Runaway Duchess (London Ladies Book 1) Read online

  “I know it is not my place, but I…that is to say…you should not be alone with the duke.” Tabitha spoke so quickly that her words came out in one long, nearly indecipherable stream:

  Youshouldnotbealonewiththeduke.

  Removing a daintily embroidered handkerchief from the pocket of her dress, Charlotte dabbed at her perspiring brow. “Not to worry. I have no intention of ever seeing that man again, let alone being caught in the same room with him. I should quite rather die first.” Smiling in what she hoped was a reassuring manner, she picked up her skirts so as not to trip over her long hem and hurried down the stairs, taking the narrow steps two at a time.

  Left alone in the attic, Tabitha closed her eyes and said a quick prayer. “Yes,” she said softly, “that is exactly what I am afraid of.”

  Chapter Two

  Twinings Tea House was tucked away on the relatively quiet corner of Broad Street and Park. It was an old brick building that sagged a little here and there, but it was cheerful despite its age and there was rarely an hour that went by when it was not filled to the brim.

  High noon on a Tuesday was certainly no exception, with carriages lined up around the block and a long que of patrons waiting to get in.

  Charlotte had managed to escape from her mother’s watchful eye using the tried and true excuse of a shopping expedition with Dianna. As a young woman of impeccable character and a well-to-do family, Dianna had earned the grudging approval of Bettina. A good thing, as the two women, friends since childhood, were often inseparable.

  Short, petite, and lovely, with blonde ringlets, rosy cheeks, and dancing blue eyes, Dianna was Charlotte’s opposite is nearly every way. Reserved where Charlotte was outgoing, thoughtful when Charlotte was impulsive, Dianna often helped curb some of Charlotte’s more wild ideas while Charlotte encouraged Dianna to be more courageous. They suited each other perfectly, and were so close they considered themselves to be sisters in every way but blood.

  Thus it was with great reluctance that Dianna agreed to wait in the carriage while Charlotte went inside of Twinings to meet with Tabitha.

  “I am afraid if I bring you with me it will scare her into silence,” Charlotte explained. “And I need to know what she has to say.”

  “Oh, very well.” Waving her hand in the air, Dianna rolled her eyes and slumped back onto a plush velvet seat cushion. Beside her, Abigail Mannish, their chaperone for the morning and Dianna’s aunt, did not bother to look up from her book.

  A sweet natured spinster in her later years (a polite way of saying she was nearly sixty), Abigail had long ago reached an agreement with Charlotte and Dianna. As long as they provided her with enough reading material, she would let the girls do as they pleased, excluding any activity she deemed too dangerous or one that had the potential to harm their spotless reputations.

  “I will simply wait here twiddling my thumbs,” Dianna sighed. “You will tell me every word, of course.”

  “Of course,” Charlotte promised solemnly. “Every word.”

  Since the day she’d learned of her own engagement, the two friends had been driving themselves to distraction trying to figure out a way to free Charlotte from the duke’s nefarious clutches. They’d thought of everything from faking Charlotte’s death in a drowning accident (Charlotte had been fully supportive of this plan, Dianna not so much) to running away and joining a traveling menagerie.

  ‘But you’ll free all the animals,’ Dianna had pointed out, ‘and be placed in jail, and be no better off than you are now.’

  To Charlotte’s mind, being in jail was preferable to being married to a man she positively loathed, but she hadn’t wanted to be responsible for tigers overtaking London, and thus she’d reluctantly agreed that perhaps the menagerie wasn’t the best idea they could come up with.

  Unfortunately, that left them with no ideas, which was why her meeting with Tabitha was of the utmost importance. If the maid was able to share information that was salacious enough in nature, then maybe–just maybe–Bettina would reconsider marrying her only daughter off to the highest bidder.

  “Out you go, then.” Dianna rapped her fist against the window and the carriage door was promptly opened by her footman, allowing a warm spring breeze to spill into the carriage. “I will stay here and gossip with Aunt Abigail.”

  Startling at the sound of her name, Abigail looked up from her book and blinked owlishly at her charges from behind the thick wire spectacles she used for reading. “What? Who?”

  “Nothing, Aunt Abigail.” Dianna patted her aunt’s knee. “Charlotte is just going to a secret meeting with her own maid to discuss the horrible things her husband-to-be has done.”

  Charlotte bristled. “He is not my husband-to-be, and I refuse to acknowledge him as such.”

  “Try telling that to the ton,” said Dianna. “That announcement your mother had printed has sent everyone in a wedding fervor. Lady Grunewald stopped me on the street yesterday to ask how long your veil is going to be.”

  “Long enough to strangle her with,” Charlotte muttered under her breath. Lady Grunewald was a notorious gossip and a dramamonger besides. Suffice it to say, there was no love lost between the two women.

  Glancing down regretfully at her book, Abigail marked her page and then closed it. Slipping her spectacles to the top of her head where she wore a white lace mob cape over wispy blonde hair streaked liberally with gray, she turned her attention to Charlotte. “I did not know you were engaged. What is his name, dear?”

  “Miss Abigail, I am not—”

  “The Duke of Paine,” Dianna interjected.

  “Paine?” Abigail said, referring to the duke by his less commonly used surname. “You are to wed Paine? Is he not a bit old for you? And, well…” Her nose wrinkled. “Grotesque?”

  Charlotte nodded so vigorously her hat strings came untied. “Yes. Precisely so, Miss Abigail. But my mother refuses to listen to reason, and—”

  “I was engaged to a duke once, you know.”

  Charlotte and Dianna exchanged wide-eyed glances. No, they most definitely had not known.

  A quintessential spinster with a love for crumpets, Abigail had always seemed quite content with her life as a chaperone. In all their time together Charlotte could ever recall Dianna’s aunt being in the company of a suitor, and she’d certainly never mentioned an engagement, let alone an engagement to a duke.

  “A duke, Aunt Abigail?” Dianna said dubiously. “Are you certain?”

  “Am I certain who I was once engaged to?” The faintest hint of a smile curved Abigail’s lips and for an instant, despite her silver hair and the lines embedded in her countenance, Charlotte caught a glimpse of the great beauty she had once been. “Yes, I do believe I am. I may now spend my days with my nose buried in a book, but it was not always so, my dears. I once led quite the exciting life.”

  “What was his name?” Charlotte asked.

  “And what happened?” Dianna piped in.

  Abigail lowered her book to her lap, and absently smoothed her hand over the cover. Her gaze was distant as she spoke, as though she had gone to another time and place, and in some small way Charlotte supposed she had.

  “His name was Reginald Browning the Third, Duke of Ashburn.” The corners of her eyes crinkled as she smiled. “I called him Rocky. We grew up next to each other and as a result became fast childhood friends, even though he was destined to inherit a dukedom and I was the third daughter of a Baron. Still, love blooms where the sunshine is, and we were always out in the sun together. He asked me to marry him on my seventeenth birthday. He was the impulsive sort. We both were.”

  “Oh, how romantic,” Dianna sighed.

  Charlotte, noting the way Abigail’s hands tightened reflexively on the spine of her book, said nothing.

  “Romantic, yes. Practical, no. Rocky’s father was furious with him, and with me. He demanded he break the engagement. By then it had gone public, of course.”

  “Oh dear,” Dianna murmured.

  �
�Yes,” Abigail agreed, “‘oh dear’ sums it up nicely. Rocky said he loved me, and I trusted him at his word. But we both knew the engagement could not continue, and he ended it a week later. We fell out of touch after that. I saw him occasionally in London, but after his father died and he inherited his title, he ran with a more exclusive set than I did. He ended up married to the daughter of a marquess, and moved to France to be near her family, leaving his mother in charge of all his holdings here.” Abigail blinked, and her gray eyes cleared. “I have not seen him since.” There was no remorse or anger in her tone, only a quiet finality that somehow made it all the worse.

  “He should have stuck by you.” Charlotte’s brow furrowed at the thought of anyone leaving poor, sweet Abigail. “If he truly loved you, he never would have let you go.”

  “He sounds like a complete beast, Aunt Abigail,” Dianna said with a scowl. “You are lucky you did not have to marry him.”

  Abigail shrugged. “Yes, well, it is what it is. Charlotte?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Did you not say you were meeting someone?”

  “Oh!” Charlotte’s hazel eyes went wide and she scrambled to her feet, ducking her head just in time to save herself from striking it against the roof of the carriage. “Tabitha! I completely forgot. I hope she hasn’t left.”

  “Good luck,” Dianna called after her as she leapt out the door and dashed towards Twinings as fast as her skirts would allow.

  Dodging elbows and ducking under heavy silver trays weighed down by an array of scrumptious smelling cakes and pastries, Charlotte fought her way to the back of the crowded shop, looking this way and that in a valiant effort to find Tabitha amidst the barely controlled chaos. Hearing her name being called she turned to the left, and a relieved smile broke across her face when she saw her maid sitting at a small wooden table tucked away in the far corner.

  “I do apologize.” Out of breath by the time she reached Tabitha, she collapsed into the empty chair across from the maid and rested her gloved elbows on the table. “My chaperone was telling me a story, and I lost track of the time. Thank you for waiting.”

  Tabitha bobbed her head and plucked nervously at a loose string on the sleeve of her plain brown dress. As usual her hair was pulled ruthlessly back from her face and pinned up in a tight coil at the nape of her long neck. She wore no adornments or jewelry, and Charlotte could not help but wonder if it was because she had none to wear or she preferred not to draw attention to herself with flashy baubles.

  Probably both, she decided as her fingers unconsciously drifted to the pearl necklace she had looped around her own throat. “Is someone else joining us?” she asked, belatedly taking note of the three cups of tea on the table. Adding a lump of sugar to the cup that was sitting in front of her, she blew across the top of it before taking a small, careful sip.

  “Yes,” Tabitha said.

  When she failed to elaborate, Charlotte merely sipped her tea. It was rather exciting, she thought, to meet under such mysterious circumstances. With the exception of her unwanted engagement to the duke, nothing out of the ordinary ever seemed to happen to her. Her upbringing had been standard for a girl of her station. Her debut into high society had been nothing short of textbook (with the notable exception of being unable to find a husband, not that she’d ever looked very hard). She had, up until this point, led a very dull, boring life filled with more do not’s than do’s.

  Do not voice an opinion.

  Do not speak unless spoken to.

  Do not go outside without a hat.

  Do not go outside without gloves.

  Do not go anywhere without a chaperone.

  There were countless more, but it made Charlotte depressed to think of them all, and so she set her mind to guessing whom the third cup of tea might belong to. A secret informant? An illicit lover? She brightened at the thought. Perhaps Tabitha was involved in a scandal and she had really asked Charlotte to meet her because she was preparing to run away with a prince from a faraway country where they would live happily-ever-after and—

  “Lady Charlotte, this is my sister, Vera.”

  All thoughts of princes and scandals and lovers faded away as Charlotte twisted in her seat. Studying the woman who had approached their table, she saw the resemblance between Tabitha and Vera immediately.

  In addition to being of similar height and build, Vera possessed the same pinched look of worry as her sibling, as if she were waiting for bad news to befall her at any moment. She sidled up next to Tabitha and glanced sideways at Charlotte, her murky brown eyes filled with suspicion.

  “Is this her, then?” she asked.

  “Yes. This is Lady Charlotte.”

  “Do sit down,” Charlotte urged, gesturing towards the last empty chair.

  Vera sat gingerly on the very edge, but she kept an old beaded reticule clutched tightly in both hands and the heels of her boots planted firmly on the floor as though ready to bolt at the smallest provocation.

  “My name is Vera,” she said needlessly.

  “That is a lovely name.” Charlotte extended her right hand across the table, but Vera refused to lift her fingers from her purse, and after a few seconds of awkward waiting, she drew her arm back.

  “Vera,” Tabitha hissed, her cheeks going pink with mortification. “Remember your manners! Lady Charlotte, I am so very sorry—”

  “Don’t you go apologizin’ for me.” Vera sniffed. “I ain’t done nothin’ wrong.” She spoke with a cockney twang that betrayed her lack of education, and the challenging lift of one dark eyebrow dared Charlotte to say something about it.

  Quickly reassessing her initial impression of Vera–while she certainly looked like her sister, albeit several years older, they were nothing alike–Charlotte managed what she hoped was a diplomatic smile and said, “Would you like some pastries? The yellow meringue tarts are very good here.”

  Vera tilted her head to the side. “Tarts would be nice. I ain’t had one of ‘em in a while.”

  “Tarts it is.” Flagging down a member of the staff, Charlotte placed an order for six fresh lemon meringue tarts. By the time she was finished Vera had noticeably relaxed and even went so far as to lift one hand from her reticule.

  “Tabby said you was kind like,” she said. “I wasn’t sure what to believe–ye never know what to expect with you meet hoity toity nabobs–but ye seem nice enough I guess.”

  “Thank you?” Charlotte ventured.

  Vera nodded regally, as though she had just granted a very fine compliment. “Yer welcome. My sister also said ye were engaged to that man.”

  “The Duke of Paine?”

  Vera’s eyes narrowed. “Yeah.”

  “Yes,” Tabitha corrected her in a small voice. “It is pronounced ‘yes’.”

  Vera glared sideways at her sister with thinly veiled hostility. “Did Tabby ever tell ye there were five of us in all? I’m the oldest, Tabby here is the baby. Our mum popped out a new one e’ry year until she died of the pox. I took care o’ the lot. Raised ‘em like they were my own. Tabby here is the best of us. She went and got herself a fine education, she did. Learned how to speak by takin’ care of rich nabob brats starting when she was twelve. Now she thinks she’s better than the lot of us on account of her fancy way of speakin’ and nice clothes.”

  It was difficult for Charlotte not to take an instant dislike to Vera. She did not approve of the way she treated Tabitha, and would have surely objected if they were here under different circumstances, but she did not want to raise a fuss and frighten Vera away. So she bit her tongue, always a difficult thing for her to do, and struggled to keep a smile on her face.

  “I see.”

  Her cheeks brighter than ever, Tabby shrank back into her chair and stared miserably down at her cup of tea. “I do not think that, Vera. You know I do not. Please just tell Lady Charlotte what you came to tell her.

  “And then you’ll give me the five shillings like ye promised?” Vera said shrewdly.

  It s
eemed Charlotte was not going to be able to hold her tongue after all.

  “Five shillings?” she exclaimed in disbelief. “For coming here to eat pastries and share a bit of gossip? That is highway robbery!”

  “Not to worry,” Tabitha interjected quickly. Her gaze slid from her tea to Charlotte and back again. “I have your payment in full, Vera. Now say what you have come to say and you can leave.”

  “After my lemon tart,” Vera said with a belligerent toss of her head.

  “After your lemon tart,” Tabitha agreed.

  Charlotte, her teeth clenched so hard her jaw ached, said nothing at all.

  “Well,” Vera began after a long, deliberate pause, during which Charlotte feared her teeth were in danger of cracking in half, “the thing of it is I used to work for the duke ‘till I was let go ‘fer stealing silver. I didn’t do it, you know,” she said with a sulky jerk of her shoulder. “I ain’t never stole no silver.”

  “I believe you,” Charlotte lied. “Do go on.”

  “I could tell you the short version fer five, or the long one ‘fer ten.”

  “Vera.” Visibly agitated now, Tabitha slapped her palm down hard enough on the table to cause the teacups to rattle in their saucers. “You agreed before coming here that you would not ask—”

  “It is quite all right,” Charlotte interrupted. “Ten shillings for the entire story, did you say?” She was loathe to give the ill-mannered woman a farthing, but if it meant hearing a story she could use to change her mother’s mind about the duke then she would gladly pay Vera’s price ten times over. “Here,” she said, digging into her reticule and procuring a fistful of silver coins. “This should cover what Tabitha owes you as well.”

  Her eyes gleaming will greed, Vera scooped the coins up and slipped them quick as a wink into her beaded purse. “Now, where was I?”

  “The duke had just let you go,” Charlotte prompted.

  But before Vera could continue, the tarts arrived on a white porcelain plate edged with hand-painted violets. Snagging the largest one, Vera took an enormous bite. Then another, and another. Just when Charlotte was about to scream with impatience, she smacked her lips, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, and resumed her story.