It was, Charlotte realised, not nearly so satisfying as she had remembered carrying on a conversation all by herself.
As February dripped away into March, with dismal rains and chilling frosts, Charlotte was forced to admit that discretion might not always be the better part of valour. Maybe valour was the better part of valour. She had thought she was being so sensible, rejecting Robert – but what if she hadn’t been sensible? What if she had just been scared?
Half a dozen times Charlotte took up her pen to write to him, but she foundered before she even completed the address. ‘Somewhere in India’ wasn’t terribly much to go on. Penelope, on the other hand, was; Penelope, who was already halfway across an ocean. The prospect filled Charlotte with new energy. Once, her grandmother might have balked at the notion of allowing her to visit a friend a world away, but there were benefits to being in disgrace. Her grandmother had washed her hands of her. Noisily. Multiple times. And her grandmother adored Penelope.
At the very worst, in India, she might come face-to-face with Robert across a drawing room and encounter only indifference, proof that his affections were the ephemeral product of circumstance, like a mist that dissolved in the heat of the sun. At least she would have tried. At least she would know, rather than fidgeting and pining and wondering about might-have-beens.
On a misty morning in the middle of March, Charlotte tucked her writing desk under her arm and tromped out into the garden to compose a letter to Penelope. Little bits of damp clung like crystal beads to the yew hedges. The air was rich with the scent of damp, loamy earth and fresh-baked jam tart.
Charlotte crunched to a halt right before stepping into the jam tart. She had no idea what a jam tart was doing in the middle of the path. It wasn’t even the right season for jam tarts. And yet there it was, unmistakably a tart and equally unmistakably filled with jam.
The tart had been placed smack in front of her favourite bench, right there on the ground. It couldn’t have been there long or the birds would have been at it. As it was, a squirrel was already staring down a sparrow, each daring the other to make a run for it.
Who left a tart on the ground like that? That it had been deliberately left was quite clear. Across the top crust, someone had painted an arrow out of raspberry jam. The arrow pointed down the path, past an amused Venus, straight to another jam tart. With another arrow.
It was unicorn bait.
Charlotte felt a crazy hope beginning to swell in her chest that had nothing to do with the promise of spring or the scent of loam and everything to do with the bizarre incongruity of a tart in the middle of a garden path, the sort of tarts a teenage Robert used to tease Cook into baking. They would lay them out just so, in a line to the edge of the woods, since Charlotte was firmly convinced that no unicorn could resist the lure of raspberry jam and that if they just waited long enough, one day they would see a shimmering silver steed nuzzling his way down the row of pastries, muzzle streaked with jam.
The only person who knew about the tarts was far away across the seas, on his way to India. Wasn’t he? The only cause she had to believe it was his own departing salvo.
No. Charlotte shoved her mist-frizzed hair back behind her ears. The whole idea was too absurd.
But who else would lay a trail of tarts to catch a unicorn? Charlotte’s fingers tingled with nervous excitement. To catch a unicorn – or a lady?
Depositing her writing desk on her bench, Charlotte followed the tarts. A third tart led down past the dry fountain; a fourth had been pecked but was still recognisable as leading towards the lake; and a fifth brought her across the ornamental bridge. By the third tart, Charlotte’s stroll had turned to a trot; by the fourth, a run. By the time she reached the bridge, she was flying, her skirt lifted high over her ankles and her unkempt hair flapping like a banner behind her.
From the bridge, she could see a shadowy figure by the summer house, half reflected in the water. It was the form of a man, a tall man, in riding clothes, tossing bits of tart to the bad-tempered swans on the lake.
He looked like something out of a picture, out of a tapestry, out of her imagination. Goodness only knew, she had daydreamed him often enough, imagining his step in every squirrel scurrying across the gravel in the garden, every sparrow pecking at the windowpane.
Charlotte skidded to a stop a few feet away from him, lifting a hand to her chest as she struggled for air. He looked, at close range, astonishingly corporeal. Damp had darkened his hair and there was a splotch of raspberry jam on his buckskin breeches where a tart had tumbled wrong side down in the process of being painted.
‘Good morning,’ he said tentatively, swinging his hat from one hand, and Charlotte realised that he was as nervous as she was, that the whole panoply of pies was as much a shield as it was an apology.
‘You didn’t go to India,’ she said wonderingly. ‘You came back.’
Robert tried to look debonair, but he nearly squished the brim of his hat with the force of his grip. ‘I heard the unicorn hunting was good this season.’
Charlotte wondered how many sleepless nights it had taken him to come up with that line. It sounded as though he had been rehearsing in front of his mirror. The thought made Charlotte’s lips twist in a smile so fond, it hurt. But there was still one little question to be dealt with.
‘And if there aren’t any unicorns?’ she asked, her heart in her eyes.
Robert didn’t pretend he didn’t know what she was talking about. ‘I’m willing to take it on faith if you are,’ he said seriously. He held out one gloved hand to her. There was a smear of jam on the palm. ‘Are you?’
They had stood in just this tableau only a month ago, in the queen’s chambers. Then, he had been poised and perfect, clothed in a king’s ransom of lace and velvet with a real king beaming on to give his blessing. Now they were alone, save for the irritated swans who squawked and pecked their opinions from the shallows of the lake. No king, no queen, no courtiers. There was jam on his hand and goose droppings on his boots and the unmistakable spring odour of wet grass, new soil, and incontinent goose as he looked to her for her decision.
This time, it was a question, not a command. And Charlotte finally knew exactly what her answer would be.
‘Yes, yes, yes!’ she exclaimed, nearly incoherent with glad laughter, and launched herself across the space between them.
The swans were squawking and the squirrels were gibbering, and somehow a tart got squished against the back of her dress in the confusion, but her arms were around Robert’s neck and his around her waist and they were both laughing and talking and kissing all at once and making so little sense that even the swans despaired of them and raised their tail feathers in derision.
‘—love you,’ he was saying, somewhat incoherently between kisses. It wasn’t the polished poetry Charlotte used to dream of, but it was more than declaration enough for her.
‘You came back!’ she exulted, which seemed a perfectly sensible response at the time, and squeezed her arms so tightly around his neck that it was a wonder he wasn’t strangled on the spot. ‘You came back, you came back, you came back!’
Laughing, he tipped her back and kissed her thoroughly, until her head was spinning and the clouds wheeled overhead in a grey blur and the malcontented mumblings of the local animal life sounded like the cheering of a crowd of loyal subjects.
There was a bench by the side of the summer house and by unspoken accord, they wandered over to it together, collapsing onto the marble more by luck than design, since all their attention was entirely on each other.
‘Why?’ Robert asked, his eyes devouring her face as though she were his own personal jammy tart and he hadn’t eaten for a fortnight. ‘What made you change your mind?’
Charlotte looked at Robert. Not at the golden cousin she had adored in her childhood or the knight in shining armour she had imagined riding down the lane to Girdings on a cold Christmas Eve. Without even realising it, she had bidden both of them farewell long ago. The Robert
she knew was equally charming, but it was a charm meant to keep people at bay rather than to draw them close; the long, mobile mouth that spoke gallantries so glibly closed tightly around personal confidences. This man was more brown than golden, marked body and soul by those eleven years of which Charlotte would never quite know the whole.
There were pockets of his soul she knew she would never quite know in their entirety, places he had been, demons he had borne, that were as alien to her as the carefully constructed fantasy world she had built for herself was to him.
But, for some reason, they understood each other. And she understood, without having to be told, just how much it had cost him to decide to come back.
‘You came back,’ she said. ‘You could have stayed away, but you chose to come back.’
Robert made a wry face, as though contemplating the folly of his prior actions. ‘As you so wisely pointed out, I had been running away long enough. It was time to come home.’
‘Home to Girdings?’ It was silly to feel jealous of a house, particularly one she loved so well.
‘Home to you,’ he said, framing her face in his hands. ‘That’s the only part that matters. We can stay at Girdings if you like, or set up house in London, or explore the Outer Hebrides. I don’t much care where so long as you are with me.’
‘Girdings didn’t feel like home anymore without you here,’ Charlotte confessed. ‘Not for all the books in the library. If you hadn’t come back, I was going to go to India after you.’
Robert appeared inordinately tickled by the idea. ‘Riding on an elephant?’ he suggested.
‘Sailing in a boat under the pretence of visiting Penelope,’ Charlotte corrected. ‘I did consider the elephant, but they seem rather large. And I’m not sure they can swim that far.’
Robert looked down at her thoughtfully. ‘Since I spoilt your plan to follow me, what would you say to going away with me?’
‘To India?’ The Outer Hebrides also sounded interesting. As Robert had said, Charlotte didn’t care much where they went, so long as they went together.
‘We could visit your Penelope. And I’d like to show you where I lived. Parts of it, at least,’ he corrected himself. ‘There are rambling palaces with stonework fine as lace and hidden courtyards filled with flowers and temples grander than our cathedrals, with shrines to gods whose names I could never quite get right.’
‘And festivals and elephants and princes wearing rubies as big as your fist?’
‘All of that. I can show you India, and when we get back, I’ll need you to show me how to get on at Girdings. You’ll have to teach me how to be a duke.’
‘I don’t believe you’ll find it that hard,’ said Charlotte.
‘Only because I have you as duchess. Someone very wise once told me that the trick of land management is to find a clever wife.’
Remembering the scene outside the queen’s rooms, Charlotte made a face. ‘Grandmama is going to be far too pleased. Did you know that she was scheming all this while to catch you for me?’
Robert blinked. ‘I thought I was the blot on the family escutcheon.’
‘Yes, but you’re a ducal blot,’ said Charlotte serenely, ‘and that makes all the difference.’
‘I didn’t notice her flinging me at you,’ protested Robert, once the ducal blot had firmly blotted the opprobrious words with kisses. ‘Except for the seating at Twelfth Night.’
‘Oh, no,’ said Charlotte, eyes shining. In the joy of their reconciliation, the pain of it had leached away, leaving only amusement. ‘She did you one better than that. She paid Sir Francis Medmenham to court me in the hopes of spurring your interest!’
Robert’s brows drew together. ‘No,’ he said flatly. ‘I can’t believe—’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Charlotte, enjoying herself hugely. ‘Five thousand pounds’ worth of pretend flirting!’
‘That interfering old harpy!’
‘That does about sum it up,’ Charlotte agreed, with a brisk nod.
‘That interfering, ineffectual old harpy!’ Robert choked out, sputtering so hard with laughter, he could hardly speak. ‘If she hadn’t set Medmenham on you, I would have declared myself far sooner! If it hadn’t been so deuced awful, it would be funny. I was so concerned with keeping Medmenham away from you—’
‘That you thought if you stayed away yourself, he would stay away, too?’ Charlotte finished hopefully.
Robert nodded, making a mock-comical face.
Later, she might be indignant about the wasted time. Right now, she was too busy basking in the lovely, warm feeling of knowing that her grandmother’s snares had nothing to do with Robert’s feelings for her. Not that she had really thought they did, but it was nice to be told, just the same.
‘It must be the first time I’ve ever seen one of Grandmama’s schemes go so badly awry,’ said Charlotte happily. ‘We must be quite, quite sure to tell her. Eventually.’
‘We can send her a letter from the ship. Once we’re well out of range of her stick.’ Looking thoroughly dazed, he shook his head. ‘I still can’t believe she paid Medmenham.’
‘I’m sure he used the money to good effect,’ Charlotte said cheerfully, ‘paying for your orgies.’
‘Not my orgies,’ Robert was quick to say, tightening his hold on her waist. ‘I count myself well rid of the whole lot of them.’
‘What do you think will happen to Medmenham now?’ asked Charlotte, curling comfortably into the curve of Robert’s arm and tucking her feet up beneath her on the bench. ‘Did the king punish him for his part in the king-napping?’
‘No. There was nothing to prove that he had any involvement in the matter. And given his close relationship to the Prince of Wales, no one wanted to pursue the question.’
‘I can see how that would be embarrassing for the king,’ said Charlotte thoughtfully. ‘It would be tantamount to admitting that his own son might have been plotting to depose him.’
‘Let them plot all they like so long as they leave us in peace,’ said Robert firmly. ‘No more running around after the king in the middle of the night.’
‘And you a Gentleman of the Bedchamber!’ chided Charlotte.
Robert grinned a pirate’s grin. ‘His is not the bedchamber in which I have an interest,’ he said.
Blushing a deep, pleased pink, Charlotte wiggled off his lap and held out a hand. ‘Shall we?’ she said breathlessly. ‘If we ask the vicar nicely, he can start crying the banns this Sunday.’
Robert took her hand, twining their fingers together in a lover’s knot. ‘No special licence?’ he teased. ‘I thought they were all the rage.’
‘I like this way better,’ said Charlotte, as they strolled through the goose droppings to the little footbridge. As the sun slowly burnt through the mist, the air seemed infused with a celestial quality, a golden glaze that blessed the greening fields and the tangled brush of the home woods. ‘Our banns, called in our church, for our tenants. It shows that we belong to them.’
Charlotte had spoken matter-of-factly, but something about her words seemed to strike Robert. ‘It has a nice ring, doesn’t it?’ he said slowly. ‘Belonging.’
Charlotte looked out from the footbridge, across the fields where their tenants would graze their sheep in summer, the tangled woods where their children would play, the formal gardens where their daughters would lay trails of tarts to hunt for unicorns. Along the paths lay the bird-pecked remains of the tarts Robert had set for her. It seemed terribly appropriate that the pies that he set out for her should nourish their squirrels and sparrows and swans, all the lovely living things that ran through their land.
And in that moment of magic, as the spring sun slipped through the clouds to dapple the lake with diamonds, Charlotte could have sworn she saw a silvery horn bending to explore the broken bits of jam tart where she and Robert had been sitting only moments before.
On an impulse, she waved.
‘What is it?’ asked Robert, his fingers twined securely through hers.
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‘Nothing,’ said Charlotte, smiling up at him. ‘Just a unicorn.’
Chapter Thirty-Two
In our modern age, we tell tales not of mythical beasts but of machines, those massive contraptions beloved by villains on The Avengers, replete with gratuitous knobs and bristling with levers, any one of which could send a deadly ray barrelling towards Earth via the moon and a few random planets. They’re the griffins and unicorns of the twenty-first-century lexicon. We’ve all grown up on them. But I had never expected to see one.
I gawked into the dim interior of the ancient tower, straining against the rainy-day gloom. A huge shape loomed up against the side of the tower, stretching practically the length of the room, bristling with levers, spikes, wheels, and goodness only knew what other protuberances. A constellation of smaller machinery clustered around it, an arsenal of ominous equipment.
I was so absorbed that I never heard the sound of footsteps behind me until a tall form blotted out even such small grey light that the cloudy sky allowed.
‘Eloise?’ it said, in tones of great incredulity and not a little displeasure.
In my surprise, I lost my precarious hold on the door, which would have banged closed, whapping me soundly in the butt if Colin hadn’t grabbed hold of it just in the nick of time.
‘The door was unlocked,’ I blurted out, sidling around to face him.
‘That’s not good,’ he said, gesturing me out of the doorway. He frowned at the padlock. ‘We keep this locked for a reason.’
‘I can see why!’ I said emphatically. One pull on one of those levers and Mars might be hurtling towards Earth.
‘Most of those old mowers have gone rusty,’ agreed Colin. ‘It’s automatic tetanus just from looking at them. And I wouldn’t want a child trying to climb into that old harvester.’