6. In Which a Gentleman Discovers That Rescue Has a Price – Various locations throughout London
IN WHICH A GENTLEMAN DISCOVERS THAT RESCUE HAS A PRICE
EDWARD
VARIOUS LOCATIONS THROUGHOUT LONDON
Ihad a system.
It was a pathetic system, and I knew it. But I had one nonetheless, because a man doing something inadvisable required, at a minimum, the illusion of control.
The system was this: I would not seek Charlotte out.
I would simply be in the same places she was, at the same times she was there, and if an opportunity presented itself to be useful, I would take it.
That was all. It was practical. It was helpful.
It was the behaviour of a decent man who cared for his family's well-being.
It was, I acknowledged on Wednesday, the most sophisticated piece of self-deception I had ever constructed.
But I built it carefully and lived inside it because the alternative was to examine what was actually happening. And I was not yet ready to do that.
Monday: Ashford House, Berkeley Square
I had not planned to attend Marguerite's tea.
I had, in fact, specifically decided I would not attend. I had correspondence to handle. I had estate matters that had gone unaddressed for the better part of eighteen months. I was, by any reasonable measure, a man with urgent business elsewhere.
And then, at breakfast, Father mentioned that Dunmore and Eastmore had both been invited.
I was back at Ashford House by three o'clock.
I told myself this was loyalty to family. The Ashford women had worked so hard to launch Charlotte into Society, and it was natural that I should want to support the effort. It was certainly not the case that I had spent the carriage ride rehearsing reasons to interrupt the proceedings.
The drawing room scene told itself before I had to think.
Eastmore on one side, droning. Dunmore on the other, holding a small wrapped parcel with the expression of a man who believed himself about to do something charming.
Charlotte between them, wearing the particular smile I was beginning to recognise — the one that required effort.
The one that had nothing to do with happiness.
I have known Charlotte since she was six years old.
I have watched her organise dinner parties, orchestrate her aunts' romantic entanglements, and correct the errors in everyone else's plans with the quiet efficiency of someone who genuinely believes the world functions better when properly managed.
I know her laughs — the real ones and the performed ones.
I know the difference between the eyes that sparkle and the eyes that endure.
These were the enduring eyes.
I watched Dunmore present his gift. I watched Charlotte unwrap it — slowly, carefully, with the grace of someone who had learned that feelings were best processed privately. An enamel box. Decorated with pheasants.
I waited until Dunmore was deep into what was clearly going to be a comprehensive lecture on Parisian enamelling technique. Then I stepped into the doorway and lied about carriages.
It was the second time. I had lied about carriages at the Pemberton ball as well, which meant I was building a catalogue of deceptions with a particular domestic transportation theme.
Dunmore believed me. Charlotte's eyes met mine across the room, and I saw the relief — and beneath the relief, something else.
Something that made my chest do the complicated thing it had been doing with increasing frequency since the moment she had walked through the corridor at Ashbourne House and not been thirteen anymore.
I took Dunmore's place beside her for perhaps four minutes.
Made some observation about the pheasants that made her want to throw the box at me — I could tell by the slight tightening around her eyes.
She said my name in that way she had lately, not Uncle Edward, just Edward, and I felt it somewhere I had no business feeling it.
I left before Marguerite could ask me to stay.
I was home by four o'clock, sitting in my father’s library, staring at nothing.
She is seventeen, I told myself. She is Juliet's daughter. She is family, or the nearest thing to it, and you are twenty-three years old and should know better.
All of this was true. None of it was helping.
Wednesday: Hyde Park
I hate the fashionable hour.
I have always hated it. The parade of it.
The performance of being seen seeing. I had avoided it for an entire London season before leaving for the Continent, and the Continent, whatever its other failings, had at least not required me to ride in circles around a park at eleven o'clock in the morning demonstrating my social existence.
Caroline mentioned at dinner on Tuesday night — loudly, and with the particular clarity of someone who has information she wants to convey without appearing to convey it — that she was taking Charlotte riding on Wednesday morning.
I was in Hyde Park by half past ten, waiting.
I found them without difficulty. Caroline was occupied with Lady Pemberton and oblivious.
Charlotte was riding alongside Lord Philip Ashby, who was doing something I could only conclude was poetry, based on Charlotte's expression, which suggested she was experiencing a mild medical crisis while maintaining perfect equestrian form.
I should have left. I had no legitimate reason to be there. But I told myself — as I had been telling myself all week — that I was simply a concerned family member who happened to be present.
I rode forward. Invented Eleanor's birthday as a pretext. Extracted Charlotte from Lord Ashuby’s orbit with the kind of strategic manoeuvring that would have impressed me if it had been deployed on anything other than the suppression of bad verse.
We rode together for perhaps five minutes. The park was beautiful. The light was good. Charlotte was beside me, close enough that I could have reached out.
I kept both hands on the reins.
She knew I'd followed her. She said as much — pointed out that I'd spent an entire previous season avoiding the fashionable hour, which was perfectly accurate.
I tried to deny it. She looked at me with those grey eyes that have always been able to cut straight through whatever I was attempting to project.
"Have you changed?" she asked.
The honest answer was: yes. Entirely. In ways I cannot explain to you and would not explain to you even if I could, because you are seventeen and you are on the cusp of a Season full of appropriate, uncomplicated men who will offer you uncomplicated futures, and I will not be the thing that interrupts that.
What I said was: "Perhaps."
I was beginning to speak to Charlotte in the subjunctive. It seemed the only safe tense.
Caroline retrieved her before the conversation could go anywhere. I spent the next twenty minutes riding behind them, watching Lord Ashby recite increasingly unfortunate poetry while Charlotte nodded and smiled and died slowly.
I could not rescue her from that without making a scene. So I stayed back, watched, and felt worse than useless.
When I got home, I went straight to the library and did not come out until dinner.
Friday: Hatchard's Bookshop, Piccadilly
I had bought three books the previous day. My library was full. I had no earthly reason to be at Hatchard's.
Mary had mentioned, very casually, over breakfast on Thursday, that she was taking Charlotte to browse the new political philosophy section at eleven o'clock on Friday. And that Mr Waverton had expressed interest in the same section.
I was in the classics aisle by quarter to eleven, with a clear sightline to political philosophy.
This was, I recognised, a new low.
I watched Waverton intercept Charlotte. Watched him begin to hold forth on Burke with the entitled confidence of a man who has never considered that the person he is lecturing might know more than he does.
Watched Charlotte's posture shift — the small, telling straightening of the spine that meant she was no longer merely enduring but was building toward something.
She was going to take him apart.
I could see it happening in stages, the way you can see weather building over the horizon.
The particular narrowing of her eyes. The careful patience of her smile giving way to something sharper.
Charlotte in full intellectual combat is a remarkable thing.
She had demolished a bishop at dinner once — I was not present, but Eleanor told me about it in loving detail — and she was approximately thirty seconds from doing the same to Waverton's condescending little lecture on the franchise question.
She would have been magnificent.
But Mary was watching from across the shop. And Charlotte's Season was still young, and first impressions in political philosophy sections have a way of making the rounds.
So I intervened. Appeared with a book, invented a non-existent Plutarch translation, steered her away from Waverton before she could be magnificent in any way that would cause problems.
She knew I was lying. She always knows. We have a particular shorthand for it now — a look that passes between us that says I know you're lying and you know I know and we're both going to pretend otherwise because it's working.
I handed her the book. Our fingers touched.
I have shaken hands with diplomats. I have helped women from carriages. I have danced with probably forty women in the course of my social career, and the ordinary business of hands has never once registered.
Charlotte's fingers against mine in the classics aisle of Hatchard's Bookshop registered.
"Always," I said, when she thanked me. The word came out before I could stop it.
Mary appeared. The moment ended. I left.
I walked home from Piccadilly instead of taking a carriage. It took forty minutes. The cold air helped slightly. The thinking did not.
I was keeping a list, somewhere in the back of my mind, of things I should not have said. Things I should not have done. Moments I should have allowed to pass without intervention.
"Always" was the latest entry.
It was not a short list.
Saturday: Marguerite's Musicale, Ashford House