Chapter Thirty-Four
Emma and Lucy were sitting in the drawing room, finishing a tea tray, when Charlotte walked in, flushed, out of breath, and still in her riding habit.
“Charlotte! Did you…were you…riding?” Emma asked.
“I…um…visited a horse,” Charlotte said. She looked down and picked something from her sleeve, though Emma could not see that anything had been there.
Emma glanced at Lucy and saw her own confusion reflected in her friend’s expression.
“I see.” In fact, Emma did not see at all. Visited a horse? The answer was odd, to say the least. Though the girl did have a riding habit on, and Emma knew she could not possibly have gone riding, so…perhaps a visit was what had occurred.
“I have an urgent matter to discuss. Privately,” she added, with a glance at Lucy.
Emma and Lucy exchanged curious looks.
Lucy rose and smoothed the front of her dress. “I was just commenting that I should see to packing my things. I’ve had a lovely visit, but I will be returning to Beadwell in the morning.”
Emma and Charlotte waited in expectant silence for Lucy to retire from the room, then Emma turned to a flushed and anxious Charlotte. “Sit down, dear. What is your urgent matter? If something is troubling you, I’m certain we can address it.”
Charlotte did not sit. She remained standing, wringing her hands, in the center of the room. “Why did you marry my brother?” she blurted.
Emma stilled. “That is your urgent matter?”
“No. Well—sort of.” Charlotte paced. “It’s not really, but I’d like to know the answer before we continue.”
Emma watched Charlotte continue to pace and fidget. What on earth had prompted her question? “Charlotte, why don’t you sit?”
Charlotte did as Emma asked, looking up at her with wide, expectant eyes.
Emma swallowed. “I will tell you,” Emma began, “that your question is rather impertinent and I would be entirely justified in refusing to answer it.”
Annoyance flashed through Charlotte’s deep blue eyes. John’s eyes. They were an uncanny match.
“I will answer you the best I am able, though. Our lives have been thrust together, so we may as well know each other better.”
Charlotte nodded, thus signaling the point in the conversation in which Emma should supply the promised answer. She tapped her fingers on the upholstered arm of the sofa. “Yes. Well, then,” she said. The answer. Yes. Hmmm. She sighed. “I suppose I agreed to marry your brother because it was the sensible thing to do. Women must be practical. Marrying your brother provided me with security for my future and, besides, he needed my help.”
“For me.”
“For you, yes.”
Charlotte considered this response, which Emma sensed did not resolve whatever burning question the girl desired to have answered. “In my experience,” Charlotte said, after a lengthy pause, “whenever anyone says they chose something because it was sensible, usually that means there was another, less sensible choice they would have preferred. Did you want to marry someone else?” She asked the question very plainly, her expression void of accusation.
Emma coughed. She smiled. “No. I was not hoping to marry someone other than your brother, but your judgment is correct. I had hoped to do something less sensible. I had hoped to not marry at all. I had thought I could happily live out my days as an old maid in my tiny cottage in Beadwell, tending my mother’s garden.”
“You would have chosen to be an old maid in a cottage over becoming a duchess?” Charlotte asked, disbelief heavy in her watchful expression.
Emma laughed. “Yes. Impractical through it was, I hadn’t any particular aspiration to be a duchess. I just happened to be engaged to a duke.”
Charlotte nodded thoughtfully.
This last revelation seemed to hold the answer Charlotte sought. She nodded, puzzled a moment, then nodded again. “I need your help,” she said finally.
“What is the matter?” Emma asked. Alarm coursed through her.
“I’m not a lady. I’m a kitchen girl.” Charlotte blurted the words in a loud rush.
Emma’s alarm dissipated. She patted Charlotte’s hand. “Of course you are a lady, Charlotte. You are a lady by birth. What do you mean by kitchen girl?”
“I mean I had to take a position—in the kitchen—for a family in Boston named Pritchard. I was their kitchen girl. I had to do something when my mother fell ill. I worked for them and they were nice people, but their son was horrid, and he’s followed me here and is demanding I marry him or he’ll tell everyone.” The words spilled out of Charlotte in a frantic rush. Her color rose as she spoke and her gestures became more animated.
“Stop.” Emma held up a staying hand. “This horrid son, you say he followed you? He has traveled from Boston to England?”
Charlotte nodded. “Yes.”
“Now. Explain again, perhaps more slowly this time, the part about him wanting to marry you.”
Charlotte blew out an anxious breath. “He is here. He was just here—at Brantmoor. He says he’ll tell everyone I am nothing but a kitchen girl and I will be an outcast. But if I agree to marry him, you can present me as the sister who married the son of a respectable Boston family and there will be no scandal at all.”
“Where is he now?” Emma asked, glancing involuntarily at the window.
“Mr. Brydges is chasing him off.”
“Good.” Emma nodded then and clutched Charlotte’s hands in hers. “Charlotte, dear, you listen to me. You won’t be marrying anyone who believes he can force you with threats. That I assure you.”
“But I was a kitchen maid,” Charlotte insisted. “It’s not a story. It’s the truth.” She delivered it as a dare and waited for Emma’s response.
“And your brother was a clerk. Anyone who is shallow enough to be offended by either fact is not worthy of our concern.” Of course, it would have been beneficial to know of Charlotte’s employment beforehand. She was certain John had not mentioned it. She would not have forgotten.
“You are not offended that I was a kitchen maid?” Charlotte asked.
“Certainly not. That’s a ridiculous suggestion.” Hadn’t she been the one to lecture Charlotte about earning respect through one’s conduct, not through one’s birth? “My concern is not for your past employment, Charlotte, but for your present safety. You say this man followed you to Brantmoor. If he is persistent enough to travel to England and threaten blackmail, then he is persistent enough to cause you harm.”
“You are not worried about the scandal?” Charlotte asked again.
“Only if it is hurtful to you, Charlotte. There will be gossip regardless and we shall overcome it.”
“But you and my brother are so intent on my becoming a lady,” she said.
Emma shook her head. “Oh, Charlotte, we only want to prepare you—to help you know what to expect for your own benefit. Your brother’s desire was to spare you the hurt that rejection and gossip would cause. I’m afraid he would see it as a failure on his part, Charlotte, if you were not accepted. He feels compelled to atone for your father’s sins. He must restore to you every advantage, every connection, every opportunity of which you’ve been deprived.” She looked at the uneasy young girl who sat across from her and wanted so much to take away her anxiety. “He loves you, Charlotte. He seeks your happiness and security above all else.” Emma had no doubt of it. In truth, she loved him for it.
She loved him.
She loved his tortured, well-meaning soul. And by extension, she loved Charlotte as well. She squeezed Charlotte’s hand again. “That is why we must go to your brother, Charlotte. This man could be dangerous. Your brother will know how to protect you.” He would. Emma had complete faith that John would spring into immediate action once he knew of this new threat.
“But he already had his man following Mr. Pritchard,” Charlotte said. “And Mr. Pritchard must have gotten away from him,.”
Emma let go of Charlotte’s hands and pressed fingers to her temples in an attempt to sort in her mind this jumble of new information. “Your brother had a man following Mr. Pritchard?”
“Yes,” Charlotte said, her voice rising, “but not a very competent man, it seems.”
“Your brother knows this man is in England?”
“Yes. John is the one who told me. He said he would have him followed and not let him near us, but then he was outside today making his threats again. I had to know for sure that you would not make me marry him.” She took Emma’s hand this time. “I believe you. I believe you will not make me marry him.”
Emma gulped. Anger and heartbreak roared through her. “How long has your brother known about Mr. Pritchard?”
“Since the day you went to your cottage. Before Miss Betancourt came to visit. Please don’t be angry with him. I asked him not to tell you about Mr. Pritchard because I didn’t want you to know I was a maid. I was worried about what you would think of me.”
A heavy lump sat in Emma’s stomach and seemed to grow there, becoming heavier and more difficult to ignore. “Fear not, Charlotte,” she said, struggling to project the confidence the girl needed. “You were right to come to me. I will talk with your brother.”