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CHAPTERTWENTY-ONE
Charlotte had never been so livid. She had come close when Eleanor, at the tender age of six, had seen fit to cut a lock of Charlotte’s hair in her sleep to keep it in a locket. She had come evencloserwhen Matthew had run off to France in the middle of the War to reunite with his great love—returning to them only a day later after having missed his ferry in Dover. Even her first true meeting with Fletcher, which had inspired so much anger in her that she had brandished a blade against him, seemed a children’s tale by comparison.
Strange, she thought, that the two great passional moments of her life began and ended with Benjamin Fletcher. Nottwo, she realized, for there was a first act to the comedic tragedy they had entertained, one from which he had sought to hide his leading role. The stage would be his soon enough.
She had taken great pains in setting the scene: another meeting at the greenhouse where she had thought to have first known him, but there was no knowing Benjamin Fletcher for most certainly he did not exist. As with their last meeting, Josephine was standing watch inside the Knight’s house, posted by the front window should trouble come looking for them. It was almost night in the garden, the sky turning a funny shade of grey, not quite dark enough to reveal the stars. The Duke’s daughter didn’tneedstars. She needed answers.
When the gate at the front of the lawn creaked open, she was one step closer to securing them. Wrapping her shawl around her shoulders, out of instinct rather than any necessity to ward off the cold, she steeled herself for the coming of Fletcher. Fighting a grin, he moved towards her like a stray cat, the night clinging to him most naturally.
“It seems I was mistaken in believing I was the rogue between us,” he purred against the darkness.
Charlotte tasted bile. She swallowed it back and turned to unlock the greenhouse. Her fingers fumbled with the rusted key, worried that Benjamin might see her call as the brokering of peace and look to pick up where they had left off. She imagined what his hands might feel like curled around her waist, how warm against the chill of night. Quickly, she tucked the thought away, needing not to be touched by him but to be freed of all lies. Wordlessly, she pushed the door open with her shoulder and waited for him to enter.
He moved past her, his hand brushing—perhaps accidentally, perhaps not—against her own, and the touch was violently delightful. It occurred to her, as she looked for him on the breeze that she was not afraid. The greenhouse door closed behind her with a click.
Benjamin was turning on his heel, slowly taking in the tableau she had sketched for them. Two dozen candles had been dotted around the glasshouse, flickering atop the workbenches and makeshift windowsills. In the center of the middle island, she had set out a daffodil, which lay atop an envelope containing a page from an advanced copy of the Ladies’ Monthly Gallery of Art.
Benjamin ran his calloused fingers over the bloom. “Is this a gift for me?” he inquired teasingly. “Why, I didn’t bring you a thing.” Charlotte’s jaw set to stone, and he noticed her silence. Turning to her, his eyes almost amber in the light from the flames, he said, “Why did you bring me here, Charlotte?”
She closed her eyes, recalling the speech she had prepared for him. “Do you know what that flower is called?”
She heard him breathe a laugh. “A daffodil.”
“A daffodil, by any other name…” she pastiched,would be the death of me.“Thatisone name for it. The botanists might call it narcissus—its genus, anyway.”
“You lured me here to discuss botany.”
“Do you know of the myth which shares a name? You might—you know of Milton.” Her heart pinched. If he reacted to her intimation, she could not sense it. “He was a hunter, this Narcissus, and so handsome that he could be swayed to love only by his own reflection.”
The floorboards creaked underfoot, and her eyes flashed open. Benjamin must have stepped forward. She averted her eyes to the flower. He asked, “What does this have to do with—“
“With us? Not a thing, but it has everything to do with you.” Her cheeks prickled. She took a step, her fingers dancing at the edge of the island. “My musing is this—who stares back at you in the glass, Narcissus?”
At last, their gazes locked. She could see the amusement written over his face, and she watched as it slowly twisted into disoriented fury. She suspected that he found in her expression the other questions she so longed to ask, awakening to the truth before she could utter it. His skin was molten gold in the candlelight, but it turned to dark marble as he said, “Don’t wake me, Charlotte. You won’t like the man you find.”
“I don’t doubt it, but the time for ignorant dreaming is over.” She regarded him with detestation. “A most curious thing happened earlier today. As I walked through Piccadilly, I happened to spot one of Huxley’s poems in the Hathaway window.” She gestured for the envelope. “Read it if you must, though I doubt it will be quite as novel to you as it was to me.”
With a suppressed growl, he tore open the envelope, leaning toward a candle for light as he read it silently. He turned to her, his lips wet, mumbling, “You published another poem. What of it?” and he seemed genuinely without care.
“Youpublished another poem. That was not my doing.” She vocalized a low breath. “It can’t have been because I have not seen that poem in two months.”
Benjamin froze, his eyes lifting from the poem to look ahead of him, deep in thought. The greenhouse iced over, occupying a world all of its own. The Knight’s house slipped away, as did the wind, the sky above them, the cold. Charlotte waited, expecting him to spin another lie, not knowing yet what she would do with it.
“We have known each other before, have we not?” Despite herself, her vision clouded over. Still, Benjamin did not move. “I thought I realized at the masquerade ball when you whispered,Princess, in my ear. It sounded so familiar and yet so ruinous. I buried it as I have done most things when it has come to you.” She tried and failed to stifle a cry and thought to see him stir at last through her tears. “Oh, how verysillyI have been,” she said in mock flagellation, “To have believed your lies. To havewantedto believe the story you spun me, so much that I blinded myself to the truth.”
Benjamin rasped, “And which truth is that?”
Somewhere, a clock struck midnight. “You are the man who robbed me that night in Twicham. You knew of my work not by circumstance but through your crime. You are not a man of honorable fraud but a self-serving villain through and through.” She sighed, a hand twisting in her shawl. “Worse than that, you are a coward.”
The wind picked up outside, the branches of nearby trees rapping against the glass like bony fingers. All she could hear was theirtap, tap, tappingas she waited for him to act. In that great quiet, she looked for Fletcher in the face of the man who stood before her—she looked for Huxley, too—but she found neither. He was a husk, and the light had all but drained from his eyes. Thoseeyesshe had seen before, peering at her under the veil of night in the chariot she had rented two months ago. The same eyes that had beguiled her so strongly she had cast away her virtue; that had belonged to a character with whom she had thought herself the greatest of allies.
Just as he was unmasked—faceless—so was she. All she had thought herself to be—clever, intuitive, adventurous, strong—had been wrung out dry, proved a lie. He had played her for a fool effortlessly, having used her pride, her sheltered past, her boredom, and herweaknessagainst her. She was just as hateful, soon to be driven by equal spite. In a way, they deserved each other.
“Am I mistaken? Do you not share a voice with my assailant? A gaze? A touch? Is that not how you came to know of my work?” she whispered in succession, mewling. “Do you deny it?”
He blinked slowly as though every shuttering of his eyelids was agony. “Do you want me to deny it?”
The question played like a false note. “The truth is all that matters now,” she replied, not wanting to voice that,yes, in the recesses of her heart, she longed for a lie—for him to tell her that she was mistaken so that they might keep up their charade for a moment more, long enough for her to come to terms with their parting.
