“Lady Hastings and Lady Pembroke are waiting in the drawing room for you, Lady Charlotte.”
Charlotte brushed down her skirts and accepted the handkerchief that Grace held out. “Thank you, Simmons. I’ll be down shortly.”
***
“Where did you go last night?” Josie asked the moment Charlotte entered the room. “One moment you were talking with the American girls and the next you were gone.”
Charlotte took a deep breath. It had been heartbreakingly difficult to tell her brothers that she was leaving, but at least the chaos of trunks and packing had distracted her—both from her own feelings and her brothers’.
There was nothing to distract her now. “We should sit,” she said, gesturing to the chaise longue and wondering how she would break the news. Mrs. Phillips entered with a tea set. Charlotte busied herself with pouring, putting off the moment as long as she could.
“Did Lord Harrow find you? Lord John Harrow, not the other one,” Henrietta asked.
The pot wobbled in her hand. “What do you mean ‘Did Lord Harrow find me?’ It was I who went looking for him. I was too late.” She would not dwell on it. She’d set her course of action.
Her friends exchanged a glance. “Charlotte, Lord John—Mr. Barnesworth, whatever he’s called now—came to the Ashworth ball last night in search of you. Did you not know?”
She put down the pot before she could spill boiled water all over herself. John had come looking for her?
Had he been planning to ask her to leave with him again?
Did he want to say one final good-bye?
“What did he say?” she asked once she’d found her voice again.
“It was quite the scene,” Josie said. “He kept calling out your name and then he collapsed, right at the entrance to the ballroom, in full view of everyone.”
Charlotte’s heart thumped. “He collapsed? Was he all right? Is he alive?”
Hen shrugged and nodded. “He seemed fine afterward, a little woozy, but he stumbled out muttering something about you and the docks. Whatever was he talking about?”
John had gone to the docks looking for her. But if that was the case, why hadn’t he found her? Had he gotten on his ship? Had he left for America, or had he stayed in England?
If he had stayed, where was he?
“He didn’t find me,” she said weakly, feeling light-headed.
Henrietta took over the tea service. “Well, did he get on the ship?” she asked as she poured a cup and passed it to Josie.
“I don’t know,” Charlotte replied.
“What did he want to say to you?”
“I don’t know.”
“What are you going to do?”
Charlotte threw her hands up in the air. “I don’tknow. William is booking me passage to Boston right now. We have most of the household packing up my things so that I can leave for America this evening.”
Her friends looked stunned. That was perhaps not the best way to break the news of her departure to them, but she was too befuddled to think straight. “Where is John?” she asked, standing because she was too agitated to sit.
“We don’t know,” they said in unison.
Charlotte walked to the window, staring down the drive, trying to will John into appearing.
She heard the clink of a saucer being set down and then spoke. “It’s possible after what happened to Lord Walter Harrow last night, John decided not to leave at all.”
Charlotte turned to face them. “Wait.Whathappened to Lord Harrow last night?”
