It was so easy for Mother to cast judgment, when she had never known the struggle for survival that was too often a reality for the lower classes. She had gone from her father’s house to her husband’s, trading one life of luxury and ease for another. Anthony had never quite had empty pockets himself, but he had commanded men who had. Men who had risked life and limb foronly the meager wages offered by the military, in the service of supporting their families.
Of course, there was a sense of honor in serving one’s country, a nobility even. But one could not eat prestige, nor trade it to pay the rent. Too many men had come home irreparably wounded, their military careers cut short, and often unfit for or unable to find other employment. Too many men had not come home at all, finding eternal rest upon the continent and leaving behind loved ones who would suffer for their absence and support.
“You don’t know anything at all about her, this—thiswomanyou married. Has she got any family?” Mother inquired spitefully, with the curl of a sneer pulling at her lips. “Has she got anyone at all who would bother to claim her?”
“Her father has recently passed away.” Though whether the man had deserved the title was a matter of some debate, given what he knew—or had once known—of her situation. “And there is a sister somewhere.” Felicity. He recalled the name, at least. It had been amongst those secrets she had shared with him from time to time as she had sat by the side of his bed. Morsels of her life offered up to keep him tethered to life, to entice him away from death’s door when he had been only inches from knocking upon it.
“A mother?” Mother prompted, though her tone suggested little in the way of genuine interest. “Who are her people? It is bad enough she is what she is, but she could beanyone.”
“Mother, it doesn’t matter.” There was no reason to spill Charity’s secrets to Mother, who certainly would not be a responsible custodian of them. “It doesn’t matter who she is, who her people are, where she has been, or what she has done.”
“Of course itmatters,” Mother hissed. “She could have married again! Did you not consider it? That she might have made you a party to bigamy?”
“When one considers that she has got little enough interest in being the duchess she presently is,” Anthony drawled, having grown beyond bored of even the pretense of tolerating Mother’s snit, “I find it unlikely that there might be another marriage to worry over.”
Mother paused in her frantic pacing so abruptly that her skirts swooshed around her feet. “What do you mean?” she inquired, her gaze sharpening. “What do you mean, she has little interest in being a duchess?”
“Exactly that. She came here evening last to consider how we might best resolve the issue of our marriage.” He picked at the remnants of his breakfast with the tines of his fork, certain that it would irritate Mother to noend. “Really, it was remarkably generous of her. You ought to be grateful to her for it.”
“Grateful!” Mother’s shrill voice echoed around the high ceilings. “To that—thatconnivingwoman!”
“I can see nothing particularly conniving in it. You don’t want her to be my duchess,” Anthony said. “Shedoesn’t want to be my duchess. You’re entitled to hold whatever opinion of her you will, but it would be remarkably shortsighted to slight the woman who is doing you the great service of breaking those ties which remain between us quietly, and without a fuss.”
“And what did she require of you in return?” Mother demanded, with a lift of her sharp chin.
“Nothing at all,” Anthony said. “She has a respectable fortune of her own. I imagine she would prefer to retain ownership of it. She has no need for a title, no need for whatever support a husband might provide.” He lifted his fork and poked the tines in her direction. “Thereforeyouwill keep a civil tongue in your head and be gracious. It cannot serve our purposes to have public attention be upon us. Might make it more difficult to secure an annulment.”
“An annulment!” Mother choked out a bitter laugh. “Upon what grounds? No one would believe her to be chaste.”
“Perhaps not,” Anthony allowed, “but the marriage was never consummated, and we have never lived as man and wife. If the Ecclesiastical Court may be so convinced, then seeking a divorce will not be necessary. The marriage will be as if it had never occurred.”
Mother made an inelegant sound through her teeth. “It ought never to have occurred at all. What in the world were you thinking, to offer marriage to a courtesan?”
“She wasn’t a courtesan then, Mother. She was at Waterloo, working to assist the military surgeon.” Anthony set down his utensils, having lost the appetite for breakfast at last. “She must have been quite young,” he said. “Younger even than I was. It was sixteen years ago.”
“What sort of woman goes off to war?” Mother sniffed.
“One who was willing to give more than you ever were in service of your country,” Anthony said. One who had been desperate to escape her home, with precious few resources to do so. One who had a younger sister who would have been left in a precarious position without her, and who had required her own escape. “The fact is, Mother, that youoweCharity,” he said. “Because if it had not been for her, I would have died there on the battlefield,and you would be in the position of begging cousin Donald for even the smallest comfort which you now enjoy.” He shoved his chair back, and the legs scraped harshly against the floor as if to punctuate the brutality of his statement. “You owe her every courtesy,” he cast over his shoulder as he stalked toward the door. “And I owe her my damnedlife.”
Though the life that had been left to him had not turned out to be worth much, still he owed all there was of it to her.
∞∞∞
“Oh, certainly, just drop round whenever you please,” Charity grumbled to herself as she tossed several freshly-baked biscuits onto a plate and assembled an assortment of mismatched tea cups to place upon the tea tray. “Drink up all of my tea. Eat up all of my biscuits.”
“We canhear you, you know,” Diana said, her voice inflected with well-meaning sarcasm.
“Good,” Charity said as she hefted up the tray and carried it to her small receiving room, which was populated with altogether too many ladies, and plunked it down once again upon the table before the sofa. “I was hoping you would.”
Lydia selected a tea cup, one with a pretty border of flowers and vines rendered in gold paint. “You know,” she said, as she reached for the teapot to pour, “if you had a staff, you wouldn’t have to prepare the tea yourself.”
With a sigh of aggravation, Charity sank to the floor in a puff of skirts—since her sofa and every chair she owned had been commandeered—and snatched up a biscuit for herself before they could be set upon by everyone else. “Where would I put a staff?” she asked. “My flat has just one bed chamber.”
“But surely a lady’s maid,” Phoebe said, with a little wrinkle of her brow. “Everyone has got a lady’s maid.”
“I’m perfectly capable of dressing myself,” Charity said. “And doing my own hair.” The washing and mending—those she was happy enough to have help for, and a laundress came two days a week to collect them. “Unlike most of you lot, I did not grow up in the lap of luxury, and I have worked too hard to secure my privacy only to surrender it now.”
“Industrious of you,” Emma said as she selected a biscuitof her own and passed over her tea cup to Lydia to fill. “I don’t know how I would survive without at least a cook—oh, my word,” she mumbled around the biscuit. “These are delicious.”
