Chapter X
X
A girl bends at the waist as she pours tea.
Another stands with a box balanced on her head.
A third perches primly on an ottoman, a placid smile on her face.
Charlotte turns page after page, each with its own picture of propriety.
Around her, the sitting room is humming.
Nearly a week ago, Margaret made a match with a fine gentleman named Reginald, and Edith expects her own proposal any day now.
The Season is racing toward its end, and the whole house has taken on a nervous energy, a held-breath kind of hope, but Charlotte feels herself weighted down by dread.
She dreads the imminent parting with Sabine, dreads returning home to James and Jocelyn, and a life that no longer fits.
She wishes she could curl up on the sofa, but Aunt Amelia caught her once, in those first days, and now Charlotte doesn’t dare. Instead, she sits stiffly on the sofa’s edge and pretends to read. As if she hasn’t had enough of etiquette.
She turns the page and sees a pair of women strolling arm in arm.
Like show ponies prancing . . . anyone you’d like to ride?
Charlotte smiles at the memory.
Another page, and here she finds a man and woman dancing, their arms locked at rigid angles as they turn.
You are merely going through the motions.
And here they are, the steps laid out on paper with little printed feet. But as she stares, the drawing twists, the stiffness gives way to looser limbs.
Imagine there is a wind . . .
She turns the page again, and again, twisting each image in her mind until the brittle lines give way to memories. It is not hard. She finds her thoughts are always going to Sabine. Her eyes. Her hair. Her mouth. Her hands.
She turns the page, half expecting to see a picture of two women playing cards, shoes kicked off and sherry glasses at their elbows.
Charlotte shifts at the thought of that last ball. Sabine’s body humming next to hers.
She presses her knees together, an ache pooling like heat.
When you discover what you want . . .
But Charlotte knows.
She lies awake and burns with it.
She twists and turns with it.
Last night, when she could not sleep, her hand found its way between her legs, and she let herself pretend it was Sabine’s. Could almost hear the breath against her neck, the voice in her ear, whispering her name as if it were a secret, and—
“Aren’t you a picture?”
Her aunt comes bustling in, and Charlotte sits up even straighter, trying to smother the flush that’s crept across her face.
“I must say,” continues Amelia, tugging off her gloves, “I had my doubts, but you have come a long way these past few weeks.”
And that much is true. Charlotte no longer protests at the cinching of the corsets, or the stiffness of the shoes, or the hundred pins the maid stabs in her hair each night to tame it.
But she has submitted to these discomforts knowing they are temporary discomforts, and she will fling them off again the moment she is home.
“Thank you, Aunt,” she says, conjuring the same tepid smile as the faces in her book. “I’ve had good teachers.”
Amelia absorbs the compliment like light, and drifts toward a round table, laden with gifts for Margaret and Edith. She surveys the offerings: a small bouquet of roses, a handful of cards, a box of candied fruit, a dish of chocolates.
“Next Season, I’ve no doubt, the offerings will be for you.”
Charlotte ducks her head to hide the grimace as her aunt plucks a chocolate from a dish (she has a sweet tooth, though she’ll deny it, seems to think that if the sweet is small enough to swallow in one bite, it does not count).
Just then, the bell rings.
“Finally,” sighs Aunt Amelia, as the house surges into motion.
Edith arrives, and for once the roses on her cheeks look more from stress than pinching. And yet, by the time she arranges herself on the divan and snatches up a bit of needlework, every curl is in its place, her hands steady and her face as smooth as milk.
Charlotte closes her book and stands, eager to absent herself for the proposal, is halfway to the door when the butler arrives with the news that the caller is for her .
Edith’s expression turns to ice, and Aunt Amelia’s warms with something like delight, and Charlotte simply laughs, knowing there must be some mistake.
But then the man walks in, and her amusement dies.
It’s George Preston.
George, with whom she’s danced half a dozen times, and spoken to far less.
George, who was a pleasant enough partner, a way to pass the time.
George, who stands in the good sitting room with a bundle of flowers in one clammy hand and his hat in the other, a nervous smile tugging at his mouth.
As if he isn’t there to ruin everything.
“Miss Hastings,” he begins, and she wonders if he even knows her proper name until he clears his throat and croaks out, “Charlotte,” and it sounds wrong, harsh, nothing like Sabine’s soft purr, and then to her horror he begins to talk about how deep his feelings run, how surely she cannot be surprised, given that he’s been quite bold in his affection.
Charlotte feels herself inch backward, until the sofa’s arm abruptly stops her.
She opens her mouth to speak, but cannot seem to find the air.
George has stolen it all. The room and everyone in it is so far away, their voices little more than echoes, and George is still going on and on about how certain he is that she will make a good wife, a good mother, that they will have a happy life.
And all Charlotte can think is that, if she had known, she never would have danced with him. If she had known, she would have fled from that first ball. This wasn’t supposed to happen, she isn’t even here. She was just playing dress-up, after all.
She is not a lily or a rose. Not a flower ready and waiting to be picked.
She is still growing wild at the edges of her family garden. She is not ready. She will never be ready. This isn’t what she wants.
George has finally stopped speaking, and everyone is looking at her now, as if waiting for an answer, and Charlotte finally drags in a great, heaving breath.
“If you’ll excuse me,” she says, too loud, the words crashing through the fog, “I just need a moment’s air.”
She hurries past them, toward the door, and George is trying to follow, and she is saying, “No, no, please stay, I’ll be right back,” and her aunt is calling after her, but it’s too late, she is already escaping from the parlor and the hall and the house on Merry Way.
She sees a hansom cab parked along the road, and she climbs in, asks the driver to take her to the widow Olivares.
Ten agonizing minutes later, she arrives.
Ten minutes to practice what she wants to say, and yet, as she steps out onto the curb, she feels her courage falter.
She stands before a house that last night looked so inviting—the doors open and the windows lit, a row of tiny lanterns burning like fairy lights along the walk—but now looks dark, forbidding even.
But the image of George, standing in the parlor, spurs her up the path, and to the door. She knocks, but no one answers. Panic winds like weeds around her ribs.
She knocks again.
“Miss?” asks the driver from the road. “Shall I wait?”
Charlotte hesitates, uncertain, knows only that she cannot bear the thought of turning back, not now, so she presses all the pocket change she has into the driver’s hand and sends him on his way, begs for his discretion, and whether it is the shillings, or the panic in her eyes, he bobs his head, and flicks the reins and goes.
Charlotte returns to the door, and knocks again, and this time when there is no answer she tries the handle, and finds the door unlocked.
Before doubt can overwhelm again, she plunges in.
She pulls the door shut behind her, and turns, expecting to cross paths with a butler or maid, some kind of staff.
The house was full of help the night before.
But today, there is no one.
The house sprawls around her, hollow, vacant.
“Sabine?” she calls out, softly first, and then in a voice that echoes off of marble, tremors over wood.
“Sabine!”
The whole house feels so empty, so still, that a sudden terror grips her, that Sabine has up and left, abandoned London and her, or worse, that she was never there, some phantom haunting her these past few months, a figment of—
“Charlotte.”
The word wafts through the air like smoke, and there she is.
Sabine stands at the top of the stairs, dressed in nothing but a black silk robe, parting to reveal a pale dressing gown. Her hair, no longer up in an intricate braid or bun, hangs loose, burning trails down her front, and the sight of her is striking enough that for a moment, Charlotte forgets.
She forgets the horror of the last hour, the forces that sent her running from her aunt’s salon, and thinks only of her words that first night on the stairs.
How could anyone not look at you?
Sabine drifts toward her down the stairs, her bare feet padding over marble. She looks drawn, as if she’s been in bed for days, fighting some long sickness—but that’s not possible. Charlotte saw her just the night before.
“Are you ill?”
A slow blink. “Only resting,” she says, her voice fogged with sleep, even though it’s the middle of the afternoon. Sabine reaches the bottom of the stairs and frowns. “What’s wrong?”
And just like that, it all comes rushing back.
In one violent exhale, she remembers.
“ Everything. ” The word tears from Charlotte like a sob.
“I’m sorry,” she says, shaking her head.
“I know it was thoughtless to come unannounced—I shouldn’t have—but George called on me today.
He asked for my hand. My hand!” Her limbs begin to tremble, and so she paces as she talks.
“And what he said beyond that, I don’t know.
From the moment he opened his mouth, all I could hear was my own heart, hammering to get out. ”