Shana Galen (9 page)

“My mother and sister will be here to see you through,” her husband said. “I trust their choices and expect you to defer to their judgment in all matters. I want a full report when I return.”

“Return?”

“I’ll dine at my club tonight. If you refrain from assaulting my cook again, I’m certain he will make whatever you request.”

“Assault? I merely asked the man if he had any lemon water.”

Freddie waved a hand, dismissing her. He began to close the door behind him, but Charlotte pushed it open.

“You’re leaving, sir?”

“As you see.” He indicated his clothing, and Charlotte finally registered the reason for the quick change in his attire. He’d traded the soiled breeches for riding breeches, a charcoal tailcoat, and boots black as night. His hair, which she’d succeeded in loosening from its queue during their morning parlay, was once again restrained and tamed into some semblance of order. She frowned, thinking she liked the golden mass free and curling against his neck.

Much as she hated the English and their aristocratic ways, she could not deny that this man looked every inch a prince. More than his attire, his bearing suggested refinement and majesty.

And she was no princess. As high an opinion she’d had of her social dexterity, she knew now she was sorely outmatched when it came to London and its
ton
. She really did need Dewhurst and his stupid lectures if this ruse were to work. And she needed it to work. Perhaps that’s what vexed her the most. Guilty or not, she would not abandon Cade to rot in an English prison or to stand trial for treason, and she would not give up her one thousand dollars. To give up the money
would mean letting Addy down and returning to Charleston with nothing. She could not go back to the ruins of the life her father had left for her. She could not go back to those whispers and pitying smiles.

But if this—at this point she could only think of it as a madcap scheme—were to work, she would need more than a gaggle of feathered dresses. She’d need to survive in London Society until Cade came for her. For that, she’d need a husband. Or at least she’d need these people to believe Dewhurst was her husband, and that meant he had to appear to be in love with her, to want to be with her, to be so swept away with love that he
had
to have her, even though she was a—what had he called her?—an uncouth colonist.

Charlotte looked into Dewhurst’s eyes and frowned.

He frowned back. “What?”

“I think it’s better if you stay.” Because of their charade, Charlotte reminded herself. Not because she cared what he did or who he saw. “Your running out to see your mistress or dine away from me does not smack of marriage.”

He snorted. “Women’s idea of marriage perhaps, not a man’s.”

She put her hands on her hips. “Oh, really? Well, perhaps that is the case for other husbands, but I won’t tolerate it from mine.”

He crossed his arms over his chest. “And I
won’t tolerate a wife issuing me rules and orders. I’ll spend my time how and where I want.”

“And with whom,” she said, narrowing her eyes.

“Correct.”

Charlotte turned her back and shrugged. “Well, then I see no real reason to see this Madam Vivienne. If you can’t be bothered to spend one day at home with your wife—the wife you fell madly in love with and married, even though she’s naught but an uncouth colonist—then what I wear won’t matter. No one will believe this marriage were I dressed like a queen.”

Silence. Charlotte glanced over her shoulder at Dewhurst. “That is the story you and your poetic cousin concocted, is it not?”

He glared at her, his eyes sharp and hard like emeralds now. She raised a brow, and his look darkened. “I see what you’re trying to do, Charlotte, and it won’t work.”

“What I’m trying to do?” she said. “I’m trying to save my friend and ensure my one thousand dollars.”

“It’s one thousand
pounds
. And that’s your only objective?”

“Of course. What else?” She stared at him, saw the way he scrutinized her, and couldn’t help but let out a loud laugh. “Oh, heavens. What were you thinking, Alfred? That my pleas for your presence at home were a ploy to get you to fall in love with
me? To capture your heart and your title in truth?”

He didn’t respond, but she saw the faintest flicker of affirmation in those emerald eyes. Good. She’d set him straight. Set herself straight as well.

“Allow me to let you in on one tiny, little secret.” She sashayed up to him in her best imitation of a Southern belle. “Believe it or not—and I’m sure you do not—I am not interested in your heart or your title.” She reached up and traced a finger along the stiff cravat knotted at his throat. “I am not interested in London or your
ton
or all your silly rules. What I am interested in, sir, is my friend Cade Pettigru and getting back to Charleston. I am interested in the one thousand dollars you owe me, and I intend to be paid.”

He stared at her, face hard and expressionless as she wound two fingers around the cravat’s knot, circling it tightly.

“So you go out to your clubs and your women and your fancy society, but I will get what I want—one way or another.” She released his cravat and turned to sashay away, but Dewhurst gripped her shoulder and spun her round.

“You’re playing a dangerous game, Charlotte,” he growled. “One you don’t know the rules to and against an opponent you’ve sorely misjudged. I don’t play to lose.”

She looked him straight in the eye. “Nor do I, sir.”

He nodded. “Very well. Let the games begin.”

She smiled. “Oh, they already have.” He released her shoulder and turned back to the dressing room door. “Oh, and Mr. Dewhurst”—she neglected his title deliberately—“if I’m to be sleeping so close to you at night, I really must insist on owning the key for this door. If you would please hand it over, I would be much obliged to you, sir.”

He stopped mid-stride and looked back at her. “And I would be obliged if you would call me
Lord
Dewhurst, but we can’t all get what we want, can we, Charlotte?”

And he slammed the door.

C
harlotte would have laughed if Dewhurst hadn’t made her so angry. As though a pampered British aristocrat could even conceive of the notion of not getting what he wanted.

She had not been born into a wealthy family, but her father and mother had worked hard and improved their position until they were one of the well-to-do families in Charleston. Charlotte’s mother had been from an aristocratic British family and was the niece of a former governor of Georgia. When she’d married Charlotte’s father, they’d taken her small dowry, invested it, and built from there. By the time Charlotte was born, their wealth—all new money, which in Charleston was not the same as old money and never would be—had gained them an entrée into
some of the best circles. From all accounts, life for the Burtons had been perfect.

And then the first of the cracks in their porcelain life had appeared. Charlotte had been too young to remember the illness that took her mother. She remembered only snatches of her—her voice, her smell, her laugh. As expected, her father took the loss of his wife hard, but his remedy had been to throw himself into his work. Burton & Son Shipping grew and became one of the most successful companies in South Carolina. When Charlotte had come out at sixteen, she’d done so in the company of young women from the best families. And she had not disappointed. She had glittered and dazzled like the best of them.

And then the porcelain had cracked again.

Her father, whom she had loved more than anything—excepting her brother, Thomas—had begun coming home drunk or not at all. And then one night Cade Pettigru had pounded on her door in the middle of the night. She’d thrown on a wrapper and ushered him into the parlor. His face had been ashen and his eyes dark and haunted.

“What is it?” she said, coming to sit beside him on the settee. “Is it Thomas?”

He shook his head. “No,” he said gruffly. “It’s—let’s have a drink first, Charlotte. Do you have any brandy?”

She gave him a surprised look but rose to fetch it. Thomas was away on one of the company
ships, a routine trading run to New York that was scheduled to return late next week.

“Pour yourself a glass as well,” Cade said from behind her, and a flood of fear swelled and threatened to overwhelm her. She did as he asked, and when she was again seated beside him, took a slow, measured sip, trying to hide the growing trembling in her fingers.

“It’s not Thomas,” he’d said, after draining his glass. “It’s your father. Charlotte, I just came from Adelaide Cooper’s.”

Adelaide Cooper was the proprietor of a whorehouse and casino in town. Charlotte knew her father often gambled there. Cade loosened his neck cloth and looked down at the empty glass in his hands. Without a word, Charlotte went to refill it. When he’d warmed the liquid between both hands again, he said, “He’s lost it, Charlotte.”

Charlotte inhaled sharply. “What does that mean, Cade? Lost what?”

Cade sighed heavily, putting his head in his hands. “The business, Charlotte. Perhaps the house by now as well.”

Charlotte stared at him. His words made no sense to her. She understood them, but it didn’t seem possible that her father—the man who’d caught her effortlessly to prevent her childhood falls, the man who’d danced with her at her debut, the man who’d always left a lamp burning during thunderstorms because he knew without being
told that they terrified her—that man had let her down. That man had let them all down.

The remainder of the night was mostly a blur to Charlotte. She’d blocked out much of it because she did not want to remember the things she’d seen. She’d gone to Adelaide Cooper’s and helped Cade drag her father home, and then she’d sat up all night and most the rest of the day, nursing his overindulgence in play, women, and drink. And when he’d finally sobered up, she’d held him while he cried and apologized and begged her forgiveness.

She’d little time for apologies. Charlotte had gone to the shipping offices and began to put things in order. By the time Thomas had returned, she’d liquidated all the assets her father hadn’t lost and convinced several of her father’s good friends to loan her money. But no matter how much she and Thomas pleaded, the men her father owed would not accept substitutions for what they’d won. Half of the business—her father’s half—went to Beauford Porcher, one of her father’s competitors in the shipping industry, and her brother retained control of his own fifty-one percent only through sheer force of will. They held on to the house because Cade’s family owned the bank and was willing to overlook a few missed payments on the mortgage, but Charlotte had had to sell almost everything of value to salvage the family share of the shipping business.

In the end it had been sheer desperation and shame that drove her father and brother to attempt to run the British blockade with smuggled goods. If they’d succeeded, the profits might have been enough to restore the family to something of its former standing—monetarily, if not socially—but their failure and death had been a worse blow than any measure of poverty she’d ever had to endure.

After her father’s death, Charlotte had made a last effort to salvage the family business. She’d gone to Porcher and told him she had several investors abroad interested, and if he gave her perhaps six months, she’d have the funds to buy back what her father had lost.

Porcher was no fool, and he said immediately, “You thinking of Cade Pettigru. Is that it?”

Taken off-guard, she’d nodded.

Porcher had sat back, lit one of his long, sweet cigars, and said, “Do you know where he is? Do you even know if he has any money?”

“You leave that to me, Mr. Porcher,” Charlotte had said. “All I want from you is your word that if I return with the money, you’ll sell my father’s share of the business for what it’s worth.”

He was silent for a long moment—long enough for Charlotte to hear the creek of the cedar boards in the grand house and the call of a pine warbler, and smell the light fragrance of a magnolia tree—then he said, “I’ve always liked you,
Miss Burton. You take after your mother, and she was a fine lady, even if she lacked taste in her choice of partner. Further, Eliza Lou has always been partial to you.”

He gestured at the French doors with his cigar, and Charlotte glanced out to see his daughter walking the grounds with a cluster of her friends, their parasols brushing against the profusion of roses twined among the wrought-iron gates.

Porcher smiled and added, “I myself have always been partial to you as well. You have spunk, Miss Burton. And that’s a quality we need if this country is going to stand on its own two feet. The British haven’t beaten us yet, and if the next generation has as much spunk as you, the damned redcoats never will.”

Charlotte had smiled and gone away with assurances that, were she to return with ample funds, Beauford Porcher would sell her the Burton business back. She had no such assurances that Cade would be able to help; regardless, she and Addy had packed their meager belongings and set off for England.

Charlotte blinked and registered the gray, foggy view from Dewhurst’s window. And now she was here: the London town house of a British aristocrat. One thousand dollars. Was it enough to endure the next few hours with Dewhurst’s family and friends? Enough to endure Dewhurst himself for God knew how long?

Her thoughts were interrupted by a sharp rap on her bedroom door, which promptly swung open, admitting Lady Dewhurst, Lydia, and a petite, fine-boned woman with dark hair and exotic eyes.

“Here she is!” Dewhurst’s mother said when Charlotte turned from the window.

“
Mon dieu!
” the dark-haired woman exclaimed. She paused to look Charlotte up and down. “
C’est terrible
. You said is to be much work, but this…” She gestured feebly at Charlotte.

Charlotte’s first impulse was to tell the Frenchwoman where she could put her opinions, but she held her tongue, and was surprised to see Lydia Dewhurst step forward.

“Well, Madam Vivienne,” Lydia said, appearing to admire her tan kid leather gloves, “we called on you because everyone who is anyone says you outfit all the incomparables. But if this is too much for you, we can call on Madam Bichon. I am certain
she
can work wonders.”

The Frenchwoman’s eyes grew small and slitted, and Charlotte decided that Madam Bichon and Madam Vivienne were perhaps not the best of friends. Not only that, but Lydia Dewhurst was not as insipid as she might first appear.

“
Attente.
” Madam Vivienne raised a hand. “I have not said I cannot outfit the pretty mademoiselle. She has—
ce qui est le mot
—many attributes. Not the hair. Not the skin. But the figure
c’est trés
bon
. You wait. I will make her into
un diamant
.” Then she added more quietly, “I do much better than
la chienne
—Madam Bichon.”

Charlotte wasn’t certain whether she should be pleased or insulted—pleased that Madam Vivienne could make her into a diamond but insulted that the woman thought the task so difficult. Charlotte’s French was elementary, so she could not follow a great part of the discussion that ensued as the three women conversed in a jumble of French and English. It appeared, however, that they were discussing what colors, fabrics, and styles would suit her. Charlotte’s attention went from Lady Dewhurst to Lydia to Madam Vivienne and back again while the women debated, conjectured, and suggested. Apparently, Charlotte’s own opinion was not needed.

A few moments later, she was hustled onto a padded, satin footstool that seemed to have appeared with Madam Vivienne. There she was stripped to her plain petticoat, turned this way and that, measured, prodded, and poked with fingers and elbows and pins. Madam Vivienne was a virtual whirlwind, everywhere at once and with hands to spare. She always had a measuring tape, pins, a bolt of material, and a sketchbook and pencil at the ready.

When Charlotte’s legs began to tire and the muscles of her arm ached from holding them ex
tended, she ventured to inquire—very politely, she thought—whether they might soon be finished. She was quickly set to rights on that account.

“Charlotte!” Lydia exclaimed. “We’ve only just begun. We’ve measured you for opera dresses, theater dresses, and evening dresses—”

“
Non, non!”
Madam Vivienne said. “Keep the hands out.
Comme ceci
.” She extended her arms again, and Charlotte sighed.

“But why do I need theater dresses and opera dresses?” Charlotte said. “Won’t the same dress work for both?”

All three women stared at her for a moment, uncomprehending.

“Well?” Charlotte demanded.

“Actually,” Lady Dewhurst said, “We were to cover dinner dresses next.”

Madam Vivienne jabbed Charlotte with another pin, and Charlotte sighed in resignation. An hour later, she’d been fitted for not only the dinner and opera dresses, but morning dresses and carriage dresses, walking dresses and riding dresses, promenade dresses and garden dresses. Her eyes were glazed over with talk of muslins and silks, when she looked up and spotted Dewhurst lounging, shoulder jammed against the far wall of her room.

She shrieked and dropped her arms to cover her thin petticoat. Madam Vivienne, startled by Charlotte’s outburst, jumped as well, sticking Charlotte
in the arm with a pin. Charlotte jumped again, this time in pain, then pointed to Dewhurst. “What are you doing here?” she screamed. Then, looking at Lydia, “Why is
he
here?”

Lydia glanced at her brother and gave a delicate shrug. “Oh, he doesn’t trust anyone’s taste but his own. You’re not needed here, Freddie,” she called to him. “We are almost done.”

“We are?” Charlotte was momentarily relieved, then remembered Dewhurst. “Sir, I must insist you leave. I am not fully dressed.”

Dewhurst gave her petticoat his infamous lazy smile. “Nothing I haven’t seen before, my dear.”

Charlotte felt herself blush from the roots of her hair to the bottom of her feet. Even her toes were bright pink when she stared down at them. She would have flown from her perch and donned a dressing gown, a curtain, anything…but Madam Vivienne held her hostage with pins, tapes, and laces.

“In any case,” her husband said, “I
am
needed here. You can’t possibly think to dress her in that blue or that green. Those colors suit Lydia’s complexion, but will do nothing for Charlotte.”

“Freddie—” his mother began.

“No!” Madam Vivienne poked her head out from behind Charlotte. “Listen to this man. He knows of what he speaks. Monsieur, this is what I was saying. Put her in the russet or the gold. Copper, too, will bring out her coloring.”

“Exactly so.” He circled her, seeming to study her from every angle. She blushed even harder, her skin so hot that she felt that she might burst into flame. “Those colors will do well for evening, but I’m thinking yellow and peach for morning. Perhaps burgundy for a riding habit. No blue,” he said decisively, stopping in front of her and cocking his head to the side. “Blue will do nothing for that cinnamon hair and those sherry eyes. Keep her in dark, brazen colors. Those will suit her best.”

There was silence in the room as everyone stared at him. Charlotte’s jaw was hanging open, but she was too surprised to shut it. She had cinnamon hair and sherry-colored eyes? She would look best in dark, brazen colors? George Washington, but he was making her sound like some sort of temptress! She wanted to be offended. She wanted—once again—to slap him hard across the face until that lazy smile was permanently removed. Instead she found herself strangely flattered. He thought she was bold and dramatic. A temptress.

Then she remembered where she was and her state of dress—or rather, undress—and she tensed again.

The silence was finally broken by Madam Vivienne. Beaming, she danced out from behind the footstool, her little feet flying like bumblebees. “
Oui! Oui, monsieur! Exactement!
” She looked up
at Charlotte with new admiration. “
Votre mari est si à la mode. Entre nous
, you are
une femme chanceuse.”