VERDOPOLIS. CHARLOTTE'S EYES WERE SHUT, but she knew she was no longer at her desk; the little parsonage in Yorkshire was far away.
A party. The final scene of her story would be a grand party.
The lovers had been tested. Insurmountable obstacles had stood in their way, but now their trials were over. They were married. All of Charlotte's characters, major and minor, would come together for a celebration. At a certain point, the new wife and the new husband would see each other across the room and share a knowing look, and anyone reading Charlotte's story would sigh with contentment, because that look would somehow contain all the couple's happiness, and prefigure all their golden days to come.
Yes, Charlotte thought. That was how it would be. She imagined room after dazzling room in readiness—fires glowing, silver gleaming, glassware sparkling on ornate tables. She opened her eyes.
A beautiful woman in gossamer silk floated through the fine rooms, making a last inspection before her guests arrived. It was Mary Henrietta Wellesley, the new bride. Shyly she nodded at the footmen in velvet and gold. Though of high birth, she had been raised modestly and was unused to having so many servants. Charlotte was no longer sitting. Instead she crouched behind a crimson curtain.
"Who's there?" Mary Henrietta cried. "Show yourself!" She turned to alert a footman.
Charlotte stepped out, and for one horrible moment she was herself, a plain girl in a mouse-colored dress, too small, too ill-favored to belong anywhere in this world. She looked down at her worn shoes on the gleaming marble, murmuring under her breath: "Eager for the party to begin, Lord Charles had dressed early, and now had nothing else to occupy his childish temperament but to harass his poor new sister." Somewhere far away in Haworth, these words appeared across Charlotte's story paper.
"Oh, it's you, Charles," Mary Henrietta said with a merry laugh. "Don't frighten me so."
Charlotte, now a boy of ten in a blue velvet suit, capered across the floor. "Will the Duke and Duchess of Fidena be here? And the Earl of St. Clair? And the young viscount?" Her high boy's voice echoed in the enormous room.
"Of course." A shadow passed across Mary Henrietta's lovely face. "Unless they receive a better invitation."
Charlotte flopped down on a brocaded sofa as if she owned it, which, as one of the Wellesley heirs, she did. "Don't be foolish. You're a duchess now, and a Wellesley. There is no better invitation than ours."
"I suppose not." Mary Henrietta sat down on the edge of the sofa, careful not to wrinkle her gown. "I wouldn't mind so much for myself if no one came, but … I'd like everything to be perfect for him."
Charlotte rolled her eyes, something she would scold Emily for doing back home. "Zamorna thinks everything you do is perfect. He is besotted with you, as well he should be."
"Perhaps." Mary Henrietta did not look reassured. "It's just … he's had so many wives and lovers before me …"
Charlotte sat up. She hadn't meant for the conversation to take this turn. "It's you he loves now."
"Yes." Mary Henrietta tugged at one of her chestnut curls. Her hair was not yet done for the party, and it hung prettily around her shoulders. "So he says."
A story's happy ending was no time for marital doubts, in Charlotte's opinion, but sometimes, in spite of her best efforts, her characters would drift away from the plot like recalcitrant sheep, as Mary Henrietta was doing now. She often felt that being an author was like being a sheepdog, always snapping at her characters' heels to keep them on track.
"Mary Henrietta looked down to smooth her dress," she said, "and when she looked up again, the troubled expression upon her face had melted away, replaced by a new bride's glowing smile. 'of course he loves me,' she said, and Zamorna's sordid past was quickly forgotten."
Mary Henrietta neither noticed nor acknowledged these words, but she looked down to smooth her green silk, and when she looked up, her face did indeed glow with happiness. "Of course he loves me," she said. "Forgive my foolish talk, Charles."
"Milady! There you are!" Mina Laury, Mary Henrietta's faithful maid, burst in clutching a handful of ribbons in different lengths and colors. "We haven't finished with your hair, and your guests will be arriving soon."
Mary Henrietta glanced at the ormolu clock with jeweled hands sitting on the mantel. "Oh dear!" she said, leaping up. She gave Charlotte a kiss by way of good-bye and darted off with her maid.
Charlotte was left touching her cheek where Mary Henrietta's lips had been. One of the benefits of playing Charles Wellesley was that every time Zamorna married, she got to have an elder sister again for a little while. She laughed and ate a walnut from a cut-glass bowl, then sprang from the sofa, going out through the tall French doors and onto the balcony. A warm breeze washed over her, perfumed with jasmine. It was never cold in Verdopolis, never damp. The sun was setting behind her, and a sliver of moon was already rising above the magnificent Verdopolitan skyline.
I made this, she thought. All this is mine.
She said aloud: "All the church bells in the city began to ring the hour, but loud as they were, they could not drown out the clatter of approaching wheels and the whinnying of fine horses."
Before she had even finished the sentence, the chimes of St. Augustin and St. Michael's began to ring in unison. Then, to her delight, the carriages arrived, gilded carriages decanting tiny-waisted ladies in brightly colored silks, frothy with lace. Golds, greens, and crimsons dazzled the eye: Colors were richer in Verdopolis than anywhere else. Charlotte caught glimpses of dainty, satin-sheathed feet as the ladies stepped lightly to the ground, assisted by handsome, slim-hipped gentlemen with piercing eyes and aquiline features.
She leaned over the balcony railing, waving and shouting with abandon at the guests. She didn't worry about falling, didn't worry about being unladylike. After all, she wasn't a lady; she was a ten-year-old boy.
She turned back inside and ran through room after room, stopping at the entranceway just as a pair of footmen in powdered wigs swung open the great doors. Up the staircase like a glittering tide, the party guests arrived. She stood aside and let them all go by in a swirling, chattering, laughing wave. Charlotte knew them all, but since she was a young boy, they took little notice of her, and that was as she wanted it.
A moment later, the party's host and hostess came out to greet their guests. All eyes turned to them, the wealthiest and most fashionable couple in Verdopolis: Lord Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Zamorna, eldest son of the Duke of Wellington, and his latest bride, the incomparable beauty Mary Henrietta. Immediately Mary Henrietta was surrounded by admirers, and the duke was pulled to the other side of the room by his own coterie of friends.
"Stop!" Charlotte said. The room fell silent. All were still. Gentlemen were frozen in the act of bowing to young ladies or lighting their cheroots or accepting glasses of punch from elegant servants. Ladies were frozen as they blushed behind their fans or admired the fine paintings on the walls.
Charlotte, the only moving person in the room, wove through the crowd, adjusting a stray curl here, straightening a bow there. She stopped in front of Zamorna.
Her hero was as handsome as the statue of a Roman emperor—tall, with a high, noble forehead, loose curls, and arresting brown eyes. Even frozen, he took her breath away. He was so aloof, so arrogant, so aristocratic. Zamorna had been the main character of Charlotte's stories ever since she was a little girl. Whenever Branwell's villain, the wicked Alexander Rogue, tried to rob a bank or assassinate someone or kidnap a young lady, the Duke of Zamorna was always there to save the day. Women were his one weakness, but now that he had found Mary Henrietta, his days of ensnaring highborn ladies with his famous "basilisk gaze" were surely over.
Charlotte looked back at Mary Henrietta, trying to see her through Zamorna's eyes, trying to be sure she was flawless in every way. "The dress should be violet," she said. "And more … diaphanous."
Immediately, Mary Henrietta's dress changed from green to violet, the fabric so sheer and fine she seemed to be swathed in mist.
"Yes. Perfect."
Charlotte moved back toward Mary Henrietta and climbed up onto one of the high-backed chairs behind her, wanting to see every passion that crossed Zamorna's face.
"The duke looked over at his wife, catching her eye," she said.
Immediately the scene began again with all its noise and bustle and laughter. Men finished their bows; ladies lowered their fans and smiled. Zamorna and Mary Henrietta both looked up at the same time. Charlotte held her breath in anticipation. Across the room, the husband's eyes met his wife's …
"Mary Henrietta Wellesley radiated grace and beauty …"
Charlotte kept her gaze fixed on Zamorna, waiting to see his face change, waiting for the vast depths of his affection to sweep over him. From her vantage point on the chair, she could almost pretend he was looking at her.
For a long moment Zamorna and Mary Henrietta regarded one another. Then the duke nodded to his wife and went back to his conversation.
No, Charlotte thought.
Mary Henrietta turned back to her companions. "Excuse me. What were you saying, Ambassador?"
Charlotte sat down on the gilded chair. A stiff breeze swept through the room, rustling the curtains and the ladies' gowns. Charlotte put her arms around her shoulders, chilled, as if the damp gust had come all the way from Yorkshire. Now when she glimpsed her hero through the crowd, his face seemed waxy and unreal, lacking any true life.
Over the years, Charlotte had given Zamorna many love interests, each more beautiful, virtuous, and devoted than the next. Once, she had been satisfied with these romances—thrilled even—but now … now she was beginning to see that she had never sparked true feeling in Zamorna, true fire. In fact, none of her characters came fully to life, not like people in a real book, not like—she hated to admit this—Alexander Rogue sometimes came to life on Branwell's pages.
But there was no wonder in her failure, she told herself. She was no author. She was simply an eighteen-year-old girl from Haworth, England, a girl who was destined to be a governess someday soon, and probably an indifferent one at that.
Perhaps I am only playing with the world's most exquisite set of dolls, she thought. Perhaps it was time to put her dolls away.
