He took one last breath as a free man.

“When I say he was assisting me, I mean that he offered to look inside and determine what exactly was in—”

“What Lady Charlotte is trying to say is that she has done me the honor of bestowing upon me her hand.”

Five pairs of eyes stared in surprise at his pronouncement. Dare looked calmly back at all of them, beyond feeling anything but stupefied.

“She? That person is a woman?” asked Mrs. Whitney.

“I knew it!” Patricia exclaimed, saluting her brother with her wooden saber before kissing him on his cheek. “I’m so pleased!”

“Best of luck to you, old man,” said David the sea captain as he clapped Dare on the back.

“Lady Charlotte?” Lady Jersey growled as she turned to face the person in question. “Lady Charlotte Collins? The Lady Charlotte who ran off with an Italian nobody despite my warning her it would all end in despair? The Lady Charlotte whom I specifically forbade to attend my ball? The Lady Charlotte who, upon hearing my refusal, referred to me as ‘that jealous old she-cat who wouldn’t recognize quality if it bit her on the bottom’? That Lady Charlotte?”

Dare looked at Charlotte. She looked back at him, her eyes round with surprise. Then suddenly she whooped with delight and threw herself across the room and into his arms, murmuring into his ear, “I knew this would turn out well! I knew you wouldn’t fail me! Now we will be wed and you won’t be hunted any longer, and Lady Jersey will have to receive me, and I shall have gowns and go to balls and dance, and best of all, your instrument will be happy to apply itself while you demonstrate the armchair’s usage to me.”

“Oh, happy day,” Dare said, flinching slightly as the hunter’s arrow pierced him with a mortal blow. The taste of entrapment was bitter on his tongue.

Four

“Truly, Alasdair…”

Charlotte stopped speaking under the look Dare bent upon her. She thinned her lips in annoyance. “We are betrothed. Must I continue to call you Lord Carlisle?”

Dare fought the familiar tightness across his chest and took an experimental deep breath. At least the shackles Charlotte had about him allowed him to breathe. “No, you do not need to call me Lord Carlisle, but if you must use my Christian name, please use the abbreviated version. No one but my mother calls me Alasdair.”

She blinked. “What should I call you?”

“Dare.”

“Dare? As in…Dare?”

“Dare.” He signaled the horses to start and expertly guided them into the busy flow of traffic surrounding Covent Garden. “It’s just four little letters. Even you should be able to remember it.”

Charlotte tucked an errant curl back into her honeysuckle-crested bonnet, frowned for a moment, then turned to give Dare an outraged glare. “Did you just insult me?”

“Yes.”

Her look of outrage grew. “Why?”

“Because I’m in a foul mood.”

“Why?” she asked again.