Page 46 of To Tame the Wild Rake
Sarah patted her hand. “I am your sister.”
The tears welled again, and Charlotte fought them back. “Friends forever,” she said, their old nursery promise.
A knock on the door announced Charlotte’s maid with a tray of tea makings. She put them on a table near Sarah, and fetched a jug of water from the door. “My lady, would you like me to wash your face and tidy your hair?” the maid asked Charlotte’s turned back. Charlotte shook her head, and her voice was calm when she replied, “My sister will help me, thank you, Clarke.”
Sarah made the tea and put several of Fournier’s delightful little confections of sponge and sugar paste onto a plate while Charlotte washed her face and pinned a couple of loose strands back into her coiffure. “Clarke would do a better job,” she observed as she took her seat next to Sarah again, and accepted the cup of tea.
Sarah gave the remark an abstracted smile. She was thinking about what she wanted to say. Charlotte waited for it. On the long list of people she did not want to disappoint, her sister was highest.
But she did not expect what Sarah said. “I am so angry with Aunt Eleanor. She had no right to interfere, and she could not be more wrong. And she has upset you, which is what I cannot forgive.”
“She is just trying to protect her son,” Charlotte protested.
“Really? As if he was a boy in the nursery with no idea what is good for him? He is thirty-four, Charlotte, and if anyone in all of England—no, the whole United Kingdom—knows his own mind when it comes to women, it is the Marquis of Aldridge.”
The martial light in her eyes softened and she nudged Charlotte with her shoulder. “Darling, Aldridge loves you and you love him. It is plain to anyone who knows you both. I do not know why the Duchess of Haverford is so determined to prevent this marriage, but it is Not. Her. Business.”
“She is his mother,” Charlotte pointed out. “And I am barren. The Duchess of Haverford must have sons.”
“Nonsense,” Sarah argued. “The Duke of Haverford must have an heir. And that is well covered. Even if you are barren, and Ruth said these things are not certain, Aldridge has a brother, nephews, a whole tribe of cousins.”
“Distant cousins,” Charlotte corrected. She put the tea cup down and examined the cakes as an alternative to letting Sarah see the indecision in her eyes.
“Irrelevant. The brother and nephews are enough.”
Charlotte opened her mouth to point out that Jonathan was wed to foreign royalty and therefore had other responsibilities, but Sarah put a finger over her lips.
“Which is beside the point, Charlotte. You owe it to Aldridge to tell him your true objections. Then the pair of you can decide what to do. You told me, when I was reluctant to confront Nate about abandoning me, that I had to listen to him. And you were right.” She gave a sharp nod and softened her dogmatic tone by taking her sister’s hand and holding it gently. “Now I’m giving you the same advice. You need to tell Aldridge the truth.”
“That sounds more like an order than advice,” Charlotte grumbled.
“It was advice before you convinced him to take you to bed,” Sarah retorted. “Now you have done so, do you not think you owe him the courtesy of explaining why he is good enough for bed sport but not for marriage?”
Shocked, Charlotte pulled her hand from her sister’s grasp. “He does not believe that!”
“I think he does, and so does Nate. Charlotte, some of the women I work with saw him on Westminster Bridge several nights ago, staring into the water. They thought he was going to jump.” She touched Charlotte’s arm as Charlotte was about to jump to her feet, explaining, “He did not. They sent Alex Basingstoke to Aldridge, and Alex took him home with him to his parsonage. You need to talk to him, Charlotte.”
“I did not mean to hurt him, Sarah.” She was crying again, but a sense of hope and wonder fuelled her next comment. “I did not know I could.”
Gardening did not exercise the same muscles as riding, boxing, or fencing. Aldridge exulted in the hot bath in the scullery in the gardener’s cottage, where he had a small room in the attic. One that would fit into his dressing room at any of the Haverford estates with room left over.
The bath, too was only half the size of the smallest he’d ever bathed in, and he’d had to bucket in every drop of water from the well to the kettle, and then from the kettle to the scullery. It was hot, though, and soothed the aches.
Harris, the gardener, treated his temporary apprentice with a mix of the deference due to a gentleman and the scorn of a master for the incompetent who didn’t even understand the words used to describe a craft’s tasks, let alone carry them out.
Mrs Harris called Aldridge ‘dearie’, fussed over him like an indulgent mother with one precious chick, and seemed determined to fatten him like a Michaelmas goose.
He was having dinner tonight with the vicar of St Chad’s, who was also head of the Theodora Foundation training school. He had met Arthur Beauclair several times in the four days of his stay.
Beauclair appeared mild, unworldly, and a little ineffectual. But that image didn’t match with the respect paid to him by residents of the training school, servants and trainees alike. Aldridge would be able to fund the canal extension he was planning without touching the duchy’s investments if he had a pound for every time he heard someone say,Mr Beauclair would not like it, orI need to ask Mr Beauclair, orMr Beauclair will be so pleased when I tell him.
Basingstoke, too, had said that Beauclair was both the head and the heart of the Theodora Foundation, though Basingstoke was the face, because he and his wife were comfortable with the social settings that Beauclair avoided.
What that meant for dinner, Aldridge had no idea. Dinner was at the vicarage, which was the other side of the grounds of the training school. Aldridge carried an unlit lantern, which he’d need on his way back to the gardener’s cottage.
Three more days and he’d need to return to London. He didn’t want to think about it. Instead, he occupied his mind wondering who else would be at dinner. A wasted exercise, as it turned out, since he was the only guest.
Aldridge was shown straight into the dining room, where the table had been set with two settings at one end, for ease of conversation. Beauclair did not bother with small talk. “Your days with us are more than half gone, Mr Ford. Have you found what you were looking for?”
