How telling is it that he thinks more of his plants than he does of you?asked Wicked Violet.
And for the first time, she was beginning to think Wicked Violet was not entirely wrong. Perhaps she would embrace Wicked Violet from this point hence, and no longer have any tolerance for the nonsense others continued to attempt to visit upon her.
“I am bleeding,” she announced, rather irritated with him.
Perhaps she had no right to be so aggrieved after she had kissed another man on two separate occasions, but she could not help but to be disappointed by his reaction to her injury. Charles was plainly more concerned with the state of his orchids than he was with her well-being.
And his kiss had been…
Disappointing.
Bland.
Forgettable.
“Perhaps we ought to return to Mother and Lady Beaufort,” he suggested. “My orchids are not in their best state. They have been dampening off, some of them suffering from a green fungus which I cannot yet contemplate how to combat. Given a few weeks—when we wed, perhaps—I will be capable of showing you my plants. This evening, however, seems as if it would be best devoted to other tasks.”
“But your plants,” she protested, still feeling guilty.
“They will be cleaned up and restored,” he promised easily, rising to his full height once more and offering her his hand. “Come now, my dear.”
She accepted his hand, and she went. For what other choice did she have?
Chapter Five
They were ontheir way back to Lark House, carriage swaying in familiar, lumbering gait, when something odd happened.
An explosion, to be precise.
It began in the front right corner of the conveyance and it exited in the rear left. Clean. Abrupt. So quick and unexpected, for a moment, Violet was not even certain it was real. Until she noted the sunbeam pouring through the ragged hole in the upper corner of the carriage.
She stared for a moment more, her mind attempting to comprehend.
Had it been a stone thrown aloft from another carriage? But how could a stone inflict so much damage?
The force and trajectory of the object seemed suspect. Confusion and something darker swirled…suspicion. But no, it could not be. Could it?
“Good God! Someone has taken a shot at us!” exclaimed Aunt Hortense.
Surely her aunt was being melodramatic, jumping to ridiculous conclusions, issuing statements without any fact to back her claims, Violet was certain of it. The carriage swayed wildly, almost as if the horses drawing it had spooked. The agitated voice of their driver could be heard, muffled by the walls of the carriage and the din of London’s late-afternoon traffic.
She stared again at the holes pierced in the roof of the carriage, giving her a tiny portal to the foggy sky; yellow and gray today, thick and mysterious, cloaking everything in a cloying layer of gloom.
Suddenly, the carriage sustained another attack. This time, the missile was aimed lower, hurtling through the wall of the carriage, and then the empty air separating her from Aunt Hortense, before exiting through the rear.
And it was in that moment that reality, stark and grim and frightening, set in. It had not been a rock. Nor had Aunt Hortense been suffering from a fit of the vapors.
Someone had shot at their conveyance. Twice.
Close enough that the bullets had pierced the cab, entering one wall and exiting the next.
Dear, sweet heavens.
“Get down and shield yourself,” she ordered her aunt, shock and fear mingling within her.
Aunt Hortense sank to the floor of the carriage with great difficulty thanks to her arthritis, scarcely managing to fold her knees. Issuing a heavy groan, she settled herself, arms raised over her head. Violet wanted her aunt safe, but all too soon, a fresh emotion charged through her, barreling like a locomotive.
Rage. Indignation.
