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She made no motion to demand how he’d been. Silence stretched between them. Finally, seemingly overcome with discomfort, Louisa asked it.
“And you, Sampson? I expect you’ve been well?”
“All the better if dear Charlotte dances with me this night,” Sampson said.
Charlotte so yearned to roll her eyes into the back of her head and blink into that beautiful darkness till tomorrow.
But she had no reason to say no.
“Of course,” she returned.
In moments, she found herself wrapped in the foreign arms of Sampson, listening as he prattled on about some business proposition he was crafting. Charlotte’s mind buzzed with disinterest. She cast her eyes back towards Louisa, who had fallen into hearty conversation with Zachary once more.
“What do you suppose about that?” Sampson asked her.
Charlotte hadn’t noted the current context. She nodded and said, “It sounds marvellous.”
“Doesn’t it?”
Charlotte heaved a sigh of relief. With men like Sampson, she found it simple, easy, really, to fake it. They were entirely egotistical, listening only for positive echoing of what they’d already spouted.
The song ended perhaps a year later. Charlotte allowed her arms to drop to her sides. She felt she’d never been so exhausted in her life.
“Thank you again for the dance,” she said.
“Perhaps I can steal another from you later,” Sampson said with a wink. “I always enjoy our time together, Charlotte. I hope you know that.”
Charlotte gave a firm nod, spun around, and traced her path back towards Louisa, who’d finished her own dance with Zachary and now grinned towards the floor.
“You look quite happy,” Charlotte said.
The words made Louisa jump. She glanced up, seemingly unable to recognize Charlotte, then said, “I don’t know what it is. I’m just as giddy as Margorie, perhaps more.”
“Has Margorie found Harry yet?”
“Of course. They’ve already disappeared, I think,” Louisa said with a mischievous giggle. “I suppose as she’s already been married, she doesn’t pay such attention to our society’s set-upon rules …”
In the distance, a glass shattered across the floor. Several people shrieked, then others clapped their hands. Charlotte hung back with Louisa and gripped a glass of wine from a passing staff member. She willed the night to come to an end.
“I don’t suppose any of the men here have captured your fancy?”
“Only Sampson,” Charlotte said dryly.
“Ha. I’ve never seen a woman so miserable,” Louisa affirmed. “You looked as though you wanted to crawl out of your own skin.”
“A beautiful image, Louisa. Thank you for it,” Charlotte said.
“Oh, but Jeffrey will be here, and you’ll change your tune completely,” Louisa said.
Charlotte turned her eyes towards her dear friend. With a jolt, she remembered that still, so long after the fact, Louisa knew very little of what had occurred. She’d kept the secret of the mystic to herself. To outsiders, it must have seemed that she and Jeffrey were flirtatious, enmeshed in one another.
“Admittedly, I find him attractive,” Charlotte offered.
“Of course you do,” Louisa said. Her smile faltered briefly, as though it had only just occurred to her that, in the midst of her and Margorie’s reckless conversation about Harry and Zachary, Charlotte had offered very little with regards to Jeffrey.
“But I don’t know how powerful that attraction truly is,” Charlotte said.
Louisa’s smile fell flat. “I see.” After a moment, she continued, “I don’t understand why it seems the two of you can’t get enough of one another, then? You make your way towards one another, regardless of the occasion. You’re seated beside one another at every dinner. You—”
