Charity Begins at Home (2 page)

"Come for tea," Aunt Grace, another Judas, called back cheerily as she climbed into her seat.

"Ten thousand acres in Shropshire," Aunt Grace reminded Charity as the coach lurched down the busy Strand. "Four hundred acres of park— Capability Brown designed the grounds, my dear!— and a Jacobian manor. Why, it's in all the guidebooks!"

"I won't marry a house, Aunt. Or a park, Capability Brown or no. I don't love their owner. And he doesn't love me."

"He adores you! He gazes at you as if—"

"As if I were a prize broodmare. Or a particularly comfortable armchair." From her reticule, Charity withdrew her little everyday book and a lead pencil sheathed in leather. Dismissing Sir Ralph from her thoughts, she noted down, as neatly as the jolting of the carriage allowed, Lord Braden's name and a description of his paintings. She nibbled at the end of her pencil and then added a few other artists and paintings to the list. Later she would transfer this information to her journal, where she kept close track of her aesthetic education, haphazard and unsupervised as it had to be.

"But you've already turned down five offers! Five fine offers! A marquess! That nabob just back from Bengal!" Aunt Grace's lament was accompanied by such agonized headshaking that her gray fringecurls undid themselves in the humid May air. "And Charity, by rights you shouldn't have received more than one or two! You've no fortune to speak of, and the family is well-bred but nothing special, and—"

"And my looks are nothing special either!" Charity looked up from her book with a laugh. Early in the season she had encountered a girl who looked startlingly familiar, and she had wondered for a moment if they had been to school together. Then Charity counted up the nut brown curls, the spray of freckles across the snub nose, the frank brown eyes and realized, she looks just like me! She and Priscilla had shared a chuckle at the number of healthy English dairymaid sorts just like them in London this spring.

"Oh, you're fetching enough," Aunt Grace admitted, "but no Incomparable. I must say I never expected you to be so popular with the young men, for you're hardly in the first bloom of youth!" She reached across the divide and patted Charity's hand. "I know it wasn't your fault that your season was postponed so often, of course. But one can't arrange for familial deaths at convenient times. But you are rather old to be a deb, dear."

Actually Charity, who had nearly reached the age of one-and-twenty, had never felt younger. She had considered her youth ended years ago, when her mother died and left Charity the running of the household. Here in London, her responsibilities were so few she felt herself back in some lost and carefree stage of childhood. She had only to attend entertainments and remember names and receive morning callers—and afternoon proposals.

Perhaps she could find a way to beg off from tea. Aunt Grace's household accounts were in a tangle, after all. The butcher was demanding payment on three months of bills, while the housekeeper swore she'd paid him, so Charity could claim imminent litigation precluded her presence this afternoon.

Aunt Grace, reading her mind, moaned, "Charity, Charity, why don't you accept one of these nice young men? They all like you so well!"

"They don't like me. They don't even know me. They don't even know they don't know me." Sir Ralph's offhanded
an innocent girl like you
still rankled.

"Why, of course they know you, dear. Before Chilworth offered, he wrote a letter to your vicar inquiring about your character."

"He did? He did?" Charity suddenly wished she'd been less kind when she refused the arrogant marquess.

"He was only being prudent, my dear. His title, after all, is six centuries old, and he can surely be forgiven if he takes step to ensure that the mother of the next marquess is above reproach. As you are, of course. Chilworth's mama told me the Rev. Mr. Langworth was most laudatory and regretted only that marriage would take you away from the parish you have served so well." Mrs. Garland sighed in a most mournful way. "You are so very helpful, my dear. Everyone knows that, especially these men who are so enamoured of you."

Not of me, Charity countered silently. But it was no use to elaborate, for Mrs. Garland also thought she knew her niece through and through. Charity Calder, the cheerful, capable country girl, with the rosy cheeks and useful skills, was all too easy to know.

Not for the first time, Charity contemplated accepting an offer of marriage. Sir Ralph was rich and well-born, and his wife would certainly not lack for either material things or social status. He needed her, too, or someone just like her, to take charge of his sisters and servants and eventually his children. He perhaps even needed her to check that self-destructiveness that lurked on the dark side of every rakehell.

And to judge by his reputation, Bessemer was adept enough at the arts of love. Of course, that reputation was all Charity had to judge by. Last week at the Cranmere ball, she had been intrigued when the kingdom's premier rogue suggested a garden walk. She thought perhaps this man with the seductive silver eyes might be the suitor who would sweep away all her hesitation with his passion. But when she experimentally entwined her arms around his neck, he had responded with the merest peck on the cheek, the sort she might receive from the most respectable of suitors. Then, hastily, he suggested they return to the ballroom, for he didn't wish anyone to comment on their absence.

All in all. Sir Ralph had been a great disappointment.

But all in all, Sir Ralph was a gentleman, despite his thrilling reputation. So that afternoon, he did not argue with her rejection beyond a quarter-hour. Finally, in utter despair, he cried, "Then what am I to do with my sisters?"

This, at least, was a situation in which Charity could help. Eliciting the information that his obstreperous sisters were ten, eleven, and thirteen, she went to the cherrywood desk and neatly wrote out a few lines on her aunt's best notepaper. "They are just the right age for going away to school. I attended Miss Falesham's Academy in Maidenhead for two years and liked it very well. My mother became ill then, and I had to come home to take care of the household. But I've always looked back fondly on my schooldays. Miss Falesham is kind but very firm and adept at turning young girls into young ladies, even without their knowledge or consent!"

Grudgingly Sir Ralph accepted the name and address of this paragon, and even more grudgingly Charity's insistence that, no, she hadn't changed her mind in the last ten minutes. Only after he took his leave did Charity realize she should also have given him the name and direction of Priscilla Barrett, her lookalike from Lancashire. Charity just knew Priscilla, in the great tradition of understudies, could step right into the role of perfect wife. Sir Ralph would probably never notice the substitution.

***

Breakfast the next morning was a chilled meal, though the dining room was filled with May sunlight. Aunt Grace had donned a crepe dress of lavender, declaring herself in half-mourning. She was taking the refusal of Sir Ralph with rather less grace than Sir Ralph himself. Sniffling into a gray-edged handkerchief, she announced to the footman to bring only kippers, eggs, muffins, and melon, as she had no appetite.

So Charity blew on her steaming coffee and opened her mail without venturing a word to her aunt beyond necessary requests. With none of her aunt's delicacy, she was wearing a cheery yellow cambric morning dress with matching ribbons holding back her thick curls. Ordinarily a loquacious girl, she was proud to make it through letters from one cousin and two brothers without regaling her aunt with tidbits. But that final letter did her in, making her groan and sigh and then shake her head with rue.

Finally Aunt Grace surrendered. "Whatever are you reading, Charity?"

"A letter from Francis. I'm afraid it means I must return home by the week's end at the latest."

Grace put aside her pique and took the news with real regret. "You're needed at home? Your brothers aren't ill, are they?"

"Oh, no, though he says Charlie has not been attending to his lessons. And he won't be admitted to Eton if he doesn't improve his Latin. To judge by his letter, his English needs work, too." Charity picked up Charlie's ill-spelled missive and frowned at it, then hid it under the others. "No, the vicar means to cancel the Midsummer fair!"

"Is that all?" Aunt Grace shrugged and returned to her kippers. "That needn't cut your season short. You must stay until the King's birthday, at least."

Charity shook her head. The King's birthday, the traditional end to the London Season, was a bare two weeks before the fair would be held. "No, you don't understand. The vicar—well, I think he has intended this all along. When I told him I wouldn't be able to organize the festivities this year, as I would be here in London, he suggested to Mrs. Hering that she plan the fair." Charity pushed away her breakfast plate, too annoyed now to eat. "He knows how tetchy she is, and I wager he deliberately argued with her to force her to quit, and now she has!"

"But Charity, why would the vicar do that? Not just to force you home surely! After your dazzling success? The villain! He wants to keep you in that benighted backwater, ministering to his flock, instead of taking up your rightful place next to – oh, someone like Sir Ralph!"

Aunt Grace had worked herself up into such a pet imagining a villainous vicar that Charity hated to spoil the vision. But she was an honest young lady, and the vicar, however obdurate, was no villain.

"No, Aunt, he wouldn't dream of spoiling my chances. Indeed, I'm sure he hoped I would stay in London through most of June and arrive home too late to contrive a celebration of any sort at all!" In baleful tones, she concluded, "Mr. Langworth, you see, doesn't approve of Midsummer."

"No, I don't see. How can anyone disapprove of a holiday?"

"Oh, he claims it is a pagan fertility festival." Charity added grudgingly, "And it is, I suppose, or was. But—well, it has become quite Christianized these last thousand years! It isn't even held at Midsummer any longer, but on St. John's Day, at the very beginning of summer! But Mr. Langworth doesn't like even the tiniest suggestion of the holiday's early traditions."

"You mean the parade? And the fortunetelling? Why, that's harmless stuff, surely. Just funning!"

"Exactly. The country people love it, especially the children." Charity had a flash of memory, a taste of gingerbread, and she remembered sharing her Midsummer cake with her twin Ned, so that he would have two chances to get his wish. Then she shook her head briskly and returned to the subject at hand. "The proceeds were to go to restoring the church tower. It's in lamentable state after six centuries. Chunks of flint keep falling off, and one day a piece will strike a churchgoer on the head and kill him quite dead."

Aunt Grace considered this, then speared a piece of toast and spread marmalade across it. "Well, then I should think the vicar should want to earn every groat he can from the festival, even if it means bringing on dancing girls and dancing bears!"

"Oh, but he knows he needn't do any such thing, you may be sure!" Charity picked up her elder brother's letter and scanned it again, reading between the closely written lines. "Mr. Langworth knows that if there is no other option, Francis will, as he always does, come forth with a contribution. Two hundred pounds, that's what the work will cost. And Francis can't afford that, not this year, what with the spring floods, and my season—" She broke off, troubled to think that her frivolity here in Town might have depleted the family coffers. Francis, a conscientious steward, had assured her that they could stand several seasons, if need be, but she was too frugal to ask for another.

Carefully casual, Aunt Grace remarked, "Sir Ralph, I'm sure, would be quite generous with the marriage settlements."

Charity's head snapped up, and she fixed her aunt with a minatory look. "I am not going to marry just to get the church tower fixed. All that's needed is the Midsummer Fair, for the receipts last year, when I was organizer, were nearly one hundred and fifty pounds, and Francis can stand the rest without pain."

Aunt Grace subsided, sullenly stirring her chocolate until the steam rose in a gentle curve. "There are other options, surely, than you going home so soon! Francis isn't the only nobleman in the parish, is he?"

"Well, no. But it all falls to him, to maintain the vicarage and the church. Because he will, you know. Haver—the local lord— never would. And now he can't. Though," Charity added thoughtfully, "it might help his heavenly case if he did."

"Do stop being cryptic, dear. It gives me the headache. This Haver—" Aunt Grace frowned. "Wasn't there some scandal attached to that name?"

"Scandal. Well, yes, it was a bit of a scandal." Charity thought of Kenny Haverton, Lord Haver, Kent's wickedest boy, wicked and boyish to the last. "He was killed in a duel in March."

Grace wasn't one to take pleasure in the tragedies of others, but her plump face brightened as she connected her niece's acquaintance with one of the prize scandals of the season. "Ah, yes, I remember now. He was fighting over a lady— or perhaps not a lady— certainly not his lady wife."

"That's the one." Charity felt a momentary pang, for it was sad, Kenny dead so young. But there was no other plausible destiny for him, she saw that now. "He was the earl and made most of his income off the land, so one might expect him to do his duty to the area. But he never cared a jot for the parish or the village. He didn't even maintain the vicar's living, as he was obliged to do. Francis, of course, has taken care of that. Kenny was a handsome rascal, though."