“I’ll kill him,” she growled to herself as she clutched the seat in the carriage when it lurched drunkenly over ruts in the road. “If he’s dead, I’ll bring him back to life just so I can kill him for scaring me so! Oh, Dare! You stupid, foolish, idiotic…wonderful man! How can you do this to me? How can I mean so little to you that you’d go off without even saying good-bye, while you mean the world to me? How can you possibly want to die after spending such a miraculous night together?”

Charlotte sniffled into her handkerchief as she remembered the hours leading up to dawn. Dare had been a wild man, gentle yet demanding, forceful yet tender, bringing her again and again to the brink of paradise. “If you die, how will I ever again know the joy of Churning Butter on a Fresh Spring Morn?”

Slowly a deep, dark rage overtook her grief and filled her with determination. If God were so gracious as to leave her Dare alive until she could save him, she would see to it that the beastly Pretender never bothered him again. She’d kill him herself if she had to, if that’s what it took to keep Dare safe.

Such were Charlotte’s musings as the carriage rolled on toward what she had begun to think of as the murder ground. Before she had time to do more than mentally murder Geoffrey McGregor two or three times, the carriage had stopped, blocked by a newly arrived curricle. Charlotte peered out the window at the offending obstacle, then snarled an oath that she would never admit to knowing, and without waiting for Crouch to let down the stairs, leaped from the carriage and ran to the man climbing down from the other vehicle.

“Matthew! What are you doing here? Where’s Dare? What have you done to my husband?”

“Charlotte! Dear God woman, what can you be thinking? You can’t be here! Go home this instant.”

Charlotte grabbed her brother by the neck cloth and shook him, not an easy task since he had several stone on her. “Where is my husband?”

Lord Collins’s eye bulged slightly, reminding her of Caro’s pug. “I haven’t seen him,” he choked out in between shakings. Charlotte loosened her grip. “I just got here myself. Now, release me. As long as you’re here, there’s something I wish to say to you.”

She stepped away from her brother and looked around the field. A row of trees swaying vigorously in the morning breeze blocked her view, but she thought she saw two carriages through them. “Crouch?”

“Right behind ye, m’lady.”

“Where is he?”

“Most likely beyond the trees.”

She picked up her skirts and started off toward the carriages, ignoring her brother’s demand that she wait and hear him out. “I have better things to do than listen to you tell me yet again that I’ve made my bed and now must lie in it.” Better things like throttling her husband’s murderer with her bare hands.