Chapter Twenty-Two #2
“Oh, nonsense. You were seen on the arm of the most notorious bachelor in London. You have all eyes trained on you, my dear. Besides, I am a titled widow. And what I lack in respectability of person, I make up for in pure charm and social connections.” She gave Charlotte a cheeky wink.
“Besides, I hardly think my purpose is to glower down at some young whelp wanting to take liberties. I rather prefer to think I am aiding you in taking liberties with a certain rogue about town, who will of course, not be named.”
“I think you have already named him.” Charlotte met Amelia’s gaze, and the strange amusement that had been building since the start of this unusual encounter began to bubble over. The two women shared a conspiratorial grin.
“Really, Amelia. I cannot see the need for a chaperone. I believe the damage to my reputation is already done—and really, I cannot bring myself to care overly much.”
“A friend, then. Surely you could find a use for one of those.” Amelia smiled warmly, and Charlotte could not help but return it.
She thought of all the girls with whom she had made her come out.
Now titled and tucked away with their broods of children.
Or the women she had indeed considered friends, who, after the death of her father and the shame of the family’s financial decline, she had seen less and less of until she saw them not at all.
Although now she was beginning to suspect she had been, while not responsible for their poverty, the author of her own isolation.
“Yes, I believe I could use a friend,” Charlotte agreed.
“Actually, I will admit, I already feel like I have been friends with you for years.” To Charlotte’s surprise, Amelia elaborated, “I hired your former lady’s maid, Anna, a few years ago.
When I read your letter of recommendation, I hired her on the spot—never had I seen such a glowing reference for a member of staff before.
Then, once I got to know her better…” Amelia flicked her eyes back to the road.
“She told me her story. From then on, I could not help but admire you.”
Charlotte had found Anna curled up beneath a hedgerow on the edge of Regent’s Park on a particularly foggy morning.
From her torn-up clothes—nearly rags—it was clear to her that Anna had been employed as a prostitute, and the blooming bruises and contusions on her face had been truly alarming in the dull morning light.
Despite the few years she had worked diligently with charities in the aid of the poorest of London’s inhabitants, Charlotte had never seen anyone so close to death.
At that moment, kneeling in the mud of the walkway, trying to convince the skittish Anna to rise and come home with her, she had realised how hollow her efforts had been.
It was that week, after bringing Anna home and helping her recover from her injuries as well as installing her as her new lady’s maid—her last one had left to marry a country lad at the end of her first season—that Charlotte began writing.
Two years later, she had been forced to let Anna go. Despite the deep trust—nay, friendship—that had grown between them, Charlotte could no longer pay her wages and would not hear of her sacrificing any more opportunities to remain by her side.
“Oh, I cannot tell you what a relief that is to me,” Charlotte said.
“I have worried about her so much, but I was not sure where she ended up. She would never write; I know she does not like to draw attention to herself or her whereabouts.” While she never knew why, it had been clear to Charlotte that Anna was hiding—from whom, she never knew, nor would she pry.
“But it is an immeasurable relief to me to know she has landed in a good home.”
Amelia nodded, a solemn look in her eyes at the unspoken knowledge they shared about the woman. “She is safe with me, I can assure you. And the most wonderful lady’s maid I have ever had.”
“Looking back, I am glad she got out of my house when she did. It would not do to have her attached to our family’s damaged reputation,” Charlotte said the last quietly through a gritted smile as two matrons passed them in a gig, giving polite but icy nods.
Amelia gave a smile and a wave, too, and then turned back to Charlotte after the old biddies had passed. “Anyway, damaged reputation or not, you could hardly go striding into Elysium tonight without a suitable companion.”
Charlotte laughed, remembering the two times she had done just that.
∞∞∞
Benjamin had spent the morning crouched over papers across from his long-trusted man of business, Bell.
The man had worked for him for the last eight years, but Benjamin was reasonably sure Arthur Bell had been born sixty years old.
Never once in all the time he had known him, had Bell exhibited anything but the retiring, determined patience of a harried history tutor, wire-rimmed spectacles to match.
“With this, there is enough for at least a corruption charge, sir. There is a surfeit of evidence that he is trading in fraudulent goods through his shipping company.”
Benjamin did not look up from the document he was reading. “I cannot see how it would be prudent for someone such as myself to be alerting the authorities about corruption schemes, Bell.”
“You do not actually operate so far out of the bounds of the law, sir.” The quip was uncharacteristically acerbic, and Benjamin made a mental note to give Bell a larger-than-usual Christmas bonus for putting up with him all these years.
“What do I always say, Bell?” Benjamin leaned back and stretched his neck, the morning already trailing long behind him.
Bell let out a long-suffering sigh. “Treason gets the gallows.”
Benjamin nodded. “Precisely.” He had heard whisperings of a shipper smuggling spies across the channel.
After digging further, he was sure that Deering’s company was the one responsible.
Since then, he and Bell had been keeping meticulous track of the cargoes and transactions the Deering shipping house conducted.
Looking down at the document Bell slid across the table, Benjamin could feel that budding excitement that came just as the pieces slotted into place and he could see which string to pull to have it all crumbling down. They had found it.
A shipping log marked the duty paid on the cargo, but there was a telltale mark at the bottom.
Sometimes, if it were a particularly cold night, or the port control officer had a hankering for the pub, they would flag a manifest anomaly on the night’s bill of landing to circle back to the next day.
It was a sloppy sort of work—and one that got officials into trouble more often than not.
But it was also an easy spot for leverage.
If the ship’s manifest was a few bodies short, it would only take a well-placed question to find out.
Benjamin knew just how to pull that string.
The lazy port control officer would be fretting away all the ship’s secrets in no time.
∞∞∞
The entry hall of Elysium was dazzling. Charlotte had not remembered it looking this fine.
There were gas lamps along the walls and elegant chandeliers overhead.
Their steps were muffled by the ornate runner that stretched the length of the hall where they stood behind the sizeable crowd of patrons weaving their way onto the main gaming floor.
It was an impressive place, and Charlotte could hardly believe she had not noticed its extent before. She had been a bit preoccupied on her previous visits.
Amelia looked around at the swarming crowds, basking in the excitement of the atmosphere. “There’s nothing like the joy of being at the place to be. It always feels like a triumph. Quite an establishment your Mr. Scarsdale has here.”
“Keep your voice down,” Charlotte implored. “Besides, he is not my Mr. Scarsdale. Stop saying that.”
Amelia snapped her fan and arched her eyebrow at Charlotte.
“My dear, a man who sends the most stunning evening gown to your home on a moment’s notice, arranges for a suitable evening companion, and sends an elegant carriage to fetch you and said companion to come to his unbearably popular establishment as special guests, is most certainly under your purview. ”
Charlotte blushed and, satisfied she had made her point, Amelia flicked open her fan again in order to wave it flirtatiously as she batted her eyes at a handsome young gentleman across the hall.
It was the most stunning evening gown. A package had been delivered to the Aston townhouse earlier that afternoon.
Luckily, Charlotte had been passing through the kitchen corridor at the time and had heard scuffling on the back stoop beside the empty mews.
Thinking that perhaps it was a debt collector come to take the house by force, she peeked through the small window beside the door only to see a little street ruffian scampering away, a finely wrapped box left in his wake.
Upon bringing the box inside, she found a small, embossed vellum card atop the delicate tissue paper with only one line scrawled across, in bold, rushed hand: Her skirt was o′ the grass-green silk.
She had puzzled over the words a moment, clear who had written them but not exactly their meaning.
Her curiosity got the best of her though, and she unwrapped the tissue paper to reveal the most sumptuous material she had ever seen.
The silk was the colour of grass—but not the bright sun-drenched grass of a country spring.
It was a deeper, more subtle, shifting colour.
Like the shade of dusk in an early summer meadow.
The gown had long sleeves and a high neck, and, truth be told, it would be unfashionably dowdy if not for the scandalously low back, seemingly tied closed with only a simple silk sash.
Now that she was in it, it was a relief to know the dress’s construction was deceptively secure, fastening all the way up the side and in no danger of coming undone at a simple tug of the bowed sash.
Still, the illusion was effective. Charlotte could feel eyes on her from all sides as she and Amelia made their way down the corridor.
The matching green silk domino had been secured long before they arrived, and its guarantee of relative anonymity, along with the noticeable appreciation for her ensemble, made her feel nearly invincible.
Even as a debutante, attention had always felt unseemly—as if she should make herself smaller before drawing the male gaze.
She certainly was not meant to enjoy it.
But now, she was a woman grown. She was saving her family and taking hold of her future. And had the attention of the most magnetising man she had ever encountered. It was enough to make her head lift just a little bit higher.
“I say it is a sign of good sense that he tries to spoil you so.” Amelia gave a smug look at the group of gentlemen who made barely an attempt to mask their lingering gazes as they passed. “Clearly, he is not the only prospect a dazzling lady such as yourself might have.”
Thinking of the warmth of Benjamin’s hands in the rainy pavilion—the glow of his skin in the firelight of his chambers—Charlotte could feel her cheeks heating. How could she possibly consider another prospect after being touched by a man like Benjamin Scarsdale?
“What about you and the Duke of Wells?” Charlotte did not want to continue a conversation centring on her romantic—not romantic, she reminded herself—situation. She did not know how much Amelia knew of their arrangement, and it was mortifying to imagine having to explain it to her.
“Oh, there’s nothing in that. He took a flash fancy to me sometime last year.
” She waved her hand dismissively as if the attention of the wealthiest, most eligible, and elusive bachelor on the market was of no consequence.
“I do not think we had even met! He must have just glimpsed me across the room at some event or another and been struck. Is that not the most terribly romantic notion?” She sighed, gazing up at the frescoes on the ceiling.
“Anyway, it all came to naught. He followed me to a house party in Oxfordshire, and after a few false starts, we came to the mutual conclusion that a civil friendship was more in our cards. He is surprisingly good fun, once you get past that haughty ducalness.”
Though he had been cordial—helpful even, in their previous encounters, Charlotte could not really imagine anything past said ducalness.
They had arrived at the front of the queue.