Two months. Two damnable short months.That was all Charlotte had to extricate herself from a marriage to a young man who had already buried two wives.
“The bodice of this dress is just not right.” Charlotte’s mother had turned her attention back to the gown and was staring at Charlotte’s stomacher as if she could glare the fabric into submission like she did to everything and everyone else.
“Perhaps you should review fashion plates with Madame Vernier,” Charlotte suggested, desperate to escape her mother, her current situation, and her whole bloody cosseted life.
Her mother nodded. “I am glad you have returned to being reasonable.”
“Of course, Mother,” Charlotte lied. She had no doubt that her mother detected the falsehood, but that would not bother the Society matron. Charlotte had stopped arguing and acquiesced as she always did. It was of no import how she actually felt. It never was, as long as she acted outwardly demure and pleasant.
Mother strode to the door and opened it, but she paused before crossing the threshold. “Are you not accompanying me to review the samples?”
“I need a few moments to compose myself.” Charlotte pressed her lips into a sweet smile.
Her mother’s expression turned impenetrable. “Do not dawdle too long, darling. Women of our breeding do not sulk.”
“Understood, Mother,” Charlotte said.
With regal grace, her mother swept into the hallway, not even bothering to shut the oak door behind her. Charlotte walked across the room and gently closed it, wishing she could shut out her parents’ ambitions just as easily.
Sinking back against the wood, Charlotte found herself staring at the French doors opposite her that Madame Vernier had installed years before to inject a bit of the Continent into her London shop. The early spring day was unseasonably warm, and Madame Vernier’s staff had left the massive glass slightly ajar—enough to let in air but not enough for people passing by on the street to catch glimpses of the clients. The drawn drapes fluttered in the breeze, beckoning to Charlotte.
An unholy energy, fueled by panic, buzzed through her. When pulled back, the French doors would present an opening large and grand enough even to accommodate Charlotte’s ridiculously large skirts. Moreover, the room was on the first floor.
Consumed by the urge to flee, Charlotte grabbed a swatch of gauzy material that Madame Vernier had been using as a makeshift neckerchief for Charlotte. Luckily the material had not been cut and served as a perfect veil. Pulling the sheer material over her head, Charlotte crossed over to the French doors. Parting them, she stepped through and onto the street.
Then she ran.
Chapter Two
At first, Charlotte did not have a direction in mind as she dashed through London. Instinctively, she headed away from the crowded streets frequented by the upper classes. She barely registered the shocked expressions of passers-by at the sight of a lady dressed in court attire dashing pell-mell along the cobblestones. Several times, she had to move her body at odd angles to avoid whacking someone with her pannier. Yet she did not slack her pace, not even when the buildings became older and less meticulously maintained. Fine ladies and their maids no longer populated the thoroughfare.
A painful stitch in Charlotte’s side finally caused her to pause. As she leaned against the rough brick facade of a nearby building, surprise shot through her. She’d traveled all the way to Covent Garden—and not a very savory part of it. Scooching into a side alley, she tried to gather her frenetic thoughts and emotions and put her intelligence to use.
Running from the modiste had accomplished nothing. Although Charlotte possessed a small inheritance from a great-aunt, it would not be enough to live on for the rest of her life. She had no choice but to return to her parents and their machinations. All she had done was gotten herself woefully lost in an unfamiliar and likely dangerous section of the city.
Forcing herself to breathe in and out, Charlotte focused onthe most urgent problem: finding her way through the warren of streets she’d blundered into. Her only incursions into Covent Garden had been strictly limited to attending the Theatre Royal. This part of the city was more the realm of her twin brother.
Peeking around the corner, she scanned the larger street for any landmark that Alexander might have mentioned. Everything looked drab and unremarkable. Coffeehouses blended into alehouses and perhaps even a bordello or two, and then back into coffeehouses. An incongruous laugh rose inside Charlotte, who for the first time in her life found herself on the verge of having the vapors.
To think, she had yearned to accompany her brother to this section of London! Although she had no interest in the drinking establishments or the brothels, she’d long wanted to visit a coffeehouse, choke down some of the bitter brew, and engage in a debate unfettered by the rules of polite society. She and her friends had secretly fantasized about visiting the noisy spaces instead of enduring the suffocating atmosphere of her mother’s especially strict salon and its endless decorum. But coffeehouses were barred to women, except for the proprietresses.
Stifling another inappropriate giggle, Charlotte tried to soberly take an accounting of the street. Richly clad aristocratic young rogues mixed with laborers. Not all the better-dressed men, however, had the bearing of the peerage or gentry. Instead, their demeanor seemed hard, coarse, and most assuredly deadly. A chill slithered over Charlotte as she wondered if she was espying some of the fabled highwaymen who dressed like fops; or perhaps these hardened fellows were smugglers or river pirates. This, Charlotte realized, was a world that Lord Hawley would frequent as he discarded his Society trappings and donned his true persona. The truth of the villain could be found in places like Covent Garden, not at the balls, soirees, and musicales that Charlotte attended.
But there was one coffeehouse where she might at least be able to seek temporary shelter and arrange for a hackney carriage: the Black Sheep. Not only was it her twin’s favorite haunt, but one of the proprietresses was Charlotte’s cousin—estranged, but still family. And Alexander told such stories about the establishment.
The Black Sheep—even the name called to something inside Charlotte, not just to her current panic but to the misfit part of her that wanted to debate and maybe even defy the rules prescribed to ladies. What would it be like to live as her cousin did—freed from Society, owning a place that was a hotbed for revolutionary ideas? Would it be similar to how she imagined her grandmother and great-aunt’s salon? Mother had stifled its daring philosophical atmosphere after Charlotte’s aunt had run away with a pirate, but how magnificent it must have been in its heyday.
Just a few weeks ago, her cousin and product of that shocking union, Hannah Wick, had approached Alexander about investing in an expansion of her coffeehouse. The space adjacent to the Black Sheep had recently become available for rent, and Hannah had wished for help in paying the lease. The sum was not a grand one, but Charlotte’s brother didn’t have the funds.
Suddenly, a brilliant plan ripped through the doom encasing Charlotte. She had the money—her inheritance! What if she transformed her dreams of a coffeehouse where women could attend into reality? She knew such a place would attract scores of customers, and customers meant blunt, and blunt meant she would have an income separate from her parents. If she was a co-owner of the Black Sheep, she would have access to all its customers, including those with criminal connections who might know of Hawley’s misdeeds.
Good lord, perhaps Charlotte had been running somewhere after all. An almost giddy excitement collided with her anxiousness. A part of Charlotte warned her that she should not plungeinto murky, unknown waters, but she ruthlessly silenced the doubts. If she wanted freedom, she had to be bold.
Afraid that further consideration would sway her into dismissing the scheme, Charlotte burst into the larger street. A flower seller pushing her cart seemed the most approachable person. After hurrying to catch up to the woman, Charlotte blurted out, “Miss. Please. Can you tell me where to find the Black Sheep coffeehouse?”
The female peddler blinked, likely in shock over Charlotte’s formal appearance and polished accent. Too startled and confused to protest or even to ask for coin, she jabbed her finger to the right. “Four streets that way, milady, then toward the south.”
“Thank you!” Charlotte wished she could pay the flower seller, but she had left her reticule at the modiste’s. Instead, she gave a friendly salute before she wove through the crowd in the direction indicated.
