Chapter 2

Lady Charlotte? Are you here?”

The question came from somewhere behind the towering rose trellises, the blooms, along with the warmth that had sustained them, now faded in the grip of fall. Charlotte shot to her feet, pulling her cloak tightly around her against the chill in the air. She’d come out to the deserted gardens in the watery sunshine because she couldn’t stand to be trapped in the house any longer, pacing and waiting and pacing some more. Three days had passed since she’d returned from her clandestine visit to King and she’d been on tenterhooks ever since, waiting for a visit she wasn’t sure would ever come from a woman she didn’t know.

“I’m here,” she replied, trying her best to arrange her features into normalcy.

The housekeeper rounded the garden path, her usually pinched face looking unusually befuddled, her arms wrapped around her middle against the cold. “You have a caller,” the woman said, sounding perplexed. “She’s been shown into the orange drawing room. Your aunt is already there.”

Charlotte felt her heart skip, and she willed her expression to remain serene, as though callers for her were regular fixtures. In truth, the housekeeper had every right to be perplexed. Charlotte never had callers. Of any sort. The only time that she supposed there were visitors to their London home was when her parents were in residence, and Charlotte hadn’t seen her parents in almost three years. They never came to Aysgarth and spent little time in London. Currently, they were wintering somewhere on the sunny shores of Spain, leaving Charlotte in the temporary company of an aunt who rarely left her rooms and never had even a passing interest in her niece.

Charlotte spun and hurried through the gardens and into the house, tossing her cloak aside and stopping just outside the door to the drawing room. She could see her aunt installed on the orange-and-yellow settee, the lace trim of her cap drooping over her gaunt face, a woolen blanket folded over her lap.

A soft, melodic voice that Charlotte didn’t recognize drifted from the room, but from her vantage, she could not see the owner. She smoothed the flyaway hair back from her face as best she could and brushed a dead leaf from her skirts. She squared her shoulders and stepped through the doorway.

Her aunt gazed up at her and blinked, as though she couldn’t understand where Charlotte had come from or why she was here. “I thought you were already gone to Aysgarth,” she said, and it sounded more like an accusation, as though she found Charlotte’s continued presence offensive.

“Not yet, Aunt,” Charlotte replied absently, her attention already fixed on the other woman in the room.