Page 80 of An Unwilling Earl
Charlotte nearly fumbled her teacup, just barely refraining from spilling it. “Pardon me?”
“The ball. It’s to be next week. Oh, dear. Please tell me that Jacob mentioned it to you?”
Charlotte shook her head numbly.
“I asked Armbruster to say something to you yesterday. I assume he didn’t?”
“N-no.” Suddenly Charlotte was cold all over, and then hot. Her teacup rattled in the saucer, and she quickly put it on the edge of Jacob’s desk.
“Please, tell me about this ball.”
“It was meant to be a small affair. I threw it together rather quickly as a way to introduce Jacob into Society as the new Earl of Ashland. All of those annoying matchmaking mamas are always dying to get their little girls in front of the eligible men, and I knew Jacob would probably be overrun with women thrusting their daughters under his nose. He sometimes can be quite oblivious to such matters.”
“Quite,” Charlotte murmured because Nora seemed to expect her to say something.
“After all, someone needed to ‘bring him out’ into Society, and since he’s so much like a son to me and I love hosting parties, I thought it should be me. But the guest list just grew and grew, and it went from a small dinner party to a ball nearly overnight. And then there was the wonderful news from Armbruster that Jacob was marrying. Why, we were all stunned. We didn’t even know Jacob had his eye on anyone. And then come to find out that you are the niece of the Marquess of Chadley. Well, that was quite the coup for Jacob. Armbruster says you two are madly in love.”
Nora took a sip of tea, and Charlotte’s head spun. There was quite a lot of information in that short monologue. Apparently, Charlotte was a coup. Nora was hosting a dinner party-turned-ball, and Jacob was more like family to the Armbrusters. He’d downplayed that particular piece of information.
“So now that Jacob has been firmly taken off the marriage mart—and there are some very disappointed mothers and debutantes out there, so beware, dear—I’ve decided to make this ball into a coming-out for the both of you. An introduction to Society of the Earl and Countess of Ashland.”
Charlotte sat back, breathless, as if she were the one who had imparted all of that information, instead of the other way around. Her head was spinning with so many things. Most of it dread.
She didn’t want to attend a ball. She had nothing to wear. She wanted to throttle both Jacob and Lord Armbruster, and she wanted to run back to the rookery where life seemed much less complicated than it did now.
And to top it all off, once it was announced—and in such a grand and spectacular fashion, if this woman was doing it—that Charlotte Morris was now the Countess of Ashland, her aunt would find out, and Charlotte didn’t know what the woman would do then.
Nora seemed to sense Charlotte’s thoughts and patted her on the knee. “Don’t worry, dear. There is nothing for you to do except show up and look radiant on your new husband’s arm. I will do the rest.”
And that was part of what Charlotte feared.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Jacob entered his office and threw his hat on the chair, exhausted from another meeting with Armbruster’s man-of-business, who had been combing through the former Earl of Ashland’s books. His head was stuffed full of numbers and plans and future prospects.
On the bright side, he’d discovered that he now owned a townhouse in Hyde Park, and all he could think about after that was rushing home to tell Charlotte, thinking she would be very pleased to learn that they were moving to Hyde Park.
He found her waiting for him in his office, her lips drawn into a tight line and her eyes narrowed.
She appeared to be on the verge of tears. Lord, he hoped she wasn’t going to cry. He didn’t know what to do with a crying woman.
“How was your day?” he asked, watching her warily. Truth be told, he felt he should circle her carefully.
“I had callers today,” she said, her words clipped.
He opened his mouth to say that he thought that was a good thing and that she needed more friends, but she cut him off, and he realized these callers weren’t really a good thing after all.
“Sarah and her mother, Lady Crawford. It was awful. I didn’t have anywhere to put them, so I had to put them in here, but there is nowhere to serve tea or to sit. We sat in these chairs.” She waved her hand toward the pair of straight-backed chairs that had been perched in front of his desk for so long he couldn’t remember a time when they weren’t there. “But then there was nowhere to put the tea service. Mrs. Smith had to put it there.” She halfheartedly flapped her hand toward the edge of his desk where the tea service still sat. “It was all so very awkward and embarrassing, but they were really rather kind about it, realizing that you’ve been a bachelor for a number of years.”
He wanted to protest that just because he had been a bachelor did not mean he was a Neanderthal but thought better of it.
“I apologized, of course, but luckily it was Sarah. We’ve been friends for years, as you know, and her mother was friends with my mother, and they all thought it rather quaint. At least I think they thought it quaint.” Her brows furrowed as she pondered whether serving tea in his office was quaint.
“I was pleased they visited,” she said, obviously discarding her thoughts on being quaint. “But I was also pleased when they left. Do you know how very tiring it is to take callers? Lady Crawford is good at small talk, so that made things easy. But I wasn’t finished. Oh, no. Do you know who arrived after the Crawfords left?”
She looked at him accusingly, and his mind went blank. He couldn’t have recalled one familiar name of an acquaintance if he’d tried. Luckily, she didn’t make him try.
“The Dowager Lady Armbruster. Lord Armbruster’s mother. Hismother, Jacob!”
