Potent Pleasures Read Online Free PDF Page B

the babies she thought to have, for the unfairness of discovering that she—she, Charlotte—was an insatiable woman. She’d have to stay away from men, she thought finally, after crying hopelessly for a long time. She couldn’t trust herself, that was clear. And she couldn’t allow herself to be publicly ruined; her parents would be devastated.
    Finally she got out of bed and rang for a bath. She sent the maid out of the room because she wasn’t sure whether there might be other signs of her ruination. But she didn’t seem to be bleeding anymore.
    It was only when she leaned back into the steaming water that Charlotte remembered her paintings, and given the way the world had shifted in the last few hours, she allowed that to shift too. Since she couldn’t have a husband, or a baby, she could learn how to paint properly. She would make a focus for her life in the easy sweep of new canvas and wet paint, far from the humiliation she felt at the moment. The thought—the plan—calmed the agonizing jumble of feelings inside Charlotte; she rose from the bath and allowed Julia’s maid to button her into a chaste white gown.

Chapter 2

    A s Charlotte’s world fell into before and after , so did the world of her mother. When Charlotte returned to Albemarle Square the next day, she didn’t say much. She looked at her mother with a tearless, somber look that made her mother want simultaneously to shake her and to burst into tears. What on earth had happened to Charlotte? She wasn’t herself anymore, as the duchess told her husband in bewilderment. Charlotte became moody and even harsh.
    If the truth be told, Adelaide was exhausted, too exhausted to deal with a new, irritable Charlotte. Presentations were tiring. The planning had taken weeks, and just this week Gunter’s had put up a fuss about the ices. She had ordered ices colored a delicate violet, and they appeared with a violently purple sample. The footman who was set to washing the center chandelier broke seventeen crystals before anyone noticed he was dead drunk. The new gown she had ordered (blue velvet, embroidered with silver fleur-de-lis) was ghastly. The sleeves were short and far too tight, and the overdress sagged, making her look old and matronly. So she had to pay four times the price to have Madame Flancot create a new gown of rose brocade, practically overnight.
    And then, the very day before the ball, Charlotte announced that she wouldn’t go to any balls, including her own presentation. Adelaide stared at her in disbelief. She turned sharply to Charlotte’s maid, Marie.
    “Fetch Violetta, please, Marie. And then you may go.”
    Marie slipped from the room. Her mistress must have gone crazy. That beautiful dress! How could she even think of not wearing it?
    Charlotte’s sister Violetta strolled into the bedroom with all the nonchalance of someone with two seasons behind her and an almost-for-certain marriage proposal from the Marquess of Blass.
    Violetta tried persuasion. “You know, Lottie,” she said, reverting to Charlotte’s pet name from childhood, “I was terrified at my coming out ball. Mama had the place absolutely covered in white lilies—which was very nice, Mama,” she hastened to add, “but the perfume was so powerful. When I slipped downstairs to see the ballroom in the afternoon, I just kept sneezing and sneezing, and we all panicked. But then Campion suggested scotch, which he said was a perfect remedy for sneezing, and he was right. Of course,” she said meditatively, “I don’t remember much of what happened after the glass of scotch, but at least I didn’t sneeze all evening.”
    Charlotte just looked at her sister miserably. She hadn’t cried since leaving Julia’s house, but she felt like it, all the time. One minute she was desperate to see that man again; the next she was consumed with rage and self-pity.
    Violetta sat down next to her on the bed, so close their shoulders were touching. “I wouldn’t worry,