Page 10 of Hearts at Home

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I t was Charis. A decade had not changed her so much that he could be mistaken. She was different, of course. All the difference between ten years and twenty, and what an appealing difference it was.

From the loft above the folly, he could not see her eyes, and her head was very properly covered in a bonnet. But her colouring was right, she’d come down the path from the Fishingham estate next door, and she’d immediately pulled a book from a bag and started reading. Yes. It was Charis.

Eric should have joined Ugo in greeting her. But he was wary of putting their old friendship to the test now both of them were grown. Would she be frightened? Horrified by his scars as she had not been by the unsightly growth that had devastated his childhood? So, when he’d seen her approach, he had slipped around the other side of the folly and climbed up into the loft.

The room had not been made for human occupation, being simply a space between the folly and the roof, with two window openings designed to be viewed from below. Eric had found it long ago, when escaping from Osric and Ulric, who delighted in tormenting him. He was able to swing from one of the surrounding oaks and gain access to a hidden refuge, but he had never needed to take refuge from Charis.

In London, when he had asked about the Fishingham family, most people looked blank. “Widow?” One cheerful young buck asked. “A flock of pretty daughters to fire off, and—if I don’t mistake it—not much money?” No, he told Eric, the family didn’t come to London. He’d met them in Bath. “Terrible place, but what can you do? My uncle, you know. Lives there all year round. Very warm man, though, and I was named for him.”

Eric listened as patiently as he could to Moffat’s complaints about elderly relatives who lived in unfashionable places and dangled a possible legacy as a bribe to induce their nephews to dance attendance. When Eric managed to lead the conversation back to the Fishinghams (neighbours of mine, from back when I was a child), he waxed lyrical about the Fishingham twins, the lovely Eugenie and the charming Matilda, who were apparently the belles of Bath. “Twins, you know. One dark, one fair, and both divine. Were I looking for a leg shackle, I might be tempted.”

“And the eldest?” Eric asked. Phoebe would still be in the schoolroom, but Charis was probably married. Apparently not, for Moffat said, “Oh, her. Quiet. Shy. Didn’t take.” Quiet, Eric expected. She had always been reserved with those she did not know. But shy? If so, Charis had changed since he last saw her. But then, it had been ten years since the untimely death of Lord Wayford had led his widow to decide the freakish changeling fate had inflicted on the family must be carved into a suitable replacement heir, should something happen to the new Lord Wayford or the (Dis)Honourable Ulric.

Eric settled to watch Charis reading, and for the first time since arriving in England, felt he had come home.

* * *

"I will not be able to come tomorrow," Charis informed the dog, who had appeared out of the trees each day since the weather cleared enough for her to walk to the folly.

The dog leaned more heavily against her dress, tipping his head even higher, his eyes shut in ecstasy. Charis took the hint and worked her scratching fingers behind his ears. She was rewarded with a sigh.

Charis echoed it. "Mother says the roads have dried out enough for us to travel into Bath. We will leave at noon so we can be seen in the pump rooms, have dinner with one of Mother’s friends, and attend an assembly.” She sighed again.

“We will do the same every day as long as the weather holds fine, Mother says, going to a private party if there is no assembly. Oh, I do hope it will rain. Is that wicked of me, dog?”

The dog opened his eyes, staring up into the sky. When he stood, swinging his great head to track a flock of noisy starlings that flew overhead, Charis chose to pretend he had understood every word. “I am sure you are right,” she agreed. “I do not think it will rain, either.”

She heaved another sigh. “Am I an unnatural daughter and sister, dog? Mother says that I am. She thinks I am trying to discourage suitors. I am not, truly. I know it is my duty to marry before the money runs out altogether.”

She pitched her voice to a shrill tone, her mother’s constant refrain coming easily to her lips. “‘If you would just make a push to converse, Cas. Not about your everlasting books, but about things that interest the gentlemen.’ But they are so boring! All they want to talk about is their silly japes and their clothes. Can you imagine being married to someone who has never had an interesting thought in his head? And someone who doesn’t care to know who I am, and will only court me if I pretend to be as empty-headed as he is. Am I wrong to want to wait for a suitor who likes quiet girls who read?”

She stood and began to gather her things, putting her book back into the bag and replacing and retying the bonnet she had removed to better enjoy the limited heat of the winter sun. “They don’t see me, dog. Even when I am right in front of them, they don’t see me. They look past me to my sisters. I might just as well be wearing a cloak of invisibility, like in the stories our nanny used to tell. How am I to marry when I am invisible?”

The dog gave a short bark, which she decided to interpret as support, especially when he took a couple of steps to return to her side, leaning his heavy weight against her hip. “Exactly. Marriage will be for my entire life, dog. I would like to at least respect my husband and have him respect me.”

As had become his habit, the dog escorted her to the row of trees that marked the boundary between Eastwood Hall and Ridley House, Charis’s home, where her sisters had undoubtedly been primping and preparing all afternoon, though the excursion was not until tomorrow.

Sure enough, Charis had no sooner slipped in through the garden door than Eugenie and Matilda pounced on her, each taking an arm, complaining in chorus, each taking a turn, as they harried her up the stairs.

“Hurry, Cas. You have done nothing to get ready, and you know you can look to advantage if you would only try,” said Eugenie, frowning.

Matilda scolded, “You must stop disappearing like this, Cas. Eugenie and I want husbands, even if you do not, and I must say I think you could stay and make a small bit of effort.”

“We have been through your gowns and selected one for the carriage, one for the pump room, and one for the evening,” Eugenie added.

“The ball gown is well enough,” Matilda allowed, “but you have worn all your day dresses before, Cas. Why did you not give them to me to retrim? I offered.”

Charis could tell them that the chance to escape to the folly had wiped all other considerations out of her mind, but it would simply annoy them further.

Eugenie did not wait for an answer. “The carriage won’t matter, but you cannot go to the Pump Room in a dress people will recognize.”

They reached Charis’s room as Matilda picked up the refrain. “If only you would make an effort, Cas.”

Eugenie crossed the room to lift the day gown laid out on the bed, displaying the ivory lace that now draped the neckline and finished the sleeves. “Matilda has fixed it.”

“It will do.” Matilda fingered the lace, lifting it and letting it drop again. Charis recognized it, familiar as she was with every trim and bolt of fabric they had purchased in the autumn in preparation for their assault on the bachelors of Bath.

“That is the flounce from your rose ball gown, Matilda. Surely?—”

Matilda smirked. “My rose dinner gown is now neatly trimmed with knots of magenta and ivory ribbon. Cas, can you remember which shawl you wore with this gown last time? Eugenie and I couldn’t decide whether it was the blue paisley or the green stripe.”

Charis frowned. It should be easy to remember which one she wore to which event. She did not have that many gowns. Matilda and Eugenie, with their busy needles and their flair for design, changed everything she owned between each wearing so the gossips could not sharpen their tongues on the Fishinghams’ inability to furnish each of three daughters with the extensive wardrobes Society considered essential. The basic fabric remained the same, but all else was subject to change without notice.

This blue-green walking costume was one of her favourites, but as to when she had worn it before...

Eugenie sighed. “The Moffat’s garden party. But we were rained out, and spent the whole afternoon inside, so you left your shawl with your bonnet, and I don’t remember which one it was.”

“Then I barely wore it at all. If you and Matilda don’t remember, I am absolutely positive no one else will,” Charis assured her. “Besides, even if someone notices that I’m wearing the shawl I wore then with a gown of the same colour, they will never guess it is the same gown. You have done wonders with it, Matilda.”

Matilda echoed her twin’s sigh. “I suppose it will be safe enough. Perhaps we should start keeping a list, Eugenie.”

The two narrowed their eyes, examining their sister with identical calculating expressions. “Good idea,” Eugenie decided. “She cannot be trusted to remember.”

Matilda shook her head, slowly and mournfully. “I cannot understand it.”

Charis was tempted to point out that she understood them no better than they understood her. How could they could keep all the different social events straight in their heads: who was there, who wore what, who talked to whom, and all the other minutiae that so absorbed her sisters and their mother?

She kept her words behind her teeth, though, avoiding an interminable discussion that would founder in the void between her interests and theirs, with herself very much in the minority since the twins counted Phoebe and Mother on their side.

Had Charis never met Eric, she might have long ago concluded she was defective. She was astounded and relieved to find another person who read as she did, with a boundless curiosity about the world outside the walls, both physical and customary, that kept them confined. Sometimes, she wondered if she had somehow been left in the wrong cradle.

In the unlikely event she ever married, she would make sure her own children could be themselves.