The Duke of Snow and Apples (16 page)

“Are you feeling altogether yourself, Miss Charlotte?” he asked.

Charlotte stomped on the surprisingly strong urge to back away. “I am perfectly well, Mr. Oswald. So kind of you to ask.”

She expected him to accept that far-fetched excuse, probably with a cheerful, “Oh! Indeed!” followed by some of his vaguely amiable comments about plant care. Instead, Mr. Oswald blinked slowly, his gray eyes sharp and assessing.

“All right,” he said, a faintly patronizing thread in his voice, as if indulging the fantasies of a temperamental child.

Unnerved, she broke from his side to stand at the opposite side of the pianoforte, next to Augusta and Mr. Colton. However, as she passed, Aunt Hildy laid a hand softly upon the crook of her arm. She didn’t say anything, but with the openly wondering look in her eyes, she didn’t need to.

Charlotte tried her most disarming smile.
Pull it together.
The other guests laughed, but Charlotte only belatedly caught on that Sylvia’s story had ended, so her titter rang out a fraction later than the others, thereby sounding colder and more disinterested than she intended.

Thankfully, a footman came into the drawing room to announce that dinner was ready, giving Charlotte enough time to recover herself as the other guests started lining up to proceed into the dining room. She paired with Mr. Oswald, who was closest to her in rank and consequence. He smiled at her, his harmless affable self again, although his eyes still contained a searching quality that sent her hackles up.

“I…I think I may have a slight headache,” she ventured. Why was she trying to explain herself to him? Frederick’s comments from after Lady Mettle’s ball came back to her unexpectedly, like a funeral bell tolling
boring, stilted, false.
No, she was none of those things. She was just trying to be the type of woman men wanted. That’s what she was supposed to do—what all unmarried women were supposed to do. Weren’t they?

Mr. Oswald’s smile sharpened a bit, in self-deprecation. “Yes, I have two older headaches of my own.”

Oh.
“How worrisome for you,” she said, thawing.

“Only if I let them be,” he replied.

Charlotte didn’t have anything to say to that, so she processed into the dining room in silence. As they entered, Sylvia craned her neck to shoot a glance of askance at her, but Charlotte dodged it by making a comment about the rose pinned to the lapel of Mr. Oswald’s jacket.

“Does horticulture soothe your headaches as well?” he asked, arching an eyebrow.

“Perhaps,” she said, unsure of how to deal with a more direct Mr. Oswald. What happened to his cheerful befuddlement? His amiable ignorance of the world in general? His obsession with flowers that overtook all else? To be honest, she felt a bit relieved when they parted for opposite sides of the dinner table—however, her remaining relief shriveled when she realized she was seated across from Sylvia.

The soup course began in amiable silence until a squirming, ceaselessly curious Aunt Hildy could stand it no longer. “Miss Sylvia, I must express my congratulations upon your engagement! It came as such a delightful surprise!”

“It did?” said Sylvia.

“What? Engaged?” Lady Alderley roused herself now that Lady Balrumple appeared to know something she didn’t. “Charlotte never told us you were engaged.”

Sylvia swung back to Charlotte. “You didn’t?”

Well, it came as a nasty surprise to me, that’s why.
Charlotte occupied her tongue with a scalding spoonful of soup to drown that errant remark.

“Was it a whirlwind romance?” asked Aunt Hildy, a far-off light in her eyes. “I do so love whirlwind romances.”

“Oh no,” said Sylvia. “He courted me for months before we announced the engagement.”

“Practical,” said Lady Leighwood. “Irritation of the throat, Charlotte?”

Charlotte was too busy coughing to offer a reply, the hot soup having decided to make a dash for the wrong tunnel.
Months. They were together for
months
. And Sylvia never told me.
She’d suspected they’d formed their attachment sometime before that disastrous ball where her trust had been shattered, but she’d never guessed the entire time.
Months
.

“Are you quite all right, Miss Charlotte?” Mr. Oswald asked.

“Fine,” she wheezed. “I need a bit of wine, that’s all.” She downed a large gulp from her glass.
Months.
She took another gulp.

Charlotte didn’t have the heart to eat very much, and she contributed to the conversation even less. She parceled out supportive comments and mild witticisms and a titter or two, to let them know she was still alive, but all thoughts of happiness, security, and red gowns stretched and tore and blew away, leaving her thoughts as bare and ugly as they normally were.

After dinner and tea in the drawing room, the men returned from their port, reeking faintly of cigar smoke.

“We aren’t interrupting any secret, ladylike confidences, are we?” said Elban.

“No,” Sylvia said, giving up on trying to wrest an explanation from her sister. “We were just discussing the ball of Lady Mettle’s that I missed…”

“Missed?” the Earl of Enshaw proclaimed in a dolorous voice. “Quite the opposite! I dare say the ball missed
you.
”

“You are too kind.”

Charlotte agreed.

“Well, that’s easily remedied,” said Aunt Hildy. “We have a fine family of musicians and a pianoforte that performs more than sufficiently, as Sylvia has so wonderfully demonstrated. Roll up the carpet! Have us a dance!”

A chiming chorus of agreement followed, and the preparations were no sooner suggested, than performed by the Dowagers’ able footmen. After the carpet was rolled up and taken away, Mr. Colton settled himself at the pianoforte, stretching his long pianist’s fingers, before launching into a gay little tune.

Charlotte, drawn with reluctance into the set, perked up a bit at the sound—she remembered dancing with the viscount to the same piece at Lady Mettle’s ball. When things had still been different. When she’d believed she was lovely all on her own. Her energy died almost immediately into the first few steps she performed with Mr. Oswald. Sylvia giggled as she glided around with Viscount Elban, delighted and happy.

Instinctively, Charlotte drew her old armor of gentility around her, straightened her spine, painted a contented smile on her face. However, her imaginary breastplate of manners and confidence had grown rusty with disuse, a paltry, fragile shell against the bombardments of humiliation.

Mr. Oswald caught her eye. He leaned in.

“One Sylvia is quite enough for this room—we don’t need two. Take it from someone who knows.”

Boring. Stilted. False
. Deep inside Charlotte, something fractured, sending out a spider web of painful cracks. It must have shown on her face, for Mr. Oswald, shamefaced, said, “I–I didn’t mean it that way, Miss Charlotte! I only…Charlotte!”

But Charlotte had fled.

Chapter Sixteen

“Here we are, ma’am,” said Frederick. Dorothea leaned on his arm, her head drooping with exhaustion. With her slender neck and large black mobcap, she looked like a dark bobbing flower. Little by little, step by step, the seventh Dowager had regained some sense of security in company; nevertheless, occasions involving larger groups tired her.

He opened the door to her bedchamber. Posey, an upstairs maid, had already been in to turn down the bed, light a fire, and sweep up the feathers and crumbs. The other maids claimed to be frightened of Dorothea’s crows—only Posey was brave enough to discover that the Dowager’s birds were quite tame, or as tame as seven large birds could be when cooped up in the same room with each other.

Four of them perched on the mantle, the other three in front of the grate, the flames awakening sheens of hidden colors from their otherwise-black feathers.

“My loves,” Dorothea whispered. “Oh, my loves. Have you been good today? Beatrice? Gertrude? Fiona?” Her crows
caw
ed a welcome. She released Frederick’s arm and walked forward, regaining some of her strength as her birds flocked about her, alighting upon her shoulders and outstretched arms, black upon black.

“I don’t want to take you away from your party,” she whispered to him. The seventh Dowager never seemed quite able to grasp the differences between man and servant, lady and maid. All people were alike to her—loud, intrusive, sometimes frightening.

In actuality, however, Frederick needed an excuse to escape serving the social gathering. Why now, of all times, did his stepfather have to appear? And why
here
, of all places? Sir Bertram and Frederick had never been close, but it was hardly an impossibility that Frederick might be recognized.

In this instance, his cold place, with its layers of frigid professionalism, obscured his features, rendering him just like every other faceless servant in the Dowagers’ employ.

“You should go back,” Dorothea said. She reached out a hand, a tracery of blue veins visible beneath the papery skin. “You’re chilled.”

Something fluttered against the walls of his cold place—panic, perhaps, that she might have guessed what was beneath his facade so easily. However, his walls held firm. He bowed to the Dowager and backed out, closing the door behind him.

The quick
pat-pat-pat
of slippers skidding across the floor made him turn.

“Freddy! Thank God!” Ellie cried. The still-room maid slid to a stop, gasping. “Come quick!”

“What’s the matter?”

“I found her on the eastern servants’ stairwell,” Ellie wheezed. “Lost, I think. I came across her after retrieving my cap from the still-room.”

“Who?”

“Your girl!” She sucked in a large gulp of air. “Miss Charlotte.”

The fluttering against Frederick’s barriers of ice became an insistent, sharp tapping. “What’s wrong with her?”

“Cursed if I know. She won’t stop crying. Don’t just stand there gawping—you’re supposed to be her footman!”

Frederick broke into a run, as the tapping at his walls became the pounding of a battering ram. His emotions threw themselves against his cold place, fighting to get out, laying siege to his logic and reason and sense of self-preservation.

He found her at the bottom of the eastern servants’ stairwell, one of the danker and ill-used corners of the house. She sat against the wall in a heap of pale green muslin, her head resting on top of her arms, still. Too still.

Ellie said she was crying.
“Charlotte?”

At the sound of his voice, she released a great shudder, a muffled wail that drilled right through any defenses he thought he had.

“What’s happened? Are you hurt?” He knelt beside her, afraid to touch her. “Do you know where you are?”

“I don’t care where I am,” came her small voice.

He extended a hand—it hovered over her shaking form, uncertain where to land. Before he could decide, she reared back. Strands of golden-brown hair clung to her damp, flushed cheeks.

“You’re a footman,” she said, almost as if this fact were new to her. “That means you have to do as I say.”

“Y-yes.”
That’s all you are. A footman. Nothing else.

“Tell me how you do it.”

“What?”

“Tell me how to become like you. Cold. Perfect. I’ve seen you.” She pressed a small, damp hand against his chest. “You disappear when things get hard, leaving ice in your place. How lovely it must be for you. I want that.”

You have no idea. You have no blasted, Maiden-cursed idea
. Her very touch, as soft and hesitant as it was, awakened a surging heat within him that threatened the very coldness she so desired in him.

“You don’t know what you’re asking.”

“Yes I do!” Her face screwed up as more tears threatened. “I don’t want to
feel
anymore. It hurts. I’m such a hateful, angry, dissatisfied, envious thing. It
hurts
, and I want it to go away.” Her hand curled into a fist, and she thudded it against his chest. “Make it go away!”

“No.”

She blinked blearily up at him. “Wh-what was that?”

“I said no.” He wrapped his hand around her offending fist, even as her other hand swung out, wildly. He caught it by the wrist. “You don’t want to be like me. No one should be like me.”

“Let me go!”

“Do you think it’s easy?” Frederick tightened his grip, daring her to hold his gaze. “Do you think it’s a simple matter, like closing a door or barring a window? Snow melts. Ice weakens. You always have to shore it up, freeze it again, reinforce it to keep everything out. Before you know it you’ve used up every good part of yourself, and you’re empty, and alone. You can guard that emptiness all you like, but that’s all it is. Dull echoes and useless space.”

“You seem to manage well enough,” Charlotte spat.

Anger surged within him, meeting no resistance. His barriers had vanished long before, possibly the moment he’d seen that disconsolate pile of green muslin at the bottom of the servants’ stairs, and when he found his voice it emerged as a dull roar.

“I
did
manage. I
was
managing. Ten long, frozen years, I was cold and I was
peaceful
. But then
you
had to come and ruin everything. You had to poke and prod and touch everything—and after that? It took all of my strength just to keep my hands off you. What did I have left to keep the world away? Nothing!”

Charlotte’s mouth dropped open. “That c-can’t—I mean, that’s not…”

“And now you want me to teach you to do something I can’t even manage for five minutes anymore? Holy Maiden, even now I want to kiss you, with your face all squashed and red as a goblin’s.”

An outraged gasp interrupted Charlotte’s sob. “
Squashed?
”

He silenced her squawk with a kiss, and not a gentle one. All thoughts of cold places vanished. He wanted to burn her, sear the inside of her mouth with his tongue, brand his name into her skin with his fingers.
Feel what you’ve done to me. Feel how I’ve changed. I’m done with taking orders
. He freed one of his hands to clasp the back of her neck and bring her closer. With the other he yanked off his wig and tossed it into a corner, where it landed in a small cloud of white powder.

She could have resisted. She could have fought him off. Instead, the hard little fist over his heart slowly opened, and her lips parted to welcome him in. He took, he plundered, he
advanced
, weighted with power and purpose, and Charlotte gave way before him—too much. Leaning back as far she could in her sitting position, she overbalanced under his passionate onslaught and they fell to the floor.

Frederick propped himself on top of her, caging her in with his arms, and his eyes blazed until all the dark purples and dusty greens and dirty grays of despair surrounding Charlotte came alive to his senses.

“Who did this to you?” he demanded.

She wouldn’t say.

Frederick lowered his head, and she instinctively parted her lips and lifted her face toward him, a gesture that sent a thrill of masculine pride shooting down his spine, for all that he wasn’t aiming for her mouth. He traced his lips along the trails of tears shining against her cheeks, tasting salt, and ending with a kiss upon each of her eyelids, his body aching with longing even as his mind ordered him to focus.

“Who’s done this to you?”

“N-nobody.”

Again, he ducked his head and dodged her offered lips, moving downward, tracing little curlicues with his tongue down the sweet expanse of her décolletage, pausing as he neared the delectable line of her cleavage. Rosy pink bloomed on the edges of his vision. Charlotte shook beneath the touch of his mouth but did not pull away.

Slowly, he pulled away to regard her face again. “What happened?”

“Nothing happened.” Charlotte gulped. “I mean—it isn’t about what happened, but what
is
. How it always is. I just wish I could change it.”

“Change what?”

“It’s…” She blushed, as garish colors of shame wafted up from her. “It’s not a part of me that you’d want to kiss. An ugly part of me, jealous and petty.”

“Tell me.”

“I try and I try, and I never get anywhere—and Sylvia just has to lift a finger and she gets whatever she wants. Regardless of whom it belongs to.”

Sylvia—the dove-woman
. The girl who moved with a peculiar delicacy as if the world around her might break if she took more than a mincing, soft step, moved her hands more strongly than a flutter, raised her voice above a girlish titter and—

Understanding broke upon him. Such gestures didn’t at all seem strange upon Miss Sylvia Erlwood, for to her they came naturally. With Charlotte, on the other hand…

Impulse jabbed him, and he caught up Charlotte’s face in his hands and kissed her, tears, snot, and all.

“What was that for?” she asked.

“For being so utterly beautiful,” Frederick said, roughly. “As well as completely and obliviously wrong.”

Charlotte couldn’t really draw back, pinned to the floor as she was. Still, she seemed to shrink before him, drawing closer about herself. “You’re very kind. Beauty of my sort takes hours of effort and practice.”

“Be quiet,” Frederick interrupted. He liked this feeling of power, this new weight of command that settled upon him as he gazed down at her in the dim lighting of the stairwell. Titles and status didn’t matter here. He kissed her again, a deep, long, drink of her. “You are beautiful precisely when you are not trying.”

She gave a damp, nervous chuckle. “What, you mean now? I’m a soggy handkerchief.”

“I don’t make a habit of kissing soggy handkerchiefs.”

“Are you in the habit of kissing anyone?”

“Not until you.” Somehow, without moving, their positions had reversed. Frederick hadn’t expected to reveal so much. “Your whole husband-hunting charade—you’re imitating your sister, aren’t you?”

She dropped her gaze. “It’s like a sparrow imitating a phoenix, isn’t it? I will never be a phoenix. I just thought—I thought Mr. Peever might be satisfied with a pretend phoenix, but it turns out I was mistaken.”

“Sylvia’s fiancé?” Gall rose up in his throat like a stone, choking him. “You loved him?”

Charlotte laughed bitterly. “Not now that I think about it. I think I might have been content with him. Satisfied. The important thing was that he appeared to notice me, which was more than any of the other men of Glenson did. He always partnered with me at cards, called upon me with gifts and trifles. There wasn’t even a whisper of another girl. I thought I knew him. But it was all a sham.

“It happened at a ball, after we’d known each other for a while. He danced with me twice, never looking at anyone else. I was sure he was going to propose. And he did—he made a big show of it, standing on a chair and interrupting the orchestra. Only he proposed to Sylvia instead. As it turns out, they had been courting for months. He’d wanted her all along. And I never knew.”

Frederick’s fists clenched. “If that blighter were here, I’d spill an entire tea service on him myself!”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” said Charlotte. However, that rebellious little corner of her mouth quirked upward with repressed glee. “There’s no point to it, now. I just…I just have to try harder.”

“Why?”

The harsh confusion in his tone struck an angry cord in Charlotte, creating ripples of maroon around her. “If you don’t understand by now, I don’t suppose you ever will.”

“What I
understand
is that if you imitate Sylvia, you’ll only attract men who prefer Sylvia.”

Maroon suffused her whole shape, deep and pulsing, and her thundercloud eyebrows drew down like swooping raptors.

Even with his magic between them, misunderstandings proliferated. He tapped into the heat pooling behind his eyes. She might see how he felt now, or she might see the dark core of him and be repulsed. Or she might not see anything. He let his eyes shine at her, hoping.

“If you act like Charlotte, then you’ll find the man who truly prefers and adores Charlotte.”
You’ve already found one
. The thought nestled at the back of his brain, far away from his oft-foolish tongue, and hopefully far away from his eyes. There was no need to confuse her.

You’re a footman. Nothing more
. He could get away with stolen kisses, secret touches. He could drink in her secret colors all day long. She filled him with a warmth that no cold place could withstand, but she couldn’t stay at Charmant Park forever.

“Is it so important to win a husband?” he continued. “Imagine if you’d married that stuffed-shirt Peever only to find your true love the very next day.”

Charlotte raised her eyebrows, and a shadow of a teasing smile ghosted about her mouth. “I’d simply conduct an
affaire
.”

“You wouldn’t,” said Frederick, taken aback.

“I wouldn’t?” she asked. “Because I’m so virtuous?” She cocked her head to one side, as if she could see him more clearly from an angle. A strange mixture of unease and excitement awoke in the palms of his hands and skittered up his arms. “If I was virtuous, I would never allow myself to be kissed by a man all alone in a stairwell. I would be properly courting the Duke of Snowmont, leaning on his every dull word, batting my eyelashes, letting him kiss my hand. No strange young man on a stairwell could ever excite my thoughts and ruin my concentration, nor tempt me into returning his kisses. And I
certainly
wouldn’t enjoy it.”