Camelia and Clara exchanged matching, triumphant smirks. Both were blonde, with perfect skin and dainty figures—beautiful by the standards of the ton, and the very image of their mother in her youth.
Mrs Walker, now somewhat plumper, lamented her fading beauty, yet took comfort in seeing it so perfectly preserved in her daughters.
Charlotte, by contrast, possessed brown, unremarkable hair and a figure deemed unfashionably curvaceous. Her features were pleasing enough, yet she considered herself easily forgettable. Her friends praised her soulful eyes; Charlotte, long accustomed to her mother and sisters’ contrary opinions, saw nothing special in them.
As if an unmemorable face were not disadvantageous enough, her lamentable taste in fashion did her no favours—though she remained blissfully unaware of it.
She often wondered whether her mother favoured her younger sisters because they resembled her, while Charlotte did not. The thought made her draw a quiet sigh.
‘Besides,’ their mother continued, her ostrich plumes quivering, ‘you should be worrying about securing a husband, not moralising about murders. Lord Haverley waited half an hour for you, and you never even appeared!’
‘Mother,’ Charlotte said through her teeth, ‘I have told you before—I have no desire to marry Lord Haverley. He is crude, lecherous, and his children are—how shall I phrase it politely?—unholy terrors. He sweats profusely and smells of onions.’
Mrs Walker gasped, her fan snapping shut like a pistol shot. ‘Charlotte! How ridiculous. He is as rich as Croesus and of a title besides! You should count yourself fortunate. There are girls far prettier than you who would die for such a chance.’
‘Oh, I daresay they would die,’ Charlotte muttered, ‘though whether from excitement or his cologne is debatable.’
Clara giggled until her mother silenced her with a glare.
Mrs Walker huffed. ‘Your head is filled with nonsense—romantic nonsense your father encourages. You should be grateful Lord Haverley even looked at you.’
Charlotte’s fingernails dug half-moons into her gloves. ‘I would rather remain unmarried forever than be married to that man,’ she said softly.
Her mother gave a small, indignant laugh. ‘Look at your sisters—both younger than you and both married. And look at you: four Seasons gone, and nothing to show for it but misadventures and headaches. You are four-and-twenty, Charlotte. Practically ancient.’
‘Yes, Char,’ Camelia added, with mock sympathy, ‘Papa is already concerned about his debts, and here you are wasting his funds on gowns and failed introductions.’
‘Then why have my brothers-in-law not brought you up to Town, instead of leaving Papa to bear the expense?’
Charlotte regretted the remark the moment it left her lips. All three flew into an indignant temper.
‘Mama brought us here to chaperone you, and in return you accuse our husbands of stinginess?’ Camelia returned sharply.
In truth, Charlotte suspected their husbands desired a little respite from them—and from their exuberant spending—and had found convenient excuses to remain in the country rather than accompany them to London.
Charlotte turned towards the window, blinking hard. ‘I never asked for Seasons. Mama insisted. I would much rather have remained at home.’
‘Ungrateful girl!’ Mrs Walker cried. ‘After all I have done for you—London, lessons, balls—and you throw it in my face! Do you imagine I undertake all this for my own amusement?’
Charlotte thought it prudent not to answer, as the truth—that her mother did, very much, for her own amusement—would not be well received.
She pressed her forehead against the cool glass of the window, watching the city blur past in ribbons of light. Her mother’s sharp words continued to ring in her ears until Charlotte, as she so often did, retreated into herself and let them pass over her like a storm.
At last, the tirade ebbed into brittle silence.
‘I heard,’ Camelia said, as though Charlotte were not present at all, ‘that Mr Matthew Stanley was Lord Stanley’s cousin, who was next to inherit the baronacy, until matters were thwarted last year.’
Clara asked, ‘How so?’
‘He had been abroad, you see—somewhere in the Ottoman Empire—and disappeared. Everyone believed him dead, and the title was expected to fall to his cousin, Mr Matthew Stanley. Then, after nearly seven years—just before he was to be legally declared dead—he returned and claimed everything.’
Charlotte said nothing.
Instead, she replayed the words she had overheard in the garden. It made sense now. The young fool must have spent extravagantly, fully persuaded he would inherit the barony. And when the true heir returned unexpectedly, it would have come as a most bitter shock.
What, she wondered, had Wolf meant when he said they had chosen the boy to manage operations at Alderley?
No one in that carriage would ever imagine that she, Charlotte Walker, had been the invisible witness to the entire affair: the hapless girl who had saved a life, witnessed a murder, and quite accidentally stumbled into a secret society.
