Charlotte

by Virginia Taylor

  “She went to Miss Main’s school with Daphne. And that’s about as much as I know, too. Whenever I try to get more detail from her, she smiles politely and changes the subject.”

  Nick slapped his crop on his boot. “You should ask her in bed. With the lights out, she tends to confide.”

  “What did you say?”

  “Talk to her before you tup her.”

  “You’re tempting me to take a swing at you.”

  “Try by all means,” Nick said through his teeth. “Luke managed to take me by surprise last night. Perhaps you’ll have the same luck.”

  “Not while you’re watching me.” A slight crinkle formed around Tony’s eyes. “Take it from me, I’m not tupping your wife. I have my own.”

  “You need to remember that while you’re with mine.”

  “I remember it every minute of every day, and I bless my luck.” Tony took a deep breath. “Though, you’re right. Charlotte is exceedingly beautiful. When I first saw her, I was completely floored.”

  “And yet you bless your luck to be married to Nell?”

  Tony raised his eyebrows. He was, unlike Luke, hard to rile. “She was with James, and they both turned toward me at the same instant.” His gaze held Nick’s for some five seconds, and then he lifted a hand from his reins in an open gesture. “James told me he meant to court her. Charlotte had completely bedazzled him.” He paused. “I thought it best to find out who she was.”

  “And who is she?” Nick asked in a contemptuous tone.

  “Fortunately, after a few more words with James, he came to his senses.” Tony cleared his throat. “He has another female on his mind, and until he can put her out of it, he’s not a candidate for marriage, and so I told him.”

  “You’re not his guardian.”

  “Sometimes I’m simply the pup’s voice of reason.” Tony held Nick’s gaze. “As in times gone by, I have been yours.”

  Nick glanced at a group of gray box trees swaying in the wind. “You want me to believe you’re not having an affair with my wife.”

  “I’m not having an affair with your wife. I’m in love with my own.”

  “What, then, is the reason for your interest in Charlotte?”

  Dark clouds had begun to gather. Tony cleared his throat. “A whim. She was a beautiful nobody who was turning the heads of all my friends. I couldn’t see a reason why my wife shouldn’t befriend her.”

  “Hence her invitation to your ball?”

  “She had acceptable references—the Graces and the Downings.” Tony shrugged. “I suspect she could have had Luke had she not been compromised by you.”

  “Luke wouldn’t marry a woman who’d been tupped by one of his friends,” Nick said with a twisted smile. “He’s a straight-laced lawyer.”

  Although the three had studied together in England, Luke had been the only one who had needed to take a profession seriously. At times, Nick envied Luke’s independence.

  “Or,” Nick said, “he wouldn’t if he knew.”

  Tony nodded. “I appreciate that you made quite sure he did know you’d had her previously.”

  Nick’s mouth clamped. His hasty lie about a previous dalliance with Charlotte had been meant to prepare Luke for a six-month baby after her marriage. “So, do you now expect me to sanction your meetings with my wife?”

  Tony gazed across the park. “We ride together. Nothing more. Our horses are from the same stable and have the same breeding. We share a love of horses that few do. I see no harm. While you are agreeable, the gossip has no teeth.” He turned his horse toward home. “I like Charlotte. She doesn’t gossip, she doesn’t sermonize, and she doesn’t insist on constant attention. She’s interesting in that she’s so self-contained.”

  “An attribute I appreciate in a woman,” Nick said, realizing he spoke the truth. Certain aspects of Charlotte’s personality were commendable, but he preferred to look no deeper. He desired her and that was damnable enough.

  Tony guided his horse to the riding path. “She has others, though she’s so darned beautiful that it’s almost impossible to see past her features.” He laughed, urged his horse into a gallop, and disappeared.

  Puzzled by the laugh, Nick took his horse up to a slow canter. Unfortunately, he believed Tony, a friend since early school days, a serious boy who had managed to tolerate Nick’s frivolity long enough to learn appreciation for the lighter moments in life. Luke completed the trio of contrasts with his pugnacious nature, his quick judgments, and his staunch support.

  However, if Nick believed Tony, he made a mockery of his own future. He had married a woman for a baby that didn’t exist. He had reviled the same woman for taking a lover who also didn’t exist. Now he was stuck in a world that didn’t exist for him, the respectable world of men with wives.

  However, Charlotte hadn’t tricked him into marriage. She might have ripped her clothes and screamed for aid during the first ball of the season, but only the erroneous impression that she carried Tony’s baby had decided Nick to marry her. She’d suggested that a fair exchange for his hand and fortune would be in not exposing him as a sodomite, more gently worded as if you help me, I’ll help you. If either of them had tricked the other, he had done so, letting her think he wouldn’t be a husband to her for the wrong reason.

  He wouldn’t touch a virgin bride, which he was beginning to believe she was, but only because of his intention to never again father a child. When she discovered the truth about his sexual preferences, she would be humiliated and know that not only had she been accused of lying and suspected of adultery, unjustly, she had also been rejected. This was a cruelty he now doubted she deserved.

  She wanted wealth and social success. The first she had gained with marriage, but the second she could only gain with his compliance. He suspected he owed her that, if only for her honoring their invalid bargain.

  * * * *

  Charlotte watched Nick’s face at breakfast, but his expression was unreadable. She would curl up and die if he had mentioned her mythical pregnancy to Tony for she herself would never have said a word about the confusion she had caused in her husband’s mind. Though, if Nick had, she would bluff her way through somehow.

  She began a light conversation that his father changed to property matters. Nick ignored this, his preoccupation apparent. He ate a large breakfast and sipped slowly from his tankard.

  Finally, he rose to his feet. “What do you say to a night at the theater?” he asked, including his father in his gaze.

  “The whole family?” Charlotte hid her surprise. She had expected at some time to be chided. Apparently, Nick’s conversation with Tony had concluded satisfactorily, and she and Nick had made another bargain—she would evade Tony in the park, no loss for he made her tense, and Nick wouldn’t go out every night to gamble. She hadn’t expected the bonus of Nick as her escort, a clear indication to the world that her husband was content with his marriage, a must if a nobody were to be a social success.

  He nodded, pausing. “Sarah, too, if she arrives back today.”

  * * * *

  “The Queen’s Theater?” Sarah said later that afternoon as she picked through her new gowns. “A supper dance last night and now this. I thought I would be your companion for the rest of my life, but you really are launching me into society. You’re amazing, Charlotte, truly.”

  Charlotte shook her head. “It’s none of my doing. This was Nick’s idea. I assume he is no longer tempted to rip my gown at social functions, and we may now be seen together.”

  Sarah laughed. “I expect he’s been quite embarrassed.”

  “No doubt. Are you planning on wearing the pink gown?”

  “Probably.” Sarah shook out the silk gown patterned with sprigs of tiny cream roses that Nick had bought for her. “Do you know what we will see?”

  “A farce, I believe. I have some ribbon for your hair that will look delightful with that gown. Now, tell me who you danced with last night.”


  “Oh, everyone,” Sarah said airily. “It wasn’t too formal, you know. Rather than having a dance card to fill, we were pulled onto the floor by our partners: James Hawthorn, Hubert Grace, Ralston Hunter, Luke Worthing—you know the crowd.”

  “It sounds like a romp.” Charlotte adopted a severe expression. “Young people these days simply don’t know how to behave. In my day—” A slipper hit her shoulder. She laughed and left the room.

  That night, she changed into the first gown she had purchased in more than two years. The generous allowance Alfred had granted her, strictly budgeted, covered the cost of the creation after she had hired a certain building.

  She stood in front of the mirror while Vera tightened the corset and tossed the full burgundy skirts over her head. As the maid dealt with the buttons at the back, Charlotte said, “Help Miss Sarah when you’ve finished.”

  Vera left while Charlotte ruffled the pale orange trimmings on her gown, knowing she could change them to purple and have an entirely new creation. She smiled. Habit died hard. Too late she noticed the pink satin ribbon meant for her cousin’s hair had been left on her bed. After gathering up the tie, she walked toward Sarah’s room. The door stood ajar.

  “Did you have a nice stay away, miss?” Vera asked.

  “Very. I had such fun dancing and flirting.”

  “But you’re glad to be home.”

  “Home? I’ve never really had a home.”

  “Go on with you. If this isn’t your home, I don’t know what is. Mr. Alfred fairly dotes on you.”

  “He does?” Sarah said in a voice that sounded surprised. “Well, I fairly dote on him, too.”

  Charlotte tapped on the door and entered, somewhat shaken. Sarah had shared Charlotte’s home for the past eight years, and Charlotte had not been aware that Sarah didn’t consider that to be her home as well.

  “You left Miss Sarah’s ribbon in my room, Vera.” Charlotte checked Sarah’s face, which looked softer. Her eyes were bright, and her mouth curved upward.

  “Lovely,” she said, as Vera entwined the pink ribbon in her curls.

  “Miss Sarah looks like one of them foreign princesses, don’t she?”

  “I’m not certain about foreign, but I’ll accept princess,” Sarah said, patting the thick apricot roll of hair at her nape. Delicate curls edged her face.

  “I’ve never seen you look more beautiful, Sarah.” The pink Sarah wore brought out the red highlights in her hair and the peachy smoothness of her skin. “You’ll turn every head tonight.”

  Sarah gave her a cynical glance. “Only if I’m standing beside you.”

  “Tosh,” Charlotte said lightly. “You merely have to look in the mirror to see how lovely you are.”

  Sarah turned to her cheval mirror and examined her looks. “I might be putting on a little weight. That helps, I think.”

  Charlotte nodded. Now that Sarah didn’t fuss all the time about her food, her skin had smoothed out a little, too.

  Charlotte left the room in an optimistic mood. Both her life and Sarah’s had changed for the better, which was almost as much as she needed—but not all. She also needed a certain amount of security.

  When Nick joined them in the dining room, he wore tails with a black and white silk waistcoat that showed a belly flatter than a board. His narrow trousers set off his lean hips and showed the curve of his thigh—her breath shortened and she raised her gaze to his light brown hair brushed back from his chiseled face, knowing she had never been more physically aware of a man in her life.

  Other than last night in bed, she had been in Nick’s company for episodes only. She looked forward to being with him at the play, but although he acted the perfect gentleman while the actors were performing, as soon as the lights began to flicker on, he left to be with his cronies. She shared her observations about the show with Sarah instead while she scanned the latest fashions worn by the elite in their private boxes.

  “Look over there,” Sarah said in a scathing voice, indicating Luke in a box on the other side. “No, don’t. I don’t intend to. He’d take it as a compliment. The best way to treat him is to pretend you don’t know who he is.” She sounded satisfied.

  “Why would I do that?”

  “Oh… He has an ego that needs deflating,” Sarah said in a light voice.

  Charlotte nodded, remembering Luke’s behavior toward Sarah at the regatta. He had treated her casually, and even now, Charlotte couldn’t tell if he was a friend or enemy of her husband, which meant she was uncertain of her status with him, too.

  Finally, Nick returned, a little more relaxed. In the dark of the theater, she surreptitiously inspected him, the curve of his mouth, the angle of his perfect jaw, and the tap of his fingers on his thighs. Again, her breath shortened, and she wished she could concentrate on the play rather than thinking about the hot, heavy hardness of his male part. He glanced at her, and so she eyed the stage, so conscious of his presence that when his sleeve touched her bare arm she gasped.

  Through the last act of the show, she could think of little more than her embarrassing investigation of her husband’s body the night before, so strangely pleasurable for her and so awkward for him. Should he seek her bed again, she would do no more than snuggle into his back. If she scrupulously behaved herself, he would grow accustomed to sleeping beside her.

  Somehow, she would do as Alfred had suggested—wean Nick away from his disreputable companions.

  * * * *

  Nick needed a drink so badly that he’d taken one too many. Suffering from a rare bout of introspection, he opened the sitting room door for Charlotte. He had been much mistaken about her, and not only in her pregnancy and her affair. At the theater, her main aim had been to push Sarah forward. She did indeed care for her cousin.

  His head pounding, he grabbed the brandy bottle waiting for him on the side table. Charlotte might as well become accustomed to him in his cups because drinking was his only release. He poured a generous measure into a glass, intending to fill the gap in his knowledge that Tony had exposed this morning.

  “Just a question. I’m quite remiss not to know, but I don’t. What were the full names of your parents?”

  She hesitated by his bedroom door, stripping off her long white gloves, her every movement poised and understated. “My mother was Adeline Mary Dunbar. She was Sarah’s mother’s sister. My father was Joseph Adam Davies.”

  “And he was who?”

  She shrugged. “A sea captain, as respectably born as my mother but with no high connections. You and your friends would say they were nobodies and that would be true. My mother was only a parson’s daughter.”

  “I wouldn’t say either of them were nobody. My father started as a furniture maker. Have you ever heard me be so crass?”

  She shook her head, her eyes shaded by her incredible lashes. “Do you plan to sleep with me again tonight?”

  He fingered his glass. “I hadn’t planned that, no,” he said, his body taking unexpected note of the idea. “Who knows what might happen if I did. I might want to fuck you.”

  Her eyes fixed on his face, and if she asked what the word meant… He would hate himself more than he already did, for he now believed he had the wife he didn’t want, one who had no idea about him or about coupling.

  Her left hand upswept her scrupulously coiffed head, showing the faultless shape of her arm and the graceful curve of her neck. She didn’t appear to be wearing her wedding ring. “You have the right,” she said, her voice perfectly modulated.

  His blood rushed to his cock, and he turned aside, almost groaning. “But I don’t want the right, my dear.”

  With almost undignified haste, he wavered into his celibate bedroom. Once seated on his bed, he lifted his glass in a toast to a woman he thought he had read from the start, a woman he had judged more harshly than anyone had ever judged him, a woman he wanted to plough the night long, not because she was beautiful and his, but in spite of those drawb
acks.

  Chapter 9

  For Charlotte, the next week passed in a whirl. During the day, she barely had time to do a thing but pay social calls with Sarah. At night, she attended various functions with Nick among which were a musical evening, a soiree, and once without Sarah, a card party. Charlotte didn’t dare win, but she enjoyed playing nonetheless.

  After choosing her gown for this evening’s entertainment at the home of Mr. Arnold Worthing, a politician cousin of Luke’s, she stepped into her white evening gown to which she’d lately added a low black and white striped collar and a looped half-skirt of the same reclaimed fabric, blessing her mother for keeping so many old gowns. She turned her back so that Vera could hook her latest re-creation.

  Vera studied her with a satisfied expression. “Want me to do your hair, ma’am?”

  “Not tonight. I can manage, and I’m sure Miss Sarah would like your help.”

  The maid left. Charlotte gathered her dark hair into a thick bunch at her nape, pulling out a few strands and letting the curls trickle around her neck. She examined her reflection critically, noting the pale face and darkened areas under her eyes brought about by restless nights racked with guilt.

  Although she’d managed her first step of moving Sarah into her circles, she’d been too successful in keeping Nick away from his, not because of her womanly charms, but because he had fettered himself with her needs. If she had beguiled him into changing his preferences, she would have seen that as fair, but him making a sacrifice for her when she had done nothing at all for him wasn’t. She would rather not have a real husband than one brittle enough to snap.

  As if she’d conjured him by thinking, his reflection appeared behind her. The man looked magnificent. Under his black eveningwear sat an embroidered waistcoat of red, highlighting the snowy laundering of his shirt and the elegant bow of his tie. To be worn as his accessory could only be flattering to a woman as shallow as she.