“And God forbid we show any interest in hunting or boxing,” said Miss Alexandra. “Beat one man in a little fencing match and see what he says to you.”
Even the sensible Miss Marby crossed her knife and fork neatly on her plate. “What I resent—”
Her brother hooted from across the table.
“No, James, I resent it most deeply! I resent how most men see us as either daughters, mothers, wives, grandmothers, or spinsters—always in relationship to them. For once, I’d like someone to look atme and not think how I could be of service. Could Father never ask me, for instance, before he drops the management of the family in my—” She stopped abruptly and colored. “Forgive me.”
“KIT BARTLETON TOLD ME I MUSTN’T CATCH SNAKES!” Georgiana was also wearing a Ramsay tiara, though it was much too big for her and in danger of sliding down her head because she quivered with fury. “It was only a little grass snake, and Kit was afraid.”
“If you ask me,” said the dowager, signaling to Lawrence to keep the wine coming, “the worst thing men do is hoard power. At least, they think they do, because a clever woman gets around them. But I must say, I find the subterfugeexhausting.”
“Alice!” gasped Lady Skeffington.
The dowager eyed her with a touch of impatience. “Yes, Lucretia? Whose side do you expect me to be on?”
“What about women? What about the crimes your sex perpetrates?” cried Lysander from down the table.
“Hear, hear!” shouted Marby, while Alexandra blew a raspberry.
“No, Alex! I should like to get a word in edgewise!” said Marby. “Charlotte’s suitors, they’re all flush, aren’t they? What am I… that is to say, dash it! How might a man without much in the pocket ever…”
“True, Marby.” Wolfgang’s eyes slid to Charlotte and he tasted bitterness on his tongue. “Too many women care only for a man’s position.”
“I also find it unpleasant, Your Grace,” said Miss Marby, “but women of our station must think of a man’s fortune. Your sex has left ours completely dependent. You can’t claim men have difficulties, when—”
“Ican.” Lysander’s voice scratched so strangely, like metal scraping against metal, that it made the others go silent. “Do you knowhow many matrons congratulated me when I came back from Waterloo? But if I dared ever mention the fellows who died around me,friendswho died, they saidChin up!andThink of England!Damn it, is a man not meant to feel?”
A pit opened in Wolfgang’s stomach and threatened to drag him in. He carried each soldier who died. He carried John, too, like a wound that wouldn’t heal. But the howling inside helped nothing, so he shut it up as best he could, pushing noxious thoughts down until they petrified, leaving him stiffer and more unyielding by the day. Was that what had happened to his father? He’d stood ramrod straight at the end, unable to speak of important things in anything but pronouncements.
“Of course we feel, Lysander. I think of John and—” Wolfgang ground to a stop and had to try again. “I think of John and—”
But it was no use. The words were stuck fast, choking him, just as they’d choked him those last weeks when John was dying. He’d held his brother’s hand and squeezed it hard, trying to say something of comfort, something that would help him let go, something to let him know how deeply—
But Wolfgang couldn’t find the words then, and he had no words now. The whole damn table was staring, and although his throat worked hard, he couldn’t speak.
Fuck. Was he that far gone already?
He made another appalling attempt at a sentence, but silence filled his mouth. It filled his ears and billowed up like smoke around him, so thick and impenetrable thatnothingwas strong enough to—
Charlotte plunked her elbows on the table so hard it made the cutlery bounce, and propped her chin in her hands as one by one, the other guests turned their attention to her.
“What a day, my friends! I find I could use a scotch. Lady Skeffington, have you ever tried one? Gran keeps a private stashshe thinks she’d hiding from me—shall we retire to the Grand Salon and crack it open?”
“Oh!” chirped Lady Skeffington, a bit like a startled bird. “I don’t think—”
Miss Alexandra rose to her feet. “Yes, please. I’ve always wanted to try scotch.”
Wolfgang and Charlotte were the last left sitting at the table. He caught her eye, not knowing what to think. Had she just… rescued him?
Thank you?he mouthed.
Her expression was as inscrutable as a cat’s and her eyes as unblinking. Wolfgang began to wonder if he’d misunderstood, but as he pushed his chair back from the table, and so fast he nearly missed it, Charlotte winked.
CHAPTER 23
The weather was so improbablyperfect over the next few days that Marby insisted the party spend a day by the sea. Wolfgang couldn’t resist and even Charlotte managed to tear herself away from whatever occupied her in her brother’s study to join them. The party rode over to the coast, laden with picnic hampers, blankets, and wide parasols. Miss Alexandra brought a bat and ball and dashed around with Miss Marby and Lysander, playing a three-man game of rounders, while Georgiana and Miss Helena tromped off to explore the rock pools, and Marby and Charlotte kicked off their riding boots and stockings and ran toward the water to play catch-me-if-you-can with the waves.
Only Wolfgang sat like a rock on the sand, brooding and munching methodically through his peppermints before they melted.
