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“Excuse me,” she announced as she worked through the crowd. “I am so sorry, my lord. I simply must,” she explained to a disgruntled man, “get a better view.”
She reached the stage as the writer did, and her siblings came to box her in. Charlotte peered up at the man who bowed to Lady Singberry before turning around. As he did, her fissured heart skipped a beat.
The man looked nothing like the poets of Charlotte’s imagining! He was too young, too tall, too swarthy—curse her for thinking it—too impossibly handsome and rugged. His dark green eyes held no innocence, no inquisitiveness. There was nothing genteel about him either, save for the clothes he wore, like a wolf in the pasture. He had seen much of the world, one could tell just by looking at him, by the shallow scar on his cheek, the tousle of his hair, and his sun-kissed skin… but it was not a world poets lived in, that much Charlotte knew for definite. For that world washers,and he had no place in it.
His calloused hands gripped at a crumpled note with frayed edges, and he didn’t look back up until he began reciting a poem.
“Ere we find one another where the land meets the sky,” he recanted, his voice deep and wistful, and Charlotte’s stomach churned.
“No,” she breathed, her eyes all at once wet with tears. She stepped away, her back colliding with her brother’s chest.
“Where the horizon is not a point but a world of our making,” he continued.
“Say nothing more,” she whimpered incredulously, and Matthew shushed her.
“To set you down where I found you in the garden, o apple of my eye. From a tree fallen, not of fruit but of willow.”
Her brow knitted painfully as he reached the second stanza. In unison, Charlotte’s account soundless and pleading, they finished the poem.
“I will it away beneath the willow tree; I will it away where we lie. To dream of your ghost upon cursed pillow; Where I store the taste of your sigh.”
In the flash of stunned silence before the applause, Charlotte felt something within her snap. The man did not simply share a name with her. This was no mere coincidence. He had stolen credit for her poem. The final poem of her most recently published collection, printed in December’s edition of The Ladies’ Monthly Gallery of Arts.
As she had raced up to the stage, she had wondered whether she had swiped the name subconsciously from another writer, but now there was no doubt. This man, in one fell swoop, had claimed her life’s work for his own.
She wanted to scream until her lungs burst. She wanted to climb onto the stage like a rabid animal, tear his jade eyes out and claim the glory for herself. It washers. This moment washers. The thunderous applause that came next, as she rocked herself back and forth on her feet—it was hers.
She couldn’t move; she couldn’t protest, not yet, not without causing a great scandal. She could only watch in stunned silence as the man smirked and bowed, lapping up accolades like the cat that got the cream. She hoped he might choke on it.
Lady Singberry joined him on the stage once the laurels came to term. Gentle chatter blanketed the room. She announced some other writer, but Charlotte didn’t care one bit for whoever would follow. The imposter skipped down the short stairs as the hall moved on, his polished Hessians clicking against the steps, and Charlotte turned toward him instinctively.
Matthew grabbed her by the arm. “Where do you think you’re going without us?” he muttered in her ear. “You know the rules.” He was statuesque as he regarded her, his dark brown eyes boring into hers, warning her against causing a scene.
“That man,” she whimpered, breaking free of his grasp. “I must speak with him.”
Her brother huffed and looked around to make sure no one was staring. “I will introduce you once the recital is over,” he stated. “Eleanor,” he called, for their sister was still looking up dreamily at the stage, her white-gloved hands tucked beneath her chin.
“Was that not beautiful?” she cooed as she turned to face them, her cheeks a little pink.
“You don’t understand,” Charlotte hissed at her brother, stepping away. Again, Matthew grabbed her, this time by the wrist. “He isn’t who he says he is.”
“I don’t care if he’s the King of Prussia; you will speak to him when the time is right.”
“And when will that be?”
“Once I’ve had a drink,” he quipped decisively. “Honestly, it would be utterly in your nature to cause a scene on such a pleasant night. You owe it to us all to be on your best behavior. No chasing after poets, no chasing after anyone. Eleanor!” he called again, and their sister rushed over. With a disapproving shake of his head, he led his sisters back to their father.
As if things couldn’t get any worse, he was locked in conversation with the insufferable Duke of Gamston. The two sat beneath a window on armchairs of blue panne-velvet. Charlotte’s father looked up at his children with a gentle smile, but she was powerless to return it.
“My son, my daughters,” he said at their arrival. “Was the first writer everything you dreamed?”
Charlotte was dumbfounded, so it was Eleanor who spoke first. “Oh, he was, Papa!” she replied, coming to stand beside him. He took her hand and kissed it. “It was so lovely. Could you hear much from here?”
“Hardly anything, my dove, but I think the beauty of the written word is quite lost on us,” he laughed, casting a sweeping glance over his children. To her dismay, he settled on Charlotte, not regarding her like a dove but like a sick pigeon. “Whatever is the matter, my darling? You’re white as a sheet.”
“Too much excitement, I say,” Matthew interrupted before she could even think of a lie.
Without meaning to, she caught the eye of Gamston next. He smiled that nauseating smile of his and came to a stand. “If I may, I should very much like to take Lady Charlotte for a tippling. Quench some of that excitement of hers.”
