Her mother began to speak as soon as the door to the carriage swung shut. No throat clearing; the uncomfortable moment was here, without any preamble.
“This is your last Season,” she said, staring at Charlotte with an uncompromising gaze. “It is not that your father and I cannot afford to give you another one, of course, but if there is no point to it …” She let her words trail off, still pinning Charlotte with her eyes.
“No point meaning if I do not snag a husband?” Charlotte asked, refusing to avert her gaze from her mother’s. She could be just as stubborn as her mother.
“Precisely.” Her mother finally looked away through the window of the carriage. “You have done nothing to attract any kind of eligible bachelor. In fact, I wonder if you are attempting to actively dissuade them.” She looked pointedly at Charlotte’s gown. It was not the first time she had made the accusation. “But that is of no matter.” She cleared her throat. “Mr. Goddard will be asking your father if he may pay his addresses to you.”
Charlotte’s chest tightened. That was what the two of them were discussing. And she knew her father would agree with whatever his wife wanted.
Which was for her to be married to the man seeking a substitute mother. With a healthy fortune.
Damn.
“There is nobody else who will come up to scratch. You’ve made sure of that with your absurd gowns and your plain conversation. Have you heard the nickname you’ve gotten?”
She must have taken Charlotte’s continued silence as a yes.
“But all that will go away once you are safely married.” Safely married. As though by being unmarried she was in a dangerous situation.
“I don’t wish to marry Mr. Goddard.” She couldn’t detail in just how many ways she didn’t want to—she didn’t think her mother would appreciate her thoroughness in spelling it out.
“Mr. Goddard will make an admirable husband.” Her mother’s tone of voice said it was decided.
“But what about me making an admirable wife?” Charlotte retorted. “I think it would be best for both Mr. Goddard and myself if I could learn how to manage a household, and care for children, and …” And stall for time. Even the prospect of writing a fashion column no longer seemed so bad as what else might be in her future.
“… and all those things you know that I don’t, that would make me into what Mr. Goddard wants.”
If her mother bought this, perhaps Charlotte should look into a career as a charlatan. Or an actress.
“Now you are thinking as I’d always hoped, my dear.” It made her feel awful that her mother sounded so proud and so fond of her daughter, just when her daughter was lying through her teeth. “But Mr. Goddard has expressed his desire to be married soon, and you can learn all of that after you are safely wed, and since there is no impediment.”
There is plenty of impediment, namely that I do not wish to be married, much less to him.
Charlotte interrupted before her mother could complete her thought. “If this is to be my last Season, it will be yours also. Not that you couldn’t come to town, but it wouldn’t be the same.” She reached her hand out to touch her mother’s arm. “Shouldn’t we enjoy these last few weeks? Parties, dancing, trips to the theater … all those things we won’t have after when we are both married ladies. Would you deny us that?” She widened her eyes at her mother and blinked a few times, so as to look more sincere. At least she hoped so.
There was silence, during which Charlotte could only hear her heart racing. Please, please, please.
“Hm.”
“And I might surprise you—perhaps someone else will offer for me. What if some shy young gentleman has been waiting for a chance with me, perhaps the distant heir to a dukedom? Would you deny your daughter the chance to be a duchess?”
More silence.
“I know how stubborn you are,” her mother said at last. I learned it from you, Mother. “If you must have until the end of the Season,” she continued in an aggrieved tone, as if it weren’t something she’d enjoy more than her daughter, “then fine. And then you will receive Mr. Goddard as a suitor. Heaven knows,” she added as an aside, “it is not likely that anyone else will offer.”
Having gained more time made her mother’s despair almost bearable. Now she just had to figure out what to do, how to stall, what plan was next.
Almost as easy as it would be for the Abomination to write a fashion column.
Or as easy as dressing discreetly.
***
“Your assignment, it is going well, then?” Gotam held the boot out for David to step into, then yanked his foot down. Not gently.
“She was at the haberdasher’s for some reason, yes.” Where she walked away from him. He felt shallow for being piqued, but damn it, he was. No woman had walked away from him since he was ten years old. And even then it was his older sister.
“Did Lord Bradford say she knew what he’d asked you to do?”
David stomped his foot down in the other boot, narrowly missing Gotam’s fingers. “He didn’t, but she can’t. No woman could have that knowledge and not reveal she knew, somehow.”
Gotam pulled the riding jacket from the wardrobe, shaking his head as he shook out the jacket. “Once again you underestimate the ladies. When will you learn, David?” He held the jacket in front of him and gestured for David to turn around. “I cannot wait to meet the lady who will conquer your resolute dismissal of their gender.”
David pulled the sleeves down his arms. “It is not as though my disdain is limited to the fairer sex, Ox. I don’t think anybody could know something and not reveal it, somehow.” He raised his head so Gotam could drape his cravat around his neck. “Besides, you will be waiting a long time if you hope for a female to conquer me.”
“But you will be married, eventually.” Gotam spoke with so much authority, David found himself almost agreeing. Then shook his head.
“I will not marry just anyone.” As though it were even up for discussion. Gotam should be the diplomat, not him—he could persuade anybody to consider anything with just a few well-chosen words.
Gotam dismissed him with an airy wave of his hand. “Not just anyone, of course not. Some lovely woman who won’t mind leaving her country, who is healthy enough to withstand our heat, and who will be there when you need her.”
“You make her sound like a pet.”
Gotam chuckled. “That is what most of the available women are like, at least those in your class, David. A pet. Someone you can caress and play with when you are in the mind to and who won’t mind when you leave.”
It sounded awful. And just like most of the marriages he’d seen both here and in India. In that area, at least, the two countries were on par with each other.
He could never marry a woman knowing he didn’t love her, and likely never would. Not to mention insisting she accompany him no matter where he went.
It was what his peers did regularly, however. No one would question that he had the right—not to mention the family, fortune, and face—to marry almost whomever he wanted.
Gotam tightened the knot around his neck, an irony that did not escape David’s notice.
“But returning to your assignment—you merely need to court the young lady in question? Convince her and the rest of her Society that you are sincere in your admiration?”
David nodded, hating the feeling of being used for his looks, for his charm. But if he wanted to return, to be useful again—he had to.
“It should be no problem to convince her of anything, Mr. Gorgeous,” Gotam continued. He knew David hated the nickname he’d earned from the local village. It was Gotam who’d obligingly translated what they called him. He’d initially assumed it was something like “Peacemaker” or “Excellent Speaker.” He felt like an arse when Gotam told him.
But if being Mr. Gorgeous got him back to India, back to work, back to feeling like more than just a male in elegant evening clothes, he would do it. And Lady Charlotte would be dazzled.