Chapter 30
Wolfgang had taken a bullet once, on the fifth charge at Waterloo.
It had smacked into his shoulder, and what had shocked him wasn’t the pain, or the heat as the bullet seared into muscle and out again.
It was the blow, how one small plug of metal was strong enough to knock him sideways.
But a bullet, he was quickly learning, packed nowhere near the punch of Charlotte sitting across the table with her damned prince, engaged in what seemed like… a flirting competition?
Wolfgang thrashed around on his pillow, light pushing in through the cracks of the curtains as the dawn rose, the loneliest time of day.
At least it’s over. She’s chosen Belozersky.
The thought was meant to be a comfort, but it left him as bleak as the wash of unrelenting gray outside. Damn it, he didn’t want to marry Charlotte. The thought of her with Belozersky ought to feel like a boulder falling from his shoulders.
There was a soft knock, and Grimsby pushed open the door. “Are you awake, Your Grace? The dowager has asked if you might join her in her sitting room.”
Another bullet, and Wolfgang couldn’t deny that this one smacked straight into his heart. The only reason the dowager would need him at this hour of the morning was to help with the formalities of a marriage settlement.
“Thank you, Grimsby.”
Wolfgang flung back the covers and stood to meet his fate. He dressed and went downstairs, each strike of his boot against a marble step bringing him closer to the end of a story that had never quite started.
“Good morning, Lady Alice. I’m honored to be of service.”
“There you are, Your Grace. I wondered, might you—”
“Meet with Belozersky on your behalf? Of course.” He hesitated for a long, somber beat. “It’s official, then? Lady Charlotte’s accepted?”
The dowager frowned. “Your Grace, I called you here because I’d like you to escort Lady Charlotte to Maidstone.”
“Maidstone?” A whole day in a carriage with Charlotte lit up over another man? He’d prefer a death march over the Pyrenees. “Surely the prince can escort her?”
“I’m afraid not.” The dowager offered him an inscrutable smile. “The prince left first thing this morning, you see.”
“Left? But I thought—”
“Yes, your thoughts are quite clear, but Charlotte declined the prince’s very kind offer. And so—Maidstone?”
Wolfgang’s legs shook with pure relief, but he bowed low. “I’d be delighted, my lady.”
An hour later, after a pot of coffee and a hearty breakfast, Wolfgang’s outlook on the day was decidedly sunnier. In fact, he rather felt like whistling as he stood waiting by a landau in Clare’s front courtyard and eavesdropped shamelessly.
“Gran! I don’t understand—you know I must go.”
“Yes, Charlotte. With an escort.”
“I’m taking Ivy. And outriders! And Maidstone is less than fifteen miles away. I’ve gone twice already, Gran.”
“Yes, and twice I’ve worried about you all day. I’m afraid it’s too much for my heart for you to travel these roads alone, especially when I’ve a soldier to escort you.”
“Your heart’s as healthy as mine.” Charlotte slanted Wolfgang a glance and turned back to her grandmother, whispering so low he strained to hear. “He’ll see, Gran, and I couldn’t stand it if he—”
“I won’t change my mind, darling. Your safety comes first.”
Charlotte knew when she was beaten, but she wasn’t gracious in defeat.
Although come to think of it, she wasn’t gracious in victory, either.
When she’d trounced Lysander at backgammon in three straight games the other day, she’d called out, “Oh dear, does it hurt badly? Are you brave enough to have another go?”
Now she heaved a sigh, threw her hands up, and said, “Oh, all right!” before stomping off across the pea gravel toward him.
An exasperated expression flitted across her face and she whirled around to stomp back and press a begrudging kiss on her grandmother’s cheek.
Only once the dowager patted her cheek did Charlotte set off once again for the landau.
Wolfgang handed Charlotte and her maid up into their seats, noting the upright collar and the gold frogging across the front of Charlotte’s red spencer that gave it a distinctly military feel. Brigadier Charlotte, he thought to himself, and wondered how hard she’d whack him if he offered a salute.
“Why are we going to Maidstone?” he asked as he settled on the opposite seat and the coachman clicked the horses forward. And what could “he’ll see” possibly mean?
“Ivy and I are going to Maidstone on a private errand. You’re coming to Maidstone because…” She squinted at him. “I’m tempted to say it’s because my grandmother has turned you into her lapdog, but from that grin on your face, I have to assume you’re coming to bother me?”
Wolfgang’s grin only widened. Was it him, or had the sky lightened to an especially promising blue today? “By the way, that suitor of yours—”
Her eyes flashed a warning. “I’m not discussing Belozersky.”
“That suitor of yours—”
“No!” She surprised him by closing her eyes, taking a deep breath, and holding it. He was on the point of asking if she needed some sort of restorative when he saw something that made his blood run cold.
It was her mouth.
If he wasn’t mistaken, it was quivering.
Bloody hell.
Wolfgang was a reluctant scholar of Lady Charlotte’s mouth.
He knew all its moods and shapes—the strange squiggle it made on the rare occasions she was embarrassed, her crocodile grins, the astonishing width of her smile when she was pleased.
He’d lost hours engrossed in the dip of her Cupid’s bow and the lush pillow of her lower lip, and the Lord above might as well send Azrael to fetch him, because he’d learned the taste of her mouth, too.
But in all the time he’d spent studying it, he’d never once seen it tremble.
His chest went tight.
What the hell did one do with a quivery Charlotte?
His first thought was to haul her to his chest, remove her bonnet, and whisper into her bramble of hair that everything was all right and he’d never let anything happen to her.
But that was ridiculous—obviously!—so he gave her silence instead.
She began to rummage through the basket Ivy had brought for her and pulled out her embroidery, sorting through the threads until she decided on a purplish-red one.
Something settled in Wolfgang as she began stitching.
“You’re embroidering,” he said gruffly. Everything was right in the world when Charlotte had her hoop in hand. “That’s good.”
Charlotte stabbed her needle into the linen even harder, and to his horror, her mouth began to quiver again.
Leave her be. Don’t say anything more.
But, as always, Wolfgang couldn’t resist.
“Damn it, Belozersky isn’t worth it!”
To his surprise, her laugh was sharp and bitter. “Misha’s worth more than you know, and I’m extremely cross with myself for how I treated him. But he hasn’t upset—” She broke off and attacked her linen again.
Her maid glared at him.
Wolfgang was beginning to feel like a bit of a clod, and he didn’t like it.
He could read a battlefield at a glance and tackle John’s long columns of numbers with ease, and yet any conversation with Charlotte made him feel as if he were attempting to get through Sir Isaac Newton’s Principia with a head packed full of wool.
He frowned harder, but no matter how he tormented his face, it was no use.
“Lady Charlotte, please tell me what’s wrong.”
Charlotte put down her embroidery and closed her eyes to summon her patience, which clearly took a great deal of effort given how long it was before she spoke. “If you must know, it’s you. I’m upset that I’m off on a private errand and you’re dogging my steps, ready to pick everything apart.”
Wolfgang sucked in his breath. “Devil a bit, I’m not going to—”
“Won’t you?” She lifted her chin and her eyes bored into him.
“Your Grace, you’ve made it perfectly clear that you consider me pointless.
What did you call me the night of the masquerade—damned frivolous?
So don’t look shocked that I might be dismayed to expose things I truly care about to your inspection. ”
Wolfgang gave a guilty start. Was that what Charlotte thought—that he found her frivolous?
Well, you did at the start of the summer. You saw her nonsense and refused to see anything else. But in the last weeks at Clare, it was impossible not to notice her kindess, or to dismiss her obvious talent, and of course he’d never once doubted her strength. He opened his mouth to tell her—
Charlotte slashed her hand through the air. “No, don’t say a word! Why would I waste my time on a man who doesn’t even remember—” She stopped abruptly. “Stay on your side of the carriage and I’ll stay on mine. Do you understand?”
“But—”
“Do you understand?”
Wolfgang’s head began to spin. He didn’t understand a damn thing and would have said so, except that Charlotte’s eyes looked strangely liquid.
What the hell would he do if she cried?
“Of course,” he said gently.
She gave a jerky nod and returned to her embroidery, as if she hadn’t just blasted a hole through his chest.
How was it possible that he was the one who’d made her mouth quiver?
That his words had caused the awful wobble in her voice?
He was shocked she even remembered his hastily thrown insult from all those weeks ago at Lady Hervey’s masquerade.
Besides, Charlotte didn’t give a fig for his opinion.
While she might look as if she were made of sugar and whipped cream, her skin was as tough as rhinoceros hide.
Wasn’t it?
“Lady Charlotte, it won’t do. I may not understand you, and I certainly don’t understand—damn it! Believe what you will, but I don’t think you pointless. I think you lethal.”
The two sides of the landau’s top were closed, and they trapped his words and left them hanging in the air between them, growing larger by the moment.
Charlotte stared at him, her mouth agape, and for once she wasn’t wearing her usual No, my lord Magistrate, I’d never dream of stealing the crown jewels expression.
Her maid stared, too, her mouth a little O of fascination.
A crease appeared between Charlotte’s eyebrows. “I don’t understand, Your Grace. One moment you’re… the next you’re…” She shook her head, her face oddly solemn, and Wolfgang suddenly felt the weight of the strain she’d been under all summer.
“Christ, Charlotte, I—The point I was trying to make is—” He growled in frustration and gave up. “I don’t have a point. I’m an idiot.”
And there it was. The smallest laugh burbled up from inside her.
The passengers lapsed into a silence that felt like an uneasy truce, and Wolfgang turned to look out the window and watch the oaks, horse chestnuts, and beeches drift by. Only after several miles did he look over to see what Charlotte was stitching.
His severed head.
Wolfgang smothered a laugh and something settled inside his chest.
Everything was back to normal.