“Yes.” Charlotte sighed. “You can come and visit anytime you wish, but I know you need to be elsewhere.”
Victor took a sip of his brandy, his face serious as he studied her. “You will send word if you need anything, and I will come if you need me.”
Her husband was kind and caring. He also treated her more as a younger friend. Not quite a sister, but certainly not as a wife, which she preferred. She was happy and she was free of her father and had a home without ridicule. She wanted Victor to be as happy as well, but he wouldn’t be if he remained here.
“I promise to send word,” she assured him. She then stood and took a deep breath, nerves fluttering in her stomach. “I do have one more thing to show you before you go.”
“What would that be?” he asked with humor, but not in a patronizing manner as her father had done. She’d been showing him the improvements to the estate that she’d been making for the past month. Perhaps Victor didn’t care, but he never dismissed her, which she appreciated more than he could know.
“Come with me.”
He set his glass aside and stood. “Where to?”
“The parlor,” she answered, then turned and walked away, knowing that he would follow. But with each step, her nerves increased until she was afraid that she might be ill by the time they stopped before the large fireplace.
“What do you think?” she asked with hesitation and then held her breath.
“You were wrong,” he muttered quietly.
“When?” What was he talking about?
“That first night that we met you told me that you could not financially support yourself as an artist. You were wrong.”
Charlotte blew out a breath as a wee bit of pride filled her breast. He did like it and she prayed that he was not simply being kind.
“This is what you were sketching in the carriage?”
“I have many likenesses of you now,” she admitted. “I also sketched you in the evening while you read by the fire, then painted when I retired each night.”
“This is the first portrait that anyone has ever done of me.” He turned toward her. “I will cherish it always, Charlotte. Thank you.”
Chapter 5
London,July1816–four years later
Victor tossed back the whisky then set the glass on the table.
Baron Percival Jordan eyed him with humor. “I thought you would be in a better mood now that your sister has wed.”
“I am glad she is no longer my problem,” Victor admitted. Had she needed a fourth Season, Victor may have cut the purse strings. His sister had grown into a selfish, spoiled horror, with the assistance of their mother. “Truthfully, I’m surprised she found anyone to marry her.”
This last Season had been the worst, and mostly because Maria had become his responsibility. When their father suddenly died last summer, Maria hadn’t even settled into mourning until she had confirmed that enough time would pass that she’d be able to throw off the black and not miss the Season. Meanwhile, his mother complained about being forced to wear black for a man she couldn’t abide. When Maria’s betrothal was announced, his mother insisted that the wedding not take place until her full year of mourning was up so that she might wear yellow.
“So long as Kingsley doesn’t try to return her, I will be happy,” Victor finally said.
Percy snorted. “Now that she has wed and the Season is about to end, I assume you will be traveling to Willanton.”
“Perhaps.”
Victor had thought of his wife often in the past four years and they wrote almost weekly. However, he hadn’t seen Charlotte since the day he had left her on the estate. It was how she had wanted it.
He also hadn’t intended on being away for so long. There were times that he had his trunks packed to travel north but something always happened that had kept him in London or at Thornhill Park. The last had been when his father died, and Victor became the next Viscount Blackmar. Each time that he had been delayed in visiting, he wrote to Charlotte to apologize and she in turn assured him that he was not needed and that he had far more important matters to attend to than visit her.
Charlotte did not want him in Willanton, and because Victor wasn’t certain what or who he would find once he arrived, he did not make seeing her a priority.
He liked their relationship as it was. They corresponded and were friends.
He was a coward.
