Chapter Nineteen
Elk and Wells watched from atop their mounts as Benjamin growled at a mousy stable hand in the mews behind Elysium.
After the boy finished scurrying around, tacking his horse, Benjamin flung himself into the saddle, throwing a whole guinea down to the boy in lieu of an apology for his surly behaviour.
The boy seemed suitably pleased by the compensation and disappeared into the back stalls.
“What’s got your knickers in a twist today, dear Mr. Scarsdale?” Elkington leaned over the neck of his horse to give Benjamin a sardonic look.
“Trouble with our fair Lady Charlotte?” Wills said her name in a singsong, such a boyish taunt completely at odds with his ducal hauteur.
“None of your business,” Benjamin bit out.
He knew his friends were only teasing. If it were one of them, he would do much the same. Still, at the mention of Charlotte’s name, he was plunged into another wave of frustration and irritability.
The night before had been heavenly—beyond words, really.
And the thought of Charlotte in his arms sent sensations coursing through him again and again.
But when Benjamin had awoken an hour ago—far later than usual despite his late hours—to a cold, empty indent in the sheets beside him, he had been cast into a foul mood that he simply could not shake.
Benjamin pulled at the reins, turning his horse down the mews toward the path they took to the park. The three of them met almost every day for a ride when they were all in London, and though he had slept late, Wells and Elkington were waiting for him when he came down from his rooms above Elysium.
“Ah. She did not go for it then?” Wells asked in a sympathetic tone.
“Of course she did. She would be a fool not to.” Despite the self-aggrandising nature of the statement, Benjamin knew it to be true.
He had offered Charlotte an impossible lifeline—saved her from ruin and likely destitution.
While the concept of genteel poverty was something that he had always scoffed at, at the rate at which the young earl was blowing through the family coffers, the poorhouse was not an unlikely destination for his dependent relatives.
“Jesus, then what’s all this about?” Elkington nodded to Benjamin’s stiff posture, likely referring to his overall surliness.
“I don’t know what you are talking about.”
“Well, to start with, you are behaving like a bear with a sore paw.”
“Not the behaviour one would expect after taking on a mistress. Is the anticipation driving you to distraction?” Wells levelled him an assessing glance.
He was a master at teasing information out of people—a useful skill for such a powerful man.
“Surely, once you bed her, you will be put to rights.”
Benjamin could not stop his ferocious scowl, immediately regretting the reaction. He knew that was Wells’ goal all along, but had been unable to stop himself. “Do not speak of her that way.”
Judging by the expression on his friend’s face, Wells already knew of Charlotte’s visit.
Damned duke, sticking his damned nose into things.
Both he and Elkington clearly thought they already knew all there was to know.
Benjamin would not mention the pavilion.
That moment was too sacred to share, even with his closest friends.
Elkington looked surprised. “Well, judging by that reaction, I cannot imagine what you are grumbling about. Wish fulfilled! Now you can stop mooning over her and playing the tragic villain. Clearly, she forgives you for shooting her.”
Benjamin frowned ahead, not taking his eyes from the park entrance they were approaching.
It was still before the fashionable hour for Mayfair to descend upon Hyde Park to see and be seen.
Still, there were enough coaches and single riders about that he found himself scanning for a certain pair of fair, arching eyebrows.
But he knew he would not find them. From what he could gather—quite a lot—Lady Charlotte Aston had all but retired from the ton.
She did not make public appearances. She did not attend parties or routes and had long since stopped being invited.
For all the status of her birth, Charlotte lived much like the working classes she wrote about—though with a significant degree less freedom.
Her life had been stripped away from her.
And Benjamin felt a compulsive need to restore it.
All this only made him surlier, and he did not want to examine why. While his day began with disappointment upon waking and finding an empty space beside him where Charlotte had been, he was pretty certain the thorn in the bear’s paw was heavily laced with guilt—an emotion he buffeted at all costs.
“You are right, of course. I am merely tired.”
“Oh-ho. Kept you up all night, did she?” Elkington waggled his eyebrows in an exaggerated gesture, clearly fishing for a reaction.
Benjamin could not suppress a smile. “A gentleman does not kiss and tell.”
“No, and neither does Benjamin Scarsdale.” With a wink, Elkington gave his stallion its head and left Wells and Benjamin to race after him.
∞∞∞
Dear Lord, Charlotte thought to herself, as she stood in the corridor that led back to the servants’ stairs and down to the kitchen, pulling at a curling strip of paint that was peeling from the wall; she had not realised just how bad things had gotten.
Over the years, she had watched with detached pragmatism as the vestiges of her family’s wealth were slowly stripped away.
Now, however, the reality of their great fall was staring her directly in the face.
This hall, being part of the invisible background that kept the facade running, even in the best of times, had been neglected the longest and now was in true disrepair. The sight was a blow.
After a few hours of tossing and turning after arriving home shortly before dawn, Charlotte had finally gotten up, donned her increasingly worn-out wrapper and with pencil and pad in hand, climbed to the attic rooms, and methodically made her way down through the house, taking inventory of necessary repairs and blemishes which would need to be seen to before the house could feasibly be put to market, and trying desperately to put the memory of Benjamin’s touch far from her mind.
After their night together, Charlotte felt a renewed hope for her future. She would give herself this month—a month of joy and discovery—and then she would set out to build a new life full of purpose.
In the hours since she had slipped out of his bed, she had made a plan.
She would put the house up for let. The income from that would be just enough to carry on paying the boy’s tuition until they were out of school—maybe even into university if they were lucky.
Freddie could take rooms at his club—maybe with a mistress.
Charlotte could not escape the feeling that she must have failed him.
Perhaps she should have taken a firmer hand with Freddie.
She had known from a young age that Veronica was not interested in taking anything beyond a flying fancy to her sons.
Maybe Charlotte should have tried harder to balance that—to be the structure where her stepmother was a fleeting source of vacant praise and periodic neglect.
But Charlotte had not had it in her to discipline the boys when they misbehaved.
She could only do what she could to set things right after the fact.
Besides, helping her brothers made her feel good—necessary.
But in retrospect, she saw that shielding Freddie from the consequences of his actions had not helped.
Her coddling until this point had only caused him harm.
The only thing she could do for her family now was wipe the slate clean and move on. And maybe, just maybe, it would be the right thing for her as well.
She would retire from London publicly, claiming a summons from an elderly aunt up north—Liverpool, perhaps, or maybe even Scotland.
There, she could take a position as a governess, or perhaps even engage herself as a journalist—they were not so against women working for a living there, and she knew for a fact, the working conditions in some of those new factories up North were deplorable to the extreme.
A woman sent to investigate and report would be much less remarked upon than a man.
The idea filled her with hope. There was nothing as empowering as taking hold of one’s destiny after a lifetime of catering to others.
∞∞∞
After receiving a brief, yet informative note just after midday, Charlotte was ready when a high-quality but blessedly nondescript carriage had pulled up outside the Aston townhouse around seven that evening, and a liveried footman knocked on the door to collect her.
He had masterfully concealed his surprise at the lady of the house answering the door herself, but Charlotte had noted the young man’s curious look into the empty foyer as he had dutifully pulled the door closed behind her.
The carriage left their street in the direction of Benjamin’s townhouse, and Charlotte peeked out the window to watch the evening bustle pass by, careful to keep her face hidden in the shadows of the dimly lit coach.
It seemed strange to be among the fashionable traffic of Mayfair after being apart from it so long.
For her, evenings of show and excitement had been the first luxuries to go when funds had grown thin.
She thought wistfully of the delicious hum of anticipation as the theatre lights dimmed and the curtains drew, or the first dissonant chords of an orchestra tuning up one final time before the performance.
That was the life of another woman—a girl, really. She missed her, but, as she knew all too well, dwelling on the past only wrought heartbreak. It was best to save those memories—keep them apart like a distant fairy tale, just like she would the nights to come.