She gave him a hard shove and Marby went teetering backward into the crowd and—oh dear! Charlotte winced—into the glorious backside of the Comtesse D’Artois. The comtesse shrieked, Marby spluttered, and Charlotte plunged deeper into the ballroom with her black domino a swirl of shadow behind her.
Was it her, or was there a certain desperation in the air as she pressed through the crowd? It wasn’t the ladies in the arms of otherpeople’s lords, or even the couple sneaking up the stairs toward the wing with the bedchambers—after all, Charlotte could hardly findthatshocking, when her parents’ marriage had been a famous cautionary tale. But something about the overbright eyes and the grating quality to everyone’s laughter struck her as unhappy. It brought her back to the feel of her mother’s long fingernails scraping rhythmically up and down her scalp on the long-ago nights after her father died.Never love a man, darling. Never give him that kind of power.
Charlotte snagged a bottle of champagne from a passing servant and took a long swig as she approached the smaller chamber at the back of the ballroom. She could feel her pulse beat harder and alarm bells clanging in her head. This chamber was kitted out with a series of small tables, and brighter, with candles glowing in the sconces and the chandelier lit overhead.
The players, after all, needed to see their cards.
People crowded the gambling tables, the men sweating in their coats, the women’s diamonds winking and the plumes in their hair quivering with the excitement of hopes held too high. Only one woman sat almost unmoving, her face so implacably beautiful that it seemed to draw the candlelight. In the midst of the black dominos, she stood out in a gown of deep rose silk with full skirts that crested over the side of her chair in wide, perfect waves, so that even at the crowded table there was a circle of stillness around her. Her expression didn’t change as she leaned forward to snap her card down.
The alarm bells in Charlotte’s head let out a shriek and went deathly silent.
She’d caught her mother red-handed.
CHAPTER 3
“What bad luck you’ve hadtonight, Lady Margot,” crowed the Duque de Cardona at the end of the hand. “I’ll gladly accept another voucher from you, should you wish to play again?”
But the stack of Lady Margot’s vouchers in front of the duque already teetered high, each slip of paper whispering,Catastrophe! Catastrophe!How much money had she lost? How long had she been playing for such high stakes? Worst of all, how much did sheowe?
The questions made Charlotte queasy, but she was determined to pull the answers out of her mother tonight.
“I’m afraid she must decline.” Charlotte stepped into the circle of candlelight. “Lady Margot, I believe this is our dance?”
Lady Margot’s eyes—so like Charlotte’s own—snapped to her daughter’s face and blazed once in recognition. “How could I forget?” She wrote one last voucher for the duque and rose, placing her hand lightly in Charlotte’s.
Only Charlotte could feel the tightness of her mother’s grip.
“We’re just in time for the waltz,” Charlotte said with forced cheer as they approached the dance floor, but her mother pulled her into a darkened hollow.
“We will not bewaltzing. You’ll be heading home before you’re recognized! Does your grandmother know you’re out? Or is this her idea of what it means to chaperone you?”
Very few people made Charlotte quail, but then again, very few people looked so much like her that she might as well have been staring into a mirror. Lady Margot had sleek hair instead of Charlotte’s dark bramble of curls, but they had the same slanting green eyes and the same finely wrought features, although Lady Margot was somehow more striking. She was in her mid-forties and yet time tiptoed by, not nearly brave enough to tug at her jawline or get out its tiny blade and carve wrinkles around her deep-set eyes. Instead, the only change over the years was a deepening of the hollows beneath her cheeks, which served to highlight that even her bones were staggering.
“Gran doesn’t know I’m here and I certainly don’t want to tell her. But all I hear lately is rumors of your gambling losses, and you won’t answer any of my questions. What choice did I have but to try to see for myself?”
Lady Margot did not believe in wasting expressions, but she allowed a faint incredulity to drift into her tone. “You snuck out at night to Lady Hervey’s masquerade towatch me play cards?”
“No, I came because you’ve been acting odd ever since you returned from Prussia and I’m worried. How much do you owe, Mother?”
Lady Margot laughed softly, but with no amusement. “I may have been playing cards of late, but I’ve won. Even with my losses tonight I’m up nearly two hundred and fifty pounds. Gohome, Charlotte.”
But Charlotte refused to be put off any longer. Her mother had waved off her questions for weeks now, but she couldn’t wave off the trail of bills she’d left, or the tradespeople who’d somehow managed to track Charlotte down and beg for payment. Their claims weren’t for scarves, slippers, or the fripperies that might suggest that Lady Margot had overspent her allowance again. Instead, they were askingabout coal, carriage fees, candles—expenses Lady Margot had never failed to pay in the past. Even her butler had come to the back door, coughing delicately and asking when the servants might expect their wages. Charlotte’s own allowance was more than generous and she was happy to pay up—and quickly, so Gran didn’t find out—but the bills kept coming.
“If it’s not gambling, what is it? I can’t help if you won’t tell me the problem.”
Lady Margot’s eyes blazed again. “You? Help? Why would you want to? You choose everyone else over me.”
The barb was old, but so sharply pointed that it pierced deep. It wasn’t Charlotte’s fault that her grandmother had taken charge of her when she was only six, and yet over the years, Margot’s sense of betrayal had grown. That Charlotte lived with her grandmother was one thing, but that Charlotte loved her grandmother was something Margot could never forgive. It was an argument no one could win, so Charlotte stepped neatly around it.
“Please don’t tell me I’m wearing a waistcoat for nothing, Mother. How much do you owe?”
Lady Margot said nothing, but Charlotte could see her mother’s feelings gather around her like a storm—fear, love, pride, and desperation all rising up behind her in a billowing black tower. Something electric cracked across Lady Margot’s face and at last she spoke.
“I made a bad investment with borrowed money and I owe fifteen thousand pounds. Gohome, Charlotte. I’m beyond help now.”
CHAPTER 4
Charlotte didn’t mean to gasplike a fish, but she lost the ability to breathe at her mother’s announcement. For a good ten minutes, all she could do was lean against the ballroom’s lavender-and-gilt walls and open and close her mouth, until Lady Margot threw up her hands, told Charlotte once more to go home, and fled the party herself.
