At that Charlotte walked away from Marie, who was still buttoning up her traveling gown in the back. She opened the door and said calmly, “Oh, Miss Helms.” Pippa’s nanny Katy looked back up the stairs, her hair bundled wildly on her head. “I’ll take Pippa.” The countess reached out her arms. Katy hesitated, and then walked back up the stairs. Pippa caught sight of Charlotte, and gave an urgent sob.

“My not-nanny,” she wailed.

“Here, darling,” Charlotte crooned, cuddling her in her arms. “Let’s go downstairs and get in the coach, shall we? Mama will sing you a song, and you can go back to sleep again.”

“Papa!” Pippa whimpered. “Want Papa.”

“He can’t be here right now,” Charlotte said soothingly. “But Mama is here, and I’ll sing you a song about a frog, shall I?”

On the stairs, the other two young women, Marie and Katy, looked at each other in surprise. Charlotte had never called herself “Mama” before. Yet Pippa seemed to accept it without a tremor. She cuddled into Charlotte’s arms, catching her breath but not sobbing anymore.

Charlotte looked up at Marie. “I’m sorry, Marie. We seem to have changed our plans. Would you mind bringing my brush to the coach, please? You can do my hair there. I think we had better follow his lordship now.”

Marie went back into the bedroom to pick up the last few things strewn around the room, bundling Charlotte’s ruined nightdress into a bag. She didn’t want to leave it in case the servant who cleaned the room decided to sell the story to the gossip columns. Lord knows, all this upset would be fodder enough for the papers.

But, in fact, no word of the changed plans of the Earl of Sheffield and Downes reached London. Under Alex’s instructions, Keating handed out a good deal of gold and a strongly worded threat to each and every inn employee. He doubled the yearly salary of the eight footmen who accompanied them to the inn. He paid the captain of the ship that was to take them to Italy triple fare to keep silent about the disappearance of his passengers, and capped the money off with a threat as well.

So while Charlotte’s mother and father thought she was aboard a ship for Italy, in fact she and Pippa were rattling slowly north. The two coaches Alex left behind were each pulled by two horses instead of four, so the little cavalcade didn’t travel very far in any given day. But that was a blessing, Charlotte thought. Because Alex’s coach was far, far ahead of them, and they didn’t have to worry about him.