Chapter Twenty-Nine #3
Charlotte could not help but agree. She only had eyes for the rougher of the two, but standing there, side by side in their evening black, Benjamin Scarsdale and the Duke of Wells looked like a perfectly matched pair of dark-haired devils.
Charlotte tilted her head—really, they could be two sides of the same coin.
“Yes, they are all three quite striking, are they not, Charlotte?” Elsie gave her a conspiratorial smile, and Charlotte had to fight the blush that rose in her cheeks.
It was one thing to be Benjamin’s secret mistress. It was quite another for his business partner and friend’s future wife to know of it—and… approve? It was enough for Charlotte to almost feel like she might belong—an absolutely ludicrous and devastatingly tempting idea.
“Well, Charlotte, we should finish the rounds before dinner begins.” With that, Elsie swept Charlotte away from her chattering sisters and introduced her to the rest of the guests she had yet to become acquainted with.
∞∞∞
The dinner was a delightful whirlwind of Wylde family antics.
By the time the ladies withdrew, Charlotte’s spirits were buoyed by the sisters’ easy repartee despite both of their parents’ censorious demeanours.
They flouted the common dinner convention of speaking only to the guest on their right or left and chatted across plates and through courses to each other and their guests alike, making one feel very much part of the warm, familial atmosphere.
It had not been since her stepmother’s passing that Charlotte had been part of such an informal gathering of family, and even then, she had always been acutely aware of her own otherness in her stepmother’s home.
She had come to think that a mother was what rooted one in the world and gave one licence to occupy space.
But now, seeing the Wylde sisters do that for one another, perhaps it was not a mother necessarily but the giving and receiving of this messy, unconditional love that carved out one’s place in the world.
Maybe it could give one a sense of belonging.
Perhaps one day that love might find her again—but that was a dangerous thing to hope for.
“Elsie, you are looking positively green.” The ladies had hardly reached the salon before Loretta Wylde made the pronouncement in front of all the female guests.
Corinne made a hissing sound through her teeth at their youngest sister and nearly hauled her off to the pianoforte, where the other ladies politely followed.
Charlotte hung back, watching Elsie through her lashes.
From her seat just opposite, she too had noticed that Lady Elsie had touched little of the rich courses that diligent footmen had set before her, seeming to balk specifically at the salmon dish as well as the fig pudding served just before they made their withdraw.
“I am feeling uncommonly fatigued after such a rich meal. Perhaps you would like to join me on the settee beside the window?” Charlotte made a show of eyeing the plush settee, and Elsie gave her a knowing, but grateful smile and followed to the other side of the room, out of earshot from the other guests.
Charlotte dug around in the surprisingly spacious little silk bag. She made a point to bring all practicalities with her wherever she could. “I keep some peppermint oil in my reticule, if you would like. I find dabbing some on my wrists helps the nausea pass.”
Being caught out unprepared was a recipe for disaster when one was out researching. After rifling through and depositing several items on the cushion between them, Charlotte finally found the small glass vial she had been searching for.
Elsie took it gratefully, uncorking the stopper and inhaling deeply.
After a few long breaths, the colour began to return to her cheeks, and her lips curved in a self-deprecating smile.
“Thank you, Charlotte. It would have been poor ton of me indeed to cast up my accounts in front of my guests—at my own engagement dinner, no less. Goodness, that would give them all something to talk about.”
Charlotte fought the urge to ask the question burning in her throat, but the journalist in her and the easy familiarity the two of them had fallen into won out. “How far along are you?”
It was a horribly crass thing to ask. No well-bred lady should ever broach the subject—or even notice its symptoms—and she had forgotten her place. She was more out of practice in polite society than she had realised.
Charlotte was swamped with mortification. “I apologise profusely—I do not know—”
Elsie raised a hand, effectively silencing her blabbered apology, and Charlotte was surprised to see a smile growing on her clever, expressive face.
“Please, I appreciate the candour—and the eye for detail. The only other one who has figured it out is Corinne.” She looked over to where her eldest sister stood over the pianoforte, singing an old lilting Scottish ballad that had the other ladies staring on forlornly.
“I believe I am just shy of a quarter of the way there. Alexander is rushing the wedding, so I do not begin to show before the banns are read.”
Charlotte thought back to the lovesick looks she caught passing between the two of them during dinner and refrained from pointing out that he likely had an even more compelling reason for rushing the wedding.
“So he knows about your condition too. How did he figure it out?”
Elsie laughed out loud at that. “Oh, he figured nothing out. I told him immediately.” Her face grew more pensive, and she placed her hand absently over her midsection.
Charlotte felt a twist of pain in her chest at the tender intimacy of it all.
The budding joy of family and connection beyond the mere coupling of bodies.
She thought of the man she would like to share such joys with and was met with an even more sickening twist at the truth that it would never happen.
She thought Elsie must have read something in her face, but when she looked up, the other woman’s eyes were miles away as she stared at the door that led down the hall away from the entertaining rooms to the family’s private chambers.
“Trust me, Charlotte, keeping secrets from the man you love can only lead to heartbreak.” She took another whiff of the peppermint oil and lay her head back on the settee.
“Christ, it was not this difficult the last time.”
It was a passing comment, made almost under her breath, but Charlotte felt a flickering of the intuition that had guided her through countless stories to the truth of a matter.
“There are only five Wylde sisters—are there not?” Elsie’s gaze followed Charlotte’s to the four nearly identical dark heads gathered amongst the guests.
Elsie tilted her head at the question, turning back and giving Charlotte a speculative stare—as if her agile brain could unpick the mystery of the person before her if she just looked at it from the right angle.
It was a strangely gratifying sensation from another woman—as if she saw Charlotte and considered her equal.
“Yes…” Clearly, she knew that was not the end of the question.
“But there was a sixth in the hall when I arrived.”
Elsie stared at her in silence for a beat longer than was comfortable.
But Charlotte had learned time and again, vague statements prompted details.
She just had to hold her nerve longer than the other.
Lord, perhaps she could not lay the blame entirely at Freddie’s feet that she had not been welcome in polite society for an age.
Here she was grilling her hostess, not a full day into knowing her.
But then, just as her cheeks began to heat from the impropriety of her implication, Elsie’s lips quirked into a rueful smile. “You are good, Charlotte. Very good. Her name is Helen.” She smiled wider, her face glowing with joy even at her name. “My least-concealable secret. See?”
She spoke as if she and Charlotte had had this discussion before, and her point was being proven once again.
“This is why we must live in Edinburgh. You get one look at her and know she is one of us. If the ton caught sight of her, everyone would know immediately that she is not my Aunt Iona’s ward. Or some distant cousin.”
Charlotte considered herself to have gained a fair amount of worldliness over the last years—she certainly had shed the foolish vestiges of maidenly innocence, or ignorance, that was enforced in ladies of the ton—but she found herself awed by Elsie’s casual dismissal of sure ruin in favour of lighthearted, but very earnest pride for her illegitimate daughter.
“So, your family knows?” Charlotte could not keep her surprise out of her voice.
“It would be hard for them not to, considering she is an image of me when I was her age.” She was an image of Elsie now, Charlotte could have pointed out.
“My parents do not speak of it—though I believe my stodgy father is secretly delighted by her. And of course, my sisters know. I told them after she was born. It was meant to be a secret, but holding that baby in my arms, I could not deny her the warmth of her own family.”
It was deeply admirable the way Elsie seemed unconcerned for her own ruin in the face of her daughter’s comfort and joy.
“And the duke?”
Charlotte expected Elkington to be a kind and reasonable man, considering his friendships and his relationship to this woman, but the idea of a duke accepting another man’s by-blow in his home, with his own children—that was a stretch.
Elsie’s lips twisted in a wry smile. “He knew the moment he met her. When he proposed, he said Helen would be to him like his own daughter.” Her eyes were suspiciously misty.
Charlotte was floored by the generosity of his love for Elsie—it was beyond what she had thought men capable of.
But then, while the idea of Benjamin with other women stirred that foreign jealousy in her gut, the knowledge that he had had lovers before did not make her care for him any less.
Why could a man not experience the same?
It was quite a new revelation to chew on.
“So, Charlotte. What use have you for peppermint oil? You do not have the look of the expectant about you.”
Charlotte blushed at that, though it was the thought of carrying Benjamin’s child that had her aflutter rather than the forwardness of the question itself.
“I find I get quite nauseous if I skip a meal.” She felt it only right to meet candour with candour, but she could not bring herself to spell out her family’s dire situation.
“You do that often?” Elsie’s gaze was assessing again, and Charlotte knew she was not hiding anything from this woman.
“More and more. Though not so much since—” She waved a hand towards the door, hoping that Elsie knew more than she was letting on, because, to her everlasting shame, she could not articulate her own ruin as well as Elsie had.
“Ah.” Elsie looked off to the door through which, presumably, the gentlemen would be rejoining them soon.
Elsie seemed to let the topic drop, and Charlotte breathed a sigh of relief.
“Oh no, you keep it.” Charlotte smiled as Elsie offered the peppermint oil back to her. “You have more use of it than I.” She began shuffling items back into her reticule.
“What is this?” Elsie picked up the embossed card.
Charlotte fought to keep from snatching the little paper from her hand. The scrawled words had become frighteningly dear to her, and it felt raw to have another read them.
“Her skirt was o′ the grass-green silk.” The words sounded right in her lilting accent, and Charlotte watched as she frowned down at the card and then up at her.
“You know it?”
“It is Thomas the Rhymer.” Elsie was watching her with some surprise.
Seeing that Charlotte did not know what she was referring to, she explained.
“Thomas the Rhymer was a Scottish Laird of old. Legend has it that as he lay out beneath a tree in the Eildon Hills one day, he heard the tinkling of silver bells, and a beautiful woman approached him. It turned out that this woman was really Queen of Elfland, and Thomas fell under her spell, following her deep within the hollow of the Eildon Hills to the fairy Otherworld. He lived there with her for seven years before returning to the mortal realm without her—though his eternal love for her had granted him immortality.”
Charlotte took in the tale, staring down at the bold script on the thick white card. Why in the world had he written a line from such a tale—for her? The thought filled her with an elated sort of panic, and she tried to suppress the frantic need to hear more.
“All hail, thou mighty Queen o' Heaven,” Elsie mumbled the words under her breath as she thumbed the card. “He gave this to you?” Her intelligent eyes were piercing when she looked back up at Charlotte, handing it back to her.
“Y—yes.” Charlotte was not sure what to say in the face of the woman’s sudden intensity.
Surprisingly, Elsie only shook her head and almost smiled, looking back at the door. “Damned fool.”