Chapter 36
Clare wasn’t the largest of England’s great houses, but it was certainly big enough to get lost in.
As a child, Charlotte had once spent the better part of a day dashing through it and counting rooms, a befuddling process that left her with a tally sheet longer than her arm and a head full of questions.
Was a portrait gallery a room or a corridor, and how could one possibly classify the endless rabbit warren of the cellar?
The official answer, provided by Lawrence, was that Clare boasted one hundred and eleven separate chambers.
Which meant it ought to have been easy for Charlotte to avoid a certain duke.
Even an oversize one.
But while the logistics weren’t hard to manage, her mind was.
Ivy brought a breakfast tray and Charlotte couldn’t stomach the chocolate and picked at her croissant, reducing it to a sad pile of flakes, especially because there was a letter from Lady Margot on the tray, and not one that Charlotte was ready to answer.
The loud, violent cracks of gunfire out her window were so aligned with her mood that she was slow to realize someone was actually shooting.
Wolfgang, she thought, and her heart contracted, as it did each time she recalled the jagged flash of pain in his eyes when she turned away from him.
Charlotte shook the image away and reached for her sketchbook, but each flower she drew for the new damask was wilted, and the apricots she roughed out on the page were riddled with worms. By noon, the four walls of her bedchamber were driving her mad, so she took the servants’ stairs down to Julian’s study, closing her eyes and leaning back against the door with a sigh of relief when she made it without being seen.
“There you are, darling!” said the dowager, from behind Julian’s desk.
Charlotte screeched like a seagull and spun around, clutching her sketchbook to her chest.
“Don’t have apoplexy, and there’s no need for you to skulk around, either. The Duke of Warrick and Lord Lysander are no longer in residence.”
Charlotte’s blood plummeted to her feet. “He’s… he’s gone?”
“Yes, what did you expect?”
“I—”
The dowager allowed herself a small smile. “How shattered you look, child. Isn’t that interesting? But Warrick and Lord Lysander have only gone off to inspect a site for an ironworks and should return in a few days. Will that be enough time to sort out your feelings?”
Charlotte felt her cheeks go hot. “There’s nothing to sort. I’m fine.”
“Yes, you’ve taken on your mother’s debt and the queen is pushing marriage down your throat, but all summer you’ve been just fine. My poor darling, it must be exhausting to try to be on to every trick.”
Charlotte ignored her. “Gran, will you have any objection if Helena and I go to Maidstone tomorrow? We’ll take outriders, but I promise we don’t need Marby to escort us.”
“Of course you can go, and I won’t insist on Marby.
We both know I only pushed Warrick on you in order to throw the two of you together.
” The dowager bit the inside of her cheek, but a guilty laugh slipped out anyway.
“Oh, Charlotte, you’re going to adore being a grandmother. One gets away with murder.”
The sun was just rising the next morning when Charlotte and Helena stepped into the landau to head to Maidstone, with Elizabeth dashing out at the last minute to join them.
“May I tag along? I’ve been aching to see your mill.”
“Of course, Lizzie.” Charlotte scooted over to make room on the bench.
They made good speed on the road and it wasn’t long before they were clattering into Maidstone and pulling up in front of the mill. Charlotte led Helena straight up to the Jacquard loom and left her poking at the mechanism that caused the weft to lift and lower.
As tempted as Charlotte was to hover, there was plenty of other work to be done at the mill, so she flitted upstairs to the embroidery floor for a few hours, then downstairs for a long discussion with the dyers, and as the clock ticked into the afternoon, she and Lizzie went to help Mrs. Cordelon inspect finished bolts.
“We’ve so many orders we can barely keep up.” Mrs. Cordelon sounded equal parts proud and harried.
Charlotte had a length of pink velvet in her hands, embroidered with a gemstone garland, each facet of the stones stitched in a slightly different color so they almost seemed to sparkle as she moved the fabric through her hands.
It was so perfect that it put a lump in her throat—oh God, was she going to have to sell her half of the silk mill?
Mrs. Cordelon shot a nervous glance at Helena, who was now cross-legged on the wooden floor with punch cards spread around her in a circle, as if she were the center of a strange flower. She hadn’t moved from this position in over forty minutes, and she now appeared to be napping.
“Perhaps I ought to bring her some tea?” Mrs. Cordelon whispered to Charlotte.
“No, no, it’s best to leave her in peace,” Elizabeth whispered back. “Helena always looks half asleep when she’s doing her best thinking.”
Mrs. Cordelon sighed. “I suppose at least she’s quieter than Monsieur LaForey.”
Charlotte said nothing, but her chest felt fierce and hot, and frankly, rather desperate.
It was another twenty minutes before Helena’s eyes blinked open.
“Paper!” she called, and Charlotte rushed a notebook over to her.
“Fresh cards!” Helena called somewhat later.
Mrs. Cordelon brought her a fat stack and Helena spent another good hour punching them out and fussing around the machine to string them up.
“I need a weaver,” she said at last. “It’s time for the first test.”
Half the mill crowded around as Mrs. Cordelon herself began to pass the shuttle back and forth on the loom, and no one dared breathe until the smallest strip of fabric appeared.
Charlotte frowned down at the smudged and muddled pinks, trying to swallow her disappointment. “Oh well! It’s only a test.”
But Helena’s face flushed with triumph. “It’s an excellent test. I’ve done the punch cards right, but I seem to have hung several of them backward. Mrs. Cordelon, I need your help, please.”
Between adjustments, experiments, and the actual weaving, which was its own slow agony, it was a full hour before the next test.
“There! Do you see, Charlotte?” said Helena. “It’s only a small sliver of the pattern, but it looks clean to me.”
Charlotte stared down at the loom and her heart soared like a roseate spoonbill taking flight. “Helena, you’ve done it!”
“Of course I have,” scoffed Helena. But as the mill erupted with whoops, her mouth curled into a smile.
It was late afternoon by the time the three companions piled back into the carriage for the journey home, and the sky was low, gray, and overstuffed, as if someone had packed it with tufts of wool. It grizzled down at them, not quite rain and not mist either, but more of a wet, plaintive splatter.
“Charlotte.” Elizabeth touched her sleeve. “Are you quite all right? I rather thought we’d be celebrating.”
Charlotte tried for a smile. “I am celebrating.”
“I see. Celebrating with a good stare out the window?”
“Lord, I must seem ungrateful. Helena, you were magnificent today. Only, the Jacquard loom is quite rare, and the fact that my mill has a working one makes the whole operation considerably more valuable.”
Helena tilted her head. “And that makes you… sad?”
“If it’s more valuable, it’s considerably easier to sell,” said Charlotte.
“I’m still nine thousand pounds short on my mother’s debt and the summer’s nearly over.
I thought perhaps I’d have found a husband by now and we’d set aside some of the marriage settlement for her, or that I’d come up with something good.
” Charlotte stared out again at the heavy gray sky. “I haven’t.”
“Oh.” Elizabeth’s voice was soft as mist. “I do see.”
“I don’t,” said Helena. “It’s your mother’s debt, not yours—why should you tear yourself up to take it on? Lizzie, you’re just the same with our mother.” A thought occurred to her. “It would be quite fascinating to study the role of the firstborn daughter in—”
“Fascinating, but perhaps not helpful at the moment?” Elizabeth turned away from her sister. “Charlotte, it does seem to me that you have one quite promising suitor. Won’t you consider Warrick?”
Charlotte nearly barked a laugh. She’d done nothing but consider Wolfgang. My nemesis, my own black cloud, the thorn in my side I can never quite bring myself to remove.
She hunched her shoulders and turned her head to the window again, but Elizabeth wasn’t put off so easily.
“I’ve known you forever and watched you flirt your head off, but never with an ounce of feeling. With Warrick all I see is feeling, and not an ounce of reason. You’re terribly guarded for someone who flits around causing scandals, you know.”
Charlotte could only close her eyes. Scandals were easy, but feelings made her want to howl. Wasn’t it right to be guarded?
There was a wound at the center of her family, and all these years later it still hadn’t healed.
They all twisted themselves around it in different, unnatural ways, trying not to feel how it throbbed.
Charlotte had twisted herself so tightly and for so long that she wondered if her bones had hardened into strange, unworkable shapes.
And now she was meant to try for a love match of her own, with Wolfgang of all people, who churned her up like no one else?
She might as well crack open her chest and expose her inner organs.
“What business do I have, with my parents’ marriage, to think of…” Charlotte ground to a halt.
“I do understand what it’s like to be the daughter of a difficult marriage, but would you say I’m a hopeless case?” asked Elizabeth. “You’re nothing like your parents.”
“None of us are,” said Helena.
The truth of that statement settled over the three young ladies, and they sat in silence for a while, absorbing it or perhaps turning their own troubles over in their heads. Elizabeth kicked off her slippers and Helena nestled deeper into her corner, and Charlotte felt lighter having them near.
“Do you have a buyer in mind for the mill?” Helena asked, over the clip-clop of the horses.
“No. There are plenty of people who’d be willing, but only a few Josephine could stomach as a partner, or who’d agree to hiring Spitalfields women. I refuse to bring in someone horrible and leave everyone in the lurch.”
Elizabeth sighed. “I wish I had the money. I’ll always bet on you, but this one seems a particularly good investment.”
A particularly good investment.
Charlotte stared, so electrified it was as if the skies had parted and a lightning bolt had zapped her directly in the head.
“My silk mill is a good investment, shockingly good!” She sat up straight. “My brother’s man of business can’t deny that, not after the success we’ve had this summer.”
Helena seemed puzzled. “Why would he want to?”
“He doesn’t want to! He desperately wants to cover Mother’s debt for me, but he won’t send me such a massive sum of money without security to back it. Now the mill’s up and running with substantial orders and a Jacquard loom, too—it’s become a valuable asset, you see. I must write to him at once!”
Charlotte was shocked to find that she was shaking with relief, the debt sitting so heavy on her shoulders that she nearly floated at the idea of it falling away.
It was like the old game that she and Elizabeth had played as children, one pressing her arms up as the other pressed down, then letting go suddenly and laughing as their limbs wobbled up of their own accord toward the sky.
She collapsed back into the squabs. “You’re both brilliant. I’m brilliant! The whole world’s brilliant today and I could kiss us all.”
The rest of the ride did feel like a celebration.
Charlotte fizzed, and her pencil raced over the pages of her sketchbook as Elizabeth and Helena tried to top each other with the worst idea for a damask, and Charlotte drew patterns of slugs, and then of least-favorite vegetables, which turned out actually rather charming, so she did a gory, blood-spattered one of dismembered limbs instead.
The time passed quickly until the landau drew to a stop in front of Clare, and Helena opened the door.
“Look! There’s another carriage just behind us.” She hopped down onto the drive. “Charlotte, are you expecting anyone?”
Charlotte’s unruly heart thumped in her chest. Was it Wolfgang? Was he back early? But as the footman handed her down and the other carriage drew near, she saw that it bore an unfamiliar crest.
The footman helped Elizabeth down and was just reaching for the handle on the second carriage’s door when it burst open and a man lurched out, blinking owlishly. He whipped off his top hat when he caught sight of the three young ladies and attempted a bow that toppled him over into the gravel.
“Good God.” Charlotte peered down at the Marquess of Vyse, sprawled in a drunken stupor at her feet. “It’s another damned suitor.”