Chapter 2 #2
She knew the way his face changed when the steward brought reports he disliked. She knew the laugh he used when he wished her not to worry. She knew, too, that the household accounts had lately acquired an air of secrecy entirely unsuited to arithmetic.
Something tightened low in her stomach.
“The duchess returned months ago, of course, which now seems deeply suspicious. Mrs. Vale believes she has been taking stock of the neighborhood.”
“Of the curtains?” Charlotte asked, though her mind remained on the ledger.
“Of the daughters. Do keep pace.”
“I have no wish to be inventoried.”
“No one asks the sheep whether they enjoy market day.”
“Then I shall endeavor not to behave like livestock.”
Meg pointed a finger at her. “That is precisely the sort of thing you say before causing an incident.”
Her father moved at last, crossing the hall with an effort at ease that did not deceive Charlotte. “The duke’s return will naturally occasion some interest. Ravensmoor has been without its master too long.”
“And now that its master has returned,” Charlotte said, watching him, “are we all to be improved by his presence?”
Her father looked wounded by the edge in her voice. She regretted it at once, though she did not take it back.
“I hope,” he pointed out, “that the neighborhood may benefit from his attention. The estate is large. Many depend upon it.”
“That is a great deal to expect from one man simply because he has inherited a house.”
“More than a house,” her father corrected.
“Yes,” Charlotte replied. “I know. A name. A fortune. A title. An entire mythology buttoned into a coat.”
Meg made a small sound which might have been amusement or warning. “There is to be a ball at Pemberton House in a few days. That is the true news. The duke is expected to attend. Every mother within fifteen miles will arrive armed with daughters and optimism.”
“Then I pity him,” Charlotte frowned.
“I pity the daughters. Imagine being arranged in muslin and hope before a man who has spent years in London learning how not to be impressed.”
“Perhaps he is easily impressed.”
Meg stared at her.
Charlotte sighed. “No, you are right. Men of consequence rarely cultivate that talent.”
Her father’s eyes went once more toward the study. This time Charlotte felt the movement like a hand against the back of her neck.
“You will attend, of course,” her father announced.
Meg brightened. “Yes, you must! I cannot survive it without you. Lady Weston will make me hear all three daughters sing if I stand still too long.”
Charlotte looked at her father. “Must I?”
There was a pause.
“I should like you to go,” he told her.
Charlotte’s fingers closed around the green ribbon. Meg glanced between them, some of her brightness dimming.
“Very well,” Charlotte acquiesced. “If Meg requires protection from singing, I cannot in all conscience abandon her.”
Her father exhaled, almost imperceptibly. Relief softened his face before he could hide it.
***
The rest of the morning arranged itself with deceptive ordinariness.
They went into breakfast. Meg delivered more news than the newspapers.
Her father cut his toast into pieces and forgot to eat half of them.
Charlotte drank coffee, answered when addressed, and felt the ledger sitting in the next room as though it had a pulse.
The Duke of Ravensmoor had returned.
The words drifted through the conversation like a scent one could not quite ignore. Meg spoke of him with the lively curiosity due any handsome stranger of rank, and her father spoke of him with careful respect.
In truth, the duke interested her very little. Charlotte had met enough gentlemen to know that fortune did not improve conversation, rank did not guarantee courage, and consequence often made a man less tolerable rather than more.
After breakfast, Meg accompanied her upstairs, still talking.
“You will wear the green, will you not?”
Charlotte lifted a brow. “To breakfast tomorrow? How ambitious of me.”
“To the ball, goose.”
“Oh… I haven’t decided to attend the ball in spirit. Only in body.”
“That is how most people attend balls. Spirit is rarely required.”
Charlotte smiled despite herself and opened the door to her chamber. Sunlight had found its way through the cloud and lay across the floorboards in a pale rectangle. Meg followed her in and dropped onto the window seat.
“I know that look,” Meg said.
“What look?”
“The look with which you pretend a thing doesn’t concern you while arranging an entire argument against it in your mind.”
“I do not arrange arguments. I allow them to form naturally.”
“Like storms.”
“Storms are useful. They clear the air.”
“And knock down trees.”
“Only weak ones.”
Meg softened. “Charlotte.”
There it was again, that note in another person’s voice, that gentle attempt to come nearer. Charlotte went to the dressing table and set down the folded green ribbon.
Before Charlotte could reply, a maid arrived with warm water, and Meg departed after making Charlotte promise she would not vanish into the stables again before luncheon. Charlotte gave the promise with several qualifications, none of which Meg accepted but all of which she pretended to.
Charlotte removed her habit and washed the morning from her skin.
The basin water clouded faintly with dust. Her arms smelled of lavender soap and horsehair.
She put on a simple morning gown of pale muslin, tied her hair back more loosely than Mary would have approved, and took the green ribbon from the table.
For a moment she considered placing it in the drawer. Instead, she wound it once around her fingers and carried it with her. Then, she headed to the long gallery.
The portraits there had watched over generations of Pembrokes with varying degrees of beauty, boredom, and self-importance. At the far end, was her mother.
Lady Helena Pembroke had been painted the year before her marriage, when she was still Helena Ashford, celebrated beauty, heiress of very little money and far too much spirit, if the stories were to be believed.
She stood in a woodland clearing, with one hand resting lightly against the trunk of a beech, her copper hair unpowdered and loosely dressed, and her gown the deep green of wet leaves.
There was nothing demure in the portrait.
She looked not out at the viewer, but slightly past him, as if some distant horizon had just called her name and she was deciding whether to answer.
The resemblance was startling. Charlotte had known it all her life, and still there were moments when it caught her unguarded. They had the same hair, the same bone structure, the same directness about the eyes, though Helena’s seemed to hold laughter where Charlotte suspected hers held defiance.
As a child, she believed the portrait almost alive. As a girl, she resented it. As a woman, she found it both a comfort and accusation.
She looked up. Her mother’s painted eyes remained fixed upon that private distance. Charlotte’s fingers tightened around the green ribbon.
What would her mother have made of the Duke of Ravensmoor’s return? Of a household ledger her father was plainly concealing? Of a ball at which young women would be weighed and watched and praised for qualities that had very little to do with themselves?
Charlotte stepped closer to the portrait.
“You would have told me not to be impressed,” she said. “I am sure of that.”
But was she?
The stories of Helena had never been consistent.
Some called her wild. Some called her warm.
Some called her difficult, which Charlotte had learned usually meant a woman had declined to be convenient.
Her father spoke of her with reverence and grief, making her not a person but a light that had once filled every room and then gone out.
Her reflection appeared faintly in the glass over the portrait: Charlotte’s face superimposed upon her mother’s painted form until the two seemed almost one woman divided by time. She turned away, unsettled.
Whatever debts her father concealed, whatever plans society had begun forming, and whatever importance the county chose to place upon the return of one dark, solemn duke, Charlotte Pembroke would not be arranged like a figure in someone else’s portrait.