Chapter 34 #3
Something like shock whitened his face. “But at the Marlowe ball—”
“You mean the night I waited for you?” At last she managed a laugh, though it came out small and mangled. “I told all the gentlemen I hurt my ankle to keep my dance card empty for you, but the ball dragged on and on and you didn’t—”
“I did.” His hands clamped down on her shoulders. “I was there. I saw you across the room and I followed you, but I heard you say…” The memory seemed to lash him like a whip. “You told your mother I was nothing to you. How can you claim I hurt you when you cared so little?”
The corridor reeled, spinning round and rearranging itself in strange ways. Charlotte remembered telling that lie, so filthy in her mouth that it nearly stained her tongue. But necessary, too, in order to placate her mother.
Darling, you’re not being foolish, are you?
her mother had said, watchful, when Charlotte came downstairs lit up from rereading one of Wolfgang’s many letters.
Letters that arrived like clockwork every morning and sometimes in the afternoons as well, with all the footmen on high alert to keep them out of Lady Margot’s sight.
“God, Wolfgang, you heard that? I only said it to put my mother off because she—” Regret, the most useless of emotions, flapped around in a panic inside her. “Oh God, it wasn’t true, not a word of it.”
Wolfgang’s face went almost painfully blank. Charlotte couldn’t read him at all, not even when the great muscles of his jaw clenched hard, as if a mighty battle was raging inside. “Are you telling me… Do you mean to say…”
“I’m saying I cared,” said Charlotte, and his eyes blazed hot as fire. “Please believe me. I lied to my mother because she didn’t approve. Oh God!” She felt the color drain from her face. “That’s why you stopped writing me?”
Wolfgang could only nod.
She laid her palm on his chest. “That’s why you hated me?”
He shook his head so vehemently that for a startled second Charlotte was tempted to laugh—he looked so much like Rupert coming out of the river.
“I tried to hate you, but I was no good at it. John died so soon after, though, and I confess that for a while I was… quite raw.”
It was too much to bear. Too many black feelings rising all at once and threatening to drown her. Charlotte lifted her hand to Wolfgang’s cheek and laid it down gently, as if she were inspecting a bruise. “I wanted so badly to comfort you. It’s unbearable to think that I hurt—”
“We both did.” He gathered her close. “I should have come to you instead of marching off. I should have talked. But God, Charlotte, I was a wreck that summer.”
“Of course you were. But… why did you never tell me your brother was ill? I felt so strange when I learned the news, as if I’d only imagined we were close.”
“I meant to. I tried to once, but I couldn’t make myself put the words to paper.” His face steeled with determination. “We’ll do better this time. We’ll start again with no misunderstandings between us.”
Charlotte was tempted to lean forward, to close her eyes and rest her face against his chest, letting the rise and fall of his breath soothe the clamor.
Wolfgang always melted her wits, and now especially, with her insides unsteady.
She’d felt almost as unsteady on the day they met, with infinite possibility unspooling inside her.
“I’m so used to being angry at you,” she whispered.
“Counting me as your nemesis, your own black cloud, the thorn in your side you could never quite bring yourself to remove? I know. We’ll change all that. We’ll rewrite everything between us.”
There was a grizzled old ancestor on the wall behind Wolfgang, and Charlotte could see his impatience. Kiss him! the portrait seemed to say. We both know you want to!
But her throat clogged, her lungs flooded, and she could barely breathe. Her bones felt limp and heavy, but her heart skittered around in her chest like a mouse that couldn’t find a bolt-hole.
Was it safe, all this feeling?
Remember, darling. Lady Margot’s long nails combing through her hair, scratching softly down her scalp. The more you care, the more they hurt you.
When Charlotte tried to push her mother’s voice out of her head, it began to scream.
Her stomach roiled and her eyes overflowed. So much pain at the end of that summer, so much pain in her family, and it all started with a feeling like this.
“I can’t, Wolfgang. I can’t go back.”
“Christ, are you crying?” He hauled her closer, muttering all sorts of expletives, his body curved around hers like a shelter. “I’m not asking you to marry me. I’m only asking to court you, to get the same chance—”
“I can’t.”
His laugh was almost desperate. “Each time we’re alone together for more than five minutes—”
She pushed herself out of his arms. “Wolfgang, no!”
He opened his mouth to protest again, but the sheer desperation in her expression must have stopped him cold.
“I see.” He stepped back, and his eyes shuttered.
Just like that, she’d hurt him again.
Charlotte turned away and launched herself into the safety of her bedchamber.