Potent Pleasures (6 page)

“Enough!” she said, still chortling. “Girls, shall we return to the ballroom?” And she ushered the three young women before her, not missing the languishing look cast back by Miss Isabella Riddleford. I wonder which one she’s after, Adelaide thought, and looked back herself.

The older twin, Alexander, was standing quite straight and watching them with a slight frown. His deep black eyes caught hers. Well, Adelaide thought, I certainly hope Charlotte went into the garden with the singer! This one is so moody-looking. One of Adelaide’s friends had a husband who brooded and Adelaide felt tired just hearing about his woes.

She turned briskly and herded her charges into the ballroom.

“I didn’t see the girl herself,” said one young gallant, the Honorable Peter Medley, to a friend the next morning in White’s.

“I did,” said his friend Justin. “She was nothing special. None of the bounce her sister has. But did you hear what the Foakes twins got up to later? I heard that Alex knocked out three of the watch before they managed to calm him down.”

Peter looked at Justin suspiciously. Since when did he know the future Earl of Sheffield and Downes well enough to call him Alex?

“Where’d you hear that?” he asked.

“From old Beckley.” Justin nodded across the room. Sure enough, Beckworth Cecily clearly had burning news to relate; he was surrounded by a small group of men whose faces mingled open amusement and condemnation.

So Adelaide’s plans for the prince’s ball came to naught. By four days later it was open knowledge that Woodleigh Foakes had ordered his sons onto ships bound for the Continent and the Orient. Just as the Honorable Sylvester had surmised, the heir (Alexander) was bound for Italy and the spare (as he was jocularly known) was bound for more exotic, if dangerous, travels in India. They weren’t expected back for at least two years.

Adelaide kept silent, wondering if she should have dashed up the stairs and dragged Charlotte down to the ball. For a few weeks she was tormented by regret: What if she had? What if Charlotte had been seduced by one of the Foakes twins? What if they had come to the ball specifically looking for Charlotte? Finally her common sense comforted her. There were so many men in England with silver-black hair.

Then Campion brought her the succinctly worded report of a Bow Street Runner who wrote that the Saturday night Cyprians’ Ball was a regular feature of the Kent countryside. It was attended by nobles and gentlemen, but also by every other sort of person including, of course, prostitutes. And hearing where Charlotte had been, Adelaide felt sick but resigned. Most likely Charlotte was right. She had met a handsome footman in the twilight.

Besides, Adelaide had other problems. Charlotte’s ball may have been a success but Charlotte herself was not. She spent hours in her room painting. She went to balls only when threatened with terrible punishments like the removal of her canvases. She hung listlessly around the edges of rooms full of her chattering contemporaries, and complained of boredom. She developed a cool, impenetrable glance that ranged over the assembled ranks of men and dismissed them all. It was a brave twenty-two-year-old who requested a second dance with her, since she seemed to have no small conversation and terrified empty-headed young gentlemen by asking them what they thought of events on the Continent.

After a while, Adelaide forgot about the dark eyes of Alexander the senior and the velvety voice of Patrick the junior. And Charlotte presumably forgot about her tryst in the garden … at any rate, it was never mentioned between them again. Mother and daughter spent their time, if the truth be known, bickering over Charlotte’s refusal to attend society functions and her contemptuous air when she did.

Adelaide didn’t understand that, to Charlotte, the young men she met paled next to the memory of
his
face; Charlotte didn’t understand her mother’s growing terror at the prospect of her daughter’s marriageless future. She had taken to painting flowers, and she was happiest in her room, delicately copying the dusky gold shade of a lily.

To Charlotte, the future was clear. She wouldn’t marry one of the silly boys she had met so far; she probably wouldn’t marry at all. The prospect didn’t bother her too much. What did bother her was wasted time and slow dances, tepid lemonade and too-tight dresses.

By a year later she too thought only rarely about the man she met in the garden. When she did think about the experience, she saw it as a lucky event that made her a woman overnight and taught her to see what she wanted. Without it, she’d have been herded into some man’s arms by the end of her first season, Charlotte thought contemptuously. She’d probably be pregnant by now, and her husband would be romping at Ascot while she was left at home.

Charlotte stood back from her easel, looking at her latest picture, of a tawny tiger lily. The lines of the stem were not perfect, but the color was splendid. This, she thought, was a far better life.

Chapter 3

London, England
May 1801

T
he spring Charlotte turned twenty, her family gave up hope of her marrying. In the three seasons since she had come out she had done surprisingly well, considering that she rarely attended balls and had to be coaxed into attending garden parties and tea parties and rides in the park, the normal activities for gently bred young ladies.

But when she did come to a ball, she was never ignored. After her miserable first year, she gathered a circle of gentlemen about her who applauded her wit. If they secretly admired her lovely curves, they quickly learned to keep silent. Even the most innocent of compliments, say a comparison of Lady Charlotte’s eyes to stars, was met by a calm but freezing withdrawal.

“I can’t understand it,” the Earl of Slaslow gloomily told a friend, leaning in the corner of Almack’s and watching Charlotte gracefully circle the floor. “I didn’t even think that much of her in the beginning, but she …”

“I know,” said David Marlowe, a mere younger son of a squire, destined for the clergy. “I know: She ignored your compliments, and piqued your curiosity, and now you are caught. Women!” David was disgusted. Clearly the little baggage was playing Slaslow like a fisherman with a trout.

No one would honestly refuse the Earl of Slaslow’s attention. Why, Braddon was the best catch on the market this year, if one discounted the enormously wealthy, but terribly old, Duke of Siskind. And Siskind was just looking for a nurse to take care of his eight children, everyone knew that.

But here was Braddon, as glum as a trout on the river-bank, and this Charlotte
had
turned him down for a second dance, that was a fact. At this very moment, she was circling the floor for the second time with that old gossip Sylvester Bredbeck. And chortling with laughter at a story Sylvester was telling her.

“Why don’t you write her a poem or something?” David suggested, nudging his friend.

“I did,” Braddon said dismally. “It wasn’t bad either. I pretty much stole it out of one of the old books lying around my library;
you
know.”

David did. Not that he’d read any of those books, of course, but he’d had many a smoky game of piquet in Braddon’s walnut-paneled library.

“It wasn’t bad,” Braddon insisted. “I said that her hair had pearls threaded on each strand, something like that, and that her eyes were suns and her teeth were crystals.”

“Pearls—threaded on each strand,” David repeated dubiously. “I don’t know, Braddon. What’d she say?”

“She laughed.” The earl crossed his arms over his chest. “She just laughed, and she said thank you, and then later she accidentally sat on the poem.” He looked mutinous at David’s snort of laughter.

“Wilkins had copied the whole thing out, on parchment, mind you, and he tied it with a ribbon and a flower. But she got up to greet someone, and then sat on it later and crumpled the whole thing, and she did
not
look sorry.”

David looked at Charlotte with greater curiosity. A woman who crumpled the Earl of Slaslow’s literary efforts (no matter how poor) really was quite different from the run-of-the-mill young miss.

“The thing is,” Braddon continued, lowering his voice a bit, “I could see living with her, you know? I have to get married—I mean, my mother is after me like one of those Furies in Greek drama, you remember them? Well, she doesn’t have snakes for hair, but really, it’s the same idea. She snaps at me every morning.” Braddon shuddered slightly. “And my sister, Marge, is the same. You’d think she would be happy enough with her own four brats, but no, she’s after me all the time to—to
spawn!
” he ended savagely.

David weighed the trouble of being urged to spawn against that of being a younger son whom no one would ever want to marry, given his complete lack of income. Still, he was free. He was in Almack’s only because he was visiting his old friend; it wasn’t him that all those hungry-looking young women kept eyeing.

And this Charlotte: She was beautiful, in her own way. She was wearing a rather plain gown, but even so, one could tell that she had a lovely bosom. Her hair was so black that it kept catching the gleam of the chandeliers overhead.

“I think you should do it,” he said firmly. “Look around here. All these girls look alike. Now, if that one can laugh, and she can ride a horse—she can, can’t she?” David paused anxiously. Braddon lived for his stables.

“She rides like a dream,” Braddon said.

David cast another glance at him: Braddon really was far gone. “Well, why don’t you pop the question, then?”

“You think so?” asked the Earl of Slaslow anxiously.

“Definitely,” said his closest friend. “You could even ask her father now; I think he’s in the card room.”

“Oh, no,” said Braddon, lounging back into the corner. “My mama’s been dinning this whole thing into my ears for months. I go in the morning and send in my card, and then I see her pa, and then I see her, and the most I do is kiss her forehead, so I don’t scare her off.”

There was a little pause.

David was feeling sorry for Braddon’s mother. The new earl had a head as hard as brick; David clearly remembered trying to fix certain facts in Braddon’s skull during their time at Eton, just basic ones, like the date of the Battle of Hastings. If you repeated things about eight times, they would stick for a matter of a few hours, long enough for an exam. It was always touch and go. Yet surely asking for a girl’s hand in marriage couldn’t be that difficult.

And that was how Charlotte conquered the biggest catch on the market. She rejected him just as quickly. When her papa summoned Charlotte for a private meeting with the Earl of Slaslow, Charlotte turned Braddon down flat, gently explaining that she liked him enormously, but wouldn’t he be happier with Miss Barbara Lewnstown? Barbara and Braddon seemed so well-suited, given that she loved horses just as much as he did.

Charlotte’s mother went to bed for three whole days, and wouldn’t speak to her daughter for two weeks. Braddon went away glum and unconvinced, and when he next glimpsed Miss Lewnstown he gave a ferocious grimace and turned away.

By 1801, Charlotte had received solid offers of marriage from some eight gentlemen, only two of them known to be interested in her dowry. The other six wooed her for her green eyes and her slow, unhurried smiles.

No, Charlotte will never get married, her mother and father admitted, lying in the ducal bed on a Thursday evening.

“It’s the painting!” the duchess said. “Oh, Marcel, she’ll dwindle into an old maid … I’m so unhappy,” she said in a burst, tears rolling down her face.

“Well,” said Marcel uncomfortably. “Violetta married quite late; why give up hope for Charlotte?” Marcel was a large, quiet man whose French first name had been given to him by his romantic mother. It had caused him quite a bit of embarrassment in the past few years, especially in 1797 when republican France threatened to invade England.

“I think,” he said, settling his wife’s head firmly into the crook of his shoulder, “we should just loosen the reins a little. What if she doesn’t want to go to parties? Let her paint.” He thought of adding the fact that he was tired of arguments about balls, but he didn’t.

The duchess wriggled her head against her husband’s shoulder. He was a sweet man, but he had no idea of the daily vexations that greeted a woman who never married, the snubs and insults that were already being doled out to Charlotte.

“But what about when … where will she live?” Adelaide said despairingly. “Horace will inherit this house and the one in the country, and he’ll want to start a family, and who’s to say that he would want a maiden sister living with him, especially one who has a reputation for an unladylike interest in painting!”

“I’ll tell you what,” said her spouse comfortably. “The other two girls are settled. Winnie’s husband will never lack blunt and Violetta’s marquess is doing just fine. I’ll turn that Welsh estate over to Charlotte, you know, the one that I inherited from Aunt Beatrice. It’s not entailed, and it turns a pretty profit. With the land and her dowry, she’ll be right and tight.”

Adelaide thought about it. Their eldest daughter, Winifred, had married Austen Saddlesford, a madly wealthy American, and gone off happily to live in Boston, and Violetta had married the Marquess of Blass, and indeed, neither girl was hurting for money. And Horace would inherit all the ducal holdings; he wouldn’t begrudge the Welsh inheritance.

Characteristically, she saw it from a slightly different angle than did her husband. Marcel thought, kindly enough, that with the Welsh rents Charlotte could live comfortably and buy a house in London if she wished. But what Adelaide immediately grasped was that the Welsh estate—a little Elizabethan manor house and its land—would turn Charlotte from the very well-endowed daughter of a duke into being a remarkable heiress. And
that
, she thought sagely, would perk up interest in her daughter and what’s more, would stop tongues wagging about her being an old maid. A great heiress just didn’t fit the category, somehow.

One never knew; perhaps the right man would come along for Charlotte, and now it wouldn’t matter if he wasn’t wealthy.

“Marcel, you are a wonder,” Adelaide said gratefully, rubbing her hair against his shoulder like a silken cat.

So the season of 1801 opened on a rather different note for Charlotte. Ignoring all her protests, her father had signed over to her a quite vast amount of land in Wales.

“You might as well get used to the responsibility while I’m around to advise you,” he said, signing the last papers with a flourish of his quill. The duke’s thin, prunelike lawyer, Mr. Jennings of Jennings and Condell, shuddered delicately, inside of course. Jennings and Condell did not approve of women holding property of any kind and Mr. Jennings foresaw endless bother after the Duke of Calverstill passed away.

On her side, Charlotte quickly realized that owning a house made her very happy.
She
owned a manse in Wales; twenty-three people lived and farmed near the house, and some three hundred sheep grazed on her land, according to the manager’s report. She read the latest reports over and over. The newspaper gained an interest that it never had before. When workers destroyed looms in the Cotswolds, she shuddered. What if riots spread to Wales?

As soon as possible, she promised herself, she would go to Wales. She could just imagine her mother’s horror if she suggested such a thing now (the trip! the dirt!), but perhaps in the fall … with a chaperone, of course.

And the season was better because it seemed to Charlotte that her mother was becoming more comfortable with her rejection of eight worthy suitors. Adelaide stopped looking at her with a pained expression. They even began speaking again without sorrowful innuendoes underlying every conversation.

In fact, Charlotte didn’t notice immediately that her mother was no longer prodding her into attending social events. One night she walked into the dining room and realized the room was bare.

“Where are my parents, Campion?” she asked the butler.

“I believe the duchess is attending a
fête de champagne
given by Lady Bridgeplate, and I am not cognizant of the duke’s location,” Campion replied, holding out her chair with a flourish.

Charlotte looked at the table. “What are we eating tonight, Campion?” she asked.

Campion brightened. He loved to talk about food, although this family simply didn’t appreciate it as they ought to.
“Poulet à la diable, crab rémoulade
, and
fraises à la Chantilly.”

“Oh,” Charlotte said flatly.

She sat down and stared at the steaming consommé that Campion placed tenderly before her. The solitary life was, well, so
solitary
…. Perhaps she should find a companion. She thought of an elderly lady with a cap, and pursed her lips. Perhaps not. Two old maids, she thought. She didn’t feel bitter, but it did seem tedious.

Perhaps she had made an error. In the course of fending off eight marriage proposals, Charlotte had discovered that, in fact, she didn’t have a wanton sexual response to each and every man who tried to kiss her. When the Earl of Slaslow offered his well-phrased and elegant proposal, she responded in dulcet tones; when he refused rejection and hauled her into his arms, kissing her fiercely, she didn’t respond at all. Instead she stood with her mouth tightly closed and except for grinding his teeth against her lips, there was nothing he could do about that. So Braddon gave up and backed away, even pouting a little.