Manor of Secrets (22 page)

“What do you know?” Lady Diane snapped.

Charlotte knew that she always felt small and inconsequential. That her worth was measured by her marriageability.

“I know that if you loved me, you would let me make my own choices.” Saying the words was as liberating as wiggling her bare toes. But the truth behind them left a bitter aftertaste.

“And if your choices lead you to kissing a footman and running away to God knows where to get yourself soaked in the middle of the night? You expect me to let you do those things?” Lady Diane demanded.

“I expect you to let me make mistakes!” Charlotte cried. “I expect you to give me guidance, not censure. I don’t want to do everything you say. Be everything you want me to be. I want to be my own self. Make my own choices. I want to fall in love, not marry someone because you tell me to.”

“Hear, hear.”

She felt Andrew’s murmur more than heard it. And the subsequent rush of embarrassment was followed by a rush of warmth.

“I don’t think we can choose who we love,” Charlotte
said slowly, looking her mother in the eye, “or have it forced upon us.”

“You choose with whom you associate. Love is a fabrication. An invention. The stuff of fiction and overheated imagination.”

Charlotte felt desperation rising like welts on her skin. Were her emotions just another component of her fevered imaginings? Was love just a fairy story?

“So you see, Charlotte.” Lady Diane’s tone was condescending. Like she knew she had the upper hand. “It’s impossible to love someone with whom you don’t associate. Therefore you cannot possibly love a servant.”

Across the room, at the little door that opened into the space beneath the grand staircase, Charlotte saw Janie and Harry.

Holding hands.
That
was love. That was real.

Lady Diane didn’t see them. Her penetrating gaze never left Charlotte’s face.

“Oh, I can love a ‘servant,’ Mother,” Charlotte said, feeling a surge of courage stiffen her resolve. “I’ve loved Janie like a sister for a while. Because she accepts me for who I am. Because she treats me like I’m visible. I couldn’t love her less because she’s a kitchen maid. Love is worth the risk.”

Lady Diane’s gaze flicked from one of Charlotte’s eyes to the other, as if she could see the meaning there behind Charlotte’s words. She glanced once at Aunt Beatrice and then turned back to Charlotte, looking almost bewildered.

“I feel like I don’t even know you anymore,” Lady Diane sighed.

Charlotte knew she was expected to feel guilty. But she could no longer live up to her mother’s expectations. “I don’t think you ever knew me.”

Lady Diane flinched as if she had been struck. Her eyes clouded and she blinked them rapidly before shaking her head and gathering her skirts.

“I no longer wish to hear any of this,” she said, moving toward the door. Her words tumbled over each other in her haste to get them out and get away. “You’re just like your mother.”

“What do you mean?” Charlotte asked, scrambling to understand. “I’m nothing like you.”

Lady Diane stopped abruptly, as if she had hit a wall. She clenched her fists.

“Nothing,” she said. But she didn’t leave.

Charlotte looked around the room. Janie and Harry looked as perplexed as she felt. Aunt Beatrice was staring at her sister with a mixture of shock and fascination.

“I think —” Aunt Beatrice began, but Lady Diane spun around and silenced her with a hiss.

“You have no right to think.”

Aunt Beatrice straightened her spine. “I have every right to speak my mind. You have no control over me.”

“Neither does any sense of responsibility. Or family honor. Or morality.” Lady Diane advanced on her sister surely and deliberately with every word, the timbre of her voice deepening with threat.

Andrew put a hand on Charlotte’s shoulder. She stepped back and took his other hand in hers.

“We should go,” she said, her voice quiet and unsure.

“No!” Lady Beatrice took a step forward, but her sister blocked her.

Lady Diane’s face was white and rigid with fury, the lines around her mouth and eyes deeply creased.

But Beatrice stood her ground. “Isn’t it time I told the truth?”

“No,” Lady Diane said quietly, her voice as steely as her gaze. “It’s time
I
told the truth.”

She turned to Charlotte, her features softening a little, but her voice took on a sharper edge. “You say I haven’t loved you? You say that choosing with whom you associate is worth the risk?”

Lady Diane glanced once at Aunt Beatrice and then back at Charlotte.

“Your
aunt
once had a dalliance like yours. With a member of the staff.” Lady Diane pressed her lips together. “With the
coachman
.”

Charlotte found it difficult to swallow around the lump in her throat. She felt Andrew shift his weight, and she suddenly feared he would walk away. But he moved to stand so close to her she could feel the warmth of his body through the jacket she still wore.

“She said it was love.” Each word Lady Diane spoke was as hard as granite.

“It was,” Aunt Beatrice said.

Lady Diane flung out a hand to silence her. “Not only was the man a servant, he was married.”

Charlotte looked at Beatrice, and it was like watching her heart break.

“When she became pregnant, she came to me. Crying. She had ruined herself. She would ruin the family. I told her she would never marry. That no one would ever want her. That if our parents were alive, they’d disown her. That I would send her away and never see her again.”

Beatrice wouldn’t look at any of them anymore. She stood with her head down and her hands clasped before her as if in
supplication. As if she had suddenly become the girl in her sister’s memory.

“In the end, none of those things came true,” Lady Diane continued. “I made sure no one knew about her. I claimed the pregnancy as my own. My husband had a doctor order bed rest for me. I didn’t attend the Season. I didn’t throw any parties. I didn’t see any of my friends.”

Lady Diane paused and cast a venomous look at her sister. But that look lost its potency with her next words.

“For her.”

Lady Diane turned back to Charlotte. It seemed, to Charlotte, that her mother had lost some of her potency herself. That she was smaller. Frailer.

“I raised her baby as if she were my own,” Lady Diane finished. “
That’s
what love is.”

Charlotte felt the weight of those words press the air from her lungs. She stared, unseeing, at the tapestry on the far side of the room, the strands of color blurry. Her vision faded around the edges. She felt nothing. Not the heat still trapped in the house. Not her wet gown clinging to her.

Not even her own heart.

“What are you saying?” she whispered. Her tongue felt thick, as if she could only form the words through great exertion.

The room rushed back into acute focus. The burgundy and black of her mother’s dress. The mud on the hem of Janie’s dress. The hazel of Beatrice’s eyes.

So much like her own.

Lady Diane looked at Charlotte. No, she looked
behind
Charlotte. Her color didn’t come back, but her strength seemed to. She tilted her head to one side and smiled graciously, as if she were speaking about the weather.

“You see, Lord Broadhurst,” she said. “All is not as it seems at The Manor.”

And then she collapsed.

J
anie had spent her entire life making things appear other than they really were. Making meals appear effortless. Making herself appear invisible to the family of The Manor, as a good servant should. Trying to appear as if she wasn’t terrified the world would change in an instant and the whole façade come crashing down around her.

She was shocked to discover that Lady Diane was the same. When the mistress of The Manor pitched over, Janie turned to Harry behind her. “Run for the doctor,” she said.

Lady Beatrice ran to her sister, so Janie went to Charlotte, who stood like an effigy just inside the doorway to the marble hall. Staring at the crumpled figure on the floor. Lord Broadhurst stood right behind her, one hand on her shoulder.

“Harry’s gone for the doctor,” Janie told him, and then said to Charlotte, “Your mother will be all right.”

“She’s not my mother.” Charlotte’s voice was completely flat.

Lady Beatrice looked up, but Charlotte turned away. Janie didn’t want to see the pain in Lady Beatrice’s eyes. She wanted to rail at her for giving up her daughter. For coming back into her life now.

For running to her sister first.

But Janie didn’t. Instead, she spoke to Lord Broadhurst. “I’ll take Charlotte upstairs and send for a maid.”

Janie put an arm around Charlotte’s shoulder, still covered by Lord Broadhurst’s dinner jacket.

The guests had scattered, leaving the marble hall empty and echoing. Janie wondered how much they had heard. She wondered how many of the neighbors would already be gossiping, how quickly the houseguests would depart in the morning.

She wondered if it mattered. The Edmonds family would not be able to escape the social repercussions triggered by the night’s events.

For the first time in her life, Janie walked up the grand staircase of The Manor, Charlotte stumbling along with her. She guided Charlotte down the hall, past the painting of a
high-masted ship almost toppling into the raging ocean, past Charles I still gazing at his queen. She pushed open the bedroom door and led Charlotte to an overstuffed chair.

“I’ll ruin the upholstery,” Charlotte muttered.

“I should think that’s the least of your worries,” Janie said, pulling the bell.

Charlotte’s head jerked up. “Don’t leave me,” she said.

“Don’t be daft. I’m not leaving you.”

“You rang for Sarah.”

“I rang for tea,” Janie said and turned to look at Charlotte, small and bedraggled as she was. “You look like you could use it.”

Charlotte slumped to the floor and pressed her forehead into the thick carpet.

“I don’t even know who I am anymore,” she said, her words muffled by the thick pile.

“You’re you.” Janie sat on the floor beside her and stroked her hair, carefully untangling the intricately pinned coils that had been knotted and saturated by lake water.

“Everything I thought was real was just imaginary,” Charlotte said, turning her head just slightly. “Pretend.”

“I’m sorry.” Words didn’t seem like enough. Even tears weren’t enough. Charlotte’s entire existence had been washed away in a single evening.

“How
could
she?” Charlotte cried, pressing the heels of her hands to her eyes. “With a servant?”

Janie stopped untangling Charlotte’s hair. “You said love is always worth the risk.”

Charlotte went rigid. “It is,” she whispered into her hands. “I meant what I said.”

“I know,” Janie said, hoping that she did. “Lawrence deserves a good punching for disappearing like that.”

“I didn’t mean him,” Charlotte said, sitting up. “I meant what I said about you. I need my friends right now, Janie. I need
you.
My mother is a stranger. I never even knew my father!”

“Lady Diane said he was Lady Beatrice’s coachman.”

“But she used to live here,” Charlotte said. “Lady Beatrice lived here until she married.”

Janie sat very still for a moment. She studied Charlotte’s eyes. Hazel. Like Beatrice’s.

Janie swallowed. “He was The Manor’s coachman?”

“He must have been,” Charlotte said, frowning. “But that was years ago. We’ve had a chauffeur for two years. And I don’t remember the coachman from when I was a child.”

“He would have been dismissed,” Janie said. Icy tendrils started wrapping themselves around her heart. “As soon as Lady Diane found out.”

“Well,
that’s
true,” Charlotte said bitterly. “Without a reference.”

Janie nodded. “He would have left. Taken his wife with him.”

Charlotte looked at her. “That’s right. Mother — Lady Diane — said he was married.”

“He would never have found another job in service,” Janie whispered. She couldn’t look Charlotte in the eye. Couldn’t form the thoughts. It was as if the words formed themselves. “Maybe he joined the Army.”

Charlotte may have whimpered. But Janie wasn’t finished.

“He would have left his wife. Let her fend for herself. After all, she wasn’t the one who had committed the indiscretion. She could still find work. She was employable. What he didn’t think about was his baby.” Janie finally dragged her gaze to meet Charlotte’s. “His babies. He had two daughters. He never gave either one of them another thought.”

Charlotte didn’t breathe, just stared at her until Janie became so uncomfortable she almost stood up. She almost left the room. The Manor.

Charlotte blinked. “Are you telling me that your father —”

“Used to be the coachman,” Janie finished for her. “He worked here for fifteen years. I was always told he got fired
because of me. Because The Manor didn’t want to support his baby.”

Charlotte made a sound that could have been a laugh. “When really, it was supporting a different one.”