A Scandalous Publication (12 page)

Richard and the couturiere were approaching from the adjoining showroom, and Charlotte took a deep breath to steady herself. Hastily doing up the final buttons on the gown and donning the white spencer, she was tying on a bonnet and smiling as she bade them enter.

Madame Forestier was all smiles; indeed, she had had as excellent a morning as Charlotte, not only at last ridding herself of an expensive wardrobe that had seemed likely to remain on her hands indefinitely, but also acquiring a further lucrative order to clothe Mrs. Wyndham. The dressmaker was well-pleased with herself, promising to bring several items to the house in Henrietta Street for Mrs. Wyndham to inspect.

As the landau conveyed them back to the house, Charlotte tried not to think of Judith, but of her new clothes instead. It was as if she’d been reborn. She felt a little foolish for having taken such a delight in trying everything on, but she had enjoyed it all so much that even now she couldn’t stop smiling. She glanced at Richard. “I don’t know how to thank you for this.”

“Your happy smile and bright eyes are reward enough for me. You looked lovely in everything you tried on today, Charlotte, I don’t think you’ve any notion at all how beautiful you are.”

“Beautiful?” She gave a rueful laugh. “Now you’re being too flattering, for no one with a mouth as wide as mine
—”

“That mouth gives you a smile quite beyond compare,” he interrupted gently. “You don’t do yourself justice, Charlotte. You’re a very lovely young woman, and I’m right when I say that Sir Maxim Talgarth admires you.”

She looked quickly out of the window and said nothing more.

When they reached the house, she went upstairs to put her new white spencer away in her wardrobe. Her glance fell on her manuscript, hidden away at the back; tomorrow she would be spending the day with the man who was the original of Rex Kylmerth…
.
Quickly she closed the wardrobe and hurried downstairs again, for her mother was more than a little cross that luncheon had been delayed for such a disgracefully long time, although she was mollified by the news of Madame Forestier’s impending visit.

As Charlotte neared the foot of the staircase, she paused, for the door to the kitchen had been left ajar and she could hear Mrs. White and Polly talking as they prepared to serve the meal.

“Well, now, Polly Jenkins,” the cook was saying, “and who was that fine lady I saw you talking with on the corner earlier?”

“Fine lady?” The maid’s reply was very guarded.

“Oh, don’t come the innocent with me, my girl, I saw you chitter-chattering away as if you had all the time in the world, when in fact you’d been far too long already purchasing those vegetables from the Oxford market. What was it all about, then, eh? Wanted you for her personal maid, did she?” This last was uttered with heavy sarcasm.

“No, of course she didn’t,” replied the maid, “for who’d want someone like me for a lady’s maid?”

“Who indeed?” agreed the cook dryly. “Well? Who was she?”

“I
—I don’t know.”

“Well, whoever she was, she was a lady of rank, that’s for sure. Only someone very rich could have afforded clothes like that, all so beautifully matched in the same shade of yellow, and her carriage, so magnificent and so startling in the same color. Oh, yes, a lady of rank and of fashion, and she chose to halt her carriage to speak to the likes of you. What did she want?”

“Nothing.”

“Really,” declared the cook, “you must take me for a nitwit at times, Polly Jenkins. Do you honestly expect me to believe that she went to the trouble of stopping her carriage and addressing you so that she could say nothing?”

“She only wanted directions to Regent Street,” said the maid quickly, and more than a little lamely.

The cook gave an irritated sigh and said nothing more.

Charlotte remained where she was at the foot of the stairs. The lady in yellow with a yellow carriage could only be Judith Taynton, who most definitely knew the way to Regent Street and to every other thoroughfare of importance in London. Charlotte had to admit to sharing Mrs. White’s curiosity about the incident. Why, indeed, had Judith gone to the trouble of speaking to Polly? And why wasn’t Polly prepared to admit to what really happened?

Quite suddenly Charlotte recalled Judith’s words of warning at Madame Forestier’s: “Stay away from Max, and stay away from Kimber Park. Defy me and I’ll make you pay
.
”

When it was almost time for Max to arrive the next morning, Mrs. Wyndham and Richard suddenly realized the impropriety of allowing Charlotte to spend so much time alone with him. To solve the problem, Mrs. Wyndham’s maid, Muriel, was hastily dragooned into service, being sent scuttling to her room on the top floor to change into her best clothes in order to be Charlotte’s chaperone for the day. Charlotte felt unaccountably embarrassed by all this. Had she been spending the day with any man other than Max Talgarth, she would have accepted that a chaperone was indeed necessary for the protection of her character, but somehow the fact that it was Max made a subtle difference. Perhaps, she reflected as she waited nervously in her room for him to arrive, it was because she knew he was bound to wonder if the maid was there as much because of all the rumors Sylvia had been spreading about him as because of the accepted need to at all times observe the proprieties where a lady’s reputation was concerned.

Last-minute doubts and uncertainties beset her, and her heart almost stopped when at last she heard his carriage outside. Looking discreetly from the window, she saw him alight. He wore a rust-colored coat and Bedford cord trousers. His neckcloth was of brown silk, and his waistcoat a similar shade. A tasseled cane swung in one gloved hand, while with the other he tipped his top hat back on his tangle of dark hair. She could see the scar on his cheek and the penetrating blue of his eyes.

He made no comment about Muriel’s presence; indeed, he hardly seemed to notice she was there. As he and Charlotte emerged from the house to climb into the waiting carriage, she was conscious of a sense of disappointment, for when he had seen her in her fashionable new clothes, there had been nothing in his glance or words to signify that he was particularly aware of the change in her.

The carriage set off at a smart pace, with Muriel pressed into a corner seat as if she was trying to appear invisible. Very little was said as they left London behind and drove along the road that had once meant going home to Charlotte. She had not driven along it since leaving Kimber Park the previous year, and how different things were now. Then she and her mother had been in the depths of grief and despair, and the weather had been more than a match for their sorrow; now the future again looked bright, and the weather matched this optimism. The sun shone down from a cloudless sky, and the air was warm and still, with hardly a breath of breeze to stir the hedgerows as London faded farther and farther into the distance behind them.

Because the day was so warm, she had decided against wearing a bonnet and had chosen instead to follow the pretty fashion of draping a lace veil over the back of her head. A shawl rested lightly over her arms and she carried a marquise parasol tilted back to shade her head just a little from the sun while at the same time revealing her face. The steady pace of the carriage fluttered the parasol’s fringe and made her gown’s cream-and-dark-red muslin sleeves move softly against her arms. She could smell honeysuckle and wild roses in the hedgerows, and there was something almost lulling about the carriage’s gentle rhythm.

Judith’s threats and actions the day before were a great deal on her mind, and she wondered what Max would say if he knew about them. She wondered too exactly what it was that Judith would do now that her warning had been so deliberately disregarded. The ultimatum delivered at Madame Forestier’s had been unpleasant enough, but the secret approach to Polly was disturbing. What did she have in mind? And what was there anyway that Polly could possibly tell her? Charlotte took a deep, slow breath. Polly didn’t know anything, because there wasn’t anything to know. She tried to reassure herself with this, but somehow the deep unease continued.

Opposite her, Max lounged with his usual grace. He seemed oddly withdrawn today, she thought, and there was obviously something on his mind. He spoke when spoken to, but made no attempt to keep any form of conversation flowing. She tried once or twice to break the lengthy silence but after a while gave up. They traveled the last few miles to Kimber Park in absolute silence.

At last they reached the lodge, and her heart tightened at the well-remembered sound of the wrought-iron gates swinging open. As the carriage turned onto the drive, she at last saw across the lake and the valley to the great white house on the knoll opposite. Something like a pain passed through her as she gazed at it. How she loved this place and how she missed it! Suddenly she wished that she had taken her mother’s attitude and refused to come, for seeing it again made her realize anew that no other house would ever take the place of this one, and no other house would ever be really home.

She gazed out at every well-loved feature: the trees, the sparkling waters of the lake, the little Mercury rotunda…
.
She stared at this last for a long time, remembering her dream, and she felt the hot color stealing inexorably across her cheeks. She couldn’t help glancing at Max, her eyes lingering for a moment on his firm lips. So real had that dream been that now, when she was actually by the lake and the rotunda with Max seated so very close, it was as if the dream had been no dream at all, but had really happened. She looked quickly away, fearing that if he had met her gaze in that moment, he would have been able to read her every thought.

The carriage came to a standstill before the great portico of the house, and Max alighted first, turning to extend his hand not to Charlotte, but to a rather astonished Muriel. For the first time that morning he smiled a little as he handed down the diminutive maid. “No doubt you have many friends here that you are longing to see, and I’m sure Miss Wyndham doesn’t require your services. Is that not so, Miss Wyndham?”

Charlotte was as astonished as the maid, for it was a very transparent move to see that there was little chance of a chaperone. When she didn’t immediately reply, his blue eyes swung quickly toward her. “Do you require her, Miss Wyndham?” he asked again.

There was something so compelling in his gaze that she could only shake her head. “No, of course not.”

He smiled a little, nodding at Muriel. “You may go, then. You’ll be sent for if you’re needed.”

“Yes, sir. Miss Wyndham.” Muriel bobbed a hasty curtsy and then hurried thankfully away in the direction of the stables, and thence to the rear of the house and the kitchens, where she knew most of the servants would be found.

Only then did Max extend his hand to Charlotte. “Propriety isn’t about to be mortally wounded, Miss Wyndham, you have my word on that.” There was a noticeable edge to his voice.

She was embarrassed, but managed to meet his gaze. “I didn’t for one moment imagine it would be, sir.”

“I’m relieved to hear it, for I’d hate to think a chaperone was deemed necessary because of my dastardly reputation.”

So he had been irritated. “No, sir, it was deemed necessary because of
my
reputation, dastardly or otherwise,” she explained quickly.

A slight smile reached his lips then. “You’ve a way of saying the unexpected, haven’t you? I could certainly never accuse you of being dull.”

She looked at him for a moment. “Unlike you so far today.”

“The unexpected yet again? I confess to being quite bewildered by the lightning darts of your personality.”

“Do you? Come now, sir, you aren’t in the least bewildered.” She didn’t quite know why she was saying all this; it was all just slipping from her lips as if she had no control over her tongue.

“You evidently have your forthright hat on today, Miss Wyndham.”

“I was merely remarking that during the journey your conversation was less than scintillating.”

“I rather thought that idle pleasantries irritated you considerably, Miss Wyndham.”

“That was quite uncalled for.”

He nodded then. “Yes, it was, and I apologize.”

“If you would prefer not to proceed with this visit, I shall quite understand.”

“It isn’t that at all, I promise you. I was indeed a little surly on the way here, and for that too I apologize. I’ll endeavor to improve from now on.”

“Sir, you really do not have try on my account.”

He smiled again. “I know, and you may take that as a compliment. Miss Wyndham, I know very well that you’ve been told all manner of things about me by my former sister-in-law, and I realize that you must be wondering how much of it is true. Whatever conclusion you’ve reached, today I wish to forget all that. Rumor names me a monster and a rake, and it blames you as a hot-tempered, uppity bookworm. Now, I’m sure that I can be agreeable enough; in fact, I flatter myself that I’ve been occasionally known as good company, and I’m equally sure that you have the same excellent qualities, so I suggest that we are at our angelic best today and make the occasion do our bidding
—in the most proper and polite way, of course.”

She smiled too. “Are you suggesting a fresh start, Sir Maxim?”

“Something of the sort.”

“Perhaps that would be the most civilized approach.”

“Civilized? I don’t know about that; it’s certainly the
best
approach, in my opinion.” He offered her his arm then. “Shall we proceed?”

She slipped her hand over his sleeve and they went slowly up the almost majestic steps beneath the great columned portico toward the huge double doors, which opened as if by magic as they came near.

It was strange to enter the house again, for it was at once the same and yet very different. The echoing vestibule and the sweeping double staircase had not changed, but now there were elegant crimson upholstered sofas and chairs arranged along the cream-and-gold walls, instead of the green-and-white-striped furniture that had been there in her father’s time.