On a Cold Dark Sea(7)
“Oh, Lottie.”
Reg looked terribly sad, and understanding sank over Charlotte like a weight. “You’re already married.”
“No.” Reg’s voice turned harsher. “I am terribly sorry, but I have no interest in the chains of matrimony. I value my freedom too highly.”
Charlotte realized, with sickening regret, how badly she’d misjudged her own appeal. Why would Reg, a man of the world, marry a girl who lived above a cheese shop? For all she knew, he had a harem of women who provided all the comforts he desired. He was looking at her with pity, which only made it worse. From now on, he’d always see Charlotte as the silly girl who’d made a fool of herself by kissing him.
The humiliation was total—and unbearable. Charlotte turned and ran, tears blurring her vision as she fled across the park and stumbled along the streets. How could she have put so much faith in someone she barely knew? All her memories of Reg had become tainted, like photographs splashed with water. He was a blur, a mystery that resisted being solved, and she had only herself to blame for her disgrace.
The next day, Charlotte was looking out the front window of the shop when she saw Reg approaching. She muttered a quick excuse to Mr. Thornton and scuttled out the back door before Reg could see her. She made a similarly swift escape when he returned a few days later, and after that, he stopped coming.
It was two years before they spoke again, in the spring of 1912.
Mother’s cough turned out to be serious. For months, it worsened, from discomfort to pain. Charlotte’s life was restricted, every minute given to serving customers at the shop and Mother at home. At night, she lay sleepless as their shared bed shook with Mother’s groans. The Charlotte who had once shape-shifted with mischievous glee was worn out and worn down; the few times she caught glimpses of herself in a looking glass or shop window, she was shocked by her gaunt reflection. Heads no longer turned when she passed, because beauty without light veers perilously close to tragedy. Charlotte’s air of suffering kept others away.
During her brothers’ term holiday, Charlotte sent them to stay with her mother’s sister in Devon, and when Mother died a few months later—a blessedly quiet passing after so much suffering—Charlotte’s Aunt Lucy came to the funeral. It was a somber affair with less than a dozen mourners, but Charlotte was able to pay for a decent gravestone with the money she’d saved from her exploits with Reg. She’d been planning to use it for new lodgings, but Mother’s death had quashed Charlotte’s already limited ambitions. Seeing Mother laid to rest in a churchyard, with a proper marker, assuaged a small part of her guilt over the many lies she’d told.
Charlotte watched the way her brothers looked at Aunt Lucy as they took their tea afterward, so she wasn’t surprised when her aunt offered to take over as their guardian. A farmer’s wife who hadn’t approved of her sister’s unconventional family, she exuded a comforting maternal warmth now that Mother was no longer around to scold.
“The country air will do the boys good,” Aunt Lucy said. “You’ll be glad to be spared the bother, surely? Won’t be long before you’re married with little ones of your own.”
Charlotte loved her brothers, in the detached way you love a childhood toy; though she didn’t much miss them when they were away, she liked to think of them well cared for. She knew they’d be happier chasing after chickens at a farmhouse than with her in London. But Charlotte cried harder when her brothers left than she had when Mother died. With the last remnants of her family gone, she was truly alone.
Grief moved through Charlotte like mud after a hard rain, slowing her down, making every step forward a struggle. She expected the sadness to lessen with time, but it endured and deepened, a force lashing her to the past. Occasionally, startled, she’d acknowledge the passing of time—six months since Mother died; a year—only to wonder how so many days could go by with nothing to show for them. Even stealing had lost its appeal. She wasn’t as quick or determined as she’d once been, and one afternoon she came dangerously close to being caught. Only a swift kick to the knees had gotten her out of a policeman’s grasp, and after that, she never tried again.
What had felt like a dreamlike world of interchangeable days and nights began to take shape toward a possible future when Mr. Thornton’s wife took sick. The illness, unlike Mother’s, was swift, and Mr. Thornton dropped hints that his mourning would be similarly curtailed. Not long after Mrs. Thornton’s passing in February, he told Charlotte how unsuited he was to bachelor life and how it brightened his days to see her kind face. Once, the idea of marrying Mr. Thornton would have made Charlotte laugh; now, it felt inevitable. The benefits were so obvious that she took to reciting them mentally: he owned his own business and home; he wasn’t bad-looking for a man in his forties; she already knew all his quirks and faults. Charlotte was nearly twenty-one and didn’t have any better prospects. Mrs. Thornton hadn’t been able to carry a successful pregnancy, but if Charlotte had a few children straight off, Mr. Thornton would allow her to run the household as she pleased. Perhaps that would be enough.
Though Charlotte was still able to muster a forced friendliness with customers, she no longer paid particular attention to new arrivals. So she didn’t realize Reg had entered the shop until he was standing directly in front of her, resplendent in a burgundy-checked suit, smiling like a child who’d found his lost kitten.