Charles breathed in deeply.Worse and worse.Now he was like a brother! He had greatly miscalculated his own appeal, to be sure.
“Shall we all have some champagne before it is too late?” Charlotte continued, unaware of how her honest words cut him.
Only then did the snapdragon take her sister in hand with the mildest of reprimands.
“You really should not have used that abominable whistle of yours. Imagine Mother’s face.” She fell silent with a shake of her head.
Incredibly, instead of looking chagrinned, Charlotte began to snicker, and her sister joined in, probably together picturing their mother.
“Miss Charlotte did succeed in getting our attention,” Mr. Carson added, and then they put the matter behind them as if humiliation on such a grand scale were nothing.
Charles was stunned, even though he knew it was pointless to dwell as there was no redress for it, no taking back the wretched sound.
After the refreshments, they headed back into the auditorium, and as Charlotte had insisted, the Carsons joined them in his box. With the maid, there were five of them enjoying the performance. All hope of sniffing Charlotte’s neck and asking what perfume she wore or telling her how much he appreciated her smile vanished like the artful stage smoke. What’s more, she spent all her time whispering to her sister when she wasn’t laughing uproariously at the play’s events.
Despite thinking Charlotte’s laughter to be delightful, so genuine and spontaneous, Charles had come to an irrevocable conclusion by the play’s end. The evening — and asking out Miss Rare-Foure — had been a mistake from start to finish.
Chapter Six
“I’m so sorry to leave you like this,” Felicity said over dinner a week later while Charlotte anxiously absorbed the startling news of her father’s sudden ill-health.
“It’s just indigestion,” Armand Foure grumbled. “Interfering physician.”
“My love,” Felicity said, “he is a good doctor, you know that. And it may be merely indigestion, but you’ve not been yourself and he said the sea air is what you need. It’s warm enough now, we won’t freeze in Newquay. We’ll even be able to swim.”
“Newquay,” Charlotte mused, recalling a visit to the Cornish coast a few years back with her parents and her sisters. She wished she could go, too, but as her mother was making clear, the shop was hers to run.
It was the first time she would live alone on Baker Street with only the servants. Moreover, she would be working practically alone, too. She had Edward, but Bea never came in early when it wasn’t a busy time of year, especially now that Edward could do the cleaning. And Amity hardly came in at all anymore. Instead, her sister made chocolates from home, and Edward retrieved them for the shop. Fortunately, he had taken to confectionery like a duck to water and could actually make smooth fondant, temper chocolate, and create bonbons by himself. He didn’t have the skill to blend flavors, but he carefully followed recipes that Amity gave him.
When Charlotte opened the shop the next day, for the first time in her life, a tendril of fear unfurled inside her. This was their family’s livelihood, after all. Then she realized, that wasn’t the case for Amity and Beatrice anymore, and the fear eased off slightly. Nevertheless, without her mother there, Charlotte would have to stay all day, every day.
Daunted for a moment, she reminded herself it was temporary, and her father would be well soon. Even then, her parents were already on a train on their way to Cornwall. Everyone knew good salty air and seawater would make Armand Foure right as rain in no time. Still, she had a small lump of worry in her throat that she couldn’t quite swallow away.
Edward arrived, right on time as usual. They tidied and cleaned anything that hadn’t been done the night before, and then, while he stocked the cases, she prepared the delivery orders.
“We’re like a well-greased machine, Edward.”
“What do you mean, miss?” he asked, adjusting his apron, of which he now had three that all fit him well and made him look more his age.
“Meaning we work well together, you and I.”
“Oh, I see,” he said. “The greased parts of machinery don’t grind against one another.”
“Precisely, although I never thought about it so deeply.”
He chuckled. Charlotte had come to enjoy that sound. At first, he had been the most serious child, but after weeks of making steady money, learning the trade, and feeling more confident, he was becoming lighter in manner and humor.
When she explained about her parents going away, his expression became grown-up in an instant. “I will do anything I can to help you, Miss Charlotte.”
“I know you will, and I appreciate it. Get the deliveries done and when Bea arrives, you can try making another batch of toffee with her.”
He’d burned the last one, but Charlotte wasn’t sure she would have done any better. Toffee-making seemed the most persnickety thing in the world, and she’d decided to ask Bea about getting an hourglass timer and marking it to the precise moment so both she and Edward could be assured of success when her sister wasn’t around.
After turning the sign to “Open,” with Edward not yet returned, Charlotte began working quietly making marzipan sweets, interrupted every few minutes by a customer’s arrival. After the excursion with Lord Jeffcoat the previous week, she had regained some of her former good humor, realizing she was missing the friendly interactions with her customers by being churlish and melancholy.
An hour passed pleasantly with her handing out samples and selling more than she had in days. When the door opened, Charlotte looked up at the bell with a welcoming smile to see not a customer but their landlord.
“Mr. Richardson,” she said with surprise, for she’d only seen him half a dozen times in as many years. Nothing changed about him except his moustache grew thicker and grayer each year. “What brings you in? Some sweets for Mrs. Richardson?”
