Charlotte allowed her shoulders to slump just for a moment. As a solution to her troubles, self-pity clearly had failed; she hadn’t even impressed Caroline with her woeful situation. This called for a new tactic. Where pity did not answer, perhaps a tantrum would. Charlotte straightened her posture and smiled at her reflection. Why hadn’t she thought of this before? It was all Alasdair’s fault. If he hadn’t kissed the wits right out of her, she would have realized days ago that there was nothing like a good tantrum and show of temper to get results. Once everyone realized that she was serious about the appalling breach of manners Alasdair had planned on committing that very day, the situation would be righted to her satisfaction.
“I am not leaving this house. I refuse to go to the church, not because I have cold feet, not because I’m sick, and not because I’m breeding. Quite simply, my dear Caroline, I am not going to the church because I’m not getting married today,” Charlotte said with a happy smile, dimples dimpling madly. She waved away the maid who was tucking rose blossoms into a mass of curls crowning her head. “You may cease that, Clothilde. I have no need for a headful of flowers, not until Alasdair rectifies his mistake.”
“What do you mean you’re not getting married?” Caroline clutched her hands together. “Of course you’re getting married! You’re in your wedding gown. Dearest Algernon is below with the carriage to take us to the church where Lord Carlisle is awaiting you. You have a wedding breakfast scheduled! You must get married!”
“Dearest Algernon can dismiss the carriage because I’m not leaving the house. In fact, I refuse to leave your bedchamber. I’m sure it will be no trouble if I stay here until Alasdair comes to his senses.”
Caroline grabbed at the back of a rose damask chair and turned pale at the image of Charlotte in permanent residence. Dear heaven, she had to think, and think quickly! There must be some way to get Charlotte out of the house and into the arms of her betrothed, where she belonged. Caroline’s mind whirled madly as she tried to formulate persuasive arguments, calming platitudes, and soothing words. Unfortunately, her mind refused to cooperate. “Char, you’re being too unfair! You simply must realize that it’s unreasonable to cancel the wedding that you wanted, incidentally dragging me into your plans in order to achieve it, and making dearest Algernon agree to give you away, all because you are unhappy with the arrangements.”
Charlotte’s chin went up as she stood to face her friend. “The arrangements, as you well know, are not mine. They are his. He is the unreasonable one. He took them away from me when I insisted he could grind his economies into snuff and snort them.” She paced for a few moments before plopping down on an overstuffed armchair. “Well he can just enjoy his arrangements by himself because I’m staying right here. Please ring for some tea. And perhaps some biscuits or tarts or a jam cake or two. And toasted bread, lots and lots of toasted bread. It doesn’t matter what I eat now, I have no one to care if I get wide in the saddle.”
Caroline’s panic magnified tenfold at the obstinate look on her friend’s face. “Char, you’re making yourself upset needlessly. I’m sure Lord Carlisle cares about how wide in the saddle you are, not that I think that’s important in a marriage, but still, I’m sure he cares about you and only wants you to be happy—”
Charlotte, remembering again the injustices he had perpetuated upon her in the name of saving a few coins, sprang out of the chair with an indignant flame in her China-blue eyes, and began to pace before the window. “He doesn’t care for anything but his precious purse. His slanderous comments about my extravagant plans for a memorable wedding were clearly the sign of a deranged mind, not to mention the lecture he read me about driving him into the poorhouse. As if that were possible! He is an earl, after all. Have you ever heard of a poor earl?”
“Well—”
“No, of course you haven’t. Unreasonable, my garters! I’m not being in the least bit unreasonable! I am the most reasonable person I know, and I know a great many people!”
“But Char, I’m sure Lord Carlisle desires only your happiness—”
Charlotte gave an unladylike snort of disbelief that felt so good, so right, she repeated it. “He made all the arrangements to be married at a tiny little parish church in Covent Garden with no one in attendance but you and that bossy Patricia, but that doesn’t mean I have to be there! This is my wedding, too, and I’ll be damned if I celebrate the most important moment of my life in an empty church!”
“Charlotte Honoria Eveline Benedict!” Caroline gasped. “Foul language on your wedding day is a bad omen!”
“God’s teeth, Caro! My whole life is in ruins and all you can think about are bad omens? You have bad omens on the brain.” Charlotte huffed as she stomped around the room.
Caroline, desperate now, faced as she was with the possibility of Charlotte making good her threat not to marry the earl, played her last card. “Have you thought of what everyone will say if you don’t marry Lord Carlisle?”
Charlotte frowned at Caro as she paced by her. “There will be a delicious amount of speculation as to why I canceled the plans at the last minute.”
Caroline shook her head, preparing to be merciless for the better good of her friend’s happiness, not to mention her own marital bliss. “They will say Lord Carlisle jilted you. They will say he changed his mind about wedding you. They will say he found the very idea of marriage to you repugnant and unbearable.”
Charlotte stopped dead and stared at her friend in horror. Her first instinct was to dispute such foul claims, but a moment of truth had her admitting that her star was not very high with the ton at that moment, and given the fickle nature of the members of Society, it was entirely possible that reaction to her jilting Alasdair would turn out as Caroline predicted. She was a social pariah now; could she stand being pitied and laughed at as well? She shuddered at that unwholesome image and quickly rethought her strategy. Perhaps an outright refusal to marry Alasdair wasn’t the solution. Perhaps there was a way to bring him to his senses and achieve her goal without having to run the risk of becoming an object of pity.
“Alasdair may think he can deny me my due, but I am a clever, intelligent woman who is not going to allow the minor tragedy of having accepted a pinch-paring man so tight with his purse strings that he won’t allow me to be fawned upon and idolized as is my right. I won’t marry him until he begs my forgiveness and gives me a proper wedding, one with lots of people to admire me and congratulate him on his exceptionally good luck in gaining me as his bride!” Charlotte tossed the last few words over her shoulder as she marched out of the bedchamber.
“But, but…where are you going?”
“To the carriage. Really, Caro, are you so disorganized that you aren’t ready to leave? We were supposed to be at the church ten minutes ago. Quickly, quickly! I haven’t the time to waste if I wish to be wed today. Alasdair may look like an angel, but even he can’t work miracles!”
Five minutes later saw the Beverlys’ town chaise rolling down the street. Lord Beverly—after spending two minutes in Charlotte’s company—opted to ride to the church. Inside the carriage, Charlotte spent most of the trip mustering the statements and demands she would present to her betrothed. He simply must see how important it was that they start off their married life correctly. She tried out a few of the choicer statements on Caroline.
“Honestly, Char, I don’t think telling Lord Carlisle you’ll see him hung by his toes if he doesn’t give in to your demands for a proper wedding is quite the persuasive argument you mean it to be. Perhaps if you tried to reason with him—”
“He’s a man, Caroline. Have you ever known one open to reason?”
“Well…dearest Algernon sometimes…he did stop trying to grow that mustache… Regardless, I say if you just explained how unhappy you are with the arrangements, Lord Carlisle will be in a better mind to discuss the issue than if you threaten him with bodily harm.”
Charlotte smiled a wicked little smile to herself. “I wouldn’t harm his body, Caro, I like it. I like it quite a good deal.”
“Charlotte!”
“Oh, you needn’t look so outraged. If your Algernon were the magnificent personification of everything manly and virile as Alasdair is, you would be saying similar things.”
“I would not! I would never speak of my husband in such a bold manner! It isn’t seemly in the least!”
Charlotte dimpled at her friend and couldn’t help but tease her a bit. “Really, Caro, you’re the most circumcised person I know!”
“I am…circumcised? Did you say circumcised?”
“Yes, but only because you are. Very circumcised.” Charlotte’s smile faded at the sight of her friend’s expression. “That’s not right?”
“No, it’s…Char, do you know what circumcised means?”
“Well, of course I do,” Charlotte scoffed, then thought for a moment. “I thought I did…yes, I know. It means to be overly cautious and hesitant. Doesn’t it?”
Deep pink stained Caroline’s cheeks as she looked anywhere but at Charlotte. “According to the passage in the Bible, to be circumcised means…well, it means…it’s something they do to men. You know. It’s when they snip off part of the man’s…his…” Caroline gestured wildly with her hands.
Charlotte frowned in concentration. “His what?”
“You know, his winkle.”
“His what?”
Caroline hushed her and looked nervously through the carriage windows before turning back to her friend. “His winkle. Dollymop. Dingle-dangle.”
Charlotte sat back against the cushioned seat and rolled her eyes. “Honestly, Caro, you’re a married woman. I can’t believe you have to come up with so many juvenile euphemisms for a commonplace object you must see every day. We are, after all, adults. You can say it in front of me without blushing or going to such lengths as dreaming up words like dingle-dangle!”
“I know.” Caroline looked abashed at her silliness. “I’m sorry. I won’t do it again. You are absolutely correct. We are both married women; we can talk about such things openly.”
Charlotte pulled out a tiny mirror and checked her reflection. “Exactly. As for the other, it’s utterly ridiculous. You must have read the passage wrong. No man with any amount of common sense would allow someone to snip off his dinky.”
***
Dare frowned at the pocket watch in his hand. His frown deepened as he glanced across the verger’s small, musty room to where a carriage clock sat on a battered desk. Mindful that it was his wedding day, he kept the frown from moving into a scowl as he strolled with a nonchalance he was far from feeling to where Batsfoam stood behind Captain David Woodwell, Patricia’s intended. He looked at the watch David was shaking next to his ear.
“Must get this fixed before Sunday.” David grinned. “Wouldn’t do to be late to my own…oh.”
Dare closed his eyes briefly and rubbed his forehead. The watches all told him the same thing. They all foretold the depressing truth that today marked the beginning of a life spent wasting interminable long hours waiting on a woman.
He opened his eyes and heaved a martyred sigh of the doomed.
“Most fashionable ladies are late for events,” David reassured him. “Patricia tells me it’s just not done to arrive anywhere on time, and with brides…well, everyone knows how late brides are. They like to make a dramatic entrance.”
Dare summoned a faint smile. He wished he had something pithy to say about the silliness of women and especially brides, but all he could think of was a strong recommendation to avoid the little darlings like they were plague-bearing lepers, and that was hardly the advice to be giving the man who was to marry his sister some five days hence.
“She’ll be here,” he predicted instead. “She worked too hard to snare me just to jilt me now. She’s just punishing me for not spending every last shilling I had on a big wedding.”
David smiled. “I know it must seem bad to you now, but Patricia is sure it’ll work out. She thinks Lady Charlotte has a tendresse for you, and that’s a good part of the battle, isn’t it?”
Dare allowed his lips to twist into a wry approximation of a smile, and punched David lightly in the shoulder by way of thanking him for the consolation. He resumed pacing the length of the small room, stopping occasionally to pinch the bridge of his nose. He felt a headache starting to come on, a headache made worse by the noise from the yard outside the church. A circus was in town to perform for Tsar Alexander’s visit, and it sounded like they’d decided to hold orchestra practice directly outside the church.
After Dare’s tenth pass by the two men, Batsfoam spoke. “Would you care for me to ascertain the location of the lady you so honorably, if more than a little precipitously, offered to wed? Not that I’m criticizing my lord’s actions; in truth, I would rather cut off my other leg than make even the slightest criticism of the hasty manner in which you promised to wed a woman you barely know, let alone seem to feel any fondness for, not that fondness is required in a marriage, as I have experience to know, having been wed for seventeen extraordinarily long years to Mrs. Batsfoam before her untimely demise in a terrible accident caused by the Elephant Woman of Zanzibar on display at Mr. Trencherfoot’s Gallery of the Unexplainable and Bizarre, who, as she seated herself on a bench, propelled the Tasmanian Bat Boy across the room directly into Mrs. Batsfoam’s lap, whereupon she choked on her horehound sweet, thereby hastening her death three years later by palpitations to the spleen. Indeed, my leg would be a small sacrifice to put my lord’s troubled mind at rest. Shall I fetch a surgeon for the immediate removal of the one sound limb remaining me?”
Dare pursed his lips in apparent thought. “Whoever else is fickle in my life, Batsfoam, I can always count on you to be constant, ever a glad ray of happiness and cheer ready to light my solemn days and brighten every moment.”
David made a sound suspiciously close to a snort. Outside the church, voices rose to a fevered pitch, cries of “’Ere, you, mind the bear, ’e bites” battling the sharp, tinny blare of several off-key trumpets attempting to play a triumphant march. Dare fought to keep in control the rising sense of absurdity at the situation. His lips quirked upward a moment later when Batsfoam, his head bent in humble approximation of subjugation, genuflected to indicate his leg and cocked an eyebrow. “The leg, my lord? It won’t take but a moment to have it hacked off.”
“Perhaps later, Batsfoam. After the wedding breakfast, hmm? Wouldn’t do to put the ladies off their feed with a lot of blood and such.”
“Dare!” Patricia burst into the small room, stopping just long enough to grab her brother by his arm and drag him toward the door. “Dare, you must come quickly. Lady Charlotte has arrived, but she refuses to leave the carriage until she speaks with you. Oh, and there’s a monkey loose in the church, but the vicar thinks he has it cornered in the chandelier over the nave, so you’re not to worry. Did you know there’s a circus outside?”
Dare’s shoulders twitched for a moment, but with effort, he managed to square them and follow his sister out to the carriage with no more than a slightly bored look on his face.
“Ah, Carlisle, there you are. Spot of trouble with the ladies, don’tcha know,” a slight, red-haired man standing next to the carriage said, looking distinctly relieved to see the groom. A shout of warning had the two men leaping out of the way when a camel trailing several silken scarves and a gilded rope galloped past them and up the steps leading into the church, pursued by three men who hurled a number of obscene threats and oaths at the animal’s head.
“Beverly,” Dare acknowledged with a nod as the two men resumed their place before the carriage. “I take it my bride has cold feet?”
Lord Beverly glanced worriedly at the church, then back to the carriage. The blinds were suddenly shoved aside, and Charlotte’s face appeared in the glass. Sh
e beckoned to Dare.
“Er…something like that. I gather your lady has taken exception to something with the church. Wouldn’t be surprised if it was the circus. Didn’t know they held the things in a church. Doesn’t seem entirely proper to me.”
Dare made no reply, but opened the carriage door. “Good morning, Lady Beverly, Charlotte. Is there something I can do for you? Other than wed you, that is?”
“Yes,” Charlotte said, grabbing his hand and tugging him into the carriage. Dare allowed himself to be pulled in. He settled on the seat across from her with a hard-won expression indicating only mild curiosity.
“I want to tell you that I’m not marrying you.”
“Perhaps I’d best see if dearest Algernon needs me…” Caroline murmured as she tried to slide across Charlotte to the door.
“Stay where you are, Caro, I want a witness to this discussion.”
“But, Char, this situation is between you and Lord Carlisle. I really think I should leave—”
Charlotte had the audacity to frown at him. Dare ignored Caroline and sat back, his arms crossed over his chest. “You’re not marrying me?”
“No.”
“You came all this way in your wedding gown to tell me we’re not being wed today?”
Charlotte nodded. “That’s right. I shan’t wed you until you’ve come to your senses.”
“I see.” Dare nodded, even though he didn’t see, not in the remotest sense of the word. Still, he was fairly certain that Charlotte would fill him in on all the minor points of her declaration, such as exactly why she had changed her mind after working so hard to trap him. He nodded again, then opened the carriage door and stepped out, narrowly missing being trampled by a small herd of harlequins. He took a deep, dung-scented breath, and waited for the inevitable.