Nick squirmed alongside her, flailed his arms and legs for a moment, then shot forward, gasping for air.

“Oh, dear, Nick, I’m so sorry. Could you not breathe? Are you all right now? It’s this tiny old carriage—the landau would have to take this day to have a faulty wheel.”

Charlotte pulled her head in from the window. “What?”

“Nothing. I was just explaining to Nick about the carriage, and why we have so much protection, although honestly, I would have thought that Piddle and Erp would be enough.”

“They are outside of enough,” her cousin replied, glaring at the seat opposite, where the two hounds were stuffed together, and with a sniff pushed the window open even wider. “This is ridiculous. I would have kept Papa’s carriage if I had known you were going to squish me into this minuscule little box with those two beasts. What will Lord Carlisle think when he sees how wrinkled my gown is?”

“I believe he will have more important things to notice, Char.”

Charlotte looked at her in horror. “More important than my gown? I think not!”

“Don’t be so self-centered. Gentlemen like Lord Carlisle have other things on their mind than concerning themselves with the state—wrinkled or unwrinkled—of gowns.”

“The gentlemen you know may have other things on their minds, but the gentlemen I know pay particular attention to a lady’s gown.”

“The gentlemen you know are fops.”

“Gillian!”

Gillian didn’t have the energy, or lung capacity, to argue the point any further, so she contented herself with running over the list of items she wished to discuss with the Scottish speeler earl.

***

The earl was just stepping into his carriage when they arrived. He paused, one hand on the carriage and a look of surprise on his face as it pulled up before him. He counted the liveried footmen clinging to the upper seats of the approaching carriage and almost bolted once he got a look at the behemoth who dangled from the rear.

“Crotch,” he spat at his coachman and stepped back down onto the pavement. The coachman promptly pawed at himself in an attempt to make sure nothing untoward was showing.

“No, you fool, not yours, that one. That giant one clinging to the rear of that blasted carriage. It’s Crotch, Weston’s thug of a butler. What the devil is he doing here?”

There was a slight commotion as the carriage came to a halt. Several footmen leaped off the vehicle and surrounded it in a protective manner. The carriage swayed alarmingly from side to side, then a familiar red head popped out of the window.

“Lord Carlisle, how opportune our arrival was. Might I beg a few moments of your time?”

Carlisle blinked at the image before his eyes. She had escaped Weston’s clutches? A warm sense of satisfaction, coupled with a curiosity about her request, made him reconsider his morning’s plans.

“My time is yours, madam,” he replied with a courtly bow that was sadly lost on its recipient, her head having been retracted back into the carriage.