Page 17 of Falling for a Footman

Eleven

As she was preparingfor bed, Charlotte kept telling herself to let the matter go. It was surely only because her mind had fixated so singularly on James that she was certain he was the thief. There was no evidence to suggest that it was actually him. Apart from meeting with a rider of course. But theoretically it could have been her father asking him to do so although it would be unusual.

No, she needed to rid herself of this... attraction, infatuation, magnetism whatever it was she felt towards him and simply be able to look at the facts in front of her, she thought as Miss Walker was brushing her hair. The boar bristle hairbrush worked meticulously through her long tresses in a soothing manner.

How did one become unattracted to another person? Charlotte wondered as she avoided her own reflection in the dressing table mirror. It felt too confronting staring into her own eyes.

She could ask her mother, although her mother would certainly suspect why she was asking. Her mother might not pry, but she would also assume that it was one of the men that Charlotte had met in London that had caught her eye. If only she did not think it was Lord Alston. Charlotte was fairly certain that her parents had been a bit disappointed that she had not accepted the earl, although she knew that they would never say so.

Charlotte wished that one of her friends were here. She would feel comfortable confiding in one of them and she was certain that at least one of them would know what to do. At the moment Lucy was the closest she had to a friend here.

The thought made her look at the wall that she shared with Lucy. Even though Lucy was three years younger than Charlotte she was so self-confident that it sometimes felt as if Lucy was the older sister. At fifteen Lucy might even had felt magnetic attraction to someone despite not having been introduced into society.

Charlotte doubted that it was Lucy’s best friend, Edmund Winterbottom though. It was an unspoken agreement in both the Montagu and Winterbottom family that they did not talk about Edmund’s infatuation with Lucy. At times Charlotte even doubted that Lucy knew about it.

There could have been someone else though. Perhaps a local boy. It could be worth a try to speak to Lucy as long as she was able to withstand when Lucy wanted to know who Charlotte was talking about. Charlotte was not ready to disclose that information if she ever would be.

She bid Miss Walker goodnight, crawled into bed, and waited until the hallway outside the room was quiet. Her parents had not forbidden her and Lucy from talking to each other at night, in fact they condoned it. But the reason why Charlotte wanted to speak to Lucy also made her want to keep it secret that she was going there in the first place.

When she felt certain that no one else was about, she snuck out of bed, put on her dressing gown, and hurried the short distance to Lucy’s room, only stopping briefly to knock and wait for an answer. Lucy was sitting in bed with several candles lit about her. Her sketching block was resting on her thighs and a pencil was ready in her hand, hovering just half an inch above the paper. She did not say anything when Charlotte closed the door behind her but simply lifted the blankets and allowed Charlotte to slip into her bed. Charlotte inspected the drawing for a moment. It was a close examination of a tree with a nest with hatchlings and a mother bird sitting on the branch with a worm in its beak.

“For Hester?” Charlotte asked. Their younger sister was strangely obsessed with birds despite being only three years old. It seemed that at least a third of her vocabulary consisted of birds or words connected to birds.

“Perhaps, if we can find a place to hang it in the nursery without Archie or Gregory destroying it,” Lucy answered.

Charlotte smiled at her comment as Lucy began drawing again with certain broad strokes of the pencil that Charlotte could never have mastered. This was when she should ask, but how exactly did you start this type of conversation?

“Do you remember when Mama told us about... what happens between men and women?” Charlotte began.

“Yes,” was the only reply she got. Lucy did not even look up from her drawing. Where was her chatty sister when she needed her?

“Well, Mama mentioned that a sort of magnetism can occur between two people,” Charlotte went on.

“Yes,” Lucy repeated.

This time there was a questioning edge to it. Right, Charlotte should just get to the point. Plunge right in. She was determined not to tell Lucy about James and she had known beforehand that Lucy would guess that there was someone that Charlotte felt this magnetism towards.

“Have you ever felt it?”

Lucy looked at her with a slight frown. Her pencil was still hovering over the paper where she had been drawing lines on the worm that make it look eerily alive. Or perhaps it was the flickering candlelight that made it seem like it was squirming in the birds’ beak.

“Have I ever wanted to lay with a man?” Lucy asked with a voice that was so neutral that Charlotte could not believe it. Lucy did not even blush when she said the words.

She righted herself in the bed and looked fully at Charlotte now. Charlotte’s eyes raced over the dove grey coverlet on Lucy’s bed as she was trying to find the right words. It was not simply the desire to lay with a man. When Charlotte thought about that side of it, it was certainly... tantalizing. What she was able to imagine about it certainly made her feel that it was something she wanted to explore with the right man. She was not sure though that James was the right man, except he was the only man where she had even considered it.

“Well, in a way. Have you ever felt that way, that magnetism about a specific man?” Charlotte asked.

“No,” was Lucy’s brief response.

Charlotte’s shoulders slumped and she could not hold back a long exhalation that was bordering on a sigh. Lucy turned towards the paper again.

“Who do you feel that way about?” The question was inevitable yet, Charlotte could not help but clench her jaws as if she could prevent an answer from slipping out.

“That’s not important,” she breathed. “What is important is that I would like to stop feeling this way. How do you think I should do that? Mama never mentioned it.”

Lucy put down the pencil again to look at her. Or more accurately look in Charlotte’s direction. Her gaze was distant, and her forehead slightly creased as she tapped her lower lip with the pencil.

“I don’t think you can,” she then observed as her gaze turned fully to Charlotte. “I think those matters just... have to run their course.”