Charrie’s and Prue’s sister, Hope, had reluctantly agreed to take leave from the bookshop where she worked, to come and care for the children while Charrie and Prue travelled to Kent.
“I have to meet his wife,” Charrie insisted.
“I might have known you would encourage her in this stupidity,” Hope told Prue. These were the first words her next-older sister had directed at Prue since she arrived at the cottage, and before that she had not spoken to Prue in nearly five years.
“I think it foolishness, yes,” Prue agreed. “But Charrie won’t accept the truth unless she sees it with her own eyes. And she cannot make plans for the future until she has accepted the truth.”
“The truth. How will that help her? She is ruined, just like you. What would Father say if he knew?”
Prue flinched at the thought.
Hope continued. “And those poor children with her. Your poor little girl may have stood a chance with a respectable aunt and uncle, but now! Faith and I told her not to marry that man. An aristocrat, courting her on the sly while she was still at school! We knew no good would come of it.”
Prue remembered the past slightly differently. The twins, Faith and Hope, had been jubilant when they had discovered their sister’s suitor planned marriage, and had willingly entered into the wedding plans. It was Prue who had been suspicious, not that any of them listened to her: her own judgement with men had landed her with a baby born out of wedlock, as all three of them pointed out. But even Prue had not been suspicious enough.
They left Hope still grumbling and journeyed two days to the south coast of Essex, to make their assault on the Stocke family estates.
In the post chaise, they had explored a dozen different ideas for approaching the countess, and for what they might say when and if they were able to see her. But in the end, simple was best. They stayed overnight in an inn in the village of Fishinghame, and in the morning, after a breakfast Charrie did not eat, set out to walk to the great house.
“What if she will not see me, Prue?”
“Then we shall make another plan.” This conversational path had been traversed a hundred times, but if Charrie needed it, Prue would listen another hundred.
“What if she does see me? What on earth can I say? Show me your marriage lines? Are you sure you are married? Lady Selby, we have something in common. A husband.” Charrie’s harsh cough of laughter had no humour in it.
“I cannot advise you, Charrie. You must decide. Do you want her to know what he has done to you? Or do you just need to know for yourself that he was married to her before you?”
They had discussed this before, too, many times in the fortnight since Prue first brought the news of Selby’s perfidy to the cottage. But the next part of the conversation changed as Charrie vacillated between telling the countess all (out of pity or spite, Prue was not sure), and walking away with her dignity and secrets intact.
This time, Charrie argued her way around all the points for and against, which took her the full mile from the village, along the lane, down the long, curving drive, across the courtyard, and up the steps to the front door, where she faltered.
“Should we go to the back?” she asked.
“Not if we wish to be received by the countess,” Prue counselled.
They were both dressed in their best. The bonnets were particularly fine: Charrie’s hand with a bonnet was as good or better than any London milliner. They would not be turned away on account of their looks or manners, though the lack of a carriage or describable errand may stand against them.
A butler answered the door. Charrie appeared to have lost her tongue, so Prue said, “Miss Prudence and Miss Charity Virtue to see the Countess of Selby.” Confidence was the thing. If she sounded as if she expected to be obeyed, she usually was.
“The Countess of Selby and her sister are from home,” the butler replied, but Prue insisted, “The younger Countess of Selby, if you please. I have already called on the Dowager.” She stepped forward, towing Charrie in her wake, and the butler did not disappoint, standing aside to let them in. But once they were in the entrance hall, he stopped, not meeting their eyes, his hands nervously twisting together as if he were washing them.
“I am sorry. I don’t quite know… That is to say…”
“Tell your mistress that the Misses Virtue are here,” Prue said firmly.
“But Lady Selby does not have visitors,” the butler bleated.
Prue raised her brows in imitation of the Duchess of Haverford at her most disdainful. “Please give Lady Selby our message.”
Cowed by her manner, the butler showed them into a small parlour and went off to find his mistress.
They waited only a few moments. The door opened for the mistress of the house, a modestly dressed lady of around Charrie’s age. Indeed, she might have been Charrie’s twin, so alike they were: both fair-haired, slender but shapely, their perfectly oval faces featuring wide blue eyes with absurdly long lashes.
“The Misses Virtue? I do not believe we have met. But it is kind of you to call. Will you stay for tea? I am afraid my mother-in-law and Aunt Enid are from home, but you asked for me, Finch said? Finch,” she turned to the butler. “Tea, please. In the morning room.”
The butler, still wringing his hands, hurried off.
“Come through this way, please. I do not know why Finch put you in here.” Forehead creased, she led the way towards the back of the house and into a large, sunny room, marred by a plethora of embroidered cushions in colours that clashed with the curtains, the walls, and one another.
It would otherwise be a pleasant place to sit, Prue thought. The proportions were good, and daylight streamed in through long windows that, when opened, would give access to the garden. Even on this cold day, the sun gave warmth, and a fire in the hearth also made the room comfortable.
Charrie, though, had been drawn to the painting over the hearth: a recent portrait of the man Prue knew to be the Earl of Selby.
“Please, be seated. Do I know you?” She turned to Charrie. “I feel as if I have seen you before.”
“In your mirror, perhaps, my lady,” Prue suggested, and Lady Selby turned those startled blue eyes towards her, and then back to Charrie.
“You are right. You could be my sister. Are you? Is that what you came to tell me?”
Charrie, speechless, shook her head.
“No. Well. I did not think so. It would be nice to have family, even on the wrong side of the bl… I beg your pardon. Selby says I allow my mouth to run away with me.”
Charrie leaned forward. “Oh, but that is what…” She trailed off and looked helplessly at Prue.
No. This was Charity’s idea, and her conversation to have.
“Have you come far?” Lady Selby spoke to fill the silence.
“From Tidbury End,” Charrie managed. “In Bedfordshire.”
“Oh. That is nice.”
“I live there. In Tidbury End. With my children.”
Lady Selby nodded, agreeably. “That is nice,” she said again. The puzzled frown was back.
“Sometimes my husband lives there, too,” Charrie added.
Lady Selby opened her mouth, but quite visibly decided another ‘that is nice’ would not be helpful.
“He travels for business.”
“But…” Lady Selby had spotted the discontinuity. “Finch said… are you not Miss Virtue? Did I misunderstand?”
Finch, as if his name conjured him, pushed in a tea trolley and placed it in front of his mistress. He fussed around rearranging the cups. “Cook said she has not baked today, my lady,” he apologised in a whisper. “She cut some bread and buttered it, and there is a piece of pound cake.”
Lady Selby patted his hand. “Excellent, Finch. Thank Cook for me.”
Once he left the room, she apologised. “I do not normally eat cakes, you see. Selby says it might make me fat.”
“But you love it, do you not?” Charrie asked. “And when you were younger, it never troubled you?”
“No, indeed, for when I was younger, I walked a great deal, but Selby says…”
“It is not proper for a lady to go out unaccompanied, and he cannot afford to pay a servant to tag around after someone who ought to be at home looking after his house and children, as is her duty.”
Lady Selby’s eyes were rounder than ever. “Goodness gracious me. It almost sounds as if you know my husband!”
Charrie burst into tears.
Lady Selby reached her before Prue, putting a consoling arm around her. “Oh, my dear, whatever is the matter?”
“He lied to me. He lied to you, too. I am so sorry. I should not have come. Prue, I should not have come.”
Prue took her sister’s reaching hand, and gave it a squeeze, but she spoke sternly. “Charrie, you need to make up your mind. Do what you need to do. Say what you need to say.”
Charrie pulled herself together and looked at Lady Selby.
“Four years ago, I married Samuel Stocke, nephew of the last Earl of Selby, cousin of the present earl.”
“But… that is impossible. Samuel Stocke died nearly seven years ago. And it was his father who was cousin of my father-in-law. My father-in-law has no brothers, and my husband has no first cousins. You cannot be married to Samuel Stocke. And if you are, he is not who he said he was.”
Charrie’s laugh was bitter. “Oh, he is not who he said he was. Not if that,” she pointed at the portrait, “is your husband, the Earl of Selby.”
Lady Selby nodded. “Yes. That is Selby. You do not mean…” She frowned, her eyes narrowing. “You do. No. Surely, even Selby…” Her voice ran out.
“I am sorry, my lady,” Prue said. “I have met the man who called himself my sister’s husband, and I have met Lord Selby. They are one and the same.”
“But you would say that,” Lady Selby pointed out. “You are her sister.” She had withdrawn her arm from around Charrie, and now she moved to put some distance between them. “What do you want from me? Money? I have none, and if I did I would not give it to you. I should send for the constable and have you arrested, coming here with your lies.”
“I brought a miniature.” Charrie took it from her reticule and held it out. The countess drew back a little more, then reached out nervously, taking it with care, as if she were afraid of its bite.
“This proves nothing,” she declared. But the conviction in her voice did not reach her eyes.
“You need not be afraid. You have been married longer than I, from what my sister has learned.” Charrie’s bitterness coloured her tone. “I am the mistress, not you, and my children the bastards. We have been wed five years this June.” She burst into tears again.
“Five years last January,” Lady Selby said. “We were married in January.”
She shifted uneasily, opened her mouth to say more, then busied herself with the ritual of spooning tea into the warmed teapot and filling it from the urn.
Prue put her arm around Charity and handed her a handkerchief.
“We have not come to cause trouble, my lady, if that is what you fear. My sister thought you had a right to know.”
“Why? How does it help me?” Lady Selby’s complaint was muttered to the teacups rather than to her unwanted visitors.
After several minutes, Charity collected herself sufficiently to peel herself off Prue’s shoulder. “I beg your pardon, Lady Selby. We should not have come.”
Lady Selby handed her a cup. “I put cream in it. And sugar. I thought you needed sugar.” She frowned. “I could make another if that does not suit.”
Charrie took a sip, murmuring thanks.
“I suppose you would not let him take you, even though he promised marriage?”
“He wanted me to sneak out of school to meet him at night, but I would not. I said we had to wait until the ring was on my finger.”
“Yes, I said the same, and my mother was still alive. He charmed her, but not enough that she would leave me alone with him.”
“He charmed my sisters, too.” Charrie darted a look at Prue. “Not Prue. My other sisters.”
“And they gave their consent to your wedding.” Lady Selby sighed. “You look hardly out of school now, Miss—may I call you Charrie? And you shall call me Charissa. After all,” her smile was shaky, but real, “we are, in some sort, related, are we not?”
“Please. Call me Charity. Selby calls me Charrie. Or Char sometimes. I hate it.”
Prue was startled. She had not known. She had just fallen into the habit of calling her sister by the name Charity’s supposed husband used.
Charissa was intrigued. “Really? He calls me Char. Or Charrie sometimes. I suppose he forgets who he is with. I wonder if he calls his mistresses by the wrong name?”
Charrie… no, Charity, giggled. “Perhaps he only beds women called Charity or Charissa.”
Charissa appeared taken with the idea. “Or Charlene or Charmaine or Charlotte.”
“His mistresses—his other mistresses—are welcome to him,” Charity said, bitterly.
“Charity, I am so sorry. What wickedness!”
“I thought it must be true, for here you are, living in Fishinghame Hall. And my children and I hidden away in a little village, forbidden to go anywhere or do anything.”
“As am I, and my children. My mama-in-law and aunt have been permitted to go to London, but Selby has never allowed me to go with him, or even to visit with the local people. Indeed, you would not have been permitted entry, except most of the household has gone to London with the dowager, and Camwood, Selby’s steward, was called away. Finch should be retired, poor dear, but he is kind, at least. Selby says the air in London is unhealthy, and I am never to ask again, or I shall be sorry.”
“Does Samu… Selby hit you too?” Charity asked, and Prue stiffened. She could do nothing for Lady Selby, but that bastard would not hurt her little sister again.
Charissa nodded. “But husbands must correct their wives, Charity. It is the way of things.”
Prue had to strain to hear her sister’s quiet reply: “He enjoys it.” Both Charity and Charissa flushed bright scarlet.
“Oh, Charity,” Charissa said. “Well. You shall stay the night, and we shall talk some more. Have you brought your children with you? How many are there? Would you like to meet their sisters and their brother?” Still talking, she rang for Finch, ordered a bedroom prepared, and sent a footman to the inn for their luggage.
Prue’s protests that they did not want Charissa to be in trouble with her husband were met with a terribly familiar mulish expression. There would be no shifting her.
“He will not object. How can he object to me entertaining his own wife, while he is off with his mistresses and who knows how many other wives and families? Besides, whatever happens, I will have this day with my new friends.”