Page 1 of The Deceptive Earl

~Part1~

Artifice

Chapter One

Lady Charity Abernathy, the only daughter of the Earl of Shalace was in her dressing room with her mother and her maid. It was a beautiful and fashionable dressing room, but Lady Charity could think of nothing but escaping it, and her mother’s fussing.

Mother, please,” Lady Charity Abernathy said. “Enough.”

“My dear Charity,” her mother said as she rouged the valley between her daughter’s breasts so that they looked like round melons barely contained in her dress, “men, even gentlemen,” she continued, “must be enticed to see what you want them to see. They are not quite as intelligent as they would have you believe; or as we women, would have them believe they are.”

“But mother,” Charity began again, and her mother tutted as she so often did, hustling Jean, Charity’s lady’s maid, out of the w she could tend to her only daughter.

Charity threw her maid a pleading look, but of course, there was nothing Jean could do once Charity’s mother got a thought in her head.

“Your face is quite passible, my dear, but not quite as beautiful as your friend Lady Amelia’s. She will outshine you at every turn unless you give the gentlemen something else to look at. Even the scandal cannot dim her beauty.”

Charity glowered. “Amelia is engaged,” she reminded her mother. “Her year of mourning is nearly past.”

“An engagement is not a marriage,” her mother observed with her usual cynicism. “Amelia Atherton is still a duke’s daughter, and if she no longer has quite the position, she still has her looks.

Charity sighed. She did not even want to think about Lady Amelia Atherton’s beauty right now, or whether or not her friend had truly found love. They had not parted on the best of terms, and if Charity was honest wither herself she was still a bit jealous of Amelia. She was glad the duke’s daughter was not her to outshine her.

“Amelia is not even in Bath,” she told her mother as she made a sweeping gesture toward the window of her dressing room. On the other side of the panes of glass lay the cobbled streets that boasted fountains with the medicinal waters. Lady Charity and her family had removed to Bath for the summer holiday to take their leisure in her father’s townhome. Amelia Atherton had elected to remain in London as she made preparations for her impending nuptials. Charity was not like to cross her path for another month or two, at least. “Besides, Mother, as Amelia is presently engaged, she is no threat to my attentions.”

Lady Shalace blew out a breath as if in disbelief of her daughter’s ignorance, before launching into a lecture on Charity’s lack of enthusiasm to tie down a proper suitor.

“A woman who dawdles so in her engagement can be back to the market in an instant. The gentlemen will wait until she is set and tied, to be sure, but with all the scandal, she should have had him seek out a special dispensation, lest she find herself alone.”

Charity turned away from her mother under the guise of adjusting the pleats of her gown. She had had enough of this conversation, day in and day out. How often had she been told that Lady Amelia was first engaged and Lady Patience first to be wed? She could almost speak the words before they slipped from her mother’s lips.

“Lady Patience married well enough, the first born son of The Earl of Blackburn,” Lady Charity hooked her daughter’s shoulder and spun her back around to continue her ministrations. Charity bit her tongue rather than remind her mother that the opening ball was not for another week yet, and there were few enough in Bath whose notice would matter before that day. “And she, even with all that garish red hair, managed to capture a son of an Earl,” mother continued.

Charity stared out the window and only half-listened to her mother’s prattle. Mention of Patience had presented the opening that The Countess had needed for the reminder that Lord Barton, Patience’s elder brother, was still wholly unattached, and that he was also the son of an earl.

Patience’s brother, Reginald had escorted the three friends so often upon their previous excursions, that he felt more brother than suitor to Charity. Still, there was no use telling her mother that.

“How is it that my daughter is the last to be married?” Lady Charity made no attempt to conceal her distain for the situation. “Even those others, the Misses. What are their names? They are married before you, titled and all.”

“Julia and Lavinia,” Charity provided in monotone to appease her mother’s rant.

“You ought to have been the first, if only you would listen to my instruction.”

“Mother,” Charity sighed. “I am not the last. Nor have I years enough to be shamed for it.”

“Oh?” Lady Charity mused. “Who remains? The Poppy sisters, all the dozens of them? It is no wonder that so many daughters cannot be married off.”

“That is a gross exaggeration,” Charity replied. “Six children in all to the Poppy’s and only four of the fairer sex, and do not forget Constance is married.”

“Very well, then. Half dozen,” her mother corrected. “Still, our families have long been friends, but what a shame it is that the sons must suffer their income be divided by so many dowries.”

Charity knew better than to suggest that there might be more to marriage than income or status. Her mother valued little else and took pride in the fact that her daughter could boast possession of both.

“Don’t frown so,” her mother said. “It makes wrinkles.” She ran her fingers along Charity’s brow, smoothing it, and brushed a blonde curl back from Charity’s blue eyes. “You must put your best self forward. You are beautiful and personable, but do not be too forward. Men do not like pert women. Save your opinions until after you are married, dear. And mind your tendency to gossip.”

“I do not gossip,” Charity retorted. “Nor am I pert.” A single arched brow on her mother’s fine face revealed her disagreement with the latter statement. For the most part Charity, would rather speak her mind, and was uncomfortable with the subterfuge her mother and many other ladies seemed to thrive upon. She wondered aloud, what if men practiced the same deception. She explained that she certainly would not like it.

“Dear, men have only one thought when it comes to women,” her mother said. “And it is not how to deceive them. They are at their core simple creatures,” her mother continued. “Don’t complicate things. Let them see what they wish to see…within reason of course, and they will do what you wish them to do.”