“Right,” Hugh muttered, wiping his hands together. “Tyrone, we need a discreet way out. Francis, can you explain to my wife? It’s going to be a long night.”
Chapter Fourteen
A conversation with a friend may straighten everything out. Of course, it could also ravel things more so, make things more complicated, and bring in too much drama, but that is where selection of friends comes into play. Take great care that the friend you converse with will improve matters rather than magnify them.
-The Spinster Chronicles, 11 October 1815
“I don’t know what I did, but Michael is not answering any of my notes.”
“Why do you suppose it is something you did? Most men do not answer notes in a timely manner.”
Charlotte shook her head, sitting in the drawing room of Georgie’s home, watching her infant son crawl about the floor. “Not Michael. He always responds, and sometimes just appears, if he is in town. I know he asked not to know about my suitors and courtships, but…”
Georgie sat up straighter on the divan she was on, staring at Charlotte with round eyes. “Wait, he did what?”
“I told you,” Charlotte insisted, clasping her hands before her, her yellow muslin creasing as she sat forward. “Surely I told you.”
“I would remember hearing about something like that,” Georgie retorted. She tucked a strand of her fair hair behind her ear and fidgeted with her fichu. “Michael said that?”
Charlotte nodded, her cheeks coloring, choosing to look at the cherub-cheeked Thomas Sterling as he crawled towards his mother’s legs. “At the Bond dinner. We were sat beside each other, and he told me he did not wish to know about my potential courtships. He would prefer to know nothing about any of it. It was a most uncomfortable conversation.”
Georgie shook her head slowly. “I can easily believe that. Interesting.” Her brow furrowed and she lowered her eyes.
“What?” Charlotte demanded, having looked at her friend during her response. “What are you thinking?”
She bit her lip. “Has he been distant only since that conversation?”
Charlotte frowned as she considered the question carefully. “I think so… No, that’s incorrect.” She shook her head firmly, sighing and slumping in her chair. “No, I became so wrapped up in preparing myself for earnestly looking for love and marriage that I never wrote him, sent for him, or saw him. I thought that had all been on my end, but now I see that he had made no effort, either.”
“I wondered if that might have been the case.” Georgie gave her a sympathetic smile. “Surely you cannot blame him. He’ll lose your friendship the moment you take your marriage vows.”
“He would not!” Charlotte folded her arms, grumpily wrenching her gaze to the fire. “I would stay his friend until the day I die. I do not understand why everyone believes a man and a woman who are married to other people cannot be friends.”
Georgie laughed once. “Do you not? How would it look for Michael to visit you in your husband’s house? Or for you to visit the home he shares with his wife?”
“Michael isn’t getting married,” Charlotte told her without looking. “He may entertain young ladies for his own amusement, but I know him. He’d never want a wife.”
“I think you had better revise your opinion,” Georgie suggested. “Elinor says he is growing very fond of Diana Palmer.”
Charlotte made a face. “She is a dear girl, but not right for Michael. At any rate, everyone knows the nature of things between Michael and me. No one should think anything of us visiting each other.”
The heaving sigh Georgie released ought to have warned Charlotte off, but she wasn’t about to budge. Why should her friendship with Michael change? Yes, a natural distance would fall between them, and she had felt that at the supper the other evening, but she refused to let it be an end. She was stubborn enough to fight it every step of the way, and when she was on her mettle, nothing stood in her way.
“You are not a naïve woman, Charlotte,” Georgie said firmly. “You know Society in a way that few can claim. Despite what people know and claim, do you really think that you would be safe from the gossip that such an action would stir up? Why wouldn’t you and Michael start an improper relationship, given the history you share? It is not too great a leap in logic, and you should know that.”
Well, when put that way…
Charlotte imagined the scene Georgie had painted for her, that of Michael coming to visit her in the home of her husband, perhaps with a child or two about. He wouldn’t care about visiting her husband, unless the pair of them became friends, he would simply maintain the same warm companionship they always had.
But what would her servants think? They would see their mistress keeping company with a man who was not her husband, and without an additional set of eyes in the room, as a married woman did not require a chaperone. Any passersby would see Michael entering the house at regular intervals, and it would not take much for such a thing to be mistaken for an assignation.
Such was the nature of Society that Michael’s reputation would not suffer much, as men could carry on in all sorts of improper ways without even blinking. But Charlotte would be ruined. Charlotte’s husband would be mortified. Charlotte’s children would suffer.
And what of Michael’s wife? If indeed he married.
Michael married…
What if he did marry?
“I don’t want things to change,” Charlotte whispered as she belatedly came round to Georgie’s way of things. “Why must I give up Michael in order to gain a husband?”
Georgie offered her a small smile. “I don’t think it is an exchange in the way you’re describing.”
“It feels that way.”
“No…” Georgie trailed off, pursing her lips in thought. “No, I think it is different. I believe
