enjoyed her work, but not as she should. “Something I do not understand, Lady Margaret: Earlier today, in this very room, you kissed me. No mistletoe, no prior bond of friendship or social connection to justify such an overture. I am not generally regarded as kissable, and I daresay you do not bestow tokens of affection easily, so why kiss me?”
The question had troubled Marcus the livelong day, and still, he’d surprised himself by asking it.
She set her drink near the silver standish and tidied up the documents strewn all over his desk. “You said the one thing I very much needed to hear, and you meant it. I’m sorry if I overstepped.”
She held her papers before her, a flimsy shield for her dignity.
“You surprised me,” Marcus said. “Not an experience that often befalls me. You did not overstep.”
“I’m… I’m glad, my lord. Thank you for the use of your office. I must see what has become of Charlotte.”
“Until dinner, my lady.” He bowed, she curtseyed, and Marcus took the seat behind his desk.
Somebody had left a damned pillow on his chair, which he didn’t bother removing, because—upon reflection—his arse was tired. Her ladyship had kissed him as some signal of approval or gratitude, but what the devil had he said that she had so desperately needed to hear?
He pondered that question while sipping his brandy, and he neither read his pamphlets, nor drafted his letters, nor sorted his morning mail.
Chapter Four
Meg went into a frenzy of holiday decorating each year, in part because she needed the money. She earned more in the Yuletide season than in the remaining ten months of the year combined, though each year was a struggle to find new customers and to keep old customers happy.
She also worked like a demon over the holidays because she needed to stay busy. Peter had been the next thing to a handsome cad, and she’d fallen for him utterly. Fallen in the sense of having given him her heart and fallen in the sense of having been taken in by his flattery and flirtation.
Had she not conceived Charlotte, Peter would very likely have sent her a gently worded letter releasing her from the unfair expectations of an engagement to a man whose future was so uncertain. He’d doubtless written sev
eral such letters, one for each winter leave.
And the seasonal reminder of her own stupidity was intolerable. Peter’s holiday gift to her had been an education in the follies of romance and in the dishonor a handsome smile could hide. Meg could accept her own role in inviting Peter to bestow that token, but had yet to reconcile herself to the harm Peter’s self-interest had done to his only child.
Lord Marcus had accused Meg of being sad, and she’d corrected him—she was bitter—but his observation plagued her. Maybe she was a little sad, for Charlotte more than for herself, though what must Charlotte think of her mama, abandoning an injured child for an entire afternoon?
Meg paused outside the library door, dredged up a smile, and summoned the energy for a brisk entrance. She stopped short just inside the door.
“Charlotte Marie, what on earth are you doing?”
The reading chairs had been arranged as tent poles, a pair of afghans stretched across them. Charlotte’s quilts were spread on the carpet beneath the afghans, and a pair of candelabra sat on the floor immediately outside her lair.
“I am a princess of the desert sands,” Charlotte replied. “Aunt Penny was showing me how to do a card trick. It’s not cheating if you’re doing it to entertain people.”
Lord Marcus had mentioned something about an aunt coming to serve as chaperone, but Meg had been so groggy from sleep, so embarrassed to be caught napping, and so upset to have wasted hours resting that she’d missed much of what he’d said.
A tiny older woman crawled from the blanket-tent and bounced to her feet, brushing at her skirts. She was birdlike, with snow-white hair and snapping blue eyes.
“Lady Margaret Weissmuller, you look like your mama. Ah, but you married that handsome Entwhistle boy, God rest his soul. I’m Penelope Hennepin. Everybody calls me Aunt Penny, or Aunt Penny-Henny, or Aunt Henny-Penny. You are raising a thoroughly delightful child.”
The thoroughly delightful child was using an ornately carved cane to hobble back to the sofa. “Aunt lent me her walking stick. I can use it to subdue the vandal hordes when they come to steal my camels or plunder my store of figs.”
“Now, my lady,” Aunt said, taking up an afghan and giving it a shake, “you are already deciding I am a bad influence on the youth of England. While I do get on well with children, having none of my own and thus tending to spoil the offspring of others, I am not a bad influence per se. Charlotte was restless, and I haven’t subdued any desert vandals in this age.”
The old lady had the afghans tidily arranged on the back of the sofa and was replacing the candelabra on the desk before Meg thought to restore order to the chairs.
“I am pleased to meet you, Mrs. Hennepin, and I thank you for diverting Charlotte.”
“I’m not a missus, young lady. I am the dreaded spinster aunt.” She raised her hands like they were menacing claws. “I say outrageous things that everybody else only thinks, and I threaten to do even more outrageous things, mostly to see my family quake in dread, poor dears. They are easily set to quaking. I’m in truth quite harmless.”
“I like you,” Charlotte said. “I’ve never had a dreaded spinster auntie before.”
Meg had the sense of having stepped into some fantastical version of Lord Marcus’s library. The books were all in the same places, Charlotte was still wearing the bandage fashioned for her knee, but this small, elderly woman had imparted a wisp of whimsy to a very serious room.
Whimsy—or dementia.
“I thank you for coming to stay here with us tonight,” Meg said, putting the last chair back at the reading table. “I set great store by the proprieties.”
“I gave up that folly decades ago,” Aunt Penny replied, moving one of the candelabra to the table beside Charlotte’s sofa. “I set great store by decency and happiness. Shall I read to you, child?”
“Would you read Aesop for me?” Charlotte asked.
“Wouldn’t you rather your own dear mama read to you?” Aunt Penny asked.
Charlotte stole a glance at Meg, and the uncertainty in her gaze ripped a new hole in Meg’s heart. Charlotte longed for her mother to read to her—clearly—but she would never ask.
“I would like to read Aesop,” Meg said, setting aside all the schedules, lists, and diagrams she’d meant to spend her afternoon on. “He’s full of interesting advice, and who can’t use a little wisdom from time to time?”
“I thought you had work to do, Mama.”
“The work will keep.”
Aunt Penny bustled off toward the door. “Well, that’s settled. I will confer with the housekeeper to ensure everybody has a cozy, comfy room for the night, including my own dear self. Then I must see that Charlotte’s evening meal is suitably tempting for a convalescent, and lastly, I will tease our Lord Marcus into dressing for dinner.”
“You need not go to that trouble,” Meg said, acutely embarrassed. “I haven’t anything formal to wear.”
“I’ve brought you a few of Eliza’s gowns to try on. They will be a bit loose on you—Eliza does love her sweets—but I guessed at your coloring based on your mama’s good looks, and with all becoming modesty, I must admit I was correct in my choices. I usually am, but one doesn’t admit that lest the Almighty attempt a few jests at one’s expense.”
She slipped out the door, and a profound, somewhat dazed silence bloomed in her absence.
“I like having an aunt,” Charlotte said.
“You have an aunt—Evelyn.”
“I like Aunt Penny more.”
So do I.Meg chose the story about the crow who raised the level of the water in the jar by diligently casting pebbles into the water—a tale of industry and persistence—and Charlotte sat quietly beside Meg on the sofa for the whole reading.
“If I were the crow,” Charlotte said at the end of the story, “I might instead hop into the water jar. I would drink my fill, have a nice little swim, and then fly away, all clean and no longer thirsty.”
“But what if,” Meg countered, “in that water jar you hadn’t the room to spread your wings? You would thrash and call for help and thrash some more. You might possibly drown before anybody came to your aid.”
Charlotte turned the page. “I would thrash so hard I knocked the jar over, and then I could hop free.”
Not a bad solution, for a crow. “You have a powerful imagination, Charlotte Entwhistle.”
Charlotte’s gaze remained on the book. “Is that bad?”
A singular failing in a female, to hear Lucien or any of his ilk tell it. “I could not do my job without a powerful imagination. I often walk into a cold, dreary house, one going blind with cobwebs and dust, one that hasn’t seen a kissing bough hung in ages. I must envision the place as it could be, as it wants to be, not as its owners have allowed it to become.”
“So my imagination is a good thing?”
“Does Daisy say otherwise?”
Charlotte closed the book, and for one precious instant, she rested her forehead against Meg’s arm. “Daisy says I am fanciful. I don’t think she cares for fanciful girls.”
Why did I stop reading to my daughter? “Fanciful girls are much more interesting than the other kind. I suspect Aunt Penny was a very fanciful girl.”
“You do?”
“We can ask her when she comes back. Will you help me dress for dinner when the time comes?”
“Yes, Mama. I will help you. I will help you put up your hair and practice your curtsey. We can pretend you are being presented at court again.”
They had not played that game in ages. “Very well, but first you must let me do a bit of work on tomorrow’s schedule. You can read one more story, but only one.”
Which meant Charlotte would spend a good deal of time comparing the lengths of every tale in the book, counting pages or trying to do the math in her head.
“I will read about the boy who rescued the lioness.”
“Androcles rescued a lion, Charlotte, not a lioness.”
“I don’t think so, Mama. Ev
erybody knows that the lionesses are the ones who do all the hunting, while the lion sits around looking lordly and lazy. If there was a great roaring beast out hunting in the woods that day, it was a lady lion.”
“A logical observation. I will leave you to your reading.” Meg kissed the top of Charlotte’s head and gathered up the papers she’d set aside. The time lost to napping could not be recovered, so no use lamenting the wasted hours.
Meg had less luck when it came to parting with her worries. If Charlotte went to live at Webberly Hall, she would be severely castigated for imaginative flights. She would learn to hold her tongue unless spoken to and to never take issue with Aesop’s faulty characterization of lions and lionesses.
And yet, Meg was considering consigning her daughter to such an existence, because she wanted Charlotte to be happy.
“This has gone on long enough.” Marcus tried to adopt his commanding-officer tone of voice, but he apparently wasn’t fooling Lady Margaret. She remained at his desk, swaddled in shawls, the blotter strewn with papers.
“This will go on,” she replied, “until I am confident tomorrow’s efforts are efficiently organized. The initial phase of decoration is intrusive and loud. Customers become difficult unless I execute my tasks in the shortest possible time.”
Marcus closed the office door, rather than let the meager warmth of the fire out into the corridor. He’d told the footman to leave two buckets of coal by the hearth, and both sat nearly full on the bricks.
“You will catch an ague,” he said, putting his carrying candle on the desk and adding a generous scoop of coal to the flames. “Then I will catch all manner of blame from Aunt Penny and my sister. Charlotte will sentence me to three hundred lashes. That gown looks well on you.”
The red velvet fit Lady Margaret, and she had the dark coloring to carry off such a rich hue. Aunt had purloined both the dress and a soft green shawl from Eliza’s wardrobe, but Marcus could not recall the ensemble flattering his blond sister nearly as much.
Yuletide Wishes: A Regency Novella Duet Page 5
