Once Again a Bride

Four



Charlotte watched the candlelight waver on the pages of her book and listened to the silence. Propped up in bed with plenty of pillows, her bedchamber warmed by a bright fire, she should have been quite contented. No one would be criticizing the amount of coal she had used, or sneering at her choice of reading material. Tomorrow, no one would insult her in her own home, or look at her as if they wished she did not exist. But still, she found the emptiness oppressive. The narrow town house wasn’t large; she’d grown up in a sprawling place far bigger. Yet its four stories were meant to contain many more than one young woman and her maid. The rapid departure of the other servants had left too much space behind. It opened around her and kept her awake deep into the night, with too much time to consider her mistakes. How had she let her life come to this? Why had she not protested?

Her thoughts strayed back to her recent meeting with the solicitor Harold Wycliffe. That choice, at least, seemed wise. She’d been wary of Sir Alexander’s recommendation, but Wycliffe had proved to be a pleasant, middle-aged man, thoroughly sensible and competent, and so she had invited him to look over and organize all of Henry’s papers. His explanations were clear and sympathetic, if depressing. She would have a small income, enough to maintain the house and hire a few servants; enough, perhaps, to salvage some sort of life from the ruins of her fortune. But ruined it definitely was. Her legacy had been poured into the shelves and cases that crowded the first floor of the house like millstones around her neck. Henry had spent it so fast it was dizzying.

It also was maddening. And then to have to face vultures such as Mr. Ronald Herriton, a fat, blustering antiquities dealer, who had called insisting that Henry had meant for him to have his entire collection. He’d offered Charlotte what he called a “very good price,” a figure she knew could not approach what Henry had spent. And he had refused to believe that Charlotte was unable to sell him anything—this, when she would have liked nothing better than to be rid of every musty old bit. She and Lucy together had just barely gotten him out of the house.

Her only comfort in the chaos was Wycliffe’s parting remark. “There is nothing in the will, you know, that requires you to announce the creation of a museum.”

It had taken her a moment. “I must keep all his glass cases and bookshelves and pedestals as they are, but if no one is told…?”

Wycliffe had had a gleam in his brown eyes.

“No one will know to visit,” she added slowly.

He had departed with a smile, and Charlotte’s spirits had lifted for hours, until she realized that this did not answer the larger question of what her life was to be now. Henry had socialized only at his club. They’d never entertained; she had no friends in London. She could invite old chums from Hampshire, she supposed, but most were married and busy with their new families. And the thought of any of them entering this cold museum of a dwelling made her flush. She could so easily imagine their astonished glances, their hushed pity.

Could she not have fought harder against Henry’s scathing sarcasm, the servants’ sly mockery? Even better, could she not have refused to marry him at all? What was wrong with her?

A vivid memory from the months before her marriage arose. She had come upon her father in his cherished library. But instead of reading or making notes, he was turning slowly in the center of the room, his face an alien mask of bewilderment. “Where is the Symposium?” he said.

From their years together, she understood what he meant. “Plato is there, Papa, with all your Greek books.” She pointed to a rank of shelves.

His dark eyes had flickered, lit. “Elinor. Are you back so soon, my dear?” he responded.

Elinor, Charlotte’s mother, had been dead for ten years, and Charlotte did not at all resemble her portraits. “Father?” she’d replied in a shaken voice.

For a terrifying instant, he had gazed at her with an absolute lack of recognition. It was as if she faced a stranger in her beloved father’s image. Then he’d recovered, laughed, insisted it was the sort of momentary lapse that might happen to anyone. But it wasn’t. And it wasn’t the first. Charlotte had felt the rock of her existence turning to sand. She’d been in shock when he insisted she marry, she thought, and his insistence had so reminded her of the man who had held and guided her whole life. She’d had to see him as right. Tears clogged her throat. He hadn’t been right. He’d been dying.

Something thumped downstairs. Charlotte swallowed, frowned, and dismissed it as the settling of an empty house. She was almost used to being startled by how different it sounded uninhabited. The noise came again—not a creak—much more substantial. Probably nothing, she told herself, and didn’t believe it. Heart pounding, she slipped from her bed, picked up a candlestick, and opened the door a crack. She heard rustling, a distinct footstep. Someone was downstairs. Lucy?

She tiptoed across the hall and opened Lucy’s door. She had moved her maid downstairs for company. Lucy curled peacefully in sleep, but the wash of candlelight woke her. “Wha…?”

“Shhh. There’s someone below,” Charlotte whispered.

Lucy threw back her covers, and they stood together at the head of the stairs, straining their ears. Another soft bump; if Charlotte had been asleep, it would likely have gone unnoticed. Bug-eyed, Lucy wrapped her arms around herself.

The candlestick wavered; hot wax dripped onto the lace at Charlotte’s cuff. She was just as frightened as Lucy looked, but something within her refused to be intimidated any longer. She drew in a deep breath and spoke as loud as she could. “Jonathan, I believe there is someone downstairs. Go and see.”

Lucy goggled at her.

Charlotte swallowed and spoke again, pitching her voice as low and gruff as she could. “Yes, ma’am. Right away.” She stomped heavily on the hall floor, trying to sound large and dangerous.

There was a crash downstairs and a flurry of footsteps. Then all was silent. Charlotte went still, listening with every fiber of her being.

“Miss…?”

“Shh.” All senses on high alert, pulse still hammering, she let the minutes tick by. “I think they’ve gone,” she concluded at last.

“Oh, miss! When you spoke…” Lucy sagged against the wall. “Jonathan?” Her laugh had a ragged edge. “Was it the footman from home you were thinking of?”

Home would always be Hampshire. Charlotte nodded.

“I wish he was here! What are we going to…?”

“Right now, we are going into my bedchamber and locking the door. In the morning we will consult Mr. Wycliffe.” Charlotte tried to keep her voice steady, but it shook.

Lucy heard the tremor and automatically tried to think of some comfort as she followed her mistress into the room and watched her turn the key. Lucy had known Charlotte Rutherford since she was seven years old—a sweet child, the sort the whole household had cosseted when her mother died. It had been so hard to see her sad. It was not long after that tragedy that Lucy had become her personal maid. At just five years older, she had often felt like a big sister, and had many times consoled and advised like one. At this moment, however, she found no comforting words to speak. The creeping sounds below had thoroughly unnerved her.

Miss Charlotte put the candle on the nightstand and climbed back into bed. At her gesture, Lucy joined her in the big four-poster. “Can we leave the candle burning?” she ventured.

“Absolutely.”

Lucy appreciated her crisp tone and her resolute look. She’d been brave as a lion tonight, speaking right up and scaring off the burglar. More like her old self, the mistress of the Hampshire house, a grown woman, not a forlorn little girl. As they settled on the wide feather mattress and her pulse slowed, Lucy hoped Miss Charlotte might have a plan. She’d spent all that time with her father, learning historical things and who knew what else. Her head was chock-full of ideas, and surely some of them must come in handy now. Lucy curled up under the coverlet and tried to relax.

Mr. Rutherford had been an odd duck. Lucy knew he’d loved his wife and daughter, but sometimes it was hard to see. He’d go off into his library and just… forget about everything and everybody else—dinner, appointments, outings, birthdays. He’d caused a load of disappointments he never even noticed. If somebody—Miss Charlotte, say, when she was small—complained, he truly didn’t understand at first. The promise, or whatever it was, had just slipped away, no unkindness meant. And the worst of it was, when he was put in mind of it again, he was crushed. He took it so hard that you felt miles worse for having mentioned it. It got so the household just ignored his forgetfulness right along with him. It was easier.

Which hadn’t served Miss Charlotte well with her poor excuse for a husband, Lucy thought. If she’d complained… but no. He wouldn’t have listened; he’d just have made life even more dreary, though Lord knows how it could have been. The trouble with husbands was you were stuck with them, with the law all on their side, as she understood it. Lucy sighed and turned over, careful not to wake Miss Charlotte, whose breathing had evened out into sleep. At least he hadn’t been a lecher. Lucy didn’t know what she would have done if he’d laid his dry old fingers on her charge. The very idea made her shudder.

The minutes ticked past, and Lucy lay awake in the silence. Tonight’s disturbance had unsettled her, but these days, if she woke in the middle of the night, she found it hard to go back to sleep. All her life, she’d shared a room, first with her sisters and then with another maid; she didn’t like falling asleep and waking alone. Houses were meant to be full of people. Of course, empty was better than full of nasty people like Holcombe—wasn’t it? Lucy realized she wasn’t sure. Maybe any people were better than this awful emptiness. They had to get in new staff soon as may be.

Lucy wasn’t completely clear on the state of their finances. She knew they couldn’t go back to Hampshire. The estate was sold and gone. She thought there was money to hire some new servants, but how did you do that in this huge dirty city? At home, families knew each other, and vouched for you. Her grandmother had been a friend of Mr. Rutherford’s cook, and had recommended her for a position. Everybody knew Gran would skin her if she misbehaved. Back home, you understood who you could trust and who was likely to let you down.

Did people in London even have families? Well, they must, o’ course. But how did you find them? Who could you ask if there were good people looking for posts? She had no idea, and she didn’t think Miss Charlotte did either. Maybe London servants were all like the lot who’d left. Why, the very robbers who’d crept about downstairs could apply, and they’d never be the wiser.

Lucy had a moment of sheer fear. What were they going to do? Then she remembered. They were going to see Mr. Wycliffe tomorrow, and she’d bet money that he would tell Sir Alexander what had happened. If he didn’t, she would—somehow. Between the two men, they’d know what to do and, more importantly, how to do it. With that thought, Lucy settled into sleep more happily than she had for quite a while.

***

At first light, they went downstairs together. Lucy carried a heavy candlestick like a club. They found one display case pried open, with an empty space where some object had been taken. A piece of pottery lay on the floor, but not broken. The flimsy lock on the French doors leading to the tiny back garden had been forced.

Having no one to send, they took a cab to Wycliffe’s office themselves.

And so it was that Alec found himself facing Charlotte in her drawing room little more than a week after their first meeting. He’d been called away from some particularly urgent letters—dire even—about conditions in Derbyshire; a sense of emergency, of looming disaster, gripped his consciousness. And now there was this. “The house is empty but for you and your maid?” he said again. He couldn’t believe it. The girl looked flustered and anxious and hardly older than his sister Anne. She was, apparently, incapable of managing a household.

“I will be hiring servants.” She made an impatient gesture. “Mr. Wycliffe and I could have dealt with this matter. I don’t know why he bothered you…”

“He was obliged to tell me as executor of my uncle’s will. And how would you have done that, exactly?”

“What?”

“How do you intend to ‘deal with’ a burglary?”

“I… I…”

Of course she had no idea. Very few people, in Alec’s experience, were capable of decisive, intelligent action. “This is a serious matter.”

“I know that! I am the one who was here, and might have been murdered in my bed!”

And so, people substituted emotional outbursts for clear reasoning. The ploy was all too familiar to Alec. “You will come and stay with my sisters.”

“No, I won’t.”

“You propose to remain here alone?” He could see in her face that she didn’t want to; she was sensible in that, at least. He waited for her to suggest a plausible alternative. She merely sulked. “I brought my carriage. Have your maid pack up your things. I will speak to Wycliffe.” She started to protest, clenched her fists, then her jaw. Her visible struggle was oddly affecting. Torn, she was perhaps trying to be sensible. What had she said at their first encounter? Alec had a vague impression that she’d had more than her share of difficulties lately. But he had no time.

“What is your plan?” she blurted out as he turned away.

“I shall place a couple of men in the house to watch over it, and to catch the thief if he returns. They will put in a much more effective lock, of course. And I shall notify the watch and the magistrate…”

“I would have done that! Notifying, I mean.”

Alec waited. She said no more. “Pack your things,” he repeated, and went downstairs to consult with Wycliffe about hiring an investigator to look into this incident.

An hour later, he was relieved to find Charlotte and her maid with filled valises, ready to depart. Checking another task off his list, his mind returned to the letters on his desk and the seemingly inevitable tragedy unfolding in the countryside. As they drove from his uncle’s utterly unfashionable neighborhood to more familiar districts, Alec didn’t notice the looks exchanged by his two passengers, or the deepening anxiety in Charlotte’s hazel eyes.