Chapter Forty
Worley House glowed with what must have been a thousand candles. John couldn’t begin to imagine where so many came from. Everything caught the light: golden urns, silver candelabra, gilt-framed paintings, bejeweled ladies, and glassy-eyed gentleman. Smiles and laughter reigned as the duke and duchess greeted their guests and graciously received well wishes for their nuptials. Lady Charlotte, by their side, was the recipient of effusive compliments on her appearance, most specifically her striking gown.
It was all very necessary, but by the time the last guest arrived, John had exchanged enough polite greetings to last the remainder of his life. He was hot already, as the number of people and candles had considerably increased the temperature in the room. He was also exhausted from the strain of standing for nearly an hour next to his wife in her ravishing gown, all the while reminding himself that he needed to take firm rein of his wits and not sink into the quicksand of besotted idiocy.
She smiled, laughed, and exchanged compliments with seemingly no awareness at all of the effect she was having on his sanity. How had she found the exact shade of green that at once made her eyes glow with golden light and her lips appear as honeyed apricots waiting to be tasted? Though he’d glared pointedly at more than one gentleman who’d cast a greedy glance toward the duchess’s ample décolletage, only he truly understood the treasures offered there and the way she responded when he lavished attention to her sweet, creamy breasts.
Lord, he needed air.
“I’ll return in a moment,” he said.
“Don’t be too long,” Emma told him, with a distracted smile in his general direction. “We have to open the dances.” She quickly returned to her conversation with Charlotte and two other ladies who had been calling regularly at the house that week—Ladies Blythe and Marcus, or something.
John had woven himself approximately halfway through the throng in his ballroom when he changed his mind regarding his destination and, instead of the outside air, sought a generous pour of scotch in the quiet of his study.
What sort of man required fortification to dance with his own wife?
* * *
The opening set was miserable. Why matrons were so scandalized by the waltz, he would never again understand. The traditional dances were so much more torturous for a wanting partner. Stepping tantalizingly close, only to be required to step away—yet unable to look away. John was aware of so many eyes and so many restrictions when he longed to simply take his wife in his arms and sink all of himself into all of her—her mouth, her bosom, her sex. Every single place on her body tempted him. It drove a man nearly to the brink, this teasing dance.
He was contemplating another scotch after the dance. The matter was decided when Brydges caught him by the arm.
“I must speak with you privately.”
Brydges’s grave expression alarmed him. Brydges was never grave.
“That room is full of vicious liars,” he shouted the instant the heavy oak door was shut behind him.
“Explain.”
“No one has spent a single moment since they’ve arrived talking about any subject other than your sister.”
“What are they saying?” John asked, feeling the anger rising already. There should be talk about Charlotte—it was her debut, after all—but not the sort of talk that would have Brydges so riled.
“What are they not saying! There is not a decent person here!” Brydges shouted. He pointed an accusing finger toward the closed oak door. “There are at least fifty men out there who should be called out for the vicious slander they’ve repeated.”
John’s jaw set. “You repeat it. To me.”
“The most vicious is that Charlotte your mistress from wherever you’ve been the past four years, and you’re so brazen, you’ve got her living in the same house as your wife by claiming she’s your sister.” Brydges looked back at him with brows arched in expectation, as though daring him not to be offended by that one.
No dare was necessary..
“And?” John asked.
“Every ridiculous story imaginable,” Brydges spat. “Gypsies, kitchen maids, opium eaters, troupes of traveling players. Some stories claim she is a stranger who has duped you into believing she is your long-lost sister, because your mother and father are not alive to dispute it.”
John breathed deeply. He waited for the rage to fully consume him, expecting it to settle into his limbs and send him charging into action. He waited. Then he felt something entirely unexpected. Defeat. He could not call out fifty men. He could not disprove fifty lies, when he had no truth to share that would not be equally damaging to Charlotte’s reputation.
“We have failed her,” he said, tipping the decanter to fill two glasses with amber liquid. “I have failed her.” John lifted both glasses and held one out to Brydges.
His friend only stared at it. “Are you daft? Failed her? You are done, then? Not two hours into your sister’s debut and you are finished? You would toss her to the wolves and let them have their way?”
He glared at Brydges. “I will not let them have their way. I will not force her to remain among the jackals. I intend to remove her immediately.”
“Ridiculous. Do something, man. That is your sister!”
“What is your brilliant plan, Brydges? One against fifty at dawn? Should we use pistols or swords? Are you to be my second?” He nearly laughed at the futility of it. He had failed Charlotte. His noble intentions were nothing more than a lone, tattered sail in the maelstrom of his father’s obsessive hatred.
“You can’t let them ruin her. Every single one of those stories is pure shite. I won’t stand by while you let them spread these lies.”
“I don’t intend to allow her to be ruined. This night is a loss. We shall have to evaluate our next steps carefully, but I won’t force her to stand in a room full of idiots who have decided to judge and shun her.” John slammed his own glass on the desk, causing a splash of undrunk spirits to slosh onto his hand. He shook it, glared one last time at Brydges, and marched out of the room.
* * *
John found Emma watching the dance with her aunt. “My apologies, Lady Ridgely,” he said tightly, “but I must claim my wife for a moment.”
The lady nodded. “Certainly.” She smiled pleasantly as John led his wife away to a secluded corner.
“I’ve just spoken with Brydges. This night is a disaster. It is worse than I thought possible.”
Earnest concern filled her gaze. “What is it?” she asked.
“There are rumors circulating everywhere—horrendous, damaging rumors.”
He would have sworn she smiled. Smiled?
“I don’t know about that,” she said.
“Of course you are not hearing the rumors,” he pointed out. “No one would be so careless as to repeat them to you or me or Charlotte, but nearly everyone else is talking openly. I’ve had a full account from Brydges.”
She lay a hand on his arm. “I’m sorry for my lack of clarity. I knew about the rumors. I meant the damage. Charlotte will have to dance every set to satisfy the requests she’s received. The musicians have been instructed to only play dances for which she has learned the steps, and she has performed beautifully.”
“Not damaging?” he ground out, conscious of their lack of privacy. “Think of her reputation. Brydges even heard a rumor about her being a kitchen maid. How the devil would anyone know that? We took care of Pritchard.”
“For the time being,” Emma said. “He may pop up again after today. I needed to make certain his threats wouldn’t matter.”
“What are you saying?”
Emma smiled brightly at two ladies who passed and gave a slight nod. John only scowled at them. They were likely as caught up as everyone else in all the gossiping.
“I am saying,” Emma said after the ladies had passed, “I have resolved the matter. If anyone hears Mr. Pritchard’s version of Charlotte’s past, it will not be a new revelation. It will instead be just another bit of woefully out-of-date and disappointing gossip.”
John gaped at his wife. He could have her committed. What had she done? “Do you mean to tell me that you have started the rumor that Charlotte was a kitchen maid?”
“Certainly not.”
He was lost. Well and truly lost. What the devil was going on here?
“No one will gossip to me about Charlotte,” Emma continued matter-of-factly. “How could I start a rumor? I believe Lady Markwood started that one.” She scowled in thought. “Or was it Lady Blythe? I’m not sure. Only I know for certain it was not Aunt Agatha. Aunt Agatha was assigned the raised-by-gypsies story. And a new one—daughter of a Drury Lane actress.”
He could only stare, his heart growing heavy in his chest. “Dear God, Emma, what have you done?” What had he allowed her to do?
She ignored him, tapping one finger on her chin. “No, I was right, the kitchen maid story was definitely assigned to Lady Markwood. Lady Blythe had the story about escaping from an Australian-bound convict ship.” She beamed proudly up at him. “That one was particularly brilliant in its outlandishness.”
“Why?” he asked. “Why would you do this to Charlotte? After all the trust she’s placed in you—that I have placed in you—why would you sabotage her in this way?”
Emma shook her head. “We are not sabotaging Charlotte’s debut. We are saving it.”
“I should have you committed for lunacy.”
“Listen,” Emma coaxed. “There were already rumors—awful rumors—circulating about Charlotte before we arrived in town. Any of them, if believed, would have been damaging to her reputation. The only way to directly discredit each rumor would be to provide the truth.”
That reasoning was at least sound. John had just given the same explanation to Brydges. “Go on,” he said.
“Since the truth is just as damaging to Charlotte’s reputation as any of the rumors, we concluded we could not discredit any one rumor, but could discredit the whole lot by making it into a bunch of ridiculous nonsense—the more ridiculous the better.”
John peered at her. He no longer could say if she required commitment for lunacy or a knighthood for brilliance. “Do you mean to tell me, you and your cohort of ladies have been circling the room, intentionally spreading rumors about Charlotte all evening?”
“Not quite. Not me, as I’ve already explained. And not all evening. Each lady was assigned just one or two stories, and she was only to tell her story to one other, carefully selected, gossip. And she did not tell her story directly to the most notorious gossips, but to a known intimate friend of the most notorious gossips. That way, by the time the stories really began circulating, they were several steps removed from their source, and no one really knew where they originated.”
John said nothing. He had no bloody idea what to say. The music stopped. The dance had ended. Should he still collect Charlotte as he planned?
“Have faith, John,” Emma said in whisper soft tones. “I have accomplished what you asked of me. I would have told you how I intended to accomplish it, if you had been able to spare a moment of your time over this past week, but now it is done. If just one story, no matter how false, had been allowed to take hold of everyone’s imagination, we could never have overcome it. Instead, the stories will be so great in number and so absurdly outrageous that every sensible person will eventually discount all of them as patently false. What else could they conclude? There will always be some mystery surrounding Charlotte, but she is a success.”
“How can you be so sure there are enough ‘sensible’ people to conclude the stories are all bollocks?”
She grinned at him. “That is second part of our plan.”
He nearly smiled back. “You are disturbingly strategic, madam.”
Her grin widened. “Each lady was to launch a story or two at the beginning of the evening to add to those that would already be circulating. Once the stories have made the full rounds of the room, each lady is to separately plant the seed that the entire nonsense is an affront to sensible people. Gypsies, really?” Emma said in feigned, superior tones. “Sheer stupidity, if you ask me.”
John looked around the room. He sighted the ladies in question, all in different corners of the ballroom, all engaging in animated conversations with groups of tittering ladies. He did not, however, see Charlotte. “You may have miscalculated one factor in your stratagem,” he told her.
“What is that?” she asked.
“Charlotte.”
“How so?”
“What if Charlotte happens to hear one of these horrible rumors? Worse yet, what if she hears the truth?”
“Oh, Charlotte is fully aware of the game,” Emma said. “She held an important role.”
John was afraid to ask what sort of role Charlotte had played in this game. “Do not tell me, you had Charlotte attempting to spread her own rumors?”
“No, nothing like that,” Emma assured him. A smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. “Not directly, anyway.”
“How would Charlotte indirectly start rumors?”
“Charlotte was tasked with saying one vague, mysterious thing to each of her dance partners, but never the same thing twice, leaving them all guessing as to what sort of clue it may be to her true background. A Spanish word here. A reference to a storybook childhood there. She’s been having such fun. She really is creative, that one.”
The strains of the next piece of music reached them and John looked to the dancers to observe his sister in this unlikely task. “Where is she?” he asked.
Emma looked as well. “I don’t see her. That’s odd. This set was spoken for. She should be dancing.”