As the sun began to make its descent, Charity stood before her wardrobe, using the last of the remaining light to examine critically the two gowns she had yet to decide between for the evening. Both were lovely in their own way, but she feared the purple might lean too much toward black as the light waned. Then again, she’d worn quite a lot of red to Captain Sharp’s residence just lately, so that, too—
“The red. Shows off your bosom better.”
Charity shrieked, her heart in her throat as she whirled about to find Chris and Phoebe standing in the open door of her bed chamber.
“Don’t remark upon her bosom,” Phoebe scolded her husband.
“It’s unseemly.”
“You frightened me out of my wits,” Charity snapped, laying one hand over her racing heart, and thanking God she’d seen fit to don a suitable dressing gown while she had begun her preparations for the evening.
“I don’t want to show off my bosom, besides. And how the hell did you get in?”
“Picked the lock,” Chris said, without even the faintest flicker of shame.
“Ye weren’t answering yer door.”
“I was in the bath!”
“Well, how was I to know that? Besides, it’s Phoebe’s fault.” He ignored the gasp of betrayal issued by his wife.
“She’s just come from a visit wiv one of yer friends. Wanted to tell ye that yer ‘usband were seen evening last at the Worthington ball.”
“Really?” Good for him. She’d watched him pen the note accepting the invitation, but he had wavered a bit as the night had approached, and she had feared he might be tempted to back out at the last moment.
“Did you see him there?”
“We weren’t invited,” Phoebe said, though she did not seem particularly put out to have been so excluded.
“But Diana was. Apparently, his attendance caused quite the stir.”
Yes; she imagined it would have done. Recluse that he had become, he would have caused a stir with his late acceptance of the invitation rendered.
“Did he speak to anyone?”
“Not much, or so I am given to understand,” Phoebe said.
“But he did dance—just once, with Lady Cecily Wainwright.”
Relief swept over her in a crashing wave, and Charity let her knees collapse beneath her as she sank onto the side of her bed. Of course, Phoebe had been instrumental in the creation of the list of potential duchesses, so she would not have missed the significance of the dance.
“Did they appear to be…getting on well?”
“I wasn’t there,” Phoebe said, with a roll of her eyes.
“Don’t be coy, you wretched meddler,” Charity snipped, feeling about for the edge of a pillow, which she cast in Phoebe’s direction.
“I know you well enough by now. You certainly would have pressed Diana for every bit of information you could. So tell me.”
“Well, Diana seemed to think so,” Phoebe admitted.
“Of course she could not hear a word of their conversation, but it appeared to be a pleasant one. At least, she said that Lady Cecily looked to be enjoying herself.”
“And—and Captain Sharp?” Charity’s fingernails scratched over the velvet counterpane atop her bed, and she grasped handfuls of the fabric, waiting with bated breath for the answer.
“I’ve no idea,” Phoebe said with a shrug.
“And before you ask, neither has Diana. Whatever his feelings, he did not wear them upon his face.”
Perhaps because he was far too accustomed to his face being used as a weapon against him.
“I see,” she said. And then: “Could I ask a favor of you both?”
“Of course,” Phoebe said automatically.
“For a price,” Chris said, and dodged the swipe of his wife’s pointy elbow in a smooth, practiced motion that suggested he’d become well acquainted with the consequences of speaking out of turn.
“He’s joking,” Phoebe assured her, in a voice that promised retribution if he wasn’t.
“Should you encounter him—Captain Sharp, I mean to say—would you just…be kind to him?” The poor man was long due a bit of kindness. One good turn, when so much else had gone so terribly wrong for him.
“Kind?” Chris echoed, aghast.
“He’s not like us,” Charity said to him.
“You and me, I mean to say. He isn’t anywhere near so hard or cold as he would like to appear.” Or ruthless, or cunning, or brutal when a situation required it. Rather, he was too tenderhearted for his own good, when a harder one might have served him better. More vulnerable already than he even knew. Wary of a hand offered in friendship which might plunge a dagger into his back the moment he turned it. Wounded and battered, expecting only betrayal and scorn.
“He could benefit from a few friendly faces in a crowd.”
“Hell,” Chris grunted.
“I s’pose I might as well make room for one more. I put up wiv Phoebe’s brother and brothers-in-law often enough as it is. And a duke in my pocket would be quite a feather in my cap,” he added with a sly smile.
“We’ll be out o’ yer way,” he said, curling one hand around Phoebe’s arm to tug her from the room.
“Since it’s clear as day you got plans o’ yer own for the evening.”
She had, of course, and no doubt they could both hazard a guess as to what they were—or near enough to it. The broad strokes, at least.
“The red,” Chris repeated, with a nod toward the garment in question as he crossed the threshold.
“Shows off your bosom better.”
Charity sighed. With Captain Sharp’s renewed mastery of dancing, she supposed it was time to move on to more advanced lessons. And the red gown, with its risqué neckline, would be well-suited to it.
A man had to learn the intricacies of unlacing a gown eventually.
***
“Captain Sharp is out at the moment,” Redding said, as Charity shrugged out of her pelisse and handed it over to him.
“He is expected back within the hour, but requests that you make yourself comfortable in his absence. Shall I bring tea?”
Out was good, she hoped. Out meant that Captain Sharp had not buried himself within this great house that had the distinct air of a mausoleum more than anything else. That he had not been banished to his study within his own home to dine alone rather than risk upsetting the children in residence.
“No, thank you, Redding,” she said.
“But if you might direct me toward the library, I would be most appreciative. I’m afraid nothing within Captain Sharp’s study constitutes light reading.”
“It wouldn’t,” he said.
“The late duke considered himself something of an academic. He enjoyed the occasional novel, but he would not have placed them upon his own shelves.”
“Not a jovial sort of man, then?”
“On the contrary. An affable man to last, he was. But he wasn’t the sort of man to spend much of his time with his nose in a book when he might spend it with his family instead.” Redding pitched his voice to a low murmur, almost conspiratorial, as if he suspected the walls might possess ears.
“The duchess was the more prolific reader between them. There was a time that she was quite a voracious reader of novels and poetry.” He gave a small gesture toward the rear of the house, past the drawing room where he might otherwise have placed her to wait upon Captain Sharp’s return.
“You’ll find the library down the first corridor on the left, second room to the right. It’ll be the work of only a few moments to ensure the lamps are lit for you.” With a small bow, Redding departed once more.
A kind man, she thought, as she watched him go. He’d ushered her into this grand house a half a dozen times now, and never once had he insinuated through word or deed that she was anything less than welcome.
Her footsteps echoed as she headed at last in the direction Redding had indicated to her; the only sound within a household that felt devoid of life. Tall ceilings, gilded molding, floors polished to a high shine—but nothing moved. Nothing breathed. Unhappiness seemed steeped into the very walls, the care taken by the servants to keep the grand house in a presentable state only a thin veneer upon this now-empty shell of what surely once must have been a happy home.
Three young boys had once occupied it, after all. She could imagine how the high ceilings must have once collected the sounds of their laughter, the shouts issued in the exuberance of youth, the rapid patter of stomping little feet as they had careened about corridors and hallways.
And now—silence. Not even the faint wheezes of the happy home that had been fading into the stillness of death. It was dead and gone already; its occupants only ghosts going through the remembered motions of life.
The heavy door of the library swung open easily at the pressure of her hand, the hinges well-oiled, but it was still instantly clear that this room received little use. The curtains were drawn, no doubt to protect the valuable books from the indifferent touch of the sun. The lamps were lit, but the room smelled sterile and dry—as if the only thing that had been moved within it recently had been dust from an infrequent and obligatory cleaning. No cracking of old covers which might have imparted to the room the comforting scent of pages and ink and the slight astringent tang of binding glue. No hints of comfortable gatherings come and gone in the faint sweetness of sugar or the lingering earthy aroma of tea.
Every bit as dead as the rest of the house. A funeral spelled out in black cloth covers, in the stultifying silence that seemed too thick and deep for even the riffle of pages to disturb it.
The thick rugs spread over the floors blunted the sounds of her footsteps as Charity browsed the shelves, arranged in orderly perfection. There was no danger of finding a volume carelessly misplaced upon them; like was inevitably with like, alphabetically organized by author, which made it at least a simple process to locate the shelf designated for poetry and to select a few suitable volumes.
The section reserved for novels was extensive, attesting to the duchess’ fondness for it. Or former fondness, it seemed—nothing new; nothing recent. Whatever had killed the duchess’ love of fiction, of stories of love and triumph and joy, had happened years and years ago.
Right around the time, Charity guessed, from the dates of publication printed within the volumes she had selected, that the duchess’ youngest son had bought himself a military commission.
As she hefted a weighty stack of books in her arms and crossed the room to deposit them upon a small table, the queer feeling of being observed prickled the fine hair at the nape of her neck and sent chill bumps racing up her arms. She was no stranger to stares, to the omnipresent eyes upon her when she went about in public, to the judgment of those who considered themselves her betters. But here, in this house, there were limited eyes which might be predisposed to spy upon her.
Her gaze sharpened, sliding across the room to the door, opened now just a crack. But the sliver of a face revealed within that crack appeared at a much shorter height than she had expected. A child—one of Captain Sharp’s nieces, she assumed. Too tall, she thought, to be only four.
The elder, then. Hattie, if she recalled correctly. And a rather accomplished little spy for a child so young. Probably it was not the first time she’d crept out of the nursery to sneak about the house and secretly surveil its occupants.
“Hello, Hattie,” she said, and the little girl gasped, startled to have been noticed.
“Do come in. It’s quite rude to linger outside of doors.”
By the vibrant flush that spread over the child’s cheeks as she slowly pushed open the door and crept inside, Charity guessed that her estimation had been correct. Little Hattie had indeed spent an inordinate amount of time peeking through doors and eavesdropping on conversations held within.
She was a pretty child, with cherubic cheeks and a wealth of long dark hair that had been meticulously wrangled into a plait. Dressed head to toe in oppressive black, she shuffled into the room with all the enthusiasm of one expecting a stern lecture.
What was one meant to say to a child? Charity couldn’t recall the last time she’d been in the company of one. Possibly not since she had been a child herself. She wracked her brain fiercely, calling to mind Phoebe’s many and varied stories of conversations with her veritable army of nieces and nephews.
“Have you come to fetch a book?” she asked.
A swift shake of her head, which sent the end of that plait flying.
“I’m not good at reading,” Hattie said as she dug the toe of one shoe into the rug beneath her feet and shrugged her thin shoulders.
“You’re s’posed to be wearing black. For my papa.”
“Oh.” Charity supposed a child so young—whose world was largely composed of those within her own household—could not be expected to understand the finer points of mourning, and to whom it extended.
“I’m afraid I don’t have anything black within my wardrobe,” she said.
“But I will ask your uncle if he has perhaps got an armband he might lend to me to wear.” A small concession to the weight of the child’s grief.
“My uncle’s dead, too,” Hattie said as her dark eyes welled with tears.
“And my grandpapa.”
Poor little mite, to have lost so many people in her life in one fell swoop. How lonely it must be, how confusing to have her happy home so suddenly swathed in shades of grief and despair.
“I know,” Charity said.
“And I am so very sorry for it. But you have got another uncle, you know, sweetheart, and I think he would like to know you. Perhaps he could tell you stories about your papa. Wouldn’t you like that?”
Another rapid shake of her head.
“He’s scary,” she said in a whisper.
“Is he?” Charity inquired. “Why?”
“He wears that thing on his face. I don’t like it.”
“His eyepatch,” Charity said.
“It’s an accessory, like a ribbon or a sash. But it also protects his face.”
“He’s got lots of scars,” Hattie said in a mumble, directing her gaze to the floor.
“Yes, he has. Do you know why?” Hattie gave another shake of her head, and Charity swept into a seat on the sofa and patted the seat beside her, beckoning the child closer. After a brief moment of hesitation, the child skittered across the floor and climbed onto the sofa beside her, her feet dangling above the floor.
“It’s because a very long time ago—well before you were born—he went off to war in the service of his country. And in that war, he was wounded.”
Hattie’s heels thumped against the sofa.
“Very badly?”
“Very badly,” Charity confided.
“He very nearly died, and he lost an eye in the process. Still, such losses and scars tend to make people uncomfortable. Most people,” she confided, “are not as brave as your uncle has had to be. Or perhaps they imagine that you can only be beautiful inside if you are beautiful outside.” As if she were confessing a secret, she leaned in closer.
“I think having a beautiful character is ever so much more important than having a beautiful face. Alas, too many would condemn your poor uncle without ever having known him, just on account of his face. I don’t think I would much like it if people thought me too frightening even to bother speaking to. If my very own family were frightened of me for something so silly as a few scars. Would you?”
“I s’pose not,” Hattie said. Her small fingers drew the edge of her plait over her shoulder, worrying the curling end of it between them.
“Perhaps you could try to be brave like your uncle—even when it is difficult?” Charity suggested.
But there was no time for the child to respond. Outside the door, the sound of footsteps resounded, growing louder as they approached. Hattie’s shoulders tightened, her dark eyes widening in escalating fear. Her back went ramrod straight, heels braced upon the sofa in preparation for a sudden flight.
Too late. The door flew open, and Captain Sharp appeared in the doorway.
“Terribly sorry. I had some business—”
He froze there in the doorway as he caught sight of Hattie sitting there beside her, her little face frozen in dread. For a moment he seemed torn, uncertain of what he was meant to do. He had to know that his niece wasn’t meant to be here, with her, at such an hour. He had to know, also, that to make any statement to that effect ran the distinct risk of terrifying the child further.
His hand released its grip on the door handle, and just as abruptly as he had appeared, he turned to leave.
“Wait!” Charity flung out one hand to stay him, though he could hardly see it with his back turned.
“Have you got an armband?”
“An—” He hesitated, his shoulders firming.
“An armband?”
“I have not got anything black to wear,” Charity said.
“And we are in mourning, aren’t we, Hattie?”
A tiny nudge to the child’s shoulder yielded a squeaked, “Yes.”
“So I have got to have an armband at least,” Charity said.
“Would you be good enough to lend one to me? To pay the proper respect to your brothers and your father?”
“Yes,” he said, his voice carefully flat.
“I have got an armband.”
“The one you’re wearing will suffice for the moment, if you don’t mind,” Charity said cannily.
“He’s got on enough black, Hattie, has he not?”
A nod rather too small to be particularly encouraging, but at least the child had let her legs dangle once again, no longer quite so wound up to flee. Still her fingers tugged at the end of her plait, but as Captain Sharp turned once more and progressed slowly across the floor toward them, she did not cower.
Captain Sharp paused before them and tugged at the ties of his armband, pulling it free of where it rested against his upper arm. When it came loose at last, Charity held out her own arm, and Captain Sharp went to his knees before them to tie it in place for her.
“There,” Charity said.
“Will this do, Hattie?” She lifted her arm for the child’s inspection and received a grave nod in reply.
“How very kind of your uncle to lend his to me, don’t you think?”
“Yes.” It was just a whisper, and Hattie shifted in her seat, her small hand groping for Charity’s.
“Thank you, Your Grace,” she said as she seized Charity’s fingers in her own.
Charity winced as Captain Sharp’s head snapped toward the child. It was, in point of fact, his title. Probably the girl had overheard it, or else someone had told her to use it. A title that had once been her grandfather’s, and which had skipped over the only uncle she had ever known in addition to her own father to fall to Captain Sharp instead.
“Uncle Anthony,” he said, his voice tinged with some nameless longing. For a family, Charity thought. The one he ought to always have had.
“I would prefer that, Hattie. If you don’t mind.”
“Uncle Anthony,” Hattie repeated. Her heels thumped against the sofa. With her free hand she reached out hesitantly—and touched the tips of her small fingers to one of the largest scars upon Captain Sharp’s face, tracing the whitened contours of it from where it began near his temple to where it ended near his jaw.
“Does it hurt?” she asked, wide-eyed, worrying her lower lip between her teeth.
“Not anymore, poppet.” He cleared his throat of its telling hoarseness, but his eye glistened with a suspicious moisture. And he held very still as his niece traced the other lines marring his flesh, first tentatively, and then with innocent curiosity.
“They don’t hurt any longer,” he said.
“But I am sorry they frighten you.”
Hattie’s fingers touched the cloth edge of the eyepatch.
“Can I see?” she asked, and Charity gave her fingers a reassuring squeeze.
It was a rather large request to make of him, though the little girl couldn’t know it.
“It’s…not pretty,” Captain Sharp said.
“It doesn’t hurt, but I lost the eye, and there’s quite a lot of scarring beneath the patch. Will you be frightened?”
“I can be brave,” Hattie said, almost to herself as she shifted in her seat.
“I can be brave.”
Captain Sharp untied the strings of the eyepatch and let Hattie pry up the cloth shielding his eye herself. She traced the closed lid, the healed slice that ran vertically through it—the evidence of the shrapnel which had taken his eye, left behind a profusion of scarring, and sheared off a sliver of his brow and lashes both.
“Is it just a hole?” she asked.
“Not quite a hole,” he said.
“Not in the way you might be thinking. But the socket is empty. I can’t see as much with one eye as you can with two, so if you were to come up upon my right side, you might startle me.”
“I know,” Hattie said.
“I heard you shout at Mama once. You were very angry. I thought—I thought you were mean.”
“Did you?” Now he was startled, but for a different reason. Charity saw a frown tug at the corners of his mouth, a slight furrow in his brow.
“That was not well done of me. Probably I should apologize. It scares me,” he said, “when people come upon me where I can’t see them. When I was a soldier, I had to have a very good sense of what—and who—was around me. It’s a difficult habit to break. More so with only one good eye with which to see.”
“Will you shout at me?”
“I will try very hard not to,” he said solemnly.
“But I have my faults, the same as anyone else. Still, I would like to be a good uncle to you. I know you must miss your papa very much.”
Hattie’s lower lip trembled.
“And Uncle William. And Grandpapa. Do you miss them, too?”
“Very much,” he rasped, his voice thick.
“When I was on the journey back to England, I cried every day. Sometimes I still do.”
“Mama says”—Hattie hiccoughed, her voice catching in her throat—“Mama says that you can send us away whenever you like. We don’t even have our own house anymore.”
Captain Sharp winced.
“There’s quite a lot of business I must still sort out,” he admitted.
“Your papa’s house in London was only a rented one. But I am not ever going to send any of you away. This is your home, for as long as you want it.” He caught her small hand in his, pulling her fingers away from his face to clasp them in his own.
“Your papa should have had so much more time,” he said.
“And it is true that many of the things that ought to have been his have now fallen to me. But I will do everything I can to care for you, since your papa cannot. The house you and your sister were born at, the one in the countryside—”
“Northall House,” Hattie said.
“Yes; that’s the one. It belongs to me at present, but it is not entailed. I can give it to your mama, so that you will always have a home of your own. Would you like that?”
Hattie swiped at her eyes, firmed her chin, and nodded.
“Yes,” she said.
“Thank you, Uncle Anthony.”
Something unbearably fragile passed through his eye, and Captain Sharp cleared his throat.
“Now,” he said.
“I think it is well past time for you to be in bed. How did you come to be down here at this time of night?”
“Nanny was giving Evie her bath,” Hattie said, and she braced her arms and shoved herself off the sofa.
“She said I must be quiet and put on my nightgown, but I—” Hattie ducked her head.
“I wanted to go look at Papa’s portrait in the gallery before bed. Just for a few minutes.”
Captain Sharp made a rough sound in his throat, as if to clear it of some wretched lump of emotion.
“And then I saw Miss—Miss—”
“Charity,” Captain Sharp supplied, which was just as well, since children were not known to be particularly capable keepers of secrets, and the less her surname was bandied about, the better.
“I saw her going toward the library, so I followed her. She’s very pretty.”
“Yes, she is. She’s a friend of mine. She has been very kind to me.”
“She was nice to me, too,” Hattie said.
“Couldn’t I stay up just a little longer?”
“Not tonight, I’m afraid. Nanny will be worried about you. She’ll be terribly cross if we don’t return you to the nursery right away.”
Hattie thrust out her lower lip in a pout—and then thrust out her hand to him.
“Will you take me back up?” she asked.
“It gets awfully dark at night. Sometimes it’s scary.”
For a moment, Captain Sharp only stared at that small hand outstretched toward his. And then, at last, he took it in his own.
“Of course,” he said, and once again his voice had gone hoarse, his eye misty.
“Of course, sweetheart. It would be my pleasure.”