“Yes, he is,” said Charlotte.
“We … we felt,” Adelaide said stumblingly, “that you should know the circumstances of his previous marriage.”
“His previous marriage,” Charlotte echoed.
“You know that he was married before?” Adelaide asked.
“Yes, I met his daughter,” Charlotte replied.
“Oh,” Adelaide said flatly. She felt incapable of addressing the issue of the daughter. “Well, Alexander Foakes was married to a woman named Maria, Maria something. Your father knows her name,” she added hastily. “After a year the woman petitioned the Pope for an annulment of their marriage. On grounds of impotence.” She looked expectantly at her daughter.
“Impotence,” Charlotte repeated. “What’s that?”
This was what Adelaide had feared. She floundered into a tangled series of half-truths and euphemisms, none of which Charlotte clearly understood.
“Are you saying that he has no … no male part?” Charlotte asked sharply. “Because it’s not true.”
Her mother’s head swung up. Too embarrassed to meet her daughter’s eyes, she had been staring carefully at her folded hands. Now she looked straight at Charlotte. “And how do you know that?” she asked, rather grimly.
“He’s the one, Mama.” Charlotte’s hands were twisting unconsciously in her lap. “He’s the one from three years ago.”
“Ah,” said Adelaide. There was a small pause. “Impotent doesn’t precisely mean that the organ in question doesn’t exist, Charlotte. It simply means that it doesn’t function … properly.”
Charlotte had no idea what her mother was talking about.
“I can’t do it!” Adelaide cried in frustration. “This isn’t a proper conversation.” Her eyes strayed to Charlotte’s new portrait and she had a sudden inspiration.
“Perhaps you could ask Sophie about impotence? I’m sorry to be such a blunder-head, my darling, but these things are just not … not in my vocabulary. I explained the important things to your sisters because I didn’t want them to be abominably ignorant on their wedding nights. My mother said nothing to me at all, and the whole event was quite a shock.”
I bet it was, Charlotte thought grimly, remembering the stabbing pain she experienced in the garden. It was a question that had perplexed her ever since. How do women put up with all that pain, every night?
“It’s all right, Mama,” she said soothingly. “Whatever the problem is, it doesn’t matter. You see, I have made up my mind not to marry Alex,” she continued. “I have already refused his offer, and when it finally dawns on him that I really mean it, I’m sure that he will find some other woman to …” Her voice shrunk into silence.
Adelaide looked at Charlotte sharply. There was a good deal more going on here than met the eye. “If he was the one from three years ago,” she said hesitatingly, “might it not be a good idea to marry him? After all, he …”
“No.” Something about the closed tightness of Charlotte’s face made Adelaide discard the subject.
There was a pause. Charlotte gathered herself together and gently drew her mother to her feet. “Don’t worry, Mama. I’ll ask Sophie about it, and you can reassure papa that I do not intend to marry Alexander Foakes, no matter what his problem may be.” Although, she added silently, I don’t believe for a single moment that he has any impediment in that region!
Her mother hesitated at the door. “Charlotte, have you heard that Alexander has a twin brother?”
“Yes.”
“Do you think that perhaps you might have confused the two men?” Adelaide persisted unhappily. She simply had to suggest it. “They are as alike as two peas, you know. Even people who know them well can’t tell them apart.”
“I can’t believe you’re suggesting this! You know what happened that night. How can you possibly think that I wouldn’t recognize the man when I saw him?”
“But, darling, it was dark, wasn’t it? And it was years ago, and wasn’t he wearing a mask?”
“There’s … there is simply no possibility,” Charlotte whispered. “I even recognized his smell, and the shape of his cheekbones, and the curve of his jaw.”
“Sweetheart,” her mother said softly, gathering her into her arms.
“It’s him, Mama,” Charlotte said. “It’s he who doesn’t recognize me!”
Adelaide stiffened. She had never even considered this possibility. In her reconstruction Alexander recognized the beautiful maiden whose virtue he had blemished, and pursued her (despite his affliction) out of loyalty, or desire, perhaps. But not recognize her daughter? Her beautiful, exquisitely beautiful daughter! She looked at Charlotte in pure amazement.
Even now, with tears stealing down her cheeks, her daughter was objectively one of the loveliest women she had ever seen. Her face had grown more slender in the past few years, accentuating her cheekbones, and her new short haircut emphasized her large eyes. But all the essential parts of Charlotte were unchanged. Her eyebrows, her sweet, flying eyebrows that she had even as a newborn baby—how could he possibly have forgotten those eyebrows?
A surge of rage swept over Adelaide that was unlike anything she had experienced before. She knew precisely how mother tigers felt when their young were threatened.
“That bastard!” she said through clenched teeth. “That absolute, unmitigated scoundrel. I’ll have his head!”
Charlotte was shocked out of her misery. Her mother rarely expressed any strong emotion outside comfortable ones, like love for her children. The most agitated Charlotte had ever seen her was when the gatekeeper at their country estate gave his wife a black eye while in his cups. Even then she just marched up to the gatekeeper and told him that if she ever heard that he had drunk more than three tankards of ale at one sitting he’d be fired on the spot. But now she was actually panting with rage.
“Mother.” Charlotte put a hand on her arm.
Adelaide looked at her fiercely.
“There’s nothing to be done about it, Mama,” Charlotte persisted. “In fact, one could think that I made a very lucky escape. I … I don’t know that I would have resisted him if I hadn’t met him three years ago, and then I wouldn’t know that he is such a—”
“Libertine!” her mother snapped.
“Whatever he is,” Charlotte said shakily, “he’s forgotten that he ever met me. And he can’t find out that he has, Mama! You must see how humiliating that would be for me.” She wiped away the tears that kept tracking slowly down her cheeks, willy-nilly. “He says he wants to marry me. But he didn’t even try to find me before. I think it was probably just a moonlight frolic for him,” she said, with a tone of acute self-disgust. “I just keep thinking, why. Why did I let him take me into the garden? I thought it was so magical. I thought it was …” She turned away and rested her forehead against the cool wall of her studio. “What a silly, stupid little fool I was! Captured by moonlight and drunk on lemonade, ruined by a man who thought so little of it he doesn’t even remember the event! It meant nothing to him, nothing to him and everything to me …” Sobs racked her body as she rocked back and forth, face caught in her hands.
Adelaide stood rock still, unable to think of anything to comfort her weeping child. Silently she drew Charlotte back to the settee they had just left. They sat quietly until Charlotte’s tears finally stopped falling and she caught her breath.
“I think you should marry him,” Adelaide finally said quietly.
Charlotte raised her tearstained face. “What?”
“I think you should marry him,” Adelaide repeated. “We need to think calmly, darling. We have been thinking with the heart, and not with the head. The fact is that men do not take sexual encounters very seriously. Oh, not your father,” she added as Charlotte’s eyes widened. “Your father is remarkable.
“But, Charlotte, the majority of my friends have watched their husbands … well, have known that their husbands were bedding one female or another. Why, dearest Georgina has had to inure herself to all
manner of affronts.”
“You mean Julia’s mother?” Charlotte asked, fascinated despite herself. “Squire Brentorton seems to be such a kindly man.”
“He is, darling, he is. But he’s a man, and there aren’t many who set store by their wedding vows. John truly loves Georgina, but he just doesn’t see it the same way she does. At least he hasn’t set up a mistress, or anything of that nature! And he never sleeps with women of our class, which is a great boon, believe me. Why do you think that Sissy’s mother pleads a weak heart so often? She simply can’t stand to watch her husband swan around the ballroom with that piece of muslin he’s set up on Mayfair Street.”
“What?” Charlotte gaped.
“I think her name is Melinda, something ridiculous like that; she’s a major’s widow, supposedly. But it’s common knowledge that Nigel Commonweal spends most of his time at her house, and while she doesn’t get invited to the best houses, she does seem to finagle invitations to most of the large balls. Prudence just doesn’t have the backbone to ignore it, not that I blame her. I have been terribly lucky with your father; I have never been confronted with anything of this nature.”
“You don’t mean that papa too …”
“I don’t think so,” Adelaide said. She sighed. “No, I’m fairly sure he has not. But if he has not, darling, then he must be one of perhaps five men in the ton who don’t occasionally sleep with ladies other than their wives. The important point is that these men don’t necessarily dislike their wives. Men simply see sexual acts rather more flexibly than do women.”
“I cannot like it, Mama,” Charlotte said, frowning.
Adelaide had to smile. On the surface, Charlotte looked to be entirely her daughter, but occasionally she was so like Marcel it made her heart melt. Just so would Marcel announce that he disliked a certain social impropriety.
“No woman likes it,” she replied simply. “Well, that’s not true. There are also women in the ton who occasion-ally …”
Charlotte’s eyes widened again. “Who?” This was just the kind of gossip that abruptly ceased when she sat down with a group of matrons. As an unmarried girl, she was far too innocent to know such things, they said.
“That’s not the point,” Adelaide said with a glimmer of a smile in her eyes. “The point is that while Alexander Foakes may have forgotten a brief encounter in the garden, he seems to be ardently pursuing you now and perhaps you ought to marry him—” She broke off, frowning. “But I forgot; I forgot all about his … problem.”
Charlotte waited patiently until it seemed that her mother was not going to elaborate. “It seems rather dismal to marry a man knowing that he will be unfaithful to you, Mama,” she finally observed. “Surely Sissy’s mother never thought that her husband would establish a friendship with a major’s widow.”
Adelaide was trying to work through her tangled thoughts. “If he … if he is unable, then he would not make such an attachment. Although the condition doesn’t make Alexander a good prospect as a husband either,” she added, remembering Marcel’s adamant objections.
Charlotte bit her lip. She was thoroughly perplexed. “What condition, Mama?”
Adelaide took a deep breath. “Your father says—” She broke off. Then she spoke abruptly. “Impotence is when a man … when his member becomes soft rather than stiff. Such a man cannot get married, Charlotte, because he and his wife would have no children. Do you understand?”
Charlotte nodded. She had a fair idea of the mechanics of sexual ingression, less, it must be admitted, from that night in the garden than from inadvertently seeing two horses mating a year ago.
“It’s not right,” Adelaide added. “It’s not right that the earl is pursuing you, given his limitations.”
“He is quite, ah, stiff, Mama,” Charlotte said weakly. “I mean, I noticed, because he kissed me and—”
Adelaide interposed, her eyes slanting away into the corner of the room. “The fact is, darling, that apparently a man can be quite capable up until the last minute, or something of that nature,” she said hurriedly. “I can’t say I understand it completely. But an impotent husband cannot have a child.”
“But—he has a child,” Charlotte said in a puzzled tone. “Pippa looks exactly like him.”
Adelaide groaned inwardly. This was precisely the subject she didn’t want to discuss.
“The child might not be, well, she could be his child but not his wife’s, if you grasp my meaning.”
“Nonsense, Mama. He told me that Pippa is distressed because when his wife was dying, the child was left with a succession of nannies. He was telling the truth.”
“I don’t know, darling. I don’t understand about the child, and your father doesn’t either. But the fact is that his wife annulled the marriage on the grounds of impotence, and he didn’t raise a whisper about it. In fact, he must have agreed with her assessment, or there would have been an examination.”
“An examination,” Charlotte whispered. “You mean by doctors?”
“Oh, Charlotte,” her mother said in agony. “You’ll simply have to forget about this man! Everyone is talking about him and anyone who marries him will have to face the harshest scrutiny … can you imagine? What if he is capable and you gave birth to a child who didn’t resemble him? What would everyone say then? No, no,” she said with decision. “I don’t know why he is even trying to get you to marry him. He will have to settle for taking his brother’s child as heir, that’s all.”
Charlotte absorbed in silence the news that all London was talking about Alex. Her heart was wrung by the idea of people laughing at him. Did he know? He must know. He showed no signs of distress. And no signs of worry about his … capability, she thought slowly. In fact, even remembering the moment when he jerked her body against his, at the picnic, made her feel flushed.
“He wants to get married because his daughter won’t accept a governess,” she said softly, looking up at her mother. “He was quite honest about it.”
Looking at her daughter’s miserable face, Adelaide felt a sympathetic pulse of sadness. Alexander was devastatingly handsome, with his dark hair and eyes. She took her daughter’s hand comfortingly in hers.
“Your father thinks he may have had a riding accident, dearest.”
Charlotte thought about this for a while.
Her mother cleared her throat. “You do see, darling, that his suit is impossible? You are far too lovely to become a mere governess. I want you to fall in love and—to be able to make love. And to have children.” She stroked her cheek lovingly. “You children have been the greatest source of joy in my life. I would hate to see you unable to experience that.”
Charlotte nodded silently.
“Perhaps you could direct Alexander to speak to your father,” her mother prompted. “Marcel could make it quite clear that he would never accept his suit, and the man could look for a nursemaid elsewhere. Really.” She frowned. “I dislike him more for pursuing you for that reason than I do for any disability he has.”
“It’s not that reason alone,” Charlotte said, almost in-audibly.
“I am sorry, darling,” her mother said, instantly understanding. “But there’s nothing to be done about it.”
“I would prefer to tell him myself.”
“Yes.”
There was a short silence.
“You will have to be very resolute, Charlotte. Perhaps it would help if you kept your mind fixed on what happened three years ago.”
“Yes,” Charlotte said.
“I meant what I said about your father, dearest. We have shared, well, life together for more than twenty years. I know that you can find a man who takes his private life seriously. If he loves you, he will,” Adelaide added firmly.
Charlotte looked at her numbly. She felt instinctively in the pit of her stomach that if she didn’t marry Alex, she would marry no man. But why bring that up with her mother? Her parents’ point of view was quite clear. And even if she refused Alex’s hand for a different re
ason than they would—she didn’t countenance this question of impotence overmuch—her mother had merely confirmed her sense that Alex’s inability to remember their encounter three years ago signaled an unhappy future. She did not want to end up like Sissy’s mother, huddled at home while her husband circled the ballroom with other women. Even the idea of seeing Alex smiling down at another woman, whether she was married to him or not, made her sick to her stomach.
“Mama,” she said, “I want you to promise that you will not discuss with papa what happened three years ago. I know that papa won’t accept Alex’s suit. But I insist that I tell Alex myself.”
Charlotte had no clear idea why she was so insistent about personally refusing Alex’s proposal. In the back of her mind she knew that if her father spoke to Alex, Alex might never speak to her again. Even the thought wrung her heart. How would she get through an evening knowing that his deep voice wouldn’t appear at her ear at some point? How would she be able to dance without the knowledge that, at some point, his large hands would grasp hers? If she were completely honest, in the week since the picnic at which he asked her to marry him she had lived for the moments when he approached her.
Charlotte went to bed feeling numb, cried out. She had promised her mother that she would inform Alex at the first opportunity that her parents would never accept his suit.
“I can’t just spit that out in public!” she had said dully, huddled on the couch in her studio.
“I know,” her mother had replied. “All we ask is that you end his courtship as soon as possible. We are only trying to guard your reputation and happiness, darling.”
That night, for the first time in a week, Charlotte did not go to sleep dreaming of velvety dark eyes and hands that tantalized and persuaded. She stared at the ceiling until glimmers of dawn crept through her new chenille curtains. Finally she turned over and fell dreamlessly into sleep.
Chapter 8
Charlotte didn’t wake up until almost two o’clock in the afternoon. Her maid tiptoed in and out several times, trying to decide whether to pull the curtains and wake up her mistress. But she looked so white lying against the linen sheets, her face distressed even in sleep, that Marie finally decided that her mistress must be getting ill and should be allowed to sleep as long as possible.