Chapter 23
Chapter Twenty-Three
“I’ve never encountered an invalid as busy as you are,” Lucy remarked to Charlotte as the Champions’ old two-seater gig bounced up the road into the village later that day.
Mr. Frog hunched in front of them on the driver’s perch, the leather reins looped in his gnarled hands. His aged face was set in the same disapproving lines it had settled into when Charlotte had first announced her intended errand.
Charlotte tilted her white lace parasol to better shield her face from the afternoon sun. It had been but a few hours since Magnus had kissed her in the small parlor at Moorcross Manor, yet the memory of it was so vivid, she could practically still feel the heat of his lips.
The whole experience had done troubling things to her constitution. Not only to her heart and to the temperature of her blood, but to the strength in her limbs as well. Indeed, the moment he’d captured her mouth, Charlotte had gone decidedly weak at the knees.
It hadn’t stopped her from being bold, she was pleased to recall. She’d touched his chest, his neck, his hair. As if he were already hers.
And she’d confessed her feelings to him.
Magnus had fallen short of doing the same. But he hadn’t given her a set down. He hadn’t pushed her away or warned her never to come back again. On the contrary. When they’d parted a short time later, he’d seemed reluctant to let her go.
Charlotte counted it a distinct success. “I’m not quite an invalid,” she informed Lucy. “Even if I was, shopping isn’t too much exertion.”
“I suppose not.” Lucy fidgeted with the buttons on her gloves. “Though I’d far prefer you remain at Sowerby Hall until Mama returns from Hampshire. Or until…” She gazed over the passing scenery with a distracted frown.
“Until what?” Charlotte asked.
Lucy’s attention returned to her, a trifle guiltily. “Oh, nothing,” she said quickly. “Only my own scattered thoughts. I can’t keep them in order lately.”
Charlotte gave her a sympathetic smile. “How vexing I must be to you.” She patted her friend’s arm. “You’re very good to indulge my whims.”
Lucy briefly averted her eyes. She had an odd look about her. “I hope you would be equally indulgent of my own if our situations were reversed. Even if you didn’t agree with them.”
“Naturally I would. What are friends for but to support each other in our various flights of fancy?”
“You may not think me a very good friend,” Lucy said. “The other girls at Mrs. Daventry’s were far more suited to your high spirits. Whereas I…” Again, she trailed off.
Charlotte took her hand. “The best friendships are composed of opposites. We balance each other’s excesses. Like light and dark, or—”
“Bold and cowardly?”
“There’s nothing cowardly about possessing good common sense. I rely on your instincts to pull me back from the brink.”
“I’ve not done a very good job, have I?” Lucy squeezed Charlotte’s hand. Her eyes were alarmingly earnest. “Though I have tried to, Charlotte. I hope you will remember that.”
Charlotte’s smile turned quizzical. “What are you on about?”
Lucy didn’t reply.
“You’re not blaming yourself, are you?” Charlotte asked. “You shouldn’t. I don’t at all regret having met Lord Eversleigh. Quite the reverse.”
Lucy’s already pale complexion went a shade paler. “You’re not saying…?”
Charlotte released her friend’s hand. “I’m saying nothing. He intrigues me, that’s all.”
“Like a horrible villain in a fairy story,” Lucy returned. “His face—”
“This isn’t a fairy story,” Charlotte interrupted with sudden sternness. “I won’t make it into one. There’s danger in being too fanciful about a gentleman.”
Lucy guffawed. “How could anyone be fanciful about him?”
Quite easily, Charlotte thought to herself.
Despite his scars. Despite his gruff exterior. Even despite his past.
Magnus had been a victim of circumstance. So too had Miss Farr and her brother. Three young people whose lives were forever changed after letting their emotions run away with them. Magnus had been punishing himself for it ever since. The letters he’d written to his father had attested to that fact.
They’d also attested to Magnus’s integrity. To his dedication to hard work. His willingness to put himself in harm’s way. And to his humility in the face of the early accolades he’d received for his conduct in the Navy.
He’d been desperate to earn back his father’s love and approval.
It had been evident in every letter. All those dutifully written lines about his dangerous exploits and the favorable reports he received from superiors.
As if, by being noble enough, heroic enough, his father might once again find him worthy.
That belief had appeared to dim with each successive letter. Yet, Magnus’s essential character had never changed. Neither had his account of the scandal that had resulted in his exile.
A contemporaneous memorandum.
That’s what it was called. Charlotte remembered reading the phrase once in a novel that had culminated in a dramatic court proceeding. Such documents carried the weight of truth because they weren’t colored by memory. They were written at the exact time an incident occurred.
Not that Charlotte had needed corroboration.
Every instinct she possessed told her that Magnus was speaking the truth about his past. Not just because of who he was and what he was coming to mean to her, but because the situation that had led to the tragedy was all too plausible.
She heaved a sigh. “The trouble is, there are too many rules,” she said, as much to Lucy as to herself.
“Endless, rigid rules about how we might meet someone and how we must behave when we do. A whole second language comprised of behavior, all the way down to our merest gestures and expressions. And if one lapses in any regard…the consequences are such that one might never recover.”
“There’s nothing wrong with rules,” Lucy replied. “Not if they have a sensible purpose.”
“But we’re not born knowing them,” Charlotte said.
“And they’re not always civil, are they?
Don’t smile at this person. Don’t shake that one’s hand.
This gentleman is suitable to court and that one must be given the cut direct.
Don’t marry beneath you, but don’t reach too far above.
And for heaven’s sake, don’t be kind to an unsuitable person lest they get the wrong idea. ”
“One must remain in one’s proper sphere. Mama says that to go outside of it lies misery.”
“But what if it doesn’t? What if it’s only a whole new adventure?”
“At Moorcross Manor?” Lucy scoffed. “Doing what?” She adjusted her gloves with a contemptuous puff of breath.
“The place is a disaster, and so is its master. I only saw the hall and the drawing room, but that was enough. And what about those stairs? Some of them were broken straight through! I don’t call that an adventure, Charlotte.
I call that a hazard that might very well lead to your death. ”
“Not at all,” Charlotte said. “Not so long as I walk with purpose.”
The carriage slowed as it approached the market square. The grocer’s shop stood on the left side, a plain wooden building with a painted sign, sandwiched between the butcher’s and baker’s. Across the way was the much more elegant draper’s shop. A large placard proclaimed its name: Kitteridge’s.
Lucy craned her head to look at it. Her face fell. “The closed sign is out,” she said in disappointment. “The woman must have gone for the day.”
“It makes no matter.” Charlotte leaned forward in her seat to address Mr. Frog. “You may set us down at the grocer’s shop.”
Lucy shot her a disgruntled look as Mr. Frog brought the gig to a halt alongside the shop’s front door. “I thought you wanted to look at ribbons?”
Charlotte closed her parasol with a snap. “I never said so.”
“Then what—”
“I mean to purchase some supplies for Lord Eversleigh.”
“Lord Eversleigh!” Lucy exclaimed in horror.
Mr. Frog remained on his perch, offering the girls no assistance out of the gig.
Charlotte exited without his help, easily leaping to the ground.
A small, embroidered drawstring purse dangled from silk cords at her wrist. On setting out for their drive, she had quite intentionally filled it with the whole of the pocket money her parents had given her for her summer in Yorkshire. It was no minor sum.
“The village shops won’t supply his lordship and his staff,” Charlotte explained as she straightened the bustled skirts of her cambric day dress. “And I can’t let them starve. Not after all the help they’ve given me.”
Lucy clambered out behind her, making ready use of Charlotte’s shoulder for balance. “He doesn’t have servants. Only one poor excuse for a butler. The man wasn’t even in proper livery! And you don’t owe them anything, Charlotte.”
“You can wait in the gig if you like.” Charlotte crossed to the door.
Lucy hurried after her. “Charlotte!”
Charlotte walked into the shop. A little bell above the door tinkled to announce her entry.
She’d been here only once before. It was a clean, orderly establishment, with a long wooden front counter and plentiful shelves of tinned goods, wheels of cheese, and barrels containing flour, sugar, and salt.
An apron-clad shopkeeper with a bristly mustache stood behind the counter attending to a female customer in a black stuff dress. The woman’s back was to the door, her face hidden from view.
Lucy came up alongside Charlotte, breathless. “I may join you on this folly, Charlotte Beresford,” she whispered sharply, “but you may be sure I won’t be accompanying you back to Moorcross Manor.”
“I’m not going back,” Charlotte said.
Not today, anyway, she added silently.
“Then how—?” Lucy began.
“I shall convince the shopkeeper to deliver my order to the manor, of course.” Charlotte approached the counter with a smile just as the previous customer was turning to leave. “Good morning, sir,” she said. “I—”
The greeting died on her lips when she saw the thin lady’s face.
It was Mrs. Kitteridge. The very woman who had caused such a fuss at the Manor. She regarded Charlotte with a frigid glare.