She winced as Josephine pressed a cotton rag to her burns, doused in a cooling solution of honey and cold water. Pain soared from her hand to her wrist and all the way up her arm. Her hair was still wet from her bath, dripping down the back of her satin dressing gown. It was teal, but black would have felt more fitting, especially when she caught sight of herself in the mirror of her toilette table. She looked the picture of mourning.
“God be praised that ladies wear gloves.” Josie’s voice was soft and near breaking. “I’ll be sure to lay out your softest kid gloves for your dinner party this eve, my lady. No one shall be any the wiser.”
Charlotte looked up at Josephine, but her gaze was fleeting beneath her blonde lashes. “I will not attend,” she uttered, and the fragility of her voice rocked her. “I do not want to attend another party for as long as I live.” She regarded the hand Josie had already bandaged. “There is no point to any one thing now, least of all socializing. I know you will remind me of my quest for a love match, but I do not want to hear of it.”
“I wasn’t to say a thing, my lady. I promise.” Josie tucked a strand of strawberry blonde hair behind her ear. She turned toward the vanity, dipping the towel back into the bowl of honeyed water. “I was lucky Mrs. Bobellon wasn’t in the kitchen proper to have spied me in the pantry. She would have whipped my hide if she knew I had pinched her best honey. George says we import it from—”
“Josie.” Charlotte’s voice was cool, bringing her maid to attention. “I am all right. You needn’t try to comfort me.”
“That’s just the thing, my lady if you’ll pardon my saying. I must try.”
Her maid’s eyes were so clear, so kind, that Charlotte felt two-feet tall for all their magnificence, for her curtness. Her brow knitted painfully, and she turned away before she could start crying. “You are more than I deserve.”
Josie hummed a contented little sigh. “Will you tell me what happened if I ask, my lady?”
Charlotte suckled at her bottom lip. “Therein lies the rub—I cannot say with any truth what possessed me.” She reached for one of the biscuits Josephine had brought up, retreating when her hand stung for the effort. “When we arrived at the publisher’s this morning, who should be there but Huxley, or whatever his true name is.” She paused. “You will recall how I was sending your young cousin to drop off the poems for me.”
“Of course, my lady. Robert thought it was all the wildest adventure.” Josie’s breath hitched. “But he would never—”
“I was not ready to accuse your cousin of anything, Josephine. I only meant to say that my anonymity and the fashion of my deliveries, has allowed the man to swoop in and claim all my effort for his own. I can do naught to protest. How he came to know of my work, of Huxley in the first place, I cannot say. Perhaps one of his lovers had a copy of the Ladies’ Monthly lying about in her chambers.” She sighed. “For all I know, he has attempted the ruse countless times, and this is the first landing he has stuck.”
“Could you overhear what they were discussing?”
“He had collected an advance and was discussing the future of his collaboration with the house.”
“Future?” Josie stalled. “What future can there be if he does not write the poems? Surely, he does not expect you to keep publishing them for him to reap all the rewards.”
Charlotte shrugged. She smiled as Josie lifted a biscuit to her mouth. She bit the end off, thanking God for the existence of butter and golden syrup, and licked her lips. “I cannot claim to know what would motivate a man such as him. If he is so bold as to claim another person’s work for his own, I daresay he doesn’t have a shred of wit about him.” She thought back to her morning, how uncomfortable the imposter had seemed for her presence.
“And the poems... erm…” Josie trailed off, cocking her head slightly toward the mantle. “Is that why you…?”
“Why I cast them into the fire? Yes, that is why, but there was no sense to it. No sense at all.” Charlotte felt a sudden tear drop to her cheek—only one. “I cannot sit back and watch someone else live my dream. I don’t care what Father will say. I don’t care what the society pages will do with the story.” Her chest seemed to swell for her admission, and it eased her gently from sadness into something fiercer—something dark and powerful. Her nerves caught fire, sickness pooling in her stomach at the thought of what she had done, at the thought of the pretender. “I can only exist for the truth, which means kicking the imposter from a pedestal that is rightly mine.”
Josephine startled. “My lady?”
“I know you will say I am acting quite the dramatist, but there is nothing else in this world that could offer me sanctuary as his ruin. I will get the man to admit to his deceit. And I know just where to begin.” She smiled, and it made her want to cry again. She had spent her entire soak thinking of how best to go about things, and she approached the task not with apprehension but with excitement. “I shall feign an ailment this evening and excuse myself from our engagement. When all have left the house, I shall slip out with one of the grooms and make my way to the viper’s nest.” She turned to Josephine, whose expression was colored by her knowledge. “I would ask, as the greatest favor to me, for your assistance.”
* * *
When the carriage came to a halt at the end of Walden Street, Charlotte could hardly believe her eyes. She had rarely traveled to Five Fields, having been told at length that the area was in no way suitable for a woman of her esteem. The tales had been rightly cautionary. The houses were higgledy-piggledy along their row, mismatching and dilapidated. The smell that ballooned from the nearby Thames, worsened by the recent rain, was enough to make her hold her breath.
She wound her hands around the black material of her cloak, shooting an anxious glance at Josephine, who looked doubly nervous. With a determined nod of her head, they alighted the chaise.
Charlotte came around to the front, pulling her hood over her head to mask her countenance. She lay a hand on a chestnut-colored pony, relieved that she had possessed the foresight to choose their most modest vehicle for the trip. Still, she asked the driver to park beneath a large tree at the very end of the road, the shade of which would conceal the man from any malevolent watchers.
“Now,” she began, addressing Mr. Booth in the darkness, “While I trust you with my life, I must remind you that it is of the upmost importance that you do not speak to anyone misguided enough to ask what it is you are doing here.” She inhaled deeply, recalling the tale she had spun with Josephine. “If pressed, do not mention Josie’s ailing mother or the fact that we have called upon her—not even to any acquaintance of my father or brother.”
Mr. Booth, with his stubbled black beard and eyes that were set a little too close together, shot her a reassuring smile. “My lady, I swear, I shall do no such thing. I shall guard your secret as if it were my own.” He looked down at Josephine, who was twirling in a circle, scanning the street top to bottom for danger. “You send your mother my sincerest greetings and wishes, Josie, all right?”
Josie nodded. If she had thought to say anything, her protestations caught in her throat. With little more than a parting word, Charlotte grabbed her maid by the arm and held her close. They began their descent of Walden Street, which sloped at the end, all but boxing them in should trouble come looking for them.
“Nine Walden Street,” she murmured, glancing from house to house. “Have you spied it?”
“N-no, my lady,” Josie stammered. She nodded to the house beside them. “But that is the first.”
“Which means we’re on the right side of the road.” Charlotte responded, rubbing her gloves hands together. “And you aren’t too cold?”
“No, my lady,” she said more temperately.