He drew in a long breath. “I can’t save Lady Hadley from herself, Lady Chase. Only she can do that. Even if I wanted to help her, no one can save a person who doesn’t wish to be saved.”
“But she does wish it, Captain.”
Julian looked away from the old woman’s hopeful expression. “No, my lady. She doesn’t.”
She would argue with him now, or perhaps she’d simply shove him into the buzzing bush and leave him to the bees. Julian waited, but Lady Chase remained oddly silent. He glanced over to find her with her hand over her mouth, her face suddenly as white as the linen tablecloths. “Lady Chase? Are you ill?”
She pointed one shaking finger in the direction of the picnickers. “Oh my goodness. Where are my granddaughters? We’re too far away to stop it…”
Julian turned back toward the terrace and saw at once what Lady Chase meant, though he doubted Charlotte herself would recognize her danger until it was too late.
Any number of things could have prevented it. If even one gentleman had claimed a blanket, or if any of the Somerset girls had been about, it would never have come to this. But the gentlemen were still at the tables filling their plates, and the Somerset girls were at the back of the terrace by the open French doors, trapped with Lady Wolverton, who was holding forth at length on some topic or other.
Charlotte hesitated at the edge of the terrace and gazed out at the crowd of young ladies scattered across the lawn. As she stood there alone, a plate clutched in her hand, the groups of young ladies drew into tight clusters on their blankets. Tight, and then tighter still…
And one by one, they turned their backs on her.
Miss Fowler, the Wolverton sisters—he could see them, smug and secure in their own places. Miss Fowler’s hand covered her mouth, but even from this distance Julian could see she was laughing.
Laughing.
Miss Fowler, who’d never faced a greater challenge than choosing hat ribbons, she dared to laugh, to turn her back, to cut Charlotte. They all did, all these spoiled chits who’d never known a day of struggle in their lives.
What had Devon said about Charlotte? That there was no other woman like her. That she was irreplaceable. Now, as he watched her endure a public humiliation from a score of young women who hadn’t half her courage, he understood this—thiswas what Devon meant.
Julian’s heart shuddered in his chest as Charlotte’s face grew paler and paler against the mauve silk of her dress until it simply…folded. There was no other word for it, for the way it fell in on itself and then tore at the creases, like a letter that’s been worried over until at last it rips away at the seams. He wanted to look away, tried to look away, because to witness such despair was an obscene invasion of privacy.
But he didn’t look away. He didn’t think. He didn’t reason. He didn’t remember she’d told him to stay away from her, or recall any of the resolutions he’d made, or remind himself he’d half hoped this would happen. He didn’t do any of those things.
He flew across the lawn, his long legs eating up the space between them, desperate to reach her.
Chapter Fifteen
Charlotte stepped off the edge of Lady Chase’s terrace into a nightmare. Her gaze darted back and forth across the lawn, but with every glance she sank deeper into the hellish dream. Rows of muslin-clad backs met her gaze, all of them stiff with outrage.
Somehow, she’d always known she’d end up here, and she wondered now, dimly, why she hadn’t seen it would happen today. Perhaps because even in her darkest dreams, the dreams that woke her in the dead of night clammy with panic, she hadn’t imagined it would happen this way. So publicly. So decisively.
But it had happened—no, itwas happeningeven as she stood here, her heart shriveling in her chest.
She had nowhere left to go.
An anticipatory hush fell over the young ladies on the lawn as they waited to see what she’d do. Charlotte struggled to stay calm enough to think. She could turn and walk up the terrace steps and try to find Iris Somerset, but already her wrist felt ready to snap under the weight of the plate in her hand, and her knees shook under her skirts. What if her legs refused to hold her and she fell to her knees, her plate shattering on the stone terrace at her feet? It would make a terrible crash, and everyone would see, and they’d know…
She could keep moving forward onto the lawn, but what then? She’d reach the end soon enough, and short of fleeing into the gardens she’d be no better off than she was now.No. She wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of seeing her run. No matter how much she bled inside, she’d never let them see it.
The lawn swam before her eyes, but Charlotte raised her chin and pulled her spine taut and straight.
You’ve survived worse than this.
She took a step forward, determined to put an end to the scene, but just then a high-pitched squeal broke the silence. Charlotte jerked her head in the direction from which it came, puzzled. A second squeal joined the first, sharp and malicious, and then she knew with a sickening certainty what it was. A feminine titter, still subdued, but spreading like wildfire from one blanket to the next.
Her knees began to buckle beneath her, but just when she was certain she must collapse, the plate she carried was lifted from her hand.
“Lady Hadley.”
Long, warm fingers closed around her wrist and a strong forearm appeared under her fingertips. “I beg your pardon, my lady, for not being more attentive.”
Charlotte looked up, dazed, to find Julian looking down at her with such an expression of grief in his dark eyes it made her breath seize in her lungs, and her own eyes fill with tears.
