Page 99 of The Gentlewoman Companion

Was this an opportunity to practice the adages she’d scribbled in her journal? Improvement required continued growth and progress; she could improve without the countess guiding her studies. Couldn’t she?

Education was the key to advance one’s situation. Might she use her education in a manner that would make Mary Astell proud?

Misfortune was an opportunity to improve; what was she meant to learn from her terrible fall from social grace?

She had jumped a horse over a fence largely guided by instinct, and she had learned to drive a team with infallible confidence. Surely setting the course for a new future was within her capabilities as well. At Stillwater, she would own all the goodness she made, test her abilities without the Halvertons propping her up or shielding her from her mistakes.

Light flickered and stirred within her. Quiet, unexpected, but alive. Yet, to trust it, to be lured by that spark, felt perilous, like stepping onto a freshly frozen pond.

Like choosing to air her worries to a trusted friend rather than letting them fester.

Like taking responsibility for her actions.

Like extending kindness where it wasn’t warranted, as with Miss Trelawney or her efforts to help her brother...

Charles! His betrayal burned like a slap, reigniting a flame in the hot core of her body that consumed the hope she’d found. He was the cause of her present misery! The cad. The scoundrel. The insufferable bounder. She clenched the leads in her palms and pulled the carriage out of the street to steady herself.

Shouting drew her attention before she could calm her fuming breath. Two burly men restrained a young man clad in patched sailor’s garb. They were followed by a man with a club.

“My mother will think me dead!” the sailor shouted.

“Your mates’ll let ’er know.”

“Take another man, I beg you!”

The press-gang ignored their captive’s pleas and led him to a ship—the HMS Frolic. Louisa looked again. The ship’s name was, indeed, Frolic. She almost smiled.

Cries from the young man being dragged up the gangway chased her mirth. Impressment was a brutal practice. Who deserved such unfair treatment?

She knew someone who did. Someone who had never applied himself except in seeking his own pleasure, who had accepted her sacrifice—how she missed the familiar weight of her mother’s brooch—and then disregarded it because he’d had what he wanted from her. Oh, yes, she would offer Charles a kindness: the generosity of providing him, for the first time in his life, discipline and purpose.

Impressment was usually reserved for men with seafaring experience. Charles, though not a sailor, knew how to manage a small yacht. And there was the butcher’s son who had been taken, so it was not impossible…

A boy of about twelve skipped past her.

“You there,” she called. He turned. “Hold my carriage and I’ll give you a penny.”

His eyes lit.

“You can manage it?” she asked.

He nodded, and she ran off in the direction of HMS Frolic.

The men of the press-gang laughed raucously as they agreed to her request. Their merriment did nothing to dampen the tiny sparks that danced, hummed, and thrilled inside Louisa at what was coming. She did not care for their pleasure, only that her brother meet justice. She demanded to follow the men to see the task done, and after little resistance, the men agreed, but in turn demanded a half-crown each in payment.

She was too impatient to disagree.

They followed her to Nimbus, where she relieved the boy of his charge and paid him.

“Call a hackney,” she told the men, giving them the location of the inn. “I will follow behind to be sure it is properly done. When he’s aboard, meet me here for payment.”

They agreed.

“Try not to hurt him.”

One of the press-gang raised his brows and another bared his teeth, but Louisa was not concerned, as she did not believe Charles had much fight. He’d obligingly walk with them, too drunk to care what was happening.

She trailed the hackney through London and waited outside the inn. Minutes slid by. What was taking so long?