Chapter Twenty-Three
“She is here, sir.” Boyd’s face bobbed into the door frame and out just as quickly as he hurried by to carry the news to the other back-room employees.
Elkington looked up from the game of chess he had been frowning over for the better part of an hour. “What does he mean, she is here?”
His fiancée, Elsie, was leaning back in the other masculine leather chair placed before the hearth in Benjamin’s office.
Her round face was rosy from the warmth of the fire and her imminent victory over her intended’s abysmal strategy.
Elk would stand a better chance if not for his utter fixation on the woman before him at the price of his focus.
Benjamin had already played out what moves Elk was likely to make that would put him right in her well-laid trap while he was checking over the invoices for the club’s next month’s foodstuffs.
“Oh, who is she?” Elsie perked up, glancing over at Benjamin.
She really was glowing. Benjamin narrowed his eyes at his friend. Perhaps there was more to this swift engagement than the couple’s obvious infatuation.
“She is an acquaintance of mine. Lady Charlotte Aston.” Even sharing that much felt tawdry.
“And,” he addressed Elkington while glancing back down at the stack of receipts before him, hoping his hammering heart was not visible to his friend.
“I imagine when Boyd said she was here, he meant that she is here.”
“Here. At Elysium?” Elsie’s voice was almost affronted.
Benjamin tried to maintain a cool, unaffected expression when he looked back up. Elsie’s too-intelligent eyes were scanning his face, and he knew she saw too much. Benjamin pushed himself from his desk and made a show of straightening his evening finery—sometimes even the costliest fabrics chafed.
“Benjamin, please tell me you have not invited an unaccompanied, unmarried lady to your gaming hell for all the ton to see?”
Benjamin resisted the urge to straighten his cravat. “Do not exaggerate. The season has not even started yet. Your precious ton is still largely off rusticating in their country piles. Besides, are you not an unmarried lady in the very same hell as we speak?”
Elsie gave him an exasperated look and stood from her chair.
“Do not split hairs with me. You know my situation is different. The Wylde family is beyond scandal at this point. Being seen with my fiancé.” Despite her rising indignation, her voice softened as she said the word, looking down at Elkington with a fond smile.
“In his own establishment is hardly the same as a respectable young lady.”
“Darling, you do not know the whole of it,” Elkington spoke from the chair as he moved another chess piece closer to defeat.
“Oh, and I am sure he does. London’s Master of Secrets.
” Elise played another piece without so much as looking down, glare still fixed on Benjamin.
“You cannot play fast and loose with a young lady’s status.
Women are given so many fewer opportunities in this world, maybe especially those of the ton.
By risking her reputation, you take from her what little power she has.
” Elsie was working herself up into a true froth, Benjamin could see by the vein pulsing in her forehead.
“It is the greatest injustice to rob someone of what little options they have. She likely cannot afford damage to her stainless reputation.” Benjamin cut her off before she could whip herself into a full fury.
“Oh, there is a stain, believe me.” He hated himself just a bit more at that. Especially since he now knew there was no truth to the sordid secret that dogged Charlotte Aston’s steps.
Still, truth had little bearing on secrets and gossip.
Silence descended as Elkington gaped at him with the awe of a man who had just seen someone sentenced to the gallows. “Scarsdale.”
Elsie clamped her jaw. “No, Alex. Everyone has something to hide. Benjamin just makes it his business to find out what it is.”
The words he had said to her upon their first meeting all those years ago. He had confided it then, as a show of his respect for her. Now, the memory shadowed by her censure hurt more than he would care to admit.
She crossed her arms and regarded him evenly.
“Well, I suppose I will just have to get the measure of the situation myself. Alex, dear, please escort me down to the floor?” It was clearly not a question, and Elkington stood, gallantly offering his arm to his intended, and giving Benjamin a speaking look as if to say I told you so, before the pair preceded him from the room.
Despite his frustration at Elsie’s rightful scolding, he found himself dizzyingly elated at the prospect of seeing Charlotte again.
∞∞∞
A footman had only just appeared to offer the ladies champagne in delicate little glass flutes when Charlotte looked up to see him.
His face stood out above the crowd—hard, calculating, indescribably handsome.
He stood on the landing just above the wide gaming floor, his keen eyes missing nothing as he surveyed the ordered chaos of the crowd.
Footmen bearing trays of drinks and hors d'oeuvres.
Musicians playing lively string pieces that would not have been out of place at Almacks.
Dealers shuffling cards and raking in markers.
Gentlemen and ladies mingling above the baize tables. And him.
The moment his eyes landed on her, she was caught.
It was as if the room had fallen away, and they were lying side by side in the pavilion in her garden.
His wide, full lips quirked in an infinitesimal smile, revealing a dimple just above the line of his jaw.
Then, without warning, they hardened into a firm line, and Charlotte watched the permanent furrow between his brows grow deeper.
He was not looking at her anymore but tracking the progress of someone through the crowd.
She looked down just in time for a striking, dark-haired woman to emerge from the throng before them, followed closely by the Duke of Elkington, who looked rather harried after following the woman through the melee.
“Dear, you need not run.” His voice was low and teasing as he bent over the smaller woman.
She gave him an arch look and turned back to Charlotte and Amelia, who both stood clutching their newly acquired glasses, a bit taken aback by the sudden approach.
“I was not running.”
If it were not for her elegant coiffure—though a few springy chestnut curls had escaped their fastenings—and her flattering sapphire gown, this lady would be exactly what Charlotte’s stepmother had always called a hoyden. Charlotte was disposed to like her immediately.
“Oh, Lady Elsie Wylde!” Amelia was almost shrill in her glee. “For a moment, I did not even recognise you. How long has it been? Not since we were girls, surely.”
Lady Elsie turned to Charlotte’s companion with surprise. Strange, she did not even seem to have noticed the other woman. Then what could have been her purpose in rushing towards them?
“Amelia Barton?” The surprise turned into a smile. “Of course, it is Amelia Barton. Even a mask cannot disguise that hair. Whatever are you doing so far from Northumberland?”
“I married an old stodger and got my ticket to London. I am Lady Amelia Cartwright now. Countess Danvers. Can you believe it?”
Lady Elsie laughed out loud, drawing some curious looks, and her strange, mixed brogue rose to the fore. “Oh, Amelia, dinnae say you did it. Just as you said you would.”
Her smile was infectious, and the two women’s girlish exchange had Charlotte feeling amused and an outsider all at once.
“We are forgetting our manners, I fear.” Amelia turned to Charlotte. “Charlotte, may I present Lady Elsie Wylde, and his grace, the Duke of Elkington? Your Grace, my lady, Lady Charlotte Aston. Lady Charlotte is my guest tonight. I am dragging her down my sordid road of wicked pursuits.”
Lady Elsie glanced back at the handsome duke hovering above her. Charlotte noticed his hand linger at the small of her back—a quiet, intimate gesture that had her looking up at the landing again. Benjamin was gone.
“Lady Charlotte, Lady Danvers, good evening,” a familiar low voice rumbled beside her, and Charlotte’s head snapped from the landing to find Benjamin.
It felt as if her thoughts had conjured him, and she was suddenly breathless. He was of a height with the duke, but his dark colouring gave him a wicked appeal against the other man’s bronzed appearance.
“I hope you are enjoying yourselves.” Benjamin bowed to each of them, and it did not escape Charlotte’s notice that he did not greet the duke and Lady Elsie but gave the latter a pointed look she could not decipher. It was clear that the three had already spoken this evening.
“Yes, we are enjoying ourselves very much, Mr. Scarsdale,” Amelia tittered. “Lady Elsie and I are old girlhood friends. What a lark to have run into her.”
“Yes, almost literally.” The duke smiled mischievously at Lady Elsie, but she did not catch it.
She was too busy looking back and forth between Benjamin and Charlotte—quite fixedly, as if teasing out a riddle.
There was an awkward pause as another look passed between Lady Elsie and Benjamin, but Amelia was too consummate a socialite to allow it to linger long.
“The duke is a co-owner of Elysium with Mr. Scarsdale and the Duke of Wells.” She waved her closed fan between the two men.
“But how are you acquainted with Lady Elsie, your Grace?” She put extra emphasis on the word acquainted.
“Lady Elsie and Elkington are engaged,” Benjamin answered before the duke had a chance.
“To be married?” Amelia clapped her hands together, nearly upsetting the champagne in her glass. “Oh, what a coup, Elsie! How is this the first I am hearing of it?”
“Oh, we just travelled down from Edinburgh only a few weeks ago. Alex has not even had the chance to send the notification to the papers yet. He has been run so ragged with the wedding preparations.”