The Gentleman Spy by Erica Vetsch

Author:Erica Vetsch
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2020-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 9

THE MONTH BOTH flew by and yet at the same time dragged for Charlotte. Her new wardrobe was nearly complete, and she and Diana shopped several more times for hats, fichus, stockings, and so much more that Diana insisted Charlotte required, until at last she protested.

“I cannot possibly need another thing. I feel a spendthrift as it is.” She put the feather-adorned bonnet back on the hatstand in the milliner’s window. They had been to the glover, the cobbler, the perfumer, the stationer, and many more specialty shops.

“You’d be surprised. There are so many events to attend and occasions that require the correct apparel. And you had quite a bit of ground to make up,” Diana reminded her, tying a bow under her chin at a jaunty angle and studying herself in the mirror.

After the first several items had arrived from Antoinette’s, Charlotte had changed the instructions to have the deliveries held until the day before the wedding and sent to Haverly House instead. Her father had taken one look at Charlotte’s new gown and hairstyle and gone pinch mouthed.

“You look like a trollop, baring your throat and arms like that.”

She had barely kept back the comment that he would know all about trollops, but she forced it to stay behind her teeth. Though she knew better than to hope for his approval in anything, it still hurt that he withheld it.

It saddened her that Mother wasn’t allowed to accompany her on her shopping trips, but Father forbade it. Charlotte managed to bring a little trinket back for her when she went out, a beaded purse, a new inkwell, a seal and wax with her initials, a vial of scent.

These, of course, had to be kept secret from her husband. Still, he’d kept far worse secrets from her.

Charlotte now studied her father, sitting in the carriage across from her on the way to the church. In less than an hour, she would be completely out of his control. She would be given into the care and keeping of another man.

Her throat constricted, and the bouquet of lily of the valley trembled in her hands. She didn’t regret escaping her father’s heavy-handedness and hypocrisy, but she was nervous about becoming the bride of the Duke of Haverly.

She still had the feeling that God didn’t really mean this for her or that He wouldn’t allow it to last. That somehow He would snatch this from her, that He didn’t intend for her life to be happy, at least not in any great quantity. She tried to suppress these feelings, but a lifetime of evidence was hard to overcome.

And yet being with the duke did make her happy. He treated her as if her opinion mattered, as if she had the capability of thinking for herself, and he never seemed to mind if she knew about something he hadn’t studied before. He didn’t take offense when she shared what she knew, and he wasn’t patronizing when he taught her something. And she loved learning from him.

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