Now there was a question Wolfgang wasn’t prepared to answer. The future stretched out before him, so vast and empty that it might swallow him.
It should have beenJohn’s life, damn it. Wolfgang didn’t want it.
“This summer, it seems I’m heading to Kent.” Wolfgang kicked his boots up on the table. “Have you heard of Lady Charlotte’s house party?”
“Yes, I’ve heard of it. In fact, I also plan to be there.”
“You? Why?” Wolfgang sat forward. “You’renot one of Lady Charlotte’s suitors.”
He must have shouted the last bit, because Lysander stared. He pulled an envelope slowly out of his pocket and grinned as he held it up in the air. “Perhaps I am. Lady Charlotte wrote personally to invite me down to Clare. Do you think I have the edge?”
Wolfgang snatched the letter from him.
Lord Lysander,
Have you heard of my predicament? Why do I even ask—you’re a worse gossip than I am.
I’m writing to see if I can’t convince you to spend the summer at Clare. I promise good shooting, a river cool enough for even your hot head, and the key to my brother’s personal wine cellar. (Yes, Lady Ramsay gave it to me. No, she won’t mind if you drink yourself silly. Yes, you coward, I’ll take the blame if Julian gets cross.)
Marby’s coming with all his sisters, and if that isn’t entertainment enough, Gran’s planning to march London’s eligibles down to parade in front of me. Won’t you help me look them over?
Yours in disgrace,
Lady Charlotte Louisa Aveton
Wolfgang cleared his throat. “Ah. I see. You and Lady Charlotte are… friends?”
“Exceedingly friendly.”
“Damn it, but you’re not, in fact, one of her suitors?”
His wretched brother only grinned wider. “No, not her suitor. But I’ll consider courting her if you promise to make that face again?”
CHAPTER 12
Charlotte and the dowager spentthe next week in a flutter of packing and planning. Their first order of business was to send couriers after Julian and Anna, although they had very little hope of a reply. Next, they went to Rundell, Bridge & Rundell to sell their jewels, which Gran claimed not to mind, though Charlotte noticed that she kissed her emerald drops and whispered, “Be well, my darlings,” before she handed them over to Mr. Rundell. The dowager wrote their trustees to see how much money she could wheedle from them, while Charlotte wrote Julian’s man of business, Mr. Bernard Curlew, to ask him for a loan to cover her mother’s debt.
She first asked to borrow against her dowry, which Mr. Curlew declined. Then she asked for a loan against her share of the silk mill, to which he also said no. Finally, she wrote to beg foranysort of loan, to which she received an agonized response, because while Mr. Curlew flatly refused to dip into the Ramsay coffers, it worried him greatly to offend his employer’s beloved younger sister.
“I must stop harassing that man,” Charlotte muttered to her gran after she received his last letter. Yet Charlotte wasn’t sure what else to do, especially after she’d gone to tea with her mother and gotten the name of her creditor. He was a thin-faced and repellent Prussian named Count Carl Frederick von Hohenstaufen, and he didn’t seem a patient man, nor was he satisfiedwith the six thousand pounds Charlotte and Gran sent to him. He was particularly scornful of Charlotte’s promise of future payments, perhaps because Charlotte herself wasn’t sure where those payments would come from.
I hear you have until the end of the summer to marry, he wrote.In the hopes your husband is both rich and obliging, I will also give your mother until the end of the summer to pay the remainder of her debt.
It was a reprieve of sorts, and yet it left anotheror elsedangling over Charlotte’s head. Still, even with all the work to do, it wasn’t long before the dowager’s town house was packed up and shuttered, holland covers laid over the furniture for the summer, the ladies bundled into their coach to jingle and creak down the long road from London to Clare, the family’s main estate. After a few hours on the road, when they crossed into Kent, Charlotte found herself sneaking frequent glances out the window.
It wasn’t the sloping, sun-dappled countryside that caught her attention.
“Must we bringhimalong?” she said to the dowager.
The dowager startled awake.
“Bring whom, my darling?” The dowager blinked hard, as if she hadn’t been sound asleep. She liked to pretend she wasn’t powerless against the rhythmic sway of the carriage and hadn’t spent most of the trip snoring.
“Him!” Charlotte lifted her chin toward the window, where a massive figure on an even larger horse was silhouetted against the sun.
God, Warrick rode well, and it was shocking that Charlotte even noticed, given that her sister-in-law ran the country’s most successful riding stable and jawed constantly about horses. Charlotte was accustomed to riders whizzing by her head, but she couldn’t seem to stop herself from gaping at the sight of the Duke of Warrick andhis charger, thundering along in a slow, rolling canter. Was it just her imagination, or did the earth tremble with every stride?
The dowager peered out the window and her eyes filled with awe. “God bless Britannia!”
