Potent Pleasures (4 page)

If only he knew the color of her hair it would be easier, but she had been wearing a ridiculous amount of powder. Alex’s domino smelled faintly of lavender for weeks. He thought about it carefully and decided that she had red hair. With skin that white, her hair had to be red. So he looked for a red-haired girl who smelled of lavender, and Charlotte, whose hair was jet-black and who smelled of orange blossoms, never crossed his path.

When Alex wasn’t dreaming about making love to her (and he didn’t even think how odd it was to use that term about a probable whore), he dreamt she was weeping, and he was comforting her, and saying tender things. Probably, Alex told himself rationally, he kept thinking of her because he hadn’t gone through with it and finished: But even thinking about how wet she had been, and how small, made him pale. She couldn’t be a lady; there was proof positive. No lady enjoyed sex, let alone a virginal lady.

On her side, the truth came slowly to Charlotte. She ran into the ballroom and thankfully saw Julia and Mr. Colby standing by the statue of Narcissus, although she didn’t notice the mutinous set of Julia’s mouth. She didn’t have to say anything; Julia simply shoved her across the ballroom and out into Mr. Colby’s carriage. In fact, she didn’t even think until later how odd it was that no one said a word on the way home. Her mind was so tumbled that she barely felt as if she were in the carriage at all.

And when they got home and Julia babbled about Mr. Colby, that he had tried to kiss her—to kiss
her
, Julia!—and she had had to grind her foot into his in order to make him let go, Charlotte just sat numbly on a chair and nodded occasionally. Finally Julia stopped.

“Are you all right, Charlotte?” she asked, seeing that Charlotte’s eyes were shadowed and her face was waxen.

And Charlotte simply said, “I think I shall be ill.” And she was, right on the Axminster carpet in Julia’s bedchamber. Which was problematic because it was the middle of the night and Julia did not want to sleep in a sour-smelling room, so finally they both went into Charlotte’s bedchamber and prepared for sleep.

Except that Julia gasped when Charlotte was undressing, and when Charlotte looked down she saw blood on her thighs and nearly jumped out of her skin.

“Oh, aren’t I silly,” said Julia. “You’ve got your monthly: Do you have the right cloths?” And when Charlotte shook her head silently (it wasn’t even due for weeks), Julia tripped off into her room and got the necessary items.

Charlotte washed at the basin in the corner, delicately touching that part of her which stung and ached and throbbed, and which she’d never really thought about before.

He’d ruined her, she suddenly realized.
This
is what is meant by ruined. She must be torn inside, changed.

And then, like a chill blowing down her back, she understood that she could never get married, because any man she married would find out, would know that she was ruined. Charlotte’s mind went very, very quiet, and she even managed to smile at Julia when she rushed back in the room.

She put on her soft white nightgown and curled up in bed, facing away from Julia. But she couldn’t go to sleep for a long time. And when she did, she sobbed aloud and woke up, imagining the faces of her mother and father. What would they say if they knew?

The next morning Charlotte lay in bed feeling miserable. Julia sat next to her, sipping hot chocolate and talking. Luckily, Julia never needed much of a response to engage in lively conversation.

“I simply cannot
believe
Mr. Colby’s perfidy!” she repeated again and again. Charlotte noticed that “Christopher” was now definitively “Mr. Colby.”

“I just can’t
believe
that he tried to take liberties with me!” Julia elbowed Charlotte again, trying to get her attention. “Charlotte! This is important! He didn’t just try to kiss me, you know. He put his hand
—on my breast
, Charlotte!
On my breast
” Julia said again, emphasizing each word. “I could have been ruined,” she said with relish.

Charlotte didn’t respond. Julia peered at her. “Are you quite all right, Charlotte? You’re very quiet. I could ask my mother … she has some good remedies for a bad monthly. Would you like that? Oh, no,” she wailed, “I couldn’t! Why, she would take one look at me and see that I was almost
ruined
last night!”

Charlotte thought dully that Julia certainly was enjoying herself.

“Why,” Julia continued, “if I hadn’t trampled on his foot, just at the right moment, well, who knows? He might have overcome my resistance!” Julia giggled. “But you know, Charlotte,” she said. “His lips were rather wet, and it was revolting … I don’t know what came over me! Kissing the curate!” She giggled again.

Charlotte listened silently. What was the matter with
her?
At least Julia knew Mr. Colby. She even adored him. But Julia hadn’t lost her head. They both knew that if Julia had been able to tell her mother, which of course she couldn’t, Lady Brentorton would have approved of her response to the curate’s kiss.

But when a stranger, a total stranger, kissed Charlotte out of the blue, she collapsed into his arms as if she were begging for more. So Charlotte separated her guilt from her anger. How evil could the man be? He must have thought … she didn’t want to think what he must have thought, and quickly covered her burning cheeks with her hands.

It was only when the huge house was quiet, around two in the afternoon, that Charlotte started to cry. Julia had gone riding with her parents; her maid was down in the kitchen. Charlotte soaked her pillow with tears: for the husband she would never have, for the babies she thought to have, for the unfairness of discovering that she—she, Charlotte—was an insatiable woman. She’d have to stay away from men, she thought finally, after crying hopelessly for a long time. She couldn’t trust herself, that was clear. And she couldn’t allow herself to be publicly ruined; her parents would be devastated.

Finally she got out of bed and rang for a bath. She sent the maid out of the room because she wasn’t sure whether there might be other signs of her ruination. But she didn’t seem to be bleeding anymore.

It was only when she leaned back into the steaming water that Charlotte remembered her paintings, and given the way the world had shifted in the last few hours, she allowed that to shift too. Since she couldn’t have a husband, or a baby, she could learn how to paint properly. She would make a focus for her life in the easy sweep of new canvas and wet paint, far from the humiliation she felt at the moment. The thought—the plan—calmed the agonizing jumble of feelings inside Charlotte; she rose from the bath and allowed Julia’s maid to button her into a chaste white gown.

Chapter 2

A
s Charlotte’s world fell into
before
and
after
, so did the world of her mother. When Charlotte returned to Albemarle Square the next day, she didn’t say much. She looked at her mother with a tearless, somber look that made her mother want simultaneously to shake her and to burst into tears. What on earth had happened to Charlotte? She wasn’t herself anymore, as the duchess told her husband in bewilderment. Charlotte became moody and even harsh.

If the truth be told, Adelaide was exhausted, too exhausted to deal with a new, irritable Charlotte. Presentations were tiring. The planning had taken weeks, and just this week Gunter’s had put up a fuss about the ices. She had ordered ices colored a delicate violet, and they appeared with a violently purple sample. The footman who was set to washing the center chandelier broke seventeen crystals before anyone noticed he was dead drunk. The new gown she had ordered (blue velvet, embroidered with silver fleur-de-lis) was ghastly. The sleeves were short and far too tight, and the overdress sagged, making her look old and matronly. So she had to pay four times the price to have Madame Flancot create a new gown of rose brocade, practically overnight.

And then, the very day before the ball, Charlotte announced that she wouldn’t go to any balls, including her own presentation. Adelaide stared at her in disbelief. She turned sharply to Charlotte’s maid, Marie.

“Fetch Violetta, please, Marie. And then you may go.”

Marie slipped from the room. Her mistress must have gone crazy. That beautiful dress! How could she even think of not wearing it?

Charlotte’s sister Violetta strolled into the bedroom with all the nonchalance of someone with two seasons behind her and an almost-for-certain marriage proposal from the Marquess of Blass.

Violetta tried persuasion. “You know, Lottie,” she said, reverting to Charlotte’s pet name from childhood, “I was terrified at my coming out ball. Mama had the place absolutely covered in white lilies—which was very nice, Mama,” she hastened to add, “but the perfume was so powerful. When I slipped downstairs to see the ballroom in the afternoon, I just kept sneezing and sneezing, and we all panicked. But then Campion suggested scotch, which he said was a perfect remedy for sneezing, and he was right. Of course,” she said meditatively, “I don’t remember much of what happened after the glass of scotch, but at least I didn’t sneeze all evening.”

Charlotte just looked at her sister miserably. She hadn’t cried since leaving Julia’s house, but she felt like it, all the time. One minute she was desperate to see
that man
again; the next she was consumed with rage and self-pity.

Violetta sat down next to her on the bed, so close their shoulders were touching. “I wouldn’t worry, Charlotte. You’re the most beautiful of us three, you know. You always have been. And you’re the reason for the whole ball: You don’t have to worry about not having someone to dance with….”

Charlotte just shook her head. Why go? She couldn’t get married; she might as well start the way she meant to go on. She felt, in her old nurse’s phrase, as stubborn as a pig about it.

“It’s no use, Violetta,” her mother broke in. “She’s set against it! Why? Why, Charlotte!” Adelaide’s voice rose perilously near a shriek. “At the least you owe me an explanation, after all the work I’ve done. If you’d said four months ago you didn’t want this ball we could have discussed it rationally. But now you
must
tell me why you won’t attend the ball or I shall summon your father!”

Adelaide was sitting on the stool of the dressing table, her eyes fixed on Charlotte’s face. Violetta was staring at her equally intently from her other side. Charlotte felt as if she were being squeezed between two walls, as if she couldn’t breathe. She looked down at her lap. Her hands were twisting, one over the other, around and around. She felt hot and nauseated. From outside her window came the rhythmic pounding of workmen building a huge marquee in the garden, for the supper at
her
ball.

“All right, Mama,” she finally said.

“All right what!” snapped her mother.

“I’ll tell you why,” said Charlotte slowly. She couldn’t look up, so she steadily regarded her linked fingers. “I went to a ball in Kent,” she said, “secretly. It wasn’t Julia’s fault; I wanted to go too. It was a masked ball and I powdered my hair, so no one could recognize me.”

Violetta had gone very still next to her. Her mother was staring at her in fascinated horror. She was too dumbfounded to ask why Charlotte had broken all the rules she spent years drilling into each of her three daughters’ heads.

“And what happened?” Adelaide finally said, evenly, when the room had been silent for several minutes.

Charlotte raised her miserable eyes to her mother’s. “I met a man,” she said, her voice trembling. “I met a man and I went into the garden with him.”

Whatever was in Charlotte’s eyes made all the anger in Adelaide’s chest melt like snow. She whisked over to Charlotte’s side, tucked herself against the headboard, and pulled her daughter into her arms.

“It’s all right, darling,” she whispered, rubbing Charlotte’s arm and kissing the top of her head, just as she had when Charlotte was a little girl and stubbed her toe. Charlotte didn’t respond, but she didn’t pull away. A silky curtain of hair fell over her face as she leaned on her mother’s chest.

“But—what happened then?” Violetta asked. “What do you mean, you went into the garden? Did you let him kiss you? What was it like? Did you enjoy it?” She reached over and gave Charlotte’s hip a little poke.

Her mother gave her a look she had rarely seen before. “Be quiet, Violetta,” she said.

And Violetta didn’t say another word. She had been about to admit to visiting the garden herself, with the marquess just last week, and
she
had quite liked it. But Charlotte had never been very interested in men … unless, and Violetta’s eyes grew round with horror, Charlotte allowed this man to take liberties with her, with her person. She drew in her breath and opened her mouth again, but her mother’s eye caught hers and she relapsed into silence.

Adelaide gathered her thoughts. Unlike Violetta, she had an excellent idea what had happened. Her little Charlotte, her baby, she thought, with a pain like a knife twisting in her heart, had been violated. By a man whom she could kill with her own bare hands. She clutched Charlotte closer.

Finally she cleared her throat and eased Charlotte into a sitting position. She put both hands on Charlotte’s shoulders and looked straight into Charlotte’s tearless green eyes.

“Are you all right, darling? Do you need me to … should I summon Dr. Pargeter?” Charlotte turned even paler, and just shook her head violently.

Adelaide stared at her silently. She needed to find out exactly what happened, but not in front of Violetta.

“Violetta,” she said. She couldn’t even think of a good excuse. “Violetta,” she repeated, looking at her elder daughter over Charlotte’s bent shoulders, “I want you to go to your chamber. No arguments,” she said firmly, heading off Violetta’s protest. “I will visit you in a few minutes and we will discuss all of this. Until then,
no one
is to know, Violetta, particularly not Alice.” Alice was Violetta’s maid.

So Violetta walked slowly out of the room, confident that she could pry all the details out of her mama later. Mama, she thought complacently, had always been putty in the hands of a good questioner. Why, she knew all about things she really oughtn’t to, such as what happened between a man and his wife, for example. She bet that Charlotte had never asked mama anything, and so she had no idea. Or perhaps she had? Violetta trailed back to her room, bursting with questions.

When they were alone, Charlotte drew a shuddering breath and started sobbing and speaking incoherently. “Oh, Mama, I met a man … in the garden. I kissed him. I didn’t think—he kissed me.” Her voice broke on a sob and she bent her forehead against her mother’s shoulder. How could she say it, what really happened? Her mother would be …

“I went with him, Mama,” she finally said, raising her head and meeting her mother’s eyes painfully. “I went into the garden with him, behind the trees, and he … he took my clothing apart. I’m so, I’m so—I didn’t stop him.”

Adelaide listened silently, stroking her daughter’s arm. It was both worse and better than she feared. At least Charlotte had not been raped. But she did seem to have abandoned all of the rules of society in an act of such recklessness that Adelaide’s stomach twisted just to hear about it. Behind the trees!
Anyone
could have seen them!

“What was his name?” Adelaide asked.

“I don’t know!”

“You don’t know,” Adelaide managed, and then, “Charlotte, he wasn’t one of Squire Brentorton’s footmen, was he?”

Charlotte gulped. “He could have been, Mama.” She began to weep even harder. Details flowed out amid sobs: the ball, silver-black hair, a green domino, the curate, the statue of Narcissus, the lemonade made with poor lemons.

Adelaide’s hand stopped its soothing motion. Who was this man? Charlotte’s description was none too exact, and there were so many gentlemen in London—if he was a gentleman, Adelaide thought bleakly. He certainly hadn’t acted like one. But Charlotte hadn’t acted like a lady, either.

Something nudged the back of her memory, something she’d heard about a young man with silver-shot hair, but she couldn’t quite remember what. They would just have to hope. She decided to send someone to Kent immediately to investigate the masked ball.

Finally Charlotte was cried out, and Adelaide came to a decision. She pushed Charlotte into a sitting position again.

“Now,” she said firmly. “We simply have to forget that this whole incident happened.” She looked into Charlotte’s eyes with every bit of maternal authority she could summon. “You cannot allow your life to be ruined because you had a momentary indiscretion in a garden, Charlotte.

“We have
all
been indiscreet on occasion. Why—” She paused and looked at her daughter’s innocent eyes. Not so innocent anymore, she reminded herself. This was going to be difficult. She had always thought of Charlotte as the daughter untouched by desire. In fact, she’d probably been much sterner with Violetta, given that Violetta was a girl one might picture enjoying a tryst in the garden! But Charlotte …

“Well, your father and I did exactly what you just did, before we got married. In fact, we weren’t even engaged.”

Charlotte looked at her with a gleam of interest. “You did?”

“We did,” her mother replied. “Not, I am glad to say, in the garden. It was … well, I won’t say where, but I will tell you that it was likely just as uncomfortable as your garden, and only slightly less imprudent. Believe me, child, people do odd things all the time. You were just terribly lucky.” She gave her a brief hug.

“No one knows.” Adelaide looked sternly into Charlotte’s eyes. “If no one knows, then it didn’t happen. Do you hear me, Charlotte?” She gave her a little shake. “It
did not happen
.”

Charlotte looked back numbly. Her mother must be insane. What did she mean, it didn’t happen? She could feel the imprint of the man’s body on her own at this very moment. She gave a little shudder.

“But, Mama,” she said uncomfortably. They had never discussed things like this before. “There was, at least, I, there was some blood, and …”

“Virginity,” her mother said astoundingly, “is a state of the body
and
mind. And believe me, child, I stayed a virgin for a good two weeks. You’ll see: When you find yourself in this situation again
—married
this time—it will hurt just as much the second time, and the third. There really isn’t any magical formula. You may not bleed on your wedding night, but actually many women never do bleed at all.

“You are going to this ball. You are going to have a good time, because you are
my
daughter, and I didn’t raise you to be a whiner. You made a mistake, and luckily you got away with it. You must never think about it again, ever.”

In the back of her mind, Adelaide reminded herself to send someone down to Kent to investigate that ball (better talk to Campion; he was so discreet). And she must remember to check, casually, that her daughter’s monthly flux appeared on time.

“You are beautiful and young, and a lovely person, Charlotte,” Adelaide said seriously, stroking her daughter’s hair. “When you fall in love and get married, it will be just as if it were the first time. Because in reality it
will
be the first time. You must forget this.”

You must forget this, Charlotte told herself dutifully that night in bed, on the morning of the ball, in the later afternoon as Marie delicately arranged the folds of her white ball gown, adorned with white-on-white embroidery and the faintest of pale green love knots.

The whole house hummed with noise. All the furniture in the reception rooms had been removed and stored. Every bit of space was needed for the five hundred gentlefolk expected. Cartloads of soft blue and deeper blue velvety delphiniums had arrived that morning and been arranged in huge vases. Huge swags of delphiniums adorned the staircase leading up from the drawing rooms to the ballroom, and the temporary staircase from the marquee in the garden to the house was lined in them.