Chapter 42
Tick. Tick. Tick.
Had the clock on the mantel always been so loud when it counted out the seconds?
Each click of the arm lashed at Charlotte’s ears and she had to fight not to flinch.
Or fidget. Or reveal any expression at all, because she didn’t want to give herself away.
Lady Margot kept her own face still at all times, which made her eyes, hectic and glittering, all the more unnerving.
What had happened? Why was her mother here?
Charlotte jangled with the need to get Lady Margot alone and ask, but instead she smoothed the celestial blue satin overskirt of the morning dress she’d thrown on hastily when her mother arrived and said a prayer that her hair wouldn’t fall out of its pins.
“I wonder what’s taking so long with tea?” she ventured, when none of the others assembled in the Great Salon seemed inclined to speak.
“Yes, I wonder,” said Lady Margot. “The servants were better trained when I was mistress here.”
Her dig was aimed at the dowager, of course, but Lady Margot delivered it to the older of the two men who accompanied her.
Count Carl Frederick von Hohenstaufen, her mother’s debtor, was a tall man of middle age, with a thin frame except for a thickening around his midsection, who walked with his hands clasped behind his back and an exaggerated stoop, so that from the side he looked like a shepherd’s crook.
Charlotte wondered if he’d developed the posture by peering down necklines, which he did immediately on presentation to each of the women in the room.
A born groper. Charlotte had to grip her hands together tightly so she wouldn’t gouge at his face, or hustle her mother out of the range of his long, pinching fingers. Damn it, why hadn’t she heard from Julian’s man of business yet?
The second man, sitting by Lady Margot, was a margrave, or “Markgraf Christian Ulrich, also of Hohenstaufen,” as he announced in his clipped accent, clearly expecting everyone to fall down in awe at his name.
He outranked his uncle and carried himself with a sense of importance that said he knew it.
There was something malign in his dull, flat gaze as he looked Charlotte up and down, as if her only value were in whether she could please him, and he sat with his legs spread wide open with the air of a man who owned the room or thought he should.
The margrave’s eyes lingered on her, and Charlotte squirmed.
Across the room, Wolfgang sprawled back in his armchair and frowned around the salon as he tried to make sense of the thickening atmosphere. When he felt Charlotte’s gaze on him, his eyebrows rose.
Which body do you want me to bury first? he mouthed, and Charlotte had to bite back a startled laugh.
“How did you find the drive down, Mother?” she tried again. “You’re in excellent looks, which I hope means you’ve had a pleasant journey?”
Lady Margot must have been greatly agitated to bring Hohenstaufen down to Clare, but as usual, there was no hint of her feelings in the way she was dressed.
Her lustrous silk traveling gown fell in burgundy folds to the tips of her polished walking boots, and the light pelisse she wore over it came to a stark point below her bust and below her shoulder blades in the back, finished with darker burgundy tassels that swayed slightly with the rise and fall of each breath.
As always, the result was immaculate and, frankly, daunting, as if she dressed to show others their flaws.
The count put his hand on Lady Margot’s shoulder and squeezed it, and the clock continued to tick.
Knots of dread tied themselves tighter inside Charlotte, and her stomach started to cramp.
“Mother,” she prompted, “how was the journey?”
Elizabeth, bless her, seized her courage and waded in. “Yes, we’ve had rain and I’ve been curious about the state of the—”
“The drive was as dull as ever, which is why I’m most grateful to the count and his nephew the margrave for providing me with company.
” Lady Margot turned to the margrave. “My lord, as you can see, I haven’t exaggerated my daughter’s beauty or our family’s wealth.
Her scandal was simply high spirits, and the queen, of course, supported her in the matter. Charlotte will make an excellent—”
“Mother!” cried Charlotte.
“There’s no need to sound alarmed. I’ve come up with a solution to please us all.” Lady Margot smiled. “Mother has brought you the perfect suitor, darling.”
After a summer of ghastly dinners, Wolfgang had already determined that the silver candlestick at the center of the table was the heaviest, but the one within arm’s reach was solid enough and more convenient if he had a sudden need for a weapon.
Unfortunately, despite his many rich and detailed fantasies of bashing suitors about the head, violence wasn’t the answer.
His problem wasn’t Darlington, Belozersky, or Vyse, and it certainly wasn’t the margrave, because if that man had any thoughts in his vegetal brain, they concerned only himself.
No, Wolfgang’s problem was Charlotte.
She wasn’t flirting tonight, or stirring up trouble, and she’d walked down the stairs into the Grand Salon with none of the usual sauce in her step.
Even more alarming was her ensemble, an ivory silk gown with a boat neck, her hair tamed into a twist, and a single strand of pearls.
She looked—Christ, how could he bear it? —modest and appropriate.
Charlotte in Defeat. Wolfgang sawed at his beef to stop himself from stabbing someone.
The other guests seemed just as flattened as Charlotte.
There was no laughter at the table, or chatter, or even much noise beyond the clink of silver against porcelain.
Lysander chucked a lone, mournful pea at Georgiana when Lady Skeffington wasn’t looking, but the older Marby girls stared at their plates.
Only Lady Margot flourished, seated at a place of honor on Wolfgang’s left, her dark hair gleaming like jet in the candlelight.
She turned to the margrave. “Tell us, my lord, what is your ideal woman?”
The margrave was mid-chew and the table had to wait for him to swallow.
“My ideal wife? She should be beautiful, of course. She should know how to run a house and make the servants fear her. If she learns German, it is good? I do not concern myself much more.” He shrugged. “By the way, the beef is excellent.”
“Yes, quite right.” Lady Margot raised an eyebrow at her daughter. “She keeps to her sphere and you keep to yours. That’s how you make a marriage excellent.”
“Yet it’s most unusual, my lord,” Miss Marby ventured, “that you’d care to offer for a woman you’ve never met?”
Lady Margot didn’t seem to like Miss Marby’s question, or explanations at all really, but she relented enough to say, “The grand duke has expressed a wish for stronger ties to England and the margrave is eager to oblige him. Charlotte is to have a political marriage, which would suit her talents, don’t you agree?
I showed the margrave her miniature and it was done. ”
“Like Henry VIII and Anne of Cleves?” said the dowager. “Auspicious, indeed!”
“I don’t understand. It doesn’t sound a bit auspicious,” Georgiana said to her mother.
Lady Skeffington’s titter winged high above the table, like a trapped bird. “Dear! We’ve allowed you to dine with the grown-ups, but let’s leave the talk to the grown-ups, shall we?”
“What’s the point of dining with them, then?” muttered Georgiana into her lemonade.
The exchange raised the faintest smile on Charlotte’s lips but it faded so quickly that Wolfgang wanted to pull the runner from the table, bring the plates and crystal glasses crashing to the floor.
Damn it, what was going on? She wouldn’t think of marrying that man, would she? Surely she wouldn’t consider marrying any of the suitors who’d come down this summer, and to hell with Her Majesty and the whole royal family. After all, the queen’s edict meant ostracism, not death.
Low, sonorous alarm bells began to sound inside Wolfgang’s chest as he reviewed the facts he knew.
A mother’s debt.
A rich suitor.
A daughter who felt love like a chain.
It was beginning to make a sick sort of sense, but damn it, not for Charlotte.
“I don’t believe in ideal women,” he announced to the table. “I wouldn’t want one—I’d be bored to tears. I prefer a scoundrel, someone impatient, poorly behaved, occasionally petulant—”
“She sounds a treasure,” said Lady Margot.
“Someone original and lightning quick who thwarts me at all turns. Someone strong enough to vanquish her enemies and write her own fate. Though, of course”—his voice darkened to a threat—“I’d grind the bones of anyone who stood in her way.”
The dowager’s blue eyes sparked and Miss Marby crossed her knife and fork neatly on her plate, no longer even pretending to eat.
“A woman with so many ideas that they leak out into sketchbooks,” he continued, “great piles of them, so that every day I fish a new one from between the pillows of the drawing room settees.”
A grin crept across Miss Alexandra’s face. “It’s true,” she whispered to Miss Helena. “I can’t tell you how many I’ve sat on.”
But Wolfgang barely heard her, too focused on Charlotte’s bowed head.
“A woman who challenges and confounds me, and who dresses so memorably that I find myself naming each of her ensembles in my head. A rule-breaker, one who delights in setting society’s dictums on fire.
Someone full of conviction, but who’s careful to hide what she holds dearest. I might underestimate a woman like that, at first. I’d have a hard time seeing past the enormous brims of her hats, or my own maddening reaction to her.
But I’d wake up eventually, and when I did… ”
Wolfgang drew a breath, because the last part was the hardest.
“When I did, I’d move heaven and earth—I’d lay down my fortune and my life—to make sure she didn’t have to marry anyone. Not even me, unless she willed it, because I’d never want a woman like that merely as my wife. I’d want her blazing, and the rest of the world be damned.”
The dowager sat back flushed with triumph, the practical Miss Helena had to dab at her eyes, and Lady Margot held the stem of her wineglass in a death grip. But Wolfgang barely noticed them. He could only see Charlotte, who’d gone alarmingly pale.
Her shoulders began to shake.
Fuck.
“Lady Charlotte, I—”
Lady Skeffington, in the dark as always, threw her napkin on the table with a hiss of disgust. “Well, my girls, if that’s the kind of woman a duke wants, then I know nothing of the world. Do what you will! Behave as you wish! You won’t hear a word from me!”
Miss Marby collapsed into laughter, but Georgiana, listening intently, cocked her head.
“Do you mean that, Mother?”
“Indeed, I do!”
Georgiana whirled around with a bloodcurdling cry and nailed Lysander with a forkful of peas.