Chapter 3 - Charlotte #4
Charlotte chose her words with care. “We are not compatible. Our characters, our temperaments. I simply do not think we would suit. Surely I should have some say in who I marry. Should I not be allowed to consider—“
“Do you have any idea how fortunate you are?” Aunt Margaret interrupted sharply. “Most girls in your situation would be grateful. Grateful for the prospect of a settled future. Grateful that a gentleman of Lord Penrose’s caliber would even look twice at them.”
Charlotte felt heat rise to her cheeks. “I’m not ungrateful, I just—“
“You are the very definition of ungrateful.” Aunt Margaret’s voice hardened.
“Three seasons, Charlotte. Three seasons of us scraping together funds for gowns and balls and calling hours, all while the walls are quite literally crumbling around us. And now, when a distinguished gentleman offers you security, offers to save this entire family from ruin, you sit there wringing your hands about your ‘options.’”
Charlotte turned desperately to her father, who had remained silent throughout the exchange, his attention seemingly fixed on his soup. “Papa, surely you don’t believe I should simply accept the first offer, regardless of…”
He didn’t look up.
“Papa, please.” Her voice cracked. “I should be able to have some say in who I marry, shouldn’t I? You always told me I should think for myself, that my mind was valuable. You and Mama always—“
“Your aunt understands these matters better than I do,” he said quietly, still unable to look at her.
Charlotte stared at him, stunned. She waited for him to say more, to look at her, to show some flicker of the man who had once encouraged her to be bold, to trust her own judgment. But he remained hunched over his plate, shoulders curved inward, as though he could make himself disappear.
“Charlotte,” Aunt Margaret continued, her tone firm.
“Your mother had the luxury of marrying for love because she had a dowry. Because her family’s finances were secure.
You have neither of those advantages. Lord Penrose is offering you—offering all of us—a lifeline, and you’re too busy romanticizing about some perfect suitor who doesn’t exist.”
Charlotte’s hands clenched in her lap. She looked once more at her father, her eyes pleading. “Papa… please.”
For a long, terrible moment, her father said nothing. Then, slowly, he raised his head to meet her gaze, and what Charlotte saw there was worse than anger or disappointment. It was defeat. Complete, hollow defeat.
“I want you to be secure,” he said finally, his voice barely audible.
Charlotte felt something inside her chest crack and splinter. “Secure,” she repeated, her voice flat. “You’re selling me for security.”
“No one is selling anyone,” Aunt Margaret snapped. “Stop being so dramatic. You’re being offered a good match with a respectable gentleman, and you’re acting as though we’re throwing you to wolves.”
Charlotte stood abruptly, her chair scraping against the floor. She looked between her aunt’s stern face and her father’s bowed head, unable to recognize either of them.
“I see.” Her voice trembled despite her efforts to steady it. “I see exactly how little my feelings matter to either of you.”
“Charlotte—“ Aunt Margaret began.
“No.” Charlotte backed toward the door. “You’ve made everything perfectly clear.”
“Sit down this instant,” Aunt Margaret commanded. “We are not finished discussing this.”
But Charlotte was already moving, her vision blurring with tears. She heard her aunt’s sharp voice follow her down the hall. “Let her go, Harold. Let her throw her tantrum. It won’t change what must be done.” Charlotte didn’t wait to hear if her father responded.
She broke into an undignified run, taking the stairs two at a time until she reached her room.
She slammed the door behind her and slid down against it, her barely maintained composure finally cracking.
The tears she had fought so hard to contain came in great, shuddering sobs that seemed to tear from her chest.
Through her open window, church bells tolled the hour somewhere in the distance—deep, mournful notes that seemed to rumble in her very bones. The night air carried the faint scent of roses from the garden below, her mother’s roses, still blooming despite everything that had withered around them.
The familiar fragrance pulled her back through time to a rainy evening years ago, when she had crept downstairs for a forgotten book and glimpsed her parents through the partially open library door.
They had been dancing slowly in the narrow space between towering bookcases, no music except their quiet laughter, her father’s hands gentle at her mother’s waist as he spun her carefully.
The way he had looked at her—as though she were the most precious thing in existence—that was what Charlotte had always believed love should be.
It was all she had ever wanted. Not the grand estates or glittering ballrooms that society promised, not the security of a well-connected marriage or the approval of London’s finest families.
She had wanted only what her parents had found in each other.
That sense of being cherished for simply being herself.
Now, pressing her face against her knees, fresh sobs overtook her.
She could barely reconcile the tender man from that memory with the stranger downstairs.
The father, who had gazed at her mother as though she held the secrets of the universe, had become someone who could look his own daughter in the eye and tell her that love was a luxury they could no longer afford.
Through the floorboards, she felt the vibrations of urgent voices but she no longer cared what they were saying. They had made their priorities perfectly clear tonight. She had lost the last person in this house who had ever counted her among them.
The dream of being her own person — to live freely, deliberately, on her own terms, the way her mother had — was dying along with everything else, leaving nothing behind but the cold arithmetic of survival.
And while she was not without people who cared, right now, in this room, in this moment, she felt completely, irrevocably alone.