Chapter 22
There was a celebratory mood in the dining room that night, the footmen hustling to keep up with the calls of “More champagne!” Either Darlington had cast a pall on the company or the guests were starting to shed their formality.
Certainly the chatter flowed faster even than the wine, and the laughter was loud and frequent.
Even Warrick wasn’t proof against the change in atmosphere, though he felt strange and prickly as a cat.
Only two mornings earlier, he’d returned from breakfast to find one of Charlotte’s famous embroidered handkerchiefs on his pillow, fine white linen embroidered with his initials in white silk.
From anyone else he would have considered it a gesture of welcome, but not from her, which was why he’d taken it to the window to inspect it under full sun.
Wolfgang had stared at it for a full five minutes trying to remember how to fold it to reveal a secret message before he realized that the silk line squiggling along the edges wasn’t sloppy embroidering.
It was a stretched-out line of calligraphy reading, Warrick the Worst, Warrick the Worst, all around the border.
Charlotte had wormed deep into his brain, leaving it so full of holes that his first reaction was to bark out a laugh and his second was to ball up the handkerchief and throw it away, lest he be tempted to sniff the damn thing.
And, of course, that kiss hadn’t helped, or her—bugger it, he’d have to call it her kindness—to a highwayman.
Or the bone-deep satisfaction of watching her dispatch Darlington.
“Is it very bad, Your Grace?” whispered Miss Elizabeth Marby, sitting on his right.
“Pardon?”
Miss Marby had frank brown eyes, and she lifted them to him. “It’s only that you’ve been silent tonight, and staring across the table. I couldn’t help but wonder if you’re quarreling with Lady Charlotte.”
“Forgive me, Miss Marby. I’m a shocking dinner companion.”
“No, you’re simply a puzzle. But I warn you, if you’re upset with Lady Charlotte, I’m sure to take her side. Especially today, after the trimming she gave Darlington.”
He turned to her. “Why’s that? Are you not partial to the vis-count?”
“I’m not partial to that viscount.” Miss Marby had a way of tilting her head that reminded him of a sparrow. “Now that I think of it, I’m not particularly partial to viscounts in general.”
“Oh? How do viscounts offend?”
“It’s not the viscounts, per se, rather it’s—” Miss Marby stopped and regarded Wolfgang steadily. “Your Grace, are you encouraging me to be indiscreet?”
“Elizabeth, you look quite serious,” called Charlotte from across the table. “Is the duke giving you one of his famous lectures? If so, it may please you to know that Lawrence prides himself on how sharp he keeps our knives.”
“You recommend I stab him? We were only discussing the current crop of eligible gentlemen—nothing to merit a bloodletting.”
“It’s a subject that makes me want to stab someone.
” Miss Alexandra poked her head out from behind a candelabra, dazzling in one of the Ramsay estate tiaras, which for some reason Charlotte had handed her to wear for the night.
“No, Lizzie, don’t sit there and make eyes at me. You know gentlemen are appalling.”
Lady Skeffington let out an odd little titter, and the ostrich feather she wore in her hair bobbled as her eyes darted between Wolfgang and Lysander, two of the most eligible men in all of England. “Lady Alice, the lamb tonight is delicious!” she cried. “Oh, how I love a good mint jelly!”
Wolfgang stifled a grin. “Damning indeed, Miss Alexandra. I’d hate to answer for the unmarried gentlemen of England, but what have we done to earn your contempt?”
It seemed Miss Alexandra had waited her whole life to be asked such a question. She inhaled deeply, like a dragon sucking down air in order to blast fire, and opened her mouth to—
“They act as if we haven’t a brain in our heads.” Miss Helena calmly gathered peas on the back of her fork as all eyes swiveled toward her. “Most men do, but it’s especially galling in the eligible ones, as we’re expected to marry them.”
“They judge us. Incessantly.” Charlotte lifted her eyebrows at Wolfgang. “They treat us as if we’re paltry, but what’s wrong with so-called feminine pursuits? Are hunting and boxing somehow more noble? At least I’m not killing anything with my embroidery.”
“And God forbid we show any interest in hunting or boxing,” said Miss Alexandra. “Beat one man in a little fencing match and see what he says to you.”
Even the sensible Miss Marby crossed her knife and fork neatly on her plate. “What I resent—”
Her brother hooted from across the table.
“No, James, I resent it most deeply! I resent how most men see us as either daughters, mothers, wives, grandmothers, or spinsters—always in relationship to them. For once, I’d like someone to look at me and not think how I could be of service.
Could Father never ask me, for instance, before he drops the management of the family in my—” She stopped abruptly and colored. “Forgive me.”
“KIT BARTLETON TOLD ME I MUSTN’T CATCH SNAKES!” Georgiana was also wearing a Ramsay tiara, though it was much too big for her and in danger of sliding down her head because she quivered with fury. “It was only a little grass snake, and Kit was afraid.”
“If you ask me,” said the dowager, signaling to Lawrence to keep the wine coming, “the worst thing men do is hoard power. At least, they think they do, because a clever woman gets around them. But I must say, I find the subterfuge exhausting.”
“Alice!” gasped Lady Skeffington.
The dowager eyed her with a touch of impatience. “Yes, Lucretia? Whose side do you expect me to be on?”
“What about women? What about the crimes your sex perpetrates?” cried Lysander from down the table.
“Hear, hear!” shouted Marby, while Alexandra blew a raspberry.
“No, Alex! I should like to get a word in edgewise!” said Marby. “Charlotte’s suitors, they’re all flush, aren’t they? What am I… that is to say, dash it! How might a man without much in the pocket ever…”
“True, Marby.” Wolfgang’s eyes slid to Charlotte and he tasted bitterness on his tongue. “Too many women care only for a man’s position.”
“I also find it unpleasant, Your Grace,” said Miss Marby, “but women of our station must think of a man’s fortune. Your sex has left ours completely dependent. You can’t claim men have difficulties, when—”
“I can.” Lysander’s voice scratched so strangely, like metal scraping against metal, that it made the others go silent.
“Do you know how many matrons congratulated me when I came back from Waterloo? But if I dared ever mention the fellows who died around me, friends who died, they said Chin up! and Think of England! Damn it, is a man not meant to feel?”
A pit opened in Wolfgang’s stomach and threatened to drag him in.
He carried each soldier who died. He carried John, too, like a wound that wouldn’t heal.
But the howling inside helped nothing, so he shut it up as best he could, pushing noxious thoughts down until they petrified, leaving him stiffer and more unyielding by the day.
Was that what had happened to his father?
He’d stood ramrod straight at the end, unable to speak of important things in anything but pronouncements.
“Of course we feel, Lysander. I think of John and—” Wolfgang ground to a stop and had to try again. “I think of John and—”
But it was no use. The words were stuck fast, choking him, just as they’d choked him those last weeks when John was dying. He’d held his brother’s hand and squeezed it hard, trying to say something of comfort, something that would help him let go, something to let him know how deeply—
But Wolfgang couldn’t find the words then, and he had no words now. The whole damn table was staring, and although his throat worked hard, he couldn’t speak.
Fuck. Was he that far gone already?
He made another appalling attempt at a sentence, but silence filled his mouth. It filled his ears and billowed up like smoke around him, so thick and impenetrable that nothing was strong enough to—
Charlotte plunked her elbows on the table so hard it made the cutlery bounce, and propped her chin in her hands as one by one, the other guests turned their attention to her.
“What a day, my friends! I find I could use a scotch. Lady Skeffington, have you ever tried one? Gran keeps a private stash she thinks she’d hiding from me—shall we retire to the Grand Salon and crack it open?”
“Oh!” chirped Lady Skeffington, a bit like a startled bird. “I don’t think—”
Miss Alexandra rose to her feet. “Yes, please. I’ve always wanted to try scotch.”
Wolfgang and Charlotte were the last left sitting at the table. He caught her eye, not knowing what to think. Had she just… rescued him?
Thank you? he mouthed.
Her expression was as inscrutable as a cat’s and her eyes as unblinking. Wolfgang began to wonder if he’d misunderstood, but as he pushed his chair back from the table, and so fast he nearly missed it, Charlotte winked.