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The sound of hooves came rolling from behind them. The second assailant was riding past, his mare saddled with Charlotte’s other belongings. He held the reigns of another horse, though they looked nothing like the sandy thoroughbreds the postilion had been commanding.
“Perhaps we shall meet again in another life,” the man before her crooned. Then he turned on his heel and hopped atop his horse as it galloped past.
Charlotte dashed after him, off the carriage and into the night. She kicked up dirt as she ran, following them down the lane until they outpaced her.
And then they were gone, and she was alone.
Alone and lost, with only the broken dream of her freedom for company.
CHAPTERONE
“Hail, to see her beauty, sobered. Lips soft and petaled as…as… Oh, for heaven’s sake!” Charlotte slammed her quill down against her vanity and breathed a guttural sigh. “Can you recall what came after this verse, Josephine? Something about flowers, or doves, and—” She waved her hand in the air as though her genius might swoop in and save her.
Josephine smiled behind her, contentedly plaiting her hair. “Hail, to see her beauty, sobered. Lips soft and petaled as the roses of your garden. Sire, to be with you is to be reborn.”
Charlotte clapped her hands together. “Blessed that you are, Josephine! That’s right!”
She leaned back over her vanity, taking the lengths of her hair with her, and scribbled down the last of the poem’s verses. And with that, she was done.
It had been a month since she had tried to run away—a month since the robbery. She and her modiste had made short work of replacing the gowns, shifts, and reticules the thieves had done away with. But restoring her anthology was not so easy a task—second only in its labor to the healing of her pride.
She beamed as she looked down at the poem and read it over. She knew it was a little scandalous, a little avant-garde, too. But it was hers, and she was proud. She dipped her quill back in its ink and gleefully signed it,Charles F. Huxley.
She was proud, but she was not afool. Should thetoncome to learn of her salacious writings, her entire family would be shamed. Thus, Charlotte becameCharlesso that the poems might become tolerable, which felt like a fair enough price to pay.
“Unless my memory is failing, I do believe that’s the last of them,” she confessed dreamily and twisted around to look at her fair-haired lady’s maid. “I truly cannot express just how grateful I am to you, Josephine. How ever did you become so smart?”
Josephine grinned bashfully. “It’s nothing to do with smartness, my lady. I’ve heard you recite your poems for nigh on four years. Some of it was bound to stick.”
Charlotte looked up at her. “Still, I am so thankful.” She twisted back around, resolved to stop making Josephine’s coiffing twice as hard as it need be, and took off her reading spectacles. “I shall send them off to my publisher on Piccadilly soon, as long as one of your young cousins is willing to go for me. Who knows who might be reading and renting these soon?” Charlotte watched Josephine in the mirror, and the girl’s expression dipped. “Unless you think that’s quite a foolish idea. Perhaps I should not push my luck.”
Josie blinked and started. “No, it’s not that. Not at all, my lady,” she stammered, but she was hardly convincing.
“Speak plainly, Josephine. You know I trust you with my life,” Charlotte cooed, and it was true. When she had fled the duchy, Josephine had been the only one she had trusted enough to tell. She picked up her poem. “Andtheseare my life.”
Josephine reached for a champagne-colored ribbon on the vanity. “I worry what the Duke might do if he finds out. His Grace was none the wiser when you published the first set of poems… but what if people start asking after you? The Season is already heavily underway, and you’ve yet to find a better match. I hate to think of you lumbered with that old, dribbling duke your father is truest friends with.” She hesitated and smoothed out the ribbon. “Oh, but I do hope this doesn’t deter you. Why, I hope everyone has the chance to read your work one day! I’m only nervous. I cannot lie and say I’m not. I know it’s not my place—”
Charlotte hushed her maid by bringing a hand to rest atop her own. “It is precisely your place,” she stressed, and her eyes were wide with kindness. “Your place is with me, and you are right—Iampushing my luck. Although Papa isn’t nearly as determined to wed me off to the Duke of Gamston as he was before my,” she whispered the next word as though it were sacrilege, “aborted flight.”
She wrangled with a smile, because really, there was nothing funny about it. She could hardly remember anything from the night—not her fear, nor her pleading—nothing but the snorting of the horses and the glint in the man’s eye as he had toyed with her. He was a phantom to her now, but not a thing of nightmares as she imagined he would be.
She quite liked that she had a secret. It was the only experience to separate her from the vast sea of damsels with whom she brushed shoulders… not that they were wise to her attempted escape.
Her Papa had not been nearly as insouciant about the whole ordeal. He had been inconsolable when she had returned at last, having been picked up along the road by some riders from the Penny-Post. He had forgiven her that same day, and when she had shared her side of things, he had promised leniency in the matters of matrimony.
The leniency was as follows: one final Season to make her own way, to find a man of her choosing, provided he was of noble birth. One last chance to find love or forever be saddled with the detestable Duke of Gamston. To forever live a life of regret and torment.
“I cannot say I am eager to see him,” Charlotte murmured, voicing her fears aloud. “Gamston, I mean to say. Anyone would think he had only my father for friendship, though I suppose the same could be said of Papa.” She paused. “It is so strange to think the man had been like a second father to me for so long. He has known me since I was in pinafores. He taught me to play chess, to read Shakespeare, for heaven’s sake! That he should be my prospective husband…” She shook her head in revulsion.
“Well, my lady,” Josephine replied, “It’s not so strange to me. A man is a man, no matter the blood running through him. You are the perfect lady, and the Duke of Gamston has no children. If you’ll pardon my saying, you know better than most what the world thinks of us women.”
There was nothing to forgive, for Josephine was not wrong. The Duke had shown no interest in making a wife of Charlotte, not until his father had suggested the sordid thing when she turned six-and-ten. It did not mean he had not been thinking about it.
“I suppose it will do me no good to consider the matter now. I have bought myself a pocket of time. Rather, those dratted brigands did.”
Charlotte supposed she owed the bandits a great deal. Without them, she may have been married by now or dead in a ditch in Italy. She didn’t quite know which of the two sounded more promising.
She looked back at Josie, who was putting the finishing touches on her coiffure. “Begging your pardon, my lady, but I don’t know how you manage to joke about what happened. If it were me, I’m not sure I would ever be able to live normally again. Were you notterrifiedof the bandit?”
