It wasn't the first time someone had closeted himself with her father with an offer. But she was reaching the apogee-drawing ever closer to the last.

Emily looked confused. And strangely concerned as she followed Charlotte farther into the room.

"One would think Mr. Trant was buying into the rumors," her mother said, st.i.tching, eyes on her piece. Charlotte hadn't st.i.tched in a week. Hadn't been able to without thinking about that night. "That he wishes to secure your obedience quickly."

Charlotte sat stiffly in a chair. There was a tea service on the table. "A cup of tea, Emily?"

Emily hopped forward and poured as if she'd always been a dab hand at it, offering a cup to Charlotte, then balancing her own perfectly on her lap. She gave Charlotte a fierce, supportive smile.

Their mother's eyes didn't lift, her response apathetic. "Adequate, Emily. Perhaps in two years, you will not be a complete disappointment to your father."

Charlotte's smile froze in its response to Emily's. "Better than adequate, Mother," she said smoothly. "And Emily is far from a disappointment. In fact, she handled that as if she had never been anything other than perfec-" Charlotte looked at her sister. "She handled that just like the magnificent woman she is."

Emily's smile resumed its brilliance.

"You coddle her." St.i.tch, st.i.tch, unending st.i.tch. "How did she do on your rounds today?" Viola's tone said that she had already come to her own a.s.sumption about Emily's performance.

Charlotte kept the stiff smile about her lips. "Emily did extremely well. I remember a time when I was far less certain of where to place my cup or how to enter conversation."

Viola's mouth pinched. "As if you have ever tipped a cup." She jabbed her needle through the cloth.

"And besides that," Charlotte pressed on, "Emily's presence fairly lights a room on fire. She will start her own fashions, mark my words."

Viola made a little noise as she worked another endless st.i.tch.

Emily's face drooped for a second before she grasped onto Charlotte's words again. Charlotte could see the thoughts tumbling there on her face. That she believed in Charlotte's words. That she would make her own happiness.

Charlotte wanted to make sure she had that chance. It had been her most desperate desire for so long. Her own happiness easily pushed to the side, for Emily had always been her happiness.

And now . . . Yes, now. That was the question.

Charlotte looked at their mother. Had Viola ever been happy? Charlotte thought of the miniature portrait she had once found in the attic-one her grandparents had commissioned upon her mother's debut. The girl within had been sparkling. Vivacious.

The woman across from her though looked like a dimmed reflection of chipped paint. And yet reflections could hold their own shine. They simply needed polishing.

The malaise seemed to feed on itself, insidious. Her mother begging off appointments and leaving Charlotte to attend on her own or with one of their neighbors. She wondered why no one had ever broken her mother of the spell.

Why hadn't she ? Because . . . because Viola was her mother. Untouchable in the same way her father had once been.

And Charlotte could see how the malaise might have taken hold. How the anger had turned to bitterness, then resignation. The darker emotions never truly leaving, merely hiding behind the melancholy.

How Charlotte could go down that path herself if she wasn't careful. How she might have contributed to her mother's descent if only in that she had done nothing to stop it.

Charlotte narrowed her eyes. When was the last time her mother had been to the park? To an event outside of the ton ?

Charlotte pushed forward in her chair. "Let us go to the park and the fair this afternoon."

Emily pushed forward too, more than eager for an outing that would prove entertaining.

"Mother?" Charlotte asked.

Viola waved a hand, well used to simply polite inquiries. "I'm sure you will find it amusing."

"All of us will find it amusing. You are coming with us." Charlotte said it calmly but injected just the right amount of steel.

Her mother looked up, and her eyes narrowed before the malaise took hold once more. "I don't feel up to it. You two go."

"No," Charlotte said in the same calm, steely tone. Her sister's eyes widened, and Emily shifted in her seat. "We wish you to accompany us."

She could feel Emily saying "We do?" in her thoughts, but wisely her sister held her tongue.

"I have the headache, Charlotte," Viola said with more asperity, unused to her daughter arguing with her. Charlotte found it easier to do things without her parents, so she always took the easy excuses tossed her way, finding accompaniment with others-mainly Miranda for this past season.

Selfish and easy, yes, and perhaps unwise.

"Fresh air will do your head good."

"Aunt Edith needs looking after," her mother said with a wave.

"Anna can look after her just fine." Aunt Edith was a convenient excuse they used to explain her mother's frequent absences and general state of fatigue. The elderly woman lived next door, rarely emerging, content to do . . . whatever it was she did. Emily liked to say she was a spy, but Charlotte thought maybe she was simply a hermit sitting on her husband's fortune. Bennett, her nephew, was always trying to figure out a way to get his hands on it since he was her closest family member.

Regardless, Aunt Edith made the perfect excuse. That Viola Chatsworth was so devoted to family was something that the matrons admired. It kept tongues subdued. It also hinted, wrongly-but no one outside of the family knew that-that the Chatsworths would one day be out of debt, inheriting Edith's money.

"Aunt Edith doesn't like Anna."

Charlotte wasn't sure Edith liked Viola either. But then, she seemed to tolerate the deception as long as Bennett kept his paws away from her paintings.

"Aunt Edith will be fine. You don't need to attend her today."

Her mother's eyes narrowed, pinning her, st.i.tching forgotten. "Then perhaps I merely don't wish to go with you. "

No one ever made her mother attend an event that she didn't wish. She could shred a person to ribbons if she chose. Bennett dealt with her as little as possible.

"You will feel better," Charlotte said, gently. "I want you to feel better."

"I don't wish to go," her mother hissed in reaction. "With an incompetent"-she pointed her needle toward Emily, then Charlotte-"and perfection. "

Charlotte held her mother's wild eyes, determined not to allow the words to hurt. Or to look at Emily's a.s.suredly devastated face and give in to the rage.

In part because . . . because Viola had never said a word about Charlotte's activities. Not since the night in the carriage. Her mother had been tight-lipped and surprisingly nonjudgmental, when she could have decimated her with a few well-chosen barbs.

She thought of Roman's slipped words that at the beginning of their relationship he had needed to overrun Andreas's p.r.i.c.kly exterior to get to the real man beneath.

She took a deep breath. "Then you can go with your daughters."

Heavy silence fell and stretched.

Charlotte disregarded her pride. "We wish you to come with us. Please."

"I will make the outing h.e.l.l for you." Viola's voice was almost pleasant as she jabbed her needle into the piece.

Charlotte nodded. "I know. I still wish you to accompany us."

There was a strangled sound, and her mother threw down her st.i.tching and swept from her chair and through the door.

Emily stared after her, wide-eyed and unsure. "Charlotte, what are you doing? It . . . it is more fun without her."

Charlotte tipped her head, not wanting to utter anything that could be construed as agreement in case Viola was standing on the other side of the wall, listening. "Let's give her a chance, Emily. Do you not wish she would come with us, happily?"

Emily didn't look convinced. "I suppose."

"If she comes back, give her a chance. Otherwise, we will go ourselves. Yes?"

Emily slowly nodded.

Charlotte half expected her mother not to return, but ten minutes later she did. Charlotte swallowed, trying to restrain the tendril of optimism.

Her mother gave her a dark glance. "Very well. The sooner we get this farce over, the better."

It was more spirit than her mother had shown in years. And the rope of guilt that she had let her mother linger in her own cage knotted about her neck. She had always accepted that cages were necessary-that it was just the way things were. Charlotte swallowed uncomfortably.

"Excellent," she said softly. "Thank you, Mother."

Viola nodded sharply. Charlotte looked more closely at her, at her expression, at her tight lips. At the deep fear underlining her irritation. Along with something else, something she couldn't identify.

Scared of her daughters? No, that wasn't quite it.

Oh. Charlotte felt the revelation-the revelations -so keenly it almost choked her. She pushed aside the one tied to Roman and concentrated on her mother. Viola had ever been a vicious woman when it came to their father. And she had encompa.s.sed her daughters in that vitriol-then hadn't known how to stop.

Behind the fear in her mother's eyes, behind the irritation, there was hope. Choking hope.

"Yes," Charlotte said firmly. "It will be wonderful, just the three of us. We can change dresses and-"

A door opened. Footsteps and voices.

Trant emerged in the doorway to the room, her father a step behind him. Her father shot her a look full of dark meaning. Deal with Trant-or else.

"Mrs. Chatsworth, Miss Chatsworth, Miss Emily." Trant nodded to each of them, his eyes quickly focusing back on Charlotte. "If I could speak with Miss Chatsworth privately?"

Viola's expression gave away nothing, but she eyed Charlotte for a long moment. "Of course, Mr. Trant." Her mother ushered a wide-eyed Emily from the room.

Trant motioned to another chair in the room. Charlotte woodenly rose and accepted the offered seat. An ornate chair her parents hadn't yet been able to part with. Uncomfortable, but beautiful. Trant drew the door shut and approached her again, hands behind his back.

"I've spoken with your father."

"Yes." She called upon her manners-and they held her stiff. They never abandoned her except when Roman Merrick called them to his control.

"And he still proves . . . stubborn. Unwilling to believe my a.s.surances."

"My father often does not follow where others want to lead." He never followed where she did.

"He does not realize the extent of the mistake he makes, allowing me to speak with you instead. You know what I desire." His eyes took her in. Admiring her posture and carriage. Her teeth like a good horse showed.

"Yes."

"We could make a good team, Charlotte."

She looked at him steadily, at the use of her Christian name. "Of course we could, Mr. Trant."

"The things we could accomplish together . . . Things beyond your father's narrow view."

Rule the ton. Climb the social vines. Create their place at the top.

Trant needed her, or someone like her. And the farther he climbed, the higher she would ascend. Unlike Downing, who cared not, and Marquess Binchley, who lacked vision, Trant's ambition would push him high.

"Yes, I am not unaware."

She wasn't a duke's daughter, or an heiress, but she was exactly what he needed and could have. Poised, impeccable, the perfect hostess, with the grit to rule. And her father had made her attainable. Had limited his own ambitions with one simple round of cards.

Had both freed and chained her with the same.

"I know you aren't. It is one of your many fine attributes. Your father plays a game still. Holding me off until the end of the season, though little does he seem to realize that it is far too late. But it is not your father whom I have to sway at this point. You are the one who holds the power."

She kept her face cool. The twisted smile down. "My father holds my strings still. I hardly think it would be within your plans to elope."

He roamed around her chair, a finger brushing her shoulders. She stiffened automatically, muscles tightening. "No, no it would not."

Trant desired power and prestige. Standing, and an unsullied reputation.

The whispers about her were making him livid. She could see it there behind his eyes. He was a meticulous planner, and factors kept slipping from his grasp.

"But you are the one who will make or break a contract. I don't remember you pushing or lamenting Downing's offer or lack thereof." She could feel him leaning closer. Her skin p.r.i.c.kled uncomfortably, but she held herself immobile as he continued speaking. "You could have pushed it through. There was a moment when Downing was still thinking clearly . . ."

She thought Downing had never been thinking more clearly than when he was outwardly showing his love for his wife. But it was true that there might have been a moment there, a moment he would have regretted forever, and that Charlotte hadn't pushed. Hadn't been able to after she had spoken with Miranda in the dark of the opera. Stolen away in the cavern of a box to watch them together. To see the adoration. To hear her future husband's mistress speak of him.

Trant suddenly was before her. "You are the one who handled your father's bet and decided things in Merrick's hall that night."

"It is not in my nature to have a mark upon our honor."

"And that does you credit," he all but purred. "But might there have been . . . something else? You have been . . . sloppier lately," he said. "Not up to your usual standards."

"You are correct." Her directness made him start, his eyes narrow. For he was not one to admire directness when it was pointed at him. "I believe you would deem my emotion and actions as 'rebellious.' "

His face was cool, but there was appreciation as well. "It is a relief to know you can be objective, dear. That you understand and can correct the behavior."

She looked at the wall. There used to be a painting there. A beautiful landscape showing girls in a meadow. Girls with unbound hair and movement in their limbs. It had been one of the first things her father had sold. "I am able to correct the behavior."

"I know. Or else we wouldn't be having this discussion."