Not Quite a Lady (The Dressmakers 4)

“You’re upsetting the horses,” she said. She started to move past him, toward the door, then stopped short. Her Cupid’s bow mouth shaped an O. She brought her hand to the back of her dress. Her eyes widened. “You undid my frock!”

“No, I didn’t,” he said.

“Who else do you think could have done it?” she said, backing away into the shadows again. “It was fastened when I came in here. Do you think one of the horses did it?”

Plague take him, had he started undressing her without realizing it?

How could he not realize it?

Don’t panic, he told himself. Don’t panic.

“Oh, my goodness, someone is coming,” she said in a frantic whisper. “Quick, do it up.”

He heard it then, too: voices, male and female. Servants or workmen. They were everywhere, confound them.

“There isn’t time,” he said.

He strode to the stable door. He didn’t know who the pair were, but it was clear they were a couple, for they had their arms about each other’s waists. Seeing him, they hastily disengaged and changed direction.

He reentered the stable and went to her. She had retreated to the far corner once more. “Turn around,” he said.

“You didn’t need me to turn around when you undid it,” she said.

“We stood closer then,” he said. “Do you wish to plaster yourself against me as you did before?”

“I did not plaster myself,” she said.

Still, she did turn around, and he focused on the fastenings. Though women’s buttons, hooks, pins, and tapes were small and complicated, he’d had plenty of practice. They seldom gave him trouble. Yet his hands were clumsy.

Feelings, curse her.

“Talk of risks,” she said. “What if they’d come in?”

“That was what they meant to do,” he said. “That’s why I stood in the doorway, in sight. Seeing me, they were obliged to find another private place in which to copulate.” He finally got her done up. His hands were steadier now.

“Copulate?” she said, her voice choked. “Copulate? You cannot say ‘make love’? Must you use that—that coldly rational word, as though you spoke of—of pigs.”

Coldly rational. How he wished, at this moment, that were true!

“I never formed the habit of speaking in euphemisms,” he said. “It is one of my numerous flaws of character. I might have used a shorter, very old English word—”

“You already used it,” she said. “Last week, when I accidentally placed my knee on your privates.”

“A lady is not supposed to know what that word means,” he said. He frowned. “I’d always thought unwed ladies were not aware we had privates.”

“I have boy cousins and little brothers,” she said. “They think it’s great fun to say shocking words and do shocking things, and well worth the whipping they get for it. You don’t know very much about ladies, do you?”

“No, and I’d like to keep it that way.” He stepped away from her. “There, you are done up properly. I hope you have learned your lesson. You must never assault me again.”

“Put your mind at rest,” she said crisply. “The next time I want excitement, I’ll shoot myself. It will be a good deal more fun.”

She swept past him.

All he had to do was stick his foot out and watch her trip and fall on her face.

But that would be childish. Like saying shocking words. He wondered if she’d been shocked the first time she’d heard such words. Or if she’d thought it great fun, too.

Had she thought it great fun to see how many feelings she could stir up in Mr. Coldly Rational Carsington?

He stood where he was and watched her go out, head high, backside swaying.

She wanted him to think it meant nothing to her. She wanted him to believe she was merely toying with him.

He almost wished he could believe she was. He’d be able to dismiss it—to dismiss her—so easily.

But he didn’t believe her. That kiss—there was more to it than caprice or boredom. Being such an old virgin, she might have learned a thousand ways to torment men while still preserving her virtue, technically, at least.

Yet he didn’t think so, and he most certainly did not believe it explained what had happened this time.

A puzzle, another irksome puzzle.

He’d get to the bottom of it but not now. He wanted a cool head.

He pushed the puzzle aside temporarily and put his mind to the simple matter of saddling his horse.

By the time the groom Joel Rogers returned from wherever he’d been or whatever wench he’d been with, Darius was on his horse, preparing to ride to Altrincham, with far too much else on his mind to demand explanations.

Friday 28 June

All in all, it would have been wiser, perhaps, for Charlotte to keep away from Beechwood this morning.

The boy would be there, the boy whose face had haunted her all day and night. She knew that seeking him out would do neither of them any good. The odds were infinitely great that he wasn’t hers. And if he was—and how could she be sure of that—what could she do? She couldn’t tell him the truth, couldn’t acknowledge him, couldn’t take him back. She couldn’t do any of those things without telling her father the truth.

Oh, he’d forgive her, but she’d never forgive herself—for the hurt she’d cause him, for the ruination of all his hopes for her. Worse than that, though, far worse, was the damage the revelation would do to Lizzie, whom Papa trusted implicitly. The truth would destroy that trust and with it, their happiness.

Charlotte knew all this.

Yet she wasn’t sure she could keep away from the boy.

She wasn’t sure she could stop herself from seeking out Mr. Carsington, either. She was too lonely now, too troubled by this child, too vulnerable to trust herself. Mr. Carsington made her believe in happiness, and he made her believe she could trust him. She’d already trusted him too far. She’d already stirred his curiosity, made him ask questions she’d better not answer.

In short, wherever she went at Beechwood, she was all too likely to find trouble.

But there was trouble at home, too. Everyone there was consumed with preparations for the house party.

At home she must hear the names of the gentlemen, again and again. Where they would sleep. Where they would sit at table. Which activities would allow this one to shine or that one.

At one moment, she’d tell herself she’d simply pick one gentleman’s name out of a hat and have done with it.

At another time she’d tell herself she must proceed as usual, and redirect each and every would-be suitor to her cousins and friends.

But how could she perform her usual maneuvers, with Papa studying them all so closely, as though this was one of his agricultural experiments?

In the end, her father decided it. Charlotte came to Beechwood mainly so she wouldn’t have to look at his loving face, practically glowing with anticipation.

At present she stood in the picture gallery that ran along one side of Beechwood’s first floor. She was supervising the servants who were rehanging the paintings that had been taken down when the ceiling, floors, and walls were cleaned. This room had needed few repairs. It had not been used in a quarter century or more, having been shut up tight long before Lady Margaret’s death.

Charlotte did not understand why. While Beechwood was rather ramshackle and wanted some modern conveniences, it was a handsome house, and the gallery was one of its most inviting rooms. It was neith

er overly large and grand nor too cramped and narrow. Filtered through the thick-paned glass, the daylight gently bathed the old portraits and softened the subjects’ features.

Many needed softening, for they’d been painted in the stiffly formal style of centuries past. However, she found several more lifelike images from what she guessed was her grandparents’ generation. She discovered, much to her surprise, that one strikingly beautiful young lady, wearing a richly decorated silk gown with a long waist and full skirts, was Lady Margaret, about the time of her marriage.

The painting hung at the far end of the gallery.

As Charlotte turned away from it, she caught a movement at the edge of her vision. She moved to the open window.

In one of the parterres of the formerly formal garden Daisy trotted after a boy in a cap, a thick stick in her mouth. The boy jumped and skipped in a circle round the perimeter of the barren garden, occasionally glancing back to see if the dog still followed. After a time, he began to laugh. He stopped skipping about, bent, and grasped one end of the stick. A tug of war ensued, Daisy shaking her head—drool flying, no doubt—trying to shake him off. The boy held on, but as the bulldog flung him this way and that—or he let himself be flung—his cap fell off, revealing hair the color of sunlight.

Charlotte’s heart gave a lurch, and she nearly cried out. But she couldn’t. Servants filled the gallery.

She folded her hands tightly at her waist and watched the boy Pip play with Lizzie’s bulldog.

He let go of the stick and fell on his back onto the mat of weeds, laughing. Daisy dropped her stick, pounced on him, and started licking his face. Still laughing, he pushed her away, and she licked his hands. He sat up and, unafraid of the dangerous jaws, rubbed her wrinkly jowls and behind her ears.

It was too much, too much.

She ached to cup that young face in her hands and say, “Are you mine? Are you my beautiful lost boy?”

She had better get used to aching, she told herself. She had no right to trouble that child. Even if he was hers, he wasn’t. When she’d given her baby away, she’d given up any right to him.