Chapter 19 #2
“It’s hardly unheard of for girls to be married at sixteen. And he had already lost his virginity, so it wasn’t as if I threatened him with imminent deflowering.”
Mrs. Watson giggled. “And he said no to this non-threat.”
“After I wooed him with a beautifully wrapped French letter, no less.”
Mrs. Watson covered her mouth with both hands, scandalized anew. “Where did you even find such a thing?”
“I believe I have told you that my sister and I snooped in our father’s study whenever the opportunity presented itself?”
Mrs. Watson nodded.
Sir Henry and Lady Holmes had never told their children anything of true importance, such as the family’s near bankruptcy. Their two youngest daughters, who had always been each other’s greatest allies, had formed the habit of finding out everything on their own.
“I always read my father’s diary. Once he recorded the name and address of a store where he had been sold a condom. I wrote to the shop and asked whether they conducted any business by post. They were happy to assist. So I sent in a postal order and picked up my purchase at our local post office.”
“You did this when you were all of sixteen?”
“No, the year before. I was fifteen.”
“I’m surprised—and relieved—that you didn’t proposition his lordship then.”
“I thought about it. But decided I wasn’t yet curious enough.”
“Even though you’d already purchased a condom?”
“A condom, a sponge, and a syringe for flushing out any semen that hasn’t been blocked by the condom and the sponge—if you want the itemized list. For my expenditure, the shop sent me a copy of Fanny Hill, gratis.”
Mrs. Watson gasped. “And what did you do with that?”
“I read it. Then I sold it to Roger Shrewsbury, for twice what it would have cost him to buy.”
Mrs. Watson’s lips moved, but no words emerged.
“I know,” said Charlotte, shaking her head. “Mr. Shrewsbury was never the most enterprising of fellows.”
“Did Lord Ingram know that?” Mrs. Watson sounded slightly choked.
“He brokered the deal—and took a cut of the profit.” Charlotte smiled. “He wasn’t always as stuffy as he later became.”
She wasn’t sentimental about some mythical past version of him—he might have been more adventurous, but he’d also been na?ve and arrogant.
Adversity didn’t improve everyone—or the world would be filled with men and women of flawless character and sublime insight.
Lord Ingram, however, had endured his misfortunes with grace and forbearance and had chosen to become a better man.
When Charlotte commented on his stuffiness, it was never about returning him to his former self—she liked him as he was—but from a deep-seated wish that he would let himself be happy.
Or at least less burdened.
And she had no idea if that would ever be the case.
“Does it really not make any difference that he loves you?” came Mrs. Watson’s soft yet fervent question.
Charlotte sighed. “It isn’t that love makes no difference; it’s that what he and I want out of life are diametrically opposite. It’s far easier for people who want the same things to fall in love than for people who want different things to remain in love.”
Mrs. Watson’s breath caught. “Are you—are you saying, Miss Holmes, that you are in love with him?”
Charlotte made no reply.
She’d already given answer enough.
Livia was proud of herself. Downright, heart-poundingly proud.
She had taken advantage of Mrs. Newell’s general distress about the bomb to refuse the offer of her maid for the way home.
“You need her more than I do. I have traveled this route more times than I can count. There has never been any trouble in the ladies’ compartments.
Don’t worry. My parents won’t know a thing. ”
And she had prevailed, for once.
But as her hired trap drew abreast of Moreton Close, her warm self-confidence began to turn into something less sustaining.
The garden had faded since her previous visit and little resembled the sunny, trim place she remembered.
All the windows were shuttered—in the middle of the day!
And not a bit of light seeped out from around the edges of the shutters, the way it would have if candles and lamps had been lit, as they must have been on this cold, gray day, if anyone at all were inside.
No one answered her summons. She pulled the bell cord again and again and made enough of a ruckus to rouse even Sleeping Beauty.
`Still no one came.
Remembering the path that led to the wrought iron gate, she ran down that way, pushed open the gate, and knocked on the door of a cottage. At last someone answered, a woman with flour-covered hands.
“Afternoon, miss,” she said tentatively.
“Good afternoon. Can you tell me where all the people in the house went, Missus . . . ?”
“Garnet. Everyone went to the south of France for the winter.”
The south of France, which Livia had always wished to visit. For a moment she was terribly envious of Bernadine, until she asked herself how likely was it that for the pittance her parents paid, Bernadine would receive trips abroad, above and beyond the already miraculous bargain of Moreton Close.
“All the ladies who can’t look after themselves went to the south of France?”
Mrs. Garnet looked confused. “There’s only one lady in the house and she looks after herself just fine.”
“Only one lady?”
“There are her husband and her sons, but she’s the only lady.”
Livia’s ears rang. “But I was here last week and I saw with my own eyes a houseful of ladies.”
“Last week the mister and I went to see our grandbaby. Maybe miss went to a different house?”
Mrs. Garnet’s tone was sympathetic, but that only made Livia’s voice rise faster. “It was this house!”
“Well,” said Mrs. Garnet apologetically, “the family went two weeks ago. I don’t know how the house could have been full of ladies last week. I really don’t know.”
Charlotte alit in front of the bijou house in St. John’s Wood where she’d met Mrs. Farr the evening before and stayed the night. She waved good-bye to Mrs. Watson, now headed to her own destination.
Inside the house she took off both her hat and her wig—a woman’s wig, this time—and sat down in front of the vanity table to massage her scalp. In the mirror she seemed thinner. Was she already down to only one point two chins?
Another face appeared in the mirror. “Counting your chins?”
“Me? How dare you accuse me of such rampant self-absorption!”
Lord Ingram smiled. “How was your meeting with the police?”
“It went as you would expect.” She turned around. He was very close to her, her favorite place for him to be. “You shouldn’t be here.”
“I know.”
She exhaled. “Tell me what has happened since I left—I assume you didn’t come just to sleep with me.”
He stepped even closer. “And you would be wrong about that.”
“I’m still unsettled to find myself in bed with you,” said Lord Ingram.
“I just find it strange that I’m abed in the middle of the day,” answered Holmes. “But I don’t mind.”
She was looking at him rather fondly—and that made his heart beat fast. They lay a few inches apart, he propped up on an elbow, she with her head on a pillow, a hand under her cheek. He brushed a strand of her hair back from her forehead, taking care not to touch her elsewhere.
“Is it true, what I once heard your sister say, that you don’t like to be embraced?”
She took some time to think. “Sometimes Livia needs to hold someone, and I’m the only suitable person nearby.
When I was little, I used to wriggle out of her arms and escape to a corner of our room.
But it wasn’t so much that I couldn’t stand being held as that I didn’t want to be held indefinitely.
Later I taught myself to count to three hundred to mark five minutes—which helped me to realize that she needed only about half that time.
I can take two to three minutes of being held.
But Livia remains hesitant to this day—she’s still scarred by my bolting away from her embrace. ”
He would be, too.
In fact, sometimes he felt scarred by her, even though she had never done anything except be an excellent friend.
She lifted her hand and hesitated for a moment—as if she expected to be brushed aside—before she reached across and touched the back of her hand to his jawline. “I know I’ve said this, but you shouldn’t have come.”
“I know. I’ve lost my mind.”
She tsked. “But I guess I can’t be entirely displeased, especially given that . . . What do you call that thing you did?”
“Madam, I did more than one thing to you.”
“You know the one I mean. I don’t think they did that even in Sodom and Gomorrah.”
“You should give Sodom and Gomorrah more credit: After living there, Lot’s daughters thought nothing of incest.”
She laughed—and giggled again after a moment. “My, you are a wittier man in the vicinity of a bed.”
Now it was he who grinned. “Maybe I’m just more relaxed after a good roll in the hay.”
“Which reminds me . . .” She climbed above him. “Is there time to do it again?”
“I did not,” protested Charlotte.
“Yes, you did,” insisted Lord Ingram, half-laughing. “You told me I was odd-looking. Said Roger Shrewsbury had the perfect face but mine was just odd.”
“No, I wrote that everyone’s face was odd to me. And Roger’s was odd, too, because it possessed near-perfect symmetry, which is highly unusual.”
“And how is that different from saying that he has the perfect face?”
She studied his face with pleasure, because it was so much more arresting and magnetic than Roger Shrewsbury’s. “Have I told you lately, my lord, that, compared to you, Mr. Shrewsbury is a sadly inadequate lover?”
A beatific smile spread slowly across his face. “I apologize, but a thousand gardens just bloomed in my soul.”
She returned the smile. “I’m not sure why, but I’m beginning to wallow in this particular pettiness of yours.”
She wasn’t sure that she wanted to understand the full spectrum of human emotions—everything that remained seemed dire to one degree or another. But this warm, silly mutual delight, this she wouldn’t mind experiencing until she comprehended its place in the world.