Page 87 of An Unwilling Earl
“I guess I should go in there,” she said softly, still staring at the door.
“I guess so,” Mrs. Smith echoed, her voice faint.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Charlotte lifted her chin and gave Mrs. Smith a bracing smile while her insides trembled. Every instinct told her not to walk through that door. But neither would she cower.
Her aunt was sitting in one of the straight-backed chairs. Charlotte thought it was appropriate as those were the only types of chairs that could be found in the woman’s home. She didn’t believe in comfort. Thought it led to softness and Lord knew, one should never be soft.
“Aunt Martha.”
The woman lifted her head, and Charlotte had to force herself not to wince. She was suddenly reminded of the first time she’d met her aunt. Still reeling from her father’s unexpected death, grief-stricken, frightened of what her new life would be like, she’d approached her aunt in much the same way. Martha had sat there, looking Charlotte over from head to toe, frowning, dark eyes assessing.
She’d stood there for what seemed like a very long time while her aunt simply looked her over.
“Your mother was a whore,” was the first thing that Aunt Martha had said, and Charlotte had felt like someone had punched her in the stomach. Everyone had always said nice things about her mother, and to hear this was like a slap in the face. It had stung just as much.
Charlotte had opened her mouth to defend her mother, had taken one look at the hard, emotionless eyes of her aunt, and had promptly shut her mouth.
“I guess I am the only one willing to take you in. Your mother’s family knows bad blood when they see it.”
Bad blood?Charlotte had had no idea what that meant but later figured that it meant her mother had somehow tainted Charlotte. She’d refused to let herself believe it and held tight to the stories her father and Lady Crawford had told of her mother.
Now, five years later, and much older, Charlotte felt the same as the fifteen-year-old girl standing before her aunt back then.
“I see you’ve landed on your feet,” Martha said. “Just like a cat.”
Charlotte refused to rise to the bait. Instead she sat in the chair opposite her aunt. “What do you want, Aunt Martha?”
Her aunt sniffed and looked around. “No tea?”
“I don’t think you’ll be staying long enough for tea.”
Those dark, bottomless eyes flashed anger, but she pressed her lips together. “Not much of a house for an earl.”
Charlotte didn’t feel that she should have to explain Jacob to her aunt, but she did so anyway, because old habits died hard. “The earldom is new to us. We’ll be moving into the Hyde Park house soon.”
Her aunt tipped her head and studied her, much the same way that she’d studied her all those years ago. “I see the apple didn’t fall far from the tree. I knew you would end up like your mother at some point. I tried my best with you, Charlotte. I tried to beat the demons out of you.”
This wasn’t the first time that she’d heard about the demons inside of her. She’d spent countless nights lying awake in terror, afraid those demons would come out of her like smoke out of a lamp. She’d pictured them exiting her body through her nose and mouth and then reentering her body the same way.
“You certainly beat me enough,” Charlotte said.
“It was for your own good, girl. Don’t forget it.”
“I think you enjoyed beating me. I think you had some twisted satisfaction in beating me and Edmund.”
“Edmund has nothing to do with any of this.”
“Doesn’t he?”
For a moment, Charlotte thought she glimpsed fear in the woman’s eyes, but it was quickly extinguished.
“Did you come to wish me well on my new marriage, aunt?”
“Of course not.”
“Then why did you come?”
