An English Lord's Love Affair

Chapter 2.1.2. A Feeling Of Chill

   "Your brother came in through the window again when I was sorting out your clothes," Paulina said in an undertone. "The handsome devil has absolutely no sense of propriety, Charlotte."

   "Propriety?" Charlotte gasped, one hand lifting to her mouth. "I absolutely forgot about the chemise Damon left in the window!"

   Paulina looked puzzled. "What chemise? I did not notice Damon with a chemise."

   "The one that  I saw from the carriage. I suppose it doesn't matter now. I suppose my brother thinks he's funny," she said crossly. "Remind me to remove it before I go to bed. I shall have to push this trunk into the closet anyway."

   "Aren't you even going to look through it?" Paulina asked in disappointment.

   "Not to—" Charlotte rose slowly from the bed, her gaze moving to the closet door. Her gown slid down to her waist, and she shivered. She wondered if she might be coming down with another cold. The strangest prickles had run down with another cold. The strangest prickles had just run down her spine. "What was that noise?"

   Paulina glanced over her shoulder. "What noise?"

   "It sounded like a man moaning." Charlotte said quietly.

   "A—oh, that. It's probably the creaky old gate in the drive. Ever since Lord Strathmere was killed, Mama has it locked for the night, though I'm not sure whether it's to keep out his ghost or his murderer. A ghost wouldn't use a gate, would he? Oh, look at this."

   Paulina had dropped to her knees, sitting happily through a thankful of scented fans, shoes, and fringed shawls. Her eyes brightened as she removed a French buckram corset of ivory silk with whalebone supports designed to slim a woman's waist while enhancing the size of her breasts.

   Charlotte couldn't help laughing at her cousin's expression of shocked delight. Sometimes it did her heart good to see things from Paulina's unsophisticated perspective. "It came all the way from Paris."

  "No wonder they had a revolution."

   "Why don't you try it on?" Charlotte suggested teasingly. "It's not as if I'll have much use for it in the near future."

   "Me?" Paulina rose before the oak-framed cheval glass, holding the corset to the modest curves beneath her plain calico bodice. "Can you imagine?"

   Charlotte slipped out of her gown and stretched across the bed in her own chemise, short corset, and stockings. "Perhaps if I'd been wearing that tonight, Lord Sinclair would have offered for me on the spot." The thought of which should had made her feel happier than it did.

   "Ravish you is more likely," Paulina said somberly. "I suppose you ought to consider yourself honored. James seems to think himself a bit above the young ladies of Chistlebury."

   "Why don't you wear that corset under your Sunday dress?" Charlotte propped herself up on her elbow, deciding she must be desperate indeed if luring her cousin into fashion decadence was her only source of excitement. "Heavens, Paulina, I think you need to position it a little lower. You aren't meant to enhance the size of your chin."

   "Lower? But how do you get your, er, bosoms into position?"

   "It looks complicated, but the design really does flattering things to one's figure." Charlotte sat up slowly, shivering again for no reason. Just her luck to be coming down with another cold when James had mentioned a possible boating party at the end of the week. "The first time I put it on, my maid laced me halfway in and halfway out on the top. I looked like one of those Amazon women who lopped off one of their breasts so they could take better aim with their bows."

   Paulina blushed pink to the roots of her auburn hair. "I have no idea what you're talking about, Charlotte Brumidge, and I suspect you're making fun of me."

   "I'm not, honestly."

   Both young women paused, sighing as Aunt Penelope began to shout for Paulina from the bottom of the stairs.

   "Well," Paulina said, "that's the end of me for the night." She tossed  the corset at Charlotte. "And I've never heard of Amazon women, but if they aim their breasts at their beaux, I'm probably better off not knowing."

   She swept from the room in such a fit of giggles that the beeswax candles on the chest of drawers blew out. The flames died in a flutter of ghostly vapors.

   Charlotte slipped off the bed and stared around the smoky shadows of the darkened room. She felt chilly and very aware of being abandoned. She breathed in the scent of melted wax. She was certain she had caught some dreadful ailment.

   Then another of those moaning sounds arose in the silence, and this time there was no mistake: the disturbance came from somewhere within her own closet.

Charlotte was a city-bred young lady. She did not claim to know the first thing about managing practical matters on a country estate. Nor did she wish to. But one point was clear, even to her in her all her blithe ignorance of rustic affairs. The wounded utterance that had just arisen from behind the door of her dressing closet was not anything a rusty gate had made.

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