Not Quite a Lady (The Dressmakers 4)

He saw the same contradiction: the angelic beauty and the grimy belligerence.

Coincidence. She must have thought so, too. What were the chances, after all?

Yet when he returned to the house, the first thing Darius did was review the notes he’d made over the course of the last week, about Philip Ogden.

He thought about it for the rest of the day.

Even when he lay in bed, aggravating himself imagining the time when Lady Charlotte would be lying with him, in his arms, his mind reverted to the puzzle.

By the time he fell asleep, he’d decided he must travel to Yorkshire and try to get to the bottom of this. But first he’d better talk to her.

Tuesday 9 July

Darius was adding notes to those he’d already made when Mrs. Endicott appeared in the doorway of his study. “If you please, sir, the ladies are here,” she said. “Lady Lithby wishes to speak to you.”

He had not yet decided how to raise the subject of Pip with Charlotte. He knew he had no tact. He didn’t want to upset her. He needed to think. What he didn’t need was to have to make decisions about furnishings.

“It isn’t about wall coverings, is it?” Darius said. “She does understand that I can’t be asked about wall coverings. Or curtains.”

“I can’t say, sir,” said Mrs. Endicott said. “All I know is—”

“Oh, come, Mr. Carsington, you are not afraid of curtains, I hope,” said a light, laughing voice.

Mrs. Endicott hastily moved away from the door, and Lady Lithby sailed in, Lady Charlotte behind her, looking utterly angelic in a fluffy white dress.

Darius remembered her sitting on the desk upstairs and pulling up her pristine skirts, unabashed, uninhibited.

He took a calming breath and rose from his chair, casually pushing the papers under a ledger.

“I am deeply afraid of curtains,” he said. “I say I want red curtains. You ask whether I mean crimson or scarlet. You ask whether I prefer brocade or embroidered. Fringed or unfringed. Then you ask about tassels,” he added darkly. “It is a quick route to dementia.”

Lady Lithby laughed.

“There’s nothing to be frightened of,” Lady Charlotte said. “It’s only about the laundry.”

“I know nothing about laundry, either,” he said.

“We refer to the building on your property where the washing used to be done,” Lady Lithby said patiently. “The dirty linen is accumulating there.”

“I thought Goodbody sent my things out,” he said.

“That may be, but a household requires household linens,” said Lady Lithby. “Bed linens. Kitchen linens. The servants’ smocks and aprons and such. As a single gentleman, you may feel it is more practical to send your laundry out or to have a wash maid come in once a week. However, if you plan any change in your circumstances…” She paused very briefly. “…or if you plan to entertain often, you may find it more convenient to hire live-in laundry maids.”

Where the devil was he to find money to pay laundry maids? He needed money for Pip first.

He must have looked panicked because Lady Charlotte said, “Your laundry needs almost no repair. We’ve had it cleaned. The maids can begin working as soon as you please.”

“I have a great deal of business to see to,” he said. “I’ll stop and look at it as soon as I finish here. Then I’ll weigh the pros and cons on my way to the home farm.”

“That seems a most logical and efficient use of your time,” Lady Charlotte said, looking mightily amused.

“Indeed, I dare not keep Mr. Carsington any longer from his work,” Lady Lithby said. She turned away and left the room.

Darius joined Lady Charlotte as she started after her stepmother. He touched her arm to slow her down. “Meet me at the laundry in half an hour,” he whispered.

“What shall I tell her?” she said.

“Anything but the truth,” he said.

It took Charlotte more than half an hour to escape to the laundry because, naturally, this must be one of the days Molly accompanied her to Beechwood. The maid had plenty to do at home, tending to her mistress’s clothing and overseeing the servants who looked after Charlotte’s rooms. Like Lizzie’s maid, she had precious little time to spare for following her mistress about at Beechwood, where one certainly didn’t need her, with servants swarming about like flies.

But Molly came today, and getting rid of her wasn’t easy. Finally, Charlotte sent the maid to consult with the housekeeper about a heap of Lady Margaret’s gowns they’d found stuffed into a window seat. The consultation would involve tea, Charlotte knew, because Mrs. Endicott would be eager to establish a good relationship with the upper servants of the great house next door. As lady’s maid to Lord Lithby’s daughter, Molly stood near the top of the female staff hierarchy, only a very little below Lizzie’s maid.

Amid all the bustle—workmen and servants going to and fro, hammering, scraping, cleaning, and so on—it was easy enough to slip out of the house. Sneaking to the laundry was more difficult. It had been built farther away from the house than other service areas because it could be very smelly, especially in the old days, when lye was the main cleansing agent.

Still, Charlotte knew the place well enough by now to work out a path that would keep her out of view for the most part. If caught, she could manufacture an excuse on the spur of the moment. She’d had plenty of practice lying.

She didn’t have to lie to Mr. Carsington.

No pretending. No concealing. Freedom, to be herself.

The thought made her dizzy.

Or maybe that was simply happiness.

She came to the laundry at last and reached for the door handle. At the same instant, the door flew open and a large hand grabbed hers and pulled her inside.

He shut the door and pulled her into his arms and kissed her.

Her knees instantly gave way. She clutched the front of his coat and hung on and kissed him back as hard as she could. She didn’t know how to hold back, with him. She didn’t want to hold back. She only wanted to hold on.

He smelled of outdoors. His coat held the sun’s warmth, and his kiss was warm, too, and so wonderfully familiar. She could have stayed forever like this, pressed against his big, hard body, letting her mind swirl, giddy as a girl’s, while they kissed, endlessly.

But it ended as abruptly as it had begun. He broke the kiss and put her away from him.

“We must talk,” he said.

It was the tone, the serious tone that drained away the warmth, as much as the distance he’d made between them.

Then it came back to her in a vivid flash of recollection: Geordie’s voice on that last day, so grave. We cannot see each other so often, he’d said. People will talk. I’d better go away for a time.

“I may need to go away for a time,” Mr. Carsington said.

She shook her head, unable to comprehend. Too much noise in her head, and too much noise in her pounding heart. Why had he kissed her, only to put her away from him and say he was going away?

He frowned. “Are you ill?”

“No,” she said. “No. Only tell me straight out. Don’t break it to me gently.”

His frown deepened. “When have you ever known me to break anything gently? I scarcely know how. That’s the difficulty with…” He trailed off. “But tell me what’s troubling you.”

“I don’t know,” she said. Be sensible, she told herself. This isn’t Geordie.

“It’s your face,” she said. “You look so serious. I wondered if you’d changed your mind…about me.”

“Would you mind very much if I changed my mind?” he said. He bent his head and peered into her eyes. “Would you mind very much if I set you free to marry a duke’s son, or an officer covered with medals or any other of those paragons your father’s chosen for his mating party?”

She nodded. “I should mind very much. I think,” she began, and paused because she saw the smile then, so very faint, curving the corners of his mouth. She saw it more

distinctly, a glint in his eyes. “I think,” she said, taking heart, “I would choke you if you changed your mind. I have so looked forward to your courting me. Properly. As you promised.”

“Properly?” He quirked an eyebrow. “I walked with you after church yesterday. How much more wooing do you want?”

“More than that,” she said. “I was looking forward to a long, slow courtship. Instead, you barged into it. Though he’s much too discreet to say so, Papa has taken the hint already, I am quite sure.”

“I should be vastly surprised if he hadn’t,” he said. “The village idiot has taken the hint, I daresay. I am not sure how I could have made my intentions plainer.”

“Oh, you,” she said. She went to him again and butted her head against his chest. He brought his arms about her, and she looked up into his laughing eyes. “You cheated,” she said. “I thought you said the mating party would go on as planned, and you were going to persuade me of all your perfections and how unlivable my life will be without you.”

“I said I’d participate,” he said. “I said I’d do a great many things, and I mean to. I never said I wouldn’t cheat.”

“Very well,” she said. “You didn’t say that. What else didn’t you say that I ought to know about?”

“Nothing,” he said. “At any rate, it isn’t cheating, precisely,” he said.

“Then what is it, precisely?”

“I’m simply stealing a march on my rivals,” he said. “Colonel Morrell will understand, certainly, though he won’t like it. I have no dashing uniform, no medals, no—”