A Rogue of Her Own (Windham Brides #4)(17)

Esther gave him an amused look.

Well, yes. He’d asked her father’s permission after gaining Esther’s notice, to put matters delicately. Her intimate notice.

“I was an idiot,” Percival said. “Charlotte is a sensible girl.”

“Charlotte is not a girl, my dear. She’s done it again.”

Percival wasn’t sure what it was, but he didn’t care for the worry in his wife’s eyes. He drew her down beside him on their cuddling couch.

“Done what? Cut her hair? I don’t favor the mannish styles, but hair grows back.”

“Percival, she’s taken on another poor soul. I saw the whole business from my parlor window yesterday afternoon. I’d tooled away for a round of gossip in the park but had forgotten my reticule, so I stopped out front and came back up here to remedy my error. A more bedraggled creature never set foot in our garden, and within the hour Charlotte’s maid was off to return a book to the lending library.”

Oh, damn the luck. “By way of a pawn shop?”

“Precisely. Another pair of earbobs, a bracelet, perhaps even a locket, sacrificed to buy coach fare for a complete stranger.”

A complete stranger who was doubtless with child and without husband. “Charlotte’s charitable impulses are nothing to be ashamed of.”

The duchess rose and Percival remained sitting. Her Grace needed the whole of the parlor for pacing purposes when she was in a passion, and nothing confounded her more thoroughly than her sole remaining unmarried niece.

“Charlotte doesn’t merely purchase them coach fare to whatever village they came from,” Esther said. “She decks them out in widow’s weeds, buys them a ring, manufactures letters from their supposed deceased spouses…I suspect the bulk of her spending money is cast upon the same waters, ensuring the same women have funds to raise their children. I’d commend her thoroughness, except that her scheme strays perilously far from traditional concepts of charity.”

In other words, Charlotte didn’t talk about helping the less fortunate, she took action. “I can increase her allowance.”

The duchess whirled on her husband, her skirts nearly knocking over the hearth set. “You most certainly cannot, Percival. She’ll spend every penny on wayward laundresses or straying chambermaids. I would far rather you encouraged Sherbourne’s suit.”

“Charlotte deserves more than a preening Welsh nabob with a penchant for gaudy waistcoats. If more people had her ingenuity and practical sense of generosity, we’d not be hearing of corn riots and Luddites.”

Esther took out a handkerchief and polished the base of the brass candlestick on the mantel. “Do you recall Lord Hennessey’s youngest boy?”

When the Duchess of Moreland took to dusting, the topic was worrisome. “The fair Adonis? Hard to forget a man cursed with such a name, even if he was a good-looking young devil. At one time, I thought he’d earned our Jenny’s notice.”

“Be glad he was nothing more than an aesthetic curiosity for Jenny. He got the Wapshot girl in trouble. Her mama whisked her off to tour the great capitals—which everybody knew the Wapshot family could ill afford—and a child was born somewhere in the vicinity of Rome.”

The duchess had an intelligence network that beggared description. Decades in polite society resulted in a web of connections more complicated than even German royalty could fathom.

“Charlotte and Miss Wapshot were cordial as I recall.” Charlotte hadn’t made any real friends in recent years, but as a younger woman, she’d been cordial to others near her age.

“Precisely,” Her Grace replied, taking a swipe at a second candlestick. “Adonis was found in the fountains behind Carlton House, dead drunk and wearing not one stitch of clothing. His curls had been shaven off, and his legendary physique was revealed to be a result of well-tailored padding.”

“I recall the talk now—the hilarity. I hadn’t known about the Wapshots’ daughter.” That put a different light on what had appeared to be the sort of prank young men played on each other when they weren’t waving dueling pistols about.

“Lady Hennessey was beside herself,” the duchess said, rejoining her husband on the couch. “A note had been tied about the young man’s…tied where he was likely to find it: Provide for your offspring or next time you’ll wake up missing more than your curls.”

Percival managed not to guffaw—barely. “And did he?”

“Assuredly, though the young woman is still ruined and always will be.”

True enough. Men were castigated for sowing wild oats, but suffered serious criticism only if they did so without providing for the resulting progeny.

“You suspect Charlotte had a hand in this mischief?”

“I know not how, but yes. The Wapshots have no sons, and Mr. Wapshot would never undertake such folly. Do you recall a Mr. Charles Aldman?”

Percival took his wife’s hand. “Banker’s son. He was cutting a dash several years ago, though I haven’t seen him about for the past few seasons.”

“He got a maid with child. Charlotte shot his hat off his head at some archery tournament, and the hat, along with his hairpiece, landed at his hostess’s feet. He acquired the nickname Baldman.”

No more cutting a dash for Mr. Aldman. “Charlotte has devilish good aim.”