Chapter III
III
London, England
Charlotte Hastings cannot breathe.
Though she suspects it has less to do with nerves and more the ruthless way her corset has been cinched. The carriage hits a crack in the cobblestones and the boning cuts into her ribs, and now she knows why Edith and Margaret move so carefully. Why their voices are so faint.
Edith and Margaret sit across from her, gloved hands folded neatly in their laps, and looking less like girls and more like Roman busts, lovely and pale and draped in pastel shades of satin.
Somehow, small as their waists are, they find the air to talk, reeling off names that mean nothing to her as they toy with the dance cards looped around their wrists.
Charlotte fidgets with her own, turning the ornate slip between gloved fingers.
Aunt Amelia fills the bench beside her, bound in sturdier fabric with a higher neck, to hide her ample bosom.
She has spent the last five minutes delivering a lecture about the hierarchy of court, and how it’s decided who will host the balls each night.
Charlotte assumes the speech is meant for her, but she is too busy trying to breathe.
Perhaps she is a bit nervous. After all, this is a first, and those are always frightening.
The carriage hits another bump, and she winces, one hand going to the front of her dress.
It was a gift from her mother, a gold so pale it shimmers beneath the flowers embroidered down the front.
A dress her aunt declared passable, only because it was too late to get another, though she dislikes the way it makes her niece’s skin look even darker.
But Charlotte loves the way the fabric glitters, matched by the trio of gemstones at her throat, her wild curls bound up beneath a net of pearls. In truth, when she saw herself in the hall mirror, she did not know whether to smile or flinch at the sight of such a pretty stranger.
Though she doubts the image will survive the ride.
The carriage is stuffy enough that she can feel her hair trying to escape the hundred pins her aunt’s maid forced into it. Her feet are already aching in their shoes, and a dread is rising to snuff out what little air she has.
At last, the carriage stops, and they descend, and for a moment she drags in giant gulps of air, and even though London air cannot be called fresh, it soothes her aching lungs. She closes her eyes and pretends that she is standing on the garden path, chin lifted to the night.
And then a firm hand plants itself in the small of her back.
Aunt Amelia chides her for clogging the walk and nudges her forward toward the waiting house.
Music wafts through the open doors, along with the sounds of laughter, delicate as glass.
The bubble of voices. The rustle of skirts.
A dozen overlapping sounds that reach like hands into the night and drag her through.
But as Charlotte steps into her first proper ball, a strange thing happens.
Her aching heart, her fear and worry, which have been with her step for step, are overwhelmed by something new. A kind of awe, or wonder.
The house is not a house. It is a wonderland.
A thousand burning tapers cast a veil of golden light that seems to land on everything. The marble floors and polished sconces, the vases and crystal cups, and the girls in all their finery. The gems in their hair, around their throats, the beads sewn into their gowns.
Charlotte has always had a dreamer’s heart, an artist’s eye, the kind of imagination that unspools itself at the slightest touch.
And in the few short days between arriving at Aunt Amelia’s house and this first ball, she has had time to make use of it, to conjure scenes from books she’s read, stitch together swatches from Edith and Margaret both.
And yet.
They do not hold a candle to the truth. Lovely is not a bold enough word for such a spectacle.
It is dazzling. Extravagant, and ornate, grander than anything she’s ever seen, and for a moment, she feels giddy, wrapped in a childlike delight, the kind she felt when she saw a glowworm for the first time, igniting in her mother’s palm, or a star come loose, tumbling across the night.
The rushing joy of doors flung open, and oh, if only Jocelyn were here—
Charlotte’s ribs begin to ache inside their corset. Her feet hurt in her shoes. And perhaps it is the pain that brings her back to earth, dampens her momentary wonder, and reminds her she is just a girl, and the ball is just a house, and both of them are simply playing dress-up.
Pretending to be what other people want.
Instead of what they are.
Clement Hall
One week prior
The letter came at breakfast.
It was always Charlotte’s favorite meal, not for the food, which was plain enough—a pot of tea, a tray of toast, half a dozen soft-boiled eggs perched in porcelain cups—but for the easy way her family sat, ranged around the table, at once together and apart, each engaged in their own quiet morning rituals, the only sounds the occasional trill of birdsong, the chime of porcelain, the whisper of pages turning.
She could lay her family out like hours on the clock.
At three, her father perused a paper, one of the weeklies sent from London.
At six, her brother made notes in the margins of a ledger (he was newly apprenticed to a bank).
At nine, her mother stared out the window, her mind on some corner of the garden or her latest block of clay.
And at noon, Charlotte sat with a novel in one hand and a toast point in the other. She had mastered the art of balancing the two without smudging the book or missing her mouth.
She was on the last chapter when the mail arrived, a single piece delivered to her father’s elbow. Charlotte didn’t pay it much mind as she popped the toast point in her mouth, read the final pages of Udolpho, and felt beset by the strange mix of pleasure and grief that came with finishing a book.
She sighed and set the novel down.
“Done already?” asked her mother.
“You go through them so fast,” observed her father as he broke the letter’s seal. “At this rate, we’ll run out.”
“Good thing, then,” she said, reaching for another piece of toast, “that more are always being written.”
It was true, Charlotte had made a fair dent in the library at Clement Hall, though the shelves were mostly filled with Swift, and Diderot, and Goethe, and she preferred the works of Austen, and Defoe, and Radcliffe.
This last one came from Jocelyn.
Jocelyn had never trusted Charlotte, not since she gave her Frankenstein. Her friend had come storming in the next day, looking absolutely haggard and claiming she hadn’t slept a wink, because it was so frightening. From that moment on, she insisted, she would read only romance.
As if love and horror could not go hand in hand.
Jocelyn read less than half of Udolpho before she declared it far too grim, with its haunted houses and restless ghosts, and practically hurled the book at Charlotte, saying, You’ll likely love it.
She couldn’t wait to tell Jocelyn that she was right.
Only, Charlotte hadn’t seen her since the incident in the garden, nearly a week before, and every time she thought of it her stomach gave a vicious little twist. It had been such a perfect day, until it wasn’t.
And when she tried to call to mind the kiss (which she did, again and again, despite herself), it came with the bitter aftertaste of Jocelyn’s expression.
But she knew that when she saw her friend, everything would be all right again.
It had to be. They could go back to how they were before.
If that’s what Jocelyn wanted.
Charlotte realized she’d been dipping the same toast point in the same egg cup for far too long.
Realized, too, as she set it down, that something about the room had changed without her noticing.
That at some point, her father and brother and mother had all stopped engaging in their own pursuits.
That her parents were now exchanging a wordless look, and James was looking, rather pointedly, at his empty plate.
“Charlotte,” began her father, and the tone of his voice made her heart quicken, her skin tighten over her bones. Something had happened. Something was wrong.
“What is it?” she asked, scanning the table for a clue, seeing only the letter lying open by his plate. “Has someone died?”
“Hardly,” said her mother with a brittle laugh.
Her father cleared his throat. “We need to talk,” he said, “about your education.”
Charlotte relaxed then, just a little. She was a sturdy enough pupil. Which was to say, she bustled through the work as one might through a lengthy meal, eager to be excused. “If it’s about the tutor last week, I wasn’t hiding from him. I simply lost track of time.”
James snorted under his breath.
“It’s not,” said her father, tapping the paper. “I’ve been speaking with your aunt, Amelia. And we think it would be a good idea for you to visit her . . .”
Reading as much as Charlotte did, she knew there were words, and words between words, ones that hid in the spaces, the pauses, the breaths. They hung on sentences, weighed them down with all the things that were not being said.
Her aunt, Amelia, lived in London with her husband. They had three daughters, raised and wed, but their house was never empty, thanks to her aunt’s talent for navigating court, and the myriad girls who passed through every Season to be groomed, and presented as her wards.
“Visit her?” said Charlotte, dread coiling around her ribs. “Surely she is too busy.”
“I was worried about that,” replied her father, “which is why I wrote. But she assures me there is room for you.”
Room for you.
Her heart started drumming in her chest. “Why must I go at all?” she asked, her voice threatening to break. “You and Mother didn’t meet at court.”
Charlotte had heard the tale a dozen times, of how he was touring a friend’s estate, of how she came by chance to visit the same day, how her mother tipped the world beneath her father’s feet. It always sounded wonderfully romantic. As if their meeting was destined. Fate.
“But we both went,” her mother chimed in now. “There’s more to it than finding matches. It will be good for you to make some friends. To meet other girls your age, as well as suitors.”
“Besides,” added her father, “no one is expecting you to make a match this Season.”
A match. Her head began to spin.
One day I will need to take a wife, just as you will need to take a husband.
“You won’t be formally presented,” her father went on. “It’s simply a chance to watch, and learn, so that next year you’ll be ready.”
Charlotte swallowed. “You always said it could wait.”
“I did. But your brother has convinced me otherwise.”
And there it was, the words between the words. The reason for the layered speech. Charlotte glared at James. He had the decency to flinch.
“I simply said it might be a good idea. A chance to see what life will be, beyond the confines of Clement Hall. I thought perhaps you might be growing bored.”
How could she be bored, with so much space? With Mother’s garden and with Father’s books? With James for talk, and Jocelyn for company—
But that was the problem, wasn’t it?
There are certain games you can no longer play.
Charlotte felt tears sting her eyes.
“Goodness, Lottie,” James added with a cheerful huff, “you act as if you’re being punished. ”
Am I not? she almost snapped. But it would be as useless as asking Why now? It was obvious. Perhaps her brother had not betrayed her secret. But he would, if she forced him to. And to give it words would damn her.
Her mother reached out and took her hand, giving it a gentle squeeze.
“How exciting it will be,” she said, “to spend the spring in London.”
A spring away from Clement Hall.
Away from the gardens.
Away from Jocelyn.
“Just wait,” her mother added cheerfully. “By the end, you’ll be writing home, begging us to let you stay.”
Charlotte chewed the inside of her cheek to keep from crying. Her brother looked away, as if the very prospect were undignified.
“It’s settled then,” said her father, rising to his feet. He kissed the top of Charlotte’s head, and gentle as the gesture was, it had all the weight of a door swinging shut.