The Duchess Diaries: The Bridal Pleasures Series (5 page)

Charlotte didn’t answer. Harriet turned to her. “Are you all right?”

“No.” She bit her lower lip. “I think you should leave me alone. I might cry. It’s been a long, challenge-fraught evening.”

“Oh, no. What— It’s him, isn’t it?”

She nodded ruefully. “I’m a dreamer. I had always hoped, perhaps…He asked me to dance because he felt sorry for me. It’s over.”

Harriet knelt before her. “What’s over?”

“My love affair.”

“Well, it wasn’t real, was it?”

“Do you know what the worst part is?”

“Tell me.”

“I spent so much time dreaming about that man. And it’s time for that nonsense to come to an end. Except that tonight I discovered he has a conscience, and that makes him more attractive to me than ever! I’m so stupid, Harriet. Why didn’t you tell me that my writing was a waste of time?”

“Because it isn’t,” Harriet said. “The stories you read me were beautiful.”

Charlotte felt mournful. “So much of my diary is make-believe. Now I can’t even dream about meeting him again. I’ll have to draw pictures of butterflies to pass the time.”

“Charlotte, I was a criminal. You gave me the gift of good books. There were thoughts in them that I had felt but never knew how to express.”

“You express yourself more eloquently than any lady I have ever met.”

“Even when I lapse into profanity?”

“Especially then.” Charlotte gave an unsteady laugh. “Don’t tell anyone I said that. A lady isn’t allowed to show her emotions. Nor should she use bad language.”

“You can trust me. Do you wish to talk about him?”

She shook her head. “Not now.”

“You’ve been working for weeks to train the girls for this graduation. Take a well-deserved rest, my dear.”

“I ought to see the girls off. I’d go with them but I have a few belongings to pack first.”

“Miss Peppertree is waiting in one of the carriages. Sir Daniel is riding behind them, and there will be enough footmen during the drive to fill a cricket field.”

Charlotte smiled in relief. Sir Daniel Mallory was a former Bow Street Runner who worked as a private agent for the Boscastle family. “The ball went well, didn’t it?”

“More than well. The young ladies have not only survived the night due to your dedication; they have thrived. Furthermore, remember that tonight you made history. It was a Boscastle event that didn’t end in scandal.”

“Forgive me. I didn’t—”

“Take a breath while I make myself presentable again. I could ring for some refreshment. I noticed you ate nothing at the table.”

“I couldn’t eat.”

“Later then.”

Charlotte sighed and opened the desk in which her diary was concealed inside a false drawer. Soon she forgot that Harriet was even in the room. She had time to pen only a page or two, but she
had
to purge her feelings for the duke while his impression was emblazoned in her mind.

“Charlotte!” Jane’s voice jolted her from her pleasant fantasy. She composed her thoughts and turned to face the elegant figure in the door.

“Is everything all right, Jane?”

“Yes. Miss Peppertree is leaving with the girls. See them off and then take a brandy with me and Chloe before Weed calls the carriage around to take you back. Harriet, are you joining us?”

“No,” Harriet replied. “I told you we were going on a treasure hunt. Do you have another turban I can borrow?”

Charlotte arose, closed the desk, and hurried to the door to join Jane. “Enjoy yourself, Harriet.”

Harriet smiled at her distractedly from the dressing table, where she had settled in an attempt to tame her hair. “I’ll ask him for a kiss to bring back to you,” she said under her breath.

“Don’t you dare,” Charlotte whispered, her cheeks burning. “I’d never be able to show my face again if you do.”

“You could sneak out with us,” Harriet said. “Miss Peppertree would stand vigil.”

“A treasure hunt does sound like fun,” she said after a thoughtful silence. “Except that games of that nature
often end up in misadventures. I can’t afford to cause a scandal.”

“Take a risk,” Harriet said, her eyes dancing.

“What exactly are you hunting?”

“I haven’t seen the entire list. I think Devon is supposed to find a silk parasol, and Chloe is hunting for a magistrate’s nightshirt.”

“The pursuit of a nightshirt will definitely get her in trouble,” Charlotte predicted.

“Maybe I have it the wrong way around,” Harriet said, her manner blithe. “Anyway, we are dividing into teams.” She dropped her voice. “Someone suggested that we pay your duke a surprise visit at his house.”

“He isn’t mine. And you and I both know he has other ideas for the night.” Charlotte frowned. She would rather not see him again than with a woman he had chosen to be his paid companion. “Besides I have class tomorrow. The older girls may have graduated, but the younger ones still need instruction.”

“You aren’t the only schoolmistress at the academy,” Harriet reminded her.

“I know. But that doesn’t give me an excuse to gallivant about London in the middle of the night.”

“Who needs an excuse?”

“An unmarried lady. It’s different for the rest of you.”

Harriet sighed. “Where is the turban?” she asked Jane before she closed the door.

“Go through the closet and to my room,” Jane replied, backing away. “Or ask my maid. I think you’ve talked me if not Charlotte into the treasure hunt.”

Harriet turned from the mirror, giving Charlotte a look of sympathy. “I was only joking. I would never do anything to betray you.”

“Charlotte!” Jane stuck her head inside the room again. “Hurry up, dear. Everyone is waiting.”

“Harriet,” Charlotte said. “Shut the door after you leave. And please, please, whatever you do, don’t give away my secrets tonight. This is an evening for the older girls to celebrate their success, not to be embarrassed by their self-absorbed schoolmistress.”

Harriet hadn’t even heard the chambermaid enter the room. “The duke’s carriage is waiting, Your Grace. He has asked that you hurry. There is quite a crush in the street.”

Harriet stuffed an escaped curl into the turban that she had denuded of its feathers, and glanced around the untidy room. She hadn’t found another turban into which she could tuck her defiant hair. She knew she was forgetting something. What had Charlotte said?

Fans. Shoes. Her reticule. Where in the world had she put her cloak? Was it buried under the other articles of clothing that had been tossed willy-nilly on the chaise?

Gloves? She spotted her cloak neatly draped over the chair by the desk where Charlotte had been—she gasped. The desk front had fallen open, which wasn’t a surprise, considering it looked as if it were at least ninety years old. Her gaze lit on the diary that Charlotte had carelessly left where anyone could read its scandalous contents.

In fact, the chambermaid’s stare was riveted to it as well.

Charlotte would be humiliated if anyone read her confessions. And Harriet had promised to protect her.

“The duke is waiting, Your Grace!” Weed announced imperiously from the door.

“I’m fetching my cloak, you old frog,” she called back, and she did, whisking the diary into its folds with a talent for larceny that she had perfected in her tender years. It wasn’t the ideal solution, but Harriet felt better carrying the diary with her than leaving it for the chambermaid to see. There was something off about that maid’s face. She looked…sneaky. And familiar? Harriet wasn’t sure.

Charlotte returned to the room with a sigh of relief. She had fulfilled her obligation to another class of girls and to the academy. Now she could savor her success. On any other night she might have sat at her desk and written to her heart’s content, pouring out secret urges she could never have revealed to anyone.

She had been in love with words since her father had allowed her into his library, and she had decided with all her gangly being that the answers to life’s questions would eventually be given her by those who had taken the time to share their thoughts on the written page.

Of course, no one would ever read what Charlotte had confessed in her collection of diaries. The story of her first heartbreak might have seemed tragically poetic when she was fifteen; it had devastated her to catch the boy she adored describing her to his friends as “that giantess with big teeth” the day she had caught him with another girl.

She felt only a twinge of pain when she thought of that past humiliation. She was tall, but she no longer slouched to hide her height in the presence of gentlemen. She had an overbite which didn’t stop her from smiling. She would have been miserable marrying an insensitive clod like Phillip Moreland. Furthermore, she had seen enough suffering in the world to appreciate the
blessings she’d been given rather than lamenting what she lacked.

Perhaps she would tear out the pages in her diary that referred to him. The demon memory of his unkindness had been exorcised from her heart in the safest manner offered to a lady in her position.

She walked over to her desk, frowning as she noticed that Harriet had left the room a mess. And that…the diary was gone.

It couldn’t be. She must have hidden it and forgotten where. She’d done it before. She opened the desk drawer and riffled through the sheets of paper and fashion plates, to no avail. Another drawer?

Think
. The duke. The girls. The duke. Her
diary
. Her personal confessor.

She wouldn’t panic. There had been so many distractions this night. This was what happened to ladies who drank champagne like it was water.

She looked across the room. She had been writing at the desk while Harriet fussed with her hair and complained about her turban. Slippers. Discarded mantles. The dress that Jane had tactfully suggested Charlotte wear instead of her simple white satin ball gown.

Perhaps Harriet had hidden it in the room before she left. Her heart gave a hopeful thump. Where was Jane? This was Jane’s house. She might have come in and recognized the diary for the dangerous article it was. Charlotte could ask the staff or, better yet, Weed. He knew all, saw all, heard all.

She ransacked the room, her anxiety increasing by the second. She wouldn’t give in to panic. The diary could not have disappeared by itself.

“I’ve lost it,” she whispered. “Somebody help me. I need to stay— I’ve lost it!” she wailed at the top of her voice. “I’ve lost it! It’s gone!”

She turned as the door flew open and Jane rushed toward her, her face white, Weed at her heels. “I was on the stairs,” Jane said breathlessly. “I heard you screaming, but I hope I didn’t hear what I thought I did. Weed, stand at the door and make sure no one comes near. It isn’t true, is it, Charlotte?”

Charlotte nodded miserably. “I’ve lost it, Jane. It’s gone.”

“Gone?”

“Gone. Taken. Stolen. I don’t know. It’s gone.”

Jane stared at her in horror. “Your virginity?” she whispered, running back to the door and slamming it with a force that nearly extinguished the candles on the wall. “Listen to me.” She clasped Charlotte’s hand. “It’s bad enough that it happened, but there is no need to shout it across the whole of London. I assume it was the duke.”

“
What?
”

“Was it in this room?” Jane demanded, her temper rising. “When? I thought he’d left. If you tell me that he sneaked back to ravish you while—”

“It isn’t the duke.” Charlotte pulled her hand from Jane’s. “It’s my diary. I left it on the desk and it has disappeared.”

“Oh, my heavens,” Jane said weakly, falling back onto the chaise. “For a moment I had murder in my heart. Don’t ever scare me like that again.”

“Get up, Jane, please. We have to find it.”

“I’m sure we will. Someone is bound to come across it—”

“No.”

Jane sat right up. “Pull yourself together this instant. I highly doubt that anything you have written is going to ruin you. Let us be honest. What could you recount that would do more than raise an eyebrow here or there, if even that? You have lived a circumspect life.”

“That’s what you think.”

Jane stared at her. “Are you saying that you confessed on paper some misdeed that could taint your name?”

Charlotte gave a soft groan of despair. “The contents of that diary could bring down me and the academy. Where is Harriet? I have to talk to her.”

“She left some time ago in the Duke of Wynfield’s carriage with a group of friends. They were all going to Mrs. Watson’s to meet up with another party. Their amusements do not begin until midnight.”

“I shall send Weed to find her straightaway. No, I’ll ask Sir Daniel when he returns from the academy. Who better than a former Runner to find Harriet? He apprehended her a few times in the past, didn’t he? In the meantime, you must remain calm.”

“How is he going to find her? She’s going on a treasure hunt. And how am I supposed to stay calm? You’ve never read my diary.”

“Then let us hope no one else does.” Jane paused to look at the door to the adjoining room. “Who is there?” she asked sharply.

“Just the chambermaid,” a reedy voice called out. “I wondered if Miss Boscastle wanted me to straighten the room before she retired. I couldn’t ’elp overhearing that there is a crisis in the ’ouse.”

Jane rose abruptly. “I don’t know your name. You must be new, and perhaps unaware that there are rules
of employment. You do not listen at doors. Nor enter without permission.”

“Yes, milady.” She curtsied, retreating to the door.

“And there is no crisis in this house.

“She must be one of the maids Mrs. Barnes hired for the party,” Jane said, closing the door on the retreating figure. “Perhaps I should have asked her and the chambermaids whether they set the diary aside.”