A Study In Scarlet Women Page 3

  Livia stared at Charlotte’s round, pink-cheeked face, cherubic as ever. Was this why Lady Holmes so disliked Mrs. Gladwell? And dear God, did Sir Henry mean to leave this paperweight where Lady Holmes was sure to see it, and then have a postcard bearing the exact same image come into the house—something the girl who found it would probably display in her room—thereby rubbing his seaside holiday with his mistress in his wife’s face?

  Was that what Charlotte had wanted to tell Livia?

  “Do you think he’s in love with Mrs. Gladwell?”

  Livia couldn’t decide which would be worse, that their father loved someone else or that he was unfaithful to their mother with a woman he didn’t even love.

  “No,” said Charlotte decisively. “Come here.”

  There was a box inside the bottom drawer of Sir Henry’s desk, a box secured with a dark bronze, strange-looking lock, which Livia guessed to be some sort of Chinese antique. Its shape was a barrel formed by five rotating disks, which bore Chinese characters that had once been painted with gold lacquer but had now faded almost to the point of illegibility.

  Livia knew about the box. She’d understood instinctively that the lock would open if she lined up the correct characters. But when she’d tried on a previous occasion, with their parents out of the house, she’d become frustrated after dozens of unsuccessful attempts.

  Charlotte, however, peered at the lock and turned the disks one by one with great confidence.

  “You tried enough times to find out the correct combination?” Livia marveled.

  “No. Papa doesn’t read Chinese any more than we do. If you look at the lock in strong light, you can see smudges of pencil marks around some of the characters. And when you line those up—”

  Charlotte drew back the pin, set the lock aside, and held out the now open box to Livia.

  The first thing Livia saw was a newspaper clipping, which announced Sir Henry’s engagement to someone named Lady Amelia Drummond.

  Next came a wedding invitation. “But this can’t be right. The wedding was on—that’s the day of Mamma and Papa’s wedding. You don’t suppose Mamma is secretly Lady Amelia Drummond?”

  Charlotte shook her head and gestured Livia to lift the invitation. At the very bottom of the box lay a small photograph, of a young Sir Henry and a handsome and very superior-looking young lady who was most certainly not Lady Holmes.

  Livia stared at the picture. “Did this Lady Amelia jilt Papa? And did he marry someone else on the original wedding day to spite her?”

  Charlotte locked the box again and put it back carefully. Then she went to the door, peered out, and beckoned Livia to follow her. Once they had ascended the stairs to their room, Livia sat on the bed, her head in her hands, and tried to cope with the day’s revelations.

  “Do you think Mamma found out that he married her on the day he was supposed to marry Lady Amelia?”

  “Yes.”

  “Before or after?”

  Charlotte thought for a minute. “After.”

  That made sense. Lady Holmes’s parents had been respectable but short on funds; without the means to afford a Season for their daughter, they might not have kept up with the flood of matrimonial news coming out of London.

  Not to mention, Lady Holmes wouldn’t be so disillusioned if she’d known what she was getting into in the first place.

  “I wonder why Mamma doesn’t have the equivalent of a Mrs. Gladwell. Do you think she wants to?”

  At Charlotte’s placid question, Livia bolted upright. “Have an affair? I’ve no idea if she wants to, but I’m sure Papa would be extremely cross if she were to.”

  “Why? He does it. And he doesn’t seem at all ashamed about it.”

  “I can’t explain it. I just know he’d be angry.”

  Charlotte considered this, her face as serene as that of an angel on a Christmas card. “That’s not fair, is it?”

  “Of course it’s unfair but that’s how it is.”

  “I don’t like it.”

  “Neither do I. I hate it. But we have to live with it.”

  Charlotte was silent. Down the passage Henrietta’s door opened. The heels of her evening slippers clicked forcefully as she descended to dinner.

  “Must we?” asked Charlotte.

  This question, somehow, shocked Livia more than the ones that preceded it. She tossed the postcard into the grate and set it on fire. “Yes, we must. There’s nothing else to do but to live with it.”

  The matter of Sir Henry’s romantic liaisons and their effect on Lady Holmes wasn’t mentioned again until two years later, when Henrietta, at eighteen, became engaged before the end of her first Season.

  Shortly afterward Livia and Charlotte met Mr. Cumberland, her fiancé. With every last ounce of her self-control, Livia managed not to roll her eyes during the encounter—Mr. Cumberland wasn’t nearly as insufferable as Henrietta, but good gracious that man was dumb as a post.

  “That poor idiot,” she said to Charlotte as soon as they were alone.

  Charlotte opened the drawer of her nightstand and took out her contraband, a large piece of plum pound cake that she’d smuggled out of the kitchen. “I agree.”

  Livia huffed. “Anybody willing to marry Henrietta has to be an idiot.”

  Charlotte nodded absently, her attention on the cake. Lady Holmes was unhappy that for all the restrictions placed on Charlotte’s diet, the latter had not become any less tubby. Livia used to delight in the trafficking of buns and puddings for Charlotte, as much to defy her mother as to savor Charlotte’s inexpressible joy as she sank her teeth into forbidden fruits. But lately Livia was beginning to be remorseful about her role as Charlotte’s abettor and procurer: The prevailing fashion was unforgiving and Charlotte was going to be awfully uncomfortable in those whale-boned, steel-ribbed corsets the only purpose of which was to manhandle a woman’s body into a wasp-waisted figure.

  Well, provided that someday Charlotte could be persuaded to abandon her dedication to her blue broadcloth frock, the only dress she had worn for years, remade every eighteen months or so to accommodate for her growing height.

  “Well, don’t just assault your cake,” Livia went on. “Tell me why you think Mr. Cumberland is an idiot.”

  It was possible to hold a minor conversation with Charlotte these days, if one was willing to prompt her at every turn. Charlotte didn’t seem to mind being asked to speak, though she often volunteered to take Henrietta’s shift with Bernadine: One didn’t need to say anything, sitting with Bernadine. In fact, the opposite was true—the less one tried to talk to Bernadine, the less frustrating those sessions were.

  “He doesn’t lack for money,” said Charlotte, “but the fit of his clothes is terrible—he clearly doesn’t know how to choose a tailor. And he thinks one showy knot of the necktie makes up for bad shoes and trousers that are too short. Besides, his valet is robbing him blind.”

  “What?”

  “The diamond on his stickpin is paste. Since he wouldn’t have bought a paste stickpin, his valet probably sold the original and put in a cheap replica.”

  Livia had been half reclining on their bed. She leaped to the floor. “Shouldn’t we tell Henrietta that he employs a thief?”

  “Henrietta was the one who showed me how to tell a real diamond from paste,” Charlotte said, as placid as she always was when she dropped these bombshell observations. “She knows. She’ll make sure the valet’s gone soon.”

  “But to knowingly accept a proposal from this moron—I almost feel sorry for Henrietta.”

  “Don’t. He’s exactly what she’s been looking for. Henrietta isn’t stupid. She isn’t going to marry someone like Papa. She wants someone she can control and now she has one.”

  Livia grimaced. “Are we sure that he does have sufficient funds? Not like us—all appearances.”

  Charlotte h
ad first pointed out, a year earlier, that Cook wasn’t putting the correct amount of butter in her pound cake anymore, which led to the discovery that the allowance Cook had for purchasing ingredients had been significantly reduced. But it was Livia who took the audacious step of steaming open a letter for Sir Henry from his bank, and that was how they found out that the house was heavily mortgaged and their parents deep in debt.

  (It was around the same time that Bernadine’s nursemaid was let go and the task of keeping an eye on her fell to her sisters, whose governess was also relieved of her duties, with Lady Holmes declaring that the girls were old enough to not need one anymore.)

  Livia, already disillusioned with her parents, became even more so: If they must make a mockery of their marriage, couldn’t they at least be responsible stewards of their finances?

  “Henrietta was careful,” said Charlotte. “Remember when she and Mamma went on that two-day trip to visit Mamma’s sick aunt—or so they said? I found punched tickets from their journey and the destinations weren’t anywhere Mamma had relations. But Mr. Cumberland mentioned all those places today—locations for his family’s holdings. That’s what Mamma and Henrietta did—they investigated those holdings on the ground, to make sure they were in sound shape.”

  “Huh. I didn’t give Henrietta enough credit.”

  “Henrietta has always been clever where her own interests are concerned.”

  “But she’s still marrying an idiot,” Livia flopped back down on the bed. “Though I suppose it’s better to marry an idiot than someone who thinks you’re an idiot.”

  Charlotte’s attention returned to her cake. Livia stared at the ceiling, swarmed by pessimistic thoughts. She was startled when Charlotte spoke again, as much by the fact that Charlotte wished to continue their conversation as by Charlotte’s actual question.

  “You won’t marry an idiot, will you?” asked Charlotte.

  “I certainly hope not,” Livia answered glumly. “Or at least with my eyes open if I do. What about you?”

  “I don’t want to marry.”

  “But how will you live? You know there won’t be enough money to keep us as spinsters.”

  “I can earn money. If I were a boy, and there were no money in the family, wouldn’t I be expected to have a profession?”

  “Yes, but you aren’t a boy. Mamma will have a fit at the idea of one of her daughters . . . working.”

  “Mamma doesn’t need to agree.”

  Livia sighed. “You’re deluding yourself if you think Papa will.”

  She was unsentimental about Sir Henry, since Sir Henry had no use for her. But Charlotte was his pet—he was vastly amused by her combination of great intelligence, great oddity, and great silence. He regularly took her for walks, just the two of them. He bought contraband sweets for her. And he read her his favorite poems and was tickled that she could immediately recite them back to him.

  “What makes you think he won’t?” asked Charlotte.

  “The same reason I think he’d fly into a rage if he found Mamma having an affair. He might appear congenial, but he isn’t at all liberal in his thinking. Keep that in mind.”

  Charlotte nodded, looking rather sadly at the empty plate before her.

  It was the last time Livia saw Charlotte consume such a quantity of cake—or of any comestible, for that matter—in one sitting.

  The next few years brought a slew of unforeseen changes on Charlotte’s part. For one, she began to take an active interest in her wardrobe—studying fashion plates, trying on different combinations of petticoats and stockings, accompanying Lady Holmes to browse selections of lace and feathers.

  By extension, she paid far greater attention to her figure and stopped eating until she couldn’t swallow another bite. The day she asked for a second helping of carrots and then forewent pudding at the end of the meal, Livia drew her aside and asked whether she was ill. Charlotte shook her head.

  Much to Lady Holmes’s relief, her youngest child also exerted a heroic effort in the direction of small talk. Instead of startling and discomfiting visitors with such comments as “I see you no longer write in your journal” or “I’m sorry the trip to Bath wasn’t as successful as you’d hoped it would be,” she learned to smile, nod, and chat about the weather.

  This last was not accomplished without trial and error. In the beginning she had a tendency to correct old squires’ exclamations of “We haven’t had so much rain since I was a boy in short breeches” by quoting concrete records from the parish registers, which demonstrated that there had been far greater precipitation a mere five years ago. It was after a fair bit of practice and no shortage of awkwardness that she at last grasped the point of all that persiflage, which was merely to avoid the silence of people having nothing to say to one another.

  The uncomfortable silence, in other words. But since there was no such thing as an uncomfortable silence for Charlotte, it was as difficult for her to understand as it was for a man with vertigo to master the Viennese polka.

  Sometimes, as Livia stood beside her, perspiring on her behalf and making every attempt to convey the correct response via telepathy, it struck her how much Charlotte resembled a foreigner who found native customs baffling and, on occasion, patently ridiculous. One time, in the middle of reading a magazine article about the possibility of life on Mars, it occurred to Livia that Charlotte was more akin to an interplanetary alien: It wasn’t only the habits and conventions of the English she found perplexing, but that of all humanity.

  But eventually Charlotte cleared that hurdle. She not only learned the stark difference between asking after an old lady’s cold versus her problem with incontinence, she became adept at navigating these formerly treacherous shoals, even though Livia could tell, at times, that she was herding a situation through an internal algorithm, trying to generate an appropriate response.

  But overall, her transformation appeared complete. The little girl who insisted on wearing the same dress year in and year out had been replaced by a young lady in ruffles and plumage. Instead of the Encyclopedia Britannica, she now read Burke’s Peerage and Cornhill Magazine. And while she never slimmed to an elegant svelteness—she retained a hint of a double chin and the buttons of her bodice always seemed in danger of popping open—her tendency toward plumpness worked very well with her wide eyes and rosy cheeks.

  She wasn’t beautiful, but she was darling. People responded to her the way they would a nursery rhyme character all grown up and come to life. Boys and young men became tongue-tied, their eyes busily darting from her pink, pillowy lips to the firm rise of her breasts.

  Livia was half envious of this response her little sister evoked from the gentlemen and half . . . mournful. Who was this girl swaddled in flounces, who put honey on her face and coconut oil in her hair? What had happened to the Charlotte Livia remembered, that noted odd duck who was the only person with whom Livia felt comfortable, the only person Livia trusted?

  And then, the day before they were to leave for London for their first Season together, Charlotte said to Livia, “I spoke with Papa today.”

  They were walking in the fields on the outskirts of the village. The day was sunny but still cool. The countryside was a fresh, sparkling green. And Charlotte’s cream-colored dress, dainty with lace and passementerie, offered an impossibly pretty contrast against this backdrop of brightly lit nature.

  Livia was feeling downhearted at the likelihood that the new Charlotte would swim in proposals by the end of the Season. Livia’s chances on the matrimonial mart were nowhere as favorable. She was a misanthrope—rare was the man or woman who didn’t deeply disappoint her. That was bad enough for a young lady, but to make matters even worse she was a misanthrope who didn’t know how to pretend not to be one.

  If Charlotte were to accept a proposal, Livia would be left all alone at home.

  She sighed. “What did you and Papa talk abo
ut?”

  “Do you remember the day we met Mr. Cumberland? I said I didn’t want to marry.”

  “You told Papa you don’t want to marry today, right before we are to leave for London?”

  “No, I spoke to him the day after we met Mr. Cumberland.”

  Livia blinked. That would have been five years ago.

  “I told him I did not think the institution of marriage would suit me very well. I said I wished to look into other means of livelihood.”

  “And what did he say?”

  “He said that he believed I was too young to make any permanent decisions. He encouraged me to look into aspects of being a girl that I hadn’t explored at the time—fashion, etc.—to experience more fully the traditional path for a woman before I rejected it altogether.”

  This sounded shockingly reasonable and wise—Livia could scarcely believe they were talking about Sir Henry.

  “I did as he asked. As it turns out, fashion is rather enjoyable. And so is talking to people—amazing how much they’ll tell you if you only inquire. And I imagine there should be something interesting to a London Season as well. But none of it changed my mind about marriage, since none of it changed the economic and political equation that is marriage. I do not like the idea of bartering the use of my reproductive system for a man’s support—not in the absence of other choices.”

  Livia’s eyes bulged. The old Charlotte had never gone anywhere; she’d been but reupholstered in fine muslin and a jauntily angled hat! Livia was ashamed that this simple camouflage had fooled her completely.

  “And you told him that?”

  “That he already knows. What I told him today was that I’d settled on a choice of career: I believe I will make a fine headmistress at a girls’ school. If I achieve that position at a reputable school, I can earn as much as five hundred pounds a year.”

  Livia sucked in a breath. “That much?”

  “Yes. But I cannot become a headmistress overnight. I must attend school, undertake the required training, and then work my way up the ranks. I asked Papa to foot the expenses until I can pay him back.”