The Temptation of the Night Jasmine (17 page)

‘Very much, sir.’ Now did not seem to be the time to voice her latent reservations about Fanny Burney’s portrayal of human nature. ‘You were kind enough to make me a very pretty present of her books.’

‘Miss Burney was a friend to me, a true friend.’ To Charlotte’s shock, tears began to wander along the weathered cheeks. ‘Where is one to find such friends again? Lost, lost, lost, all lost.’

The sheen of tears in the folds of his face glittered in ironic counterpoint to the gleaming Star of the Garter on his breast. An icy weight settled in Charlotte’s stomach. She felt frozen in horror, watching the broken shambles of the monarch who had only hours before affably received various notables and asked after her grandmother’s dog.

Had it begun this way before? No one at the palace liked to talk of it, but the memory of it was like a palpable presence in the palace at all times, there in the quick, sideways glances when the king began speaking too quickly, or the strain that sometimes entered the queen’s face when she looked at him when she thought no one else was watching. Although the royal household had tried to keep it quiet, Charlotte knew that the dreadful mania had emerged again only three years ago. Leaving state acts unsigned, the king had been taken off to Kew, ‘for a rest,’ it was said, but the mad-doctors had gone with him.

‘Sire …’ said Charlotte helplessly. ‘Are you … are you quite well?’

The king pressed a trembling hand to his stomach. ‘The foul fiend does bite me in the belly,’ he whispered hoarsely. ‘The little dogs and all, Tray, Blanch, and Sweetheart, see, they bark at me.’

The dogs were clearly straight out of
King Lear
, but the grimace that transfigured the king’s face left no doubt that the stomach pain was more than a literary allusion. ‘Sire,’ said Charlotte again, ‘if you are ill—’

‘No!’ he said, so violently that she fell back a step. ‘I will not be ill. Don’t let them make me ill, Lady Charlotte.’

‘No, sire,’ Charlotte whispered, feeling tears well in her own eyes. ‘I shan’t let them, I promise.’

Surely it had to be a good sign that he had remembered her name? From all accounts of his previous illnesses, they had all begun with a rapid spate of speech. The king wasn’t speaking quickly now. If anything, his words had a sluggish quality to them, like a man who didn’t know whether he woke or dreamt.

The veined old hands closed around her own, weak as parchment. ‘You are a good friend, Lady Charlotte,’ the king said brokenly. ‘A good friend.’

He spoke with such touching affection that it was all Charlotte could do not to give way to tears herself. ‘It would be hard not to be a good friend to Your Majesty when you have always been so good to me.’

Please let him not be mad, she prayed. Please let him just be tired and sick. Anyone might be tired and sick and confused … just not mad. If the king were to be mad again, the possibilities were horrifying. All state business to grind to a halt, the hideous struggles over who should take the reins of government, the Prince of Wales’s ghoulish glee at his father’s incapacity, and, worst of all, the sorrow of the queen. It was said that last time her desolation had been terrible to behold.

‘This is why it is best to have daughters.’ For a moment, Charlotte thought that he had confused her again with the Princess Amelia, but he added, in a stronger tone, ‘Never have sons, Lady Charlotte, or they shall publish your letters in the papers.’

‘Yes, sire.’ The reference was clear. Not a month before, the Prince of Wales, in a fit of pique, had made public all his correspondence with the king, whining about the king’s treatment of him.

‘Monstrous unnatural creatures, eh what? Eh what? Has the world ever seen such pelican sons?’

‘No, sire.’ It was all Charlotte could do not to rise up on her toes and wave in relief as the door to the king’s bedchamber burst open and a decidedly harried figure in knee breeches and plum coat came hurrying out.

She was less relieved when she saw who it was.

‘Sire!’ panted Lord Henry Innes, resting his large palms on his knees. ‘You haven’t finished your tonic.’

‘A stomach tonic?’ Charlotte asked hopefully.

Lord Henry dismissed her with a glance.

‘This way, Your Majesty,’ he said with forced joviality, as though she weren’t even there. ‘The doctor is waiting for you.’

Blinking in the light, the king followed him obediently enough, but the lost expression in his eyes was enough to make a stone weep.

As Lord Henry handed him over to a white-wigged attendant, the king glanced piteously over his shoulder at Charlotte. ‘You won’t let them make me ill again, will you, Emily?’

‘No,’ Charlotte whispered as the king was whisked away out of sight. ‘No, Your Majesty.’

With the king safely away, Lord Henry braced himself between Charlotte and the door, standing like Henry VIII with his legs spread wide and his hands on his hips. It was a pose that worked better in a doublet and tights, with a ham haunch in one hand.

‘Apologies for that, Lady … er …’

Charlotte’s wide-skirted Court dress and single egret feather provided the indication of her rank, but otherwise he was at a loss. Charlotte imagined he didn’t spend much time looking at ladies’ faces, at least not if the way his gaze was angled towards her neckline was any indication.

‘Charlotte,’ said Charlotte. ‘Lady Charlotte Lansdowne. I’m in waiting to the queen.’

Charlotte forbore to add that he had just spent the Christmas season living in her house. That would only cause unnecessary confusion, and Charlotte was far more concerned about the king than a man who had obviously been dropped on his head as a youth. Repeatedly.

And this was the sort of man with whom Robert chose to spend his time? That ought to have warned her, if nothing else had.

Lord Henry might only be capable of one idea at a time, but whichever he held, he held doggedly. ‘If you’re with the queen,’ he said, with the air of a man pronouncing a mathematical theorem, ‘shouldn’t you be upstairs?’

‘I came down for a book.’

‘Book?’ Lord Henry looked blankly around the library as though it had only just dawned on him that that was what the room was for, and that the little rectangular thingies embedded in the walls weren’t just another decorating motif. ‘Ah, right. Don’t have much use for the things myself. Bit late for a book, isn’t it?’

Now wasn’t the appropriate moment to give him her speech on how good fiction transcended time. Other matters demanded more immediate attention. Charlotte felt slightly sick at the thought of it, but it had to be faced.

‘Is his Majesty’ – Charlotte couldn’t bring herself to voice the dreaded word – ‘in need of assistance? Should I fetch the queen?’

‘No, no,’ Lord Henry said heartily, waving his huge hands in negation. ‘No need to disturb the queen. Don’t want to raise a ruckus, eh what?’ Apparently, the king’s speech habits were catching.

Charlotte carried on doggedly. ‘But if—’

‘Nothing of the sort!’ exclaimed Lord Henry, a little too hastily. ‘His Majesty only had a bit of a stomach upset. Took a little too much rich food today. Doctor’s on hand. Nothing to be worried about.’

‘But he seemed to be wandering in his speech …’

Lord Henry shrugged in a way that implied a little woman had no business bothering an important attendant of the king with trivialities. ‘Nothing like pain to make us all a little loopy, eh? Don’t want to keep you. Best be going back to the queen, what?’

Stepping back across the threshold into the king’s rooms, he started to push the panel closed.

‘One thing, Lord Henry.’ Lord Henry’s hand stayed on the door panel and his eyes rolled back in his head in an oh-nohere-it-comes gesture. ‘Should his Majesty’s … stomach upset worsen, you will send word to the queen, won’t you?’

What Lord Henry really wanted to send for was a muzzle for use on interfering maids of honour. He did not exactly have the most guarded of countenances. He must, Charlotte thought irrelevantly, lose a fortune every time he sat down to cards.

‘It’s just a stomach upset,’ he repeated. ‘No need to concern yourself.’ He didn’t exactly add ‘bloody interfering female,’ but the words were implied. And, then, in a last burst of lucid speech, ‘Tell that cousin of yours I’ll be seeing him next Thursday!’

With a concatenation of wood against wood, Charlotte found herself staring at a closed door.

She felt a powerful urge to kick it.

T
he next day dawned clear and bright. In the light of morning, with the sunlight streaming through the east-facing windows of her borrowed bedroom at Loring House, the events of the night before seemed nothing more than a hideous phantasm, too outrageous to be real.

Curled up in her comfortable nest of linen and down, with the branches of the trees in the square waving a cheerful good morning, Charlotte couldn’t help but feel that she had been extremely silly. She indulged in a moment of gratitude that she hadn’t acted on her first impulse and run tattling to the queen. With her spirits already in turmoil from her interview with Robert, carried away by the Gothic atmosphere of books and candlelight, she had given way to exaggerated imaginings fuelled by – what? Nothing more than the king confusing her, in a dark room, with his daughter Amelia, and complaining of stomach ache, albeit in somewhat florid terms. Candlelight played all sorts of tricks.

Goodness only knew her powers of perception hadn’t been anything to boast about of late.

Rolling over, Charlotte buried her face in her pillow. The down billowed comfortably around her face. Perhaps she could just stay here. For a year or so. She felt sore all over, in that hollow way one did after an emotional crisis once the storm had already flooded through. It was easier to be angry than to be hollow, but the anger just wouldn’t seem to come. Oh, but she had been an idiot!

With a resolute shove, Charlotte emerged from the bedclothes flushed but determined. No more calling herself names – even if she had been utterly, entirely idiotic to have believed … well, that was all beside the point now, wasn’t it? She had had a long, teary session with Henrietta the night before, but that was all over now. There was nothing to be done but to take the whole, sorry incident as a salutary lesson and never, ever behave so foolishly ever again. No more tears, no more regrets, and absolutely no more Robert.

She supposed she would have to see him again from time to time in the normal course of things, but there was no reason to dwell on it. Girdings had twenty-two bedrooms and twelve major reception rooms; they could live in the same house for years without so much as passing each other in the hallway.

Rolling out of the bed trailing the bedclothes along with her, Charlotte squinted shortsightedly at the china clock on the mantelpiece. Eleven o’clock! Henrietta must have left orders she wasn’t to be disturbed. Either that, or the entire staff was still engaged in laundering the flotilla of handkerchiefs she had gone through last night, while Henrietta patted her arm and repeated ‘but I don’t understand’ until Charlotte didn’t know whether to hug her or kick her in the ankle; Miles hovered just outside the drawing room door with the air of a man who would like to be helpful but doesn’t know how, popping in from time to time with bloodthirsty and unhelpful solutions like keelhauling, horse-whipping, and light braising in boiling oil, which at least had the benefit of making Charlotte hiccup through her handkerchief with snotty gasps of laughter in between bouts of concerted sobbing.

At least the keelhauling had been preferable to Henrietta’s determined incomprehension. ‘But he seemed so devoted!’ didn’t do anyone the least bit of good, no matter how well Henrietta meant by it.

Hopping in her haste, Charlotte kicked off a bit of sheet that was unaccountably clinging to her ankle and shimmied into her chemise, managing to get it wrong way round on the first go. The maid must have come while she was sleeping and cleared up the discarded debris of her court dress. Not so much as a crushed egret feather remained on the floor as a reminder of the night before. Someone had even removed the broken quill she had left lying next to her diary and replaced the stained blotter. Her poor diary had taken quite a beating the night before.

But that was all done with. Charlotte defiantly donned a bright red spencer over her white muslin dress. The queen liked red, after all. And she wasn’t going to skulk around in mourning just because her fairy tale had turned out to be nothing but an extended fit of self-delusion.

But she wasn’t supposed to be thinking about that, was she?

Grabbing up her reticule, Charlotte hurried down the front stairs, dodging a length of drapery that someone had unaccountably left hanging from the banister. Henrietta was in the process of redecorating Loring House from the ground up, so one had to be alert for ladders, lengths of fabric, and bits of miscellaneous masonry. Not only Henrietta and Miles but the entire staff of Loring House had been lovely about adopting her as a surrogate daughter of the house. Fortunately, the servants seemed to find her habit of leaving books open on odd surfaces more endearing than annoying.

As Charlotte made her way to the door, buttoning her gloves and expertly navigating around three chairs that usually lived in the south drawing room, a carefully calculated cough brought her up short. Miles’s butler Stwyth had mastered the art of exhalations that, at the same time, managed to be both unassuming and yet resonate through an entire room. It was a most impressive talent.

‘There is a gentleman to see you, Lady Charlotte,’ he intoned. Stwyth’s displeasure at this social irregularity was displayed only in the quivering tufts of hair above either ear, which served as a fairly reliable barometer of the old retainer’s moods. ‘I have taken the liberty of showing him into the morning room.’

A gentleman, was it? Sir Francis Medmenham must have made good his promise to call. It was rather flattering that he had been quite so prompt. Charlotte doubted Lovelace would ever have hauled himself from his bed before noon, just to pursue Clarissa.

‘Thank you, Stwyth,’ she said with a smile that made Stwyth thaw ever so slightly. ‘Good morning –
Robert
?’

If she had tufts of hair like Stwyth’s, they would have been quivering for England.

‘Charlotte,’ he acknowledged, turning away from his perusal of the French porcelain on the mantel to greet her. The morning light wasn’t kind to him. Fatigue – or more likely dissipation, Charlotte reminded herself – had riven deep purple patches beneath his eyes. ‘I take it you were expecting someone else?’

‘I certainly wasn’t expecting you,’ blurted out Charlotte, jolted into honesty. ‘I thought our paths weren’t to cross.’

‘Consider this more of a brief and necessary uncrossing.’

It was like looking at a stranger, but a stranger wearing a loved one’s face. It wasn’t fair, Charlotte thought furiously, for him to look so familiar and yet be so strange. It was one thing to know that the man she thought she saw wasn’t the man she was seeing; it was another thing to teach her heart to believe it. Even now, part of her still wanted to coo and flutter at him.

Charlotte crossed her arms tight across her chest, a makeshift sort of armour against an insidious enemy. ‘To what do I owe this uncrossing, then?’

Robert pushed abruptly away from the mantelpiece, very rudely presenting her with his back as he stalked with jerky movements towards the window. All the practiced gallantry he had displayed at Girdings seemed to have disappeared along with his pretended affections. But it wasn’t his gallantries that Charlotte missed the most; it was those moments when he was at his most matter-of-fact, too plainspoken to be anything but sincere. It had been an excellent act.

Robert braced his hands on the windowsill, staring fixedly into the square. It would be a pretty view in summer, with the park in the middle of the square, but now the trees were black and barren, as knobby as witches’ knees, and the only pedestrians promenading were white-capped nannies and their heavily bundled charges.

‘Sir Francis Medmenham intends to ask you riding,’ he said to the windowsill.

Charlotte stared at his back in wide-eyed disgust. ‘And he sends you as emissary?’

It was one thing not to want her himself, but to so coolly pass her along to a friend, to turn from lover to pander within the space of a month … Bile rose in Charlotte’s throat. Even Lovelace wouldn’t have behaved so.

‘No!’ Robert jerked around to glower at her. ‘He isn’t aware I’ve come to see you.’

‘How shocking.’ Relief made Charlotte acid. ‘I hadn’t thought you went anywhere without him.’

Her bolt hit home. Robert’s knuckles whitened around the windowsill. ‘I have come to request that you decline Medmenham’s invitation.’

‘Oh, have you?’

‘Yes,’ Robert said stiffly.

Charlotte might not have wanted to go riding with Medmenham before, but she did now. Despite having grown up in the country, she had never been much of a rider. Horses tended to realise when you were thinking about something else entirely and had a tendency to use those moments to dump you in the nearest hedge. But she wouldn’t miss this ride for the world.

‘Do you think I can’t keep my seat?’

Robert’s blue eyes darkened. ‘Not on a ride such as this.’

‘Don’t worry,’ said Charlotte flippantly. ‘If I take a tumble, I won’t come crying to you.’

Robert’s lips moved, but no sound came out. She appeared to have rendered him incapable of speech.

Charlotte had never seen outrage quite so profound, and all because she had made a comment about falling off her horse, which didn’t seem like it ought to be the sort of thing to make a man start breathing gusts of flame.

As she watched Robert’s face move from tan to crimson, it belatedly occurred to Charlotte that tumble might, just might, have more than one meaning.

Charlotte went pink straight to the tips of her ears. Oh, no. He couldn’t think …

He clearly did.

‘I meant off my
horse
!’ she all but shouted.

‘I know that,’ Robert snapped.

‘That’s not what you were thinking,’ she muttered.

Could a duke blush? This one seemed to be colouring up nicely. ‘You don’t know what I was thinking,’ he gritted out.

‘No, we’ve established that, haven’t we?’ said Charlotte brittlely. ‘Several times.’

‘Then I’ll make myself very plain this time.’ Robert spoke very slowly and clearly, as though to the village half-wit. He was still breathing heavily through his nose. He might not want her for himself, but the notion of her dallying elsewhere clearly discommoded him.

Charlotte lifted her chin and regarded him haughtily, in her best imitation of her grandmother squishing the peasantry. ‘And what are your pronouncements, O Master?’

Enunciating every syllable, Robert pronounced, ‘If Sir Francis Medmenham asks you to marry him, don’t.’

Charlotte blinked. She had missed a vital link there. So, as far as she could tell, had Robert. Since when had a ride in the park become a euphemism for matrimony?

Charlotte abandoned her duchess impression to wrinkle her nose at her erstwhile lover, who had clearly gone utterly mad. Or maybe he had always been utterly mad and she just hadn’t realised. Much more of this and she would go utterly mad.

Madness must be in the air.

‘He hasn’t even asked me to go riding yet. I only have your word on it. And we both know what
that
is worth.’

‘Well, if he does, don’t.’

‘Go riding with him or marry him?’ Taunting Robert was actually rather fun, once one got into the swing of it. Poking him with little sticks would probably be fun, too, but there weren’t any to hand. Too bad.

‘Either.’ If Robert gritted his teeth any more, they were going to fall out. Charlotte watched the process with fascination and no little satisfaction. Serve him right to be a toothless wonder. That would put a spoke in his future seduction plans.

‘I don’t see by what right you tell me to do – or not to do – anything.’

‘By my
right
as the head of the family.’

‘Oh, naturally!’ Charlotte wafted her arms in the air. ‘The same right you exercised oh so diligently all those years while you were away in India. The same right you employed with such stunning’ – Charlotte ground to a stop, momentarily at a loss for a suitably scathing noun – ‘
conscientiousness
by running away.’

A wry expression settled across Robert’s face, painfully reminiscent of the man she had known at Girdings. ‘Which time?’

‘Either,’ Charlotte shot his own word back at him. ‘You needn’t pretend you have the slightest concern, however minuscule, for my well-being or happiness. You just don’t want your little friend being diverted by matrimony.’

If she hadn’t known better, she might have thought that he looked … sad. That was nonsense, of course. ‘Right. Naturally. You’ve hit it entirely,’ he said tonelessly. ‘Will you grant me my request?’

‘No.’ Some inner devil prompted Charlotte to add, ‘I haven’t so many suitors that I can afford to lose one. Even if he is yet another piece of rotten fruit.’ She let that sink in before continuing, ‘But at least he makes no pretence about it. He’s never pretended to be anything else. Now may we consider this interview at a close?’

It would have been a very impressive speech if her voice hadn’t cracked at the end. With a flourish, she gestured towards the open door into the hall, where, she had no doubt, Stwyth and at least two under housemaids would be busy dusting the wainscoting along the side of the door.

Robert briefly closed his eyes, in a gesture indicative of unspeakable weariness. Without moving, he said, ‘I’m sorry I hurt you. If you believe nothing else I say, believe that.’

‘You’re right,’ Charlotte said, and waited deliberately, cruelly, before adding, ‘I don’t believe anything you say.’

Plunking her nose firmly in the air, she turned on her heel and swept out, nearly tripping over a crouching maid in the process.

Robert didn’t make any attempt to pursue. She could see him reflected in a vast Baroque mirror propped against the wall awaiting rehanging. He didn’t move. His expression didn’t change. He just stood there in Henrietta’s blue and white morning room, watching her walk away.

She should have felt triumphant. She had said all the sorts of things she had always intended to say, but never actually did. And it had been easy. They had just come pouring out. But instead of feeling victorious, she just felt drained. And very, very confused. How could he say he hadn’t meant to hurt her when he had? Why come and bedevil her when he had made it very clear he hadn’t wanted anything to do with her? Charlotte’s gloved hands curled into fists at her sides. It just plain wasn’t
right
.